Mutu makes stand to fight on the beaches

By Joanna Wane
29 August 2004

On the face of it, Professor Margaret Mutu and Sir Winston Churchill don't have much in common. She's far more photogenic and doesn't smoke cigars.

But when the head of Maori Studies at Auckland University laid down the challenge last week to forces threatening to invade her homeland's shores, she might have been echoing his rallying wartime cry: "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds . . . we shall never surrender."

Mutu's message to the government's parliamentary committee in Auckland was blunt and far less poetic. Any attempt to impose the Foreshore and Seabed Bill on her ancestral land in the Far North would be considered "an act of aggression" and treated accordingly.

But the real difference between Churchill's rhetoric and Mutu's is that the former united a nation at the crossroads; the latter has divided one at a time when the lines between "us" and "them" are increasingly blurred.

As radio talkback raged indignantly, Waitangi Fisheries Commission chairman and Northland Maori leader Shane Jones, an old adversary, slammed her comments as an appalling attempt to incite violence.

Unrepentant, Mutu headed north to Kaitaia to chair a runanga meeting on Ngati Kahu land claims and tomorrow she flies to Europe. A convenient opportunity to skip the country, perhaps, but it is mid-semester break and Mutu is not one to back down from confrontation.

Known for her fiery temperament, Mutu has little time for what she sees as Pakeha ignorance, and courted controversy last year by blaming "deeply embedded racism" for unfair treaty settlements she believes are short-changing Maori.

Yet the furore, caused by her support for Maori Language Commission chief executive Haami Piripi's warning that civil war is a real possibility, appears to have left her perplexed.

"It's what we've told the government repeatedly and it's what's been said in lectures and seminars. It's not news to us."

Isn't drawing comparisons with Israel and Palestine extreme? Mutu claims her reported comments were taken out of context.
"But that (conflict) didn't happen overnight," she says. "What's happening here is building ever so slightly but surely into that sort of thing. When you get a population disenfranchised under the law, the anger builds and you cannot expect to contain it by pushing it back into a box and telling it to stay there."

Mutu's gradual evolution from measured academic to Harawira-style rabble-rouser has been watched with interest by political commentator Willie Jackson, a former MP and now presenter of TV One's current affairs show Eye To Eye.

"Margaret has always been a highly principled academic and a careful, considered advocate for Maori," he says. "I never saw her as putting an extreme view. Over the past 12 to 18 months, that's changed. I think she's had enough. But I haven't picked up the feeling from our people that they're ready to take up arms. Far from it. Are they furious with the government? Yes. But they're not about to blow themselves up."

Like Jackson, Mutu is an urban Maori, raised in Auckland, but her spiritual heartland lies in the Far North. Ngati Kahu on her father's side - her mother's roots are Scottish - she has a home on Karikari peninsula, accessible only by four-wheel drive. Standing outside her house on the cliff, she can look over the bay and across the sand dunes - the site of old burial grounds - to Houhora Heads.

According to Mutu, Ngati Kahu holds "mana whenua" over the foreshore and seabed - god-given authority to derive a living from the lands and seas, and the responsibility to manage and defend them in trust for future generations.

"It comes down from our ancestors. It's something we have been given to have and to hold, and by crikey, we have to look after it."

Mutu claims US billionaires have approached the government to buy local beaches. "Very few people come to my area. It's very remote. But it's extremely picturesque, ideal tourism country. I can see a time, if we do not preserve this area, that it could turn into another Waikiki or Surfers Paradise. I'm damned sure most New Zealanders would not want that to happen."

Any unauthorized development or activities - even if sanctioned by the bill - will be considered illegal and be removed, by force if necessary. "It will start diplomatically, but they will no doubt say they have a legal right to be there. We will say: 'You do not.' And it will escalate from there."