Issue 63

Kā Manukura o Te Reo
Ngā Manu Kōrero

Dry statistics would tell you the future of te reo Māori is under threat. The passion of rangatahi like Thomas Aerepo Morgan and Te Aotahi Rice-Edwards suggest otherwise. One learnt to speak te reo Māori from birth. It is his first language. The other grew up speaking English and, aged 13, enrolled in an Invercargill…

He Whakaaro
Tūhoe settlement shows how far we have come

In 1992 I went to Australia on an ANZAC fellowship to study aboriginal land claim settlements. The High Court of Australia had just issued its Mabo decision, which held that aboriginal groups had native title interests in the land which the Crown should have recognised over the last 200 years. Māori legal interests in land had been recognised for around 150 years, so in that sense, Australian law was literally catching up on 150 years of established property law in New Zealand.

A Tokyo tale
Why did a Japanese businessman and philanthropist lend millions of dollars to Ngāi Tahu?

The manaakitanga begins when three black vehicles pull up on the forecourt of our hotel on the edge of the Ginza district in Tokyo.

Kaiwhakahaere Tā Mark Solomon and Tā Tipene O’Regan are in Tokyo to present tokotoko and koha to Japanese businessman and philanthropist Masashi Yamada and his right-hand man, Yoshikazu Narimoto, in recognition of an important relationship shared with Ngāi Tahu.

Locked out of national parks
A call to action from Kaiwhakahaere Tā Mark Solomon.

I expect some of you heard my speech on indigenous rights within New Zealand national parks at the Inaugural World Indigenous Network Conference, held in Darwin last year.

In that speech I made the point that national parks are not viewed by indigenous peoples in the same way that they are viewed in the Western tradition – as places in which to be free and able to soak up vast amounts of natural beauty.