100: Tangata Whenua (Part 2)

Unlike European thought (where people own parcels of land), in Māori thinking the land is regarded as a mother to the people. In fact the relationship to land is not dissimilar to that of the foetus to the placenta. In addition, there are certain Māori rituals involving burying the afterbirth of a newborn within their ancestral land, which may further shed light on the use of the word whenua for both 'land' and 'placenta'.

If that is correct, then Maori could never sell land. You were a GUARDIAN of the land, therefore you could not sell it. Yet they did. Huge tracts or land were sold or transferred for physical goods and what we would regard as trinkets today. Maybe they genuinely thought it was like a lease, but even that is incorrect as Maori had no concept of a lease. Maori also took over land from other tribes - well to be honest they just took it. So, you couldn’t sell it, but you could take it from another and possess it. So we may as well ask a controversial question - Where does the issue of the Crown taking land become a problem in the light of the above? Is it just a skin colour/race issue or something else?

And if you never owned land...how can Maori claim financial compensation for it when in Maori culture land is not a commodity? But if Maori cultural beliefs have changed, then they are no longer purely cultural? Or are they? (just some questions to consider)

In 2016, it was acknowledged that Maori businesses had finally evolved from asset to earnings. In other words, something has to be productive. Leon Wijohn, a Deloitte private partner and the firm's national Maori business sector leader, says the true gauge of Aotearoa's powerhouse Maori economy is operating income. Wijohn sees a clear evolutionary path for big Maori businesses as they grow, gradually moving away from their historic property or real estate interests into two related but clearly distinct sectors. "Initially, they're all around property and the primary sectors - fishing, farming, forestry and land. That's a factor of Treaty settlements - the assets they can acquire back as part of the settlement process," Wijohn said.

Now while this is true, it is agreed that the treaty settlement was about asset (as stated above). Yet Maori culture does not recognize ownership. Tupu is the Maori word for own, but it really means to 'grow'. When you lived on a piece of land you owned what you grew on it, but not the ground itself. Everything else belonged to earth mother. That is why they didn’t just cut trees down without the proper ceremony - except those that burned the forest indiscriminately to flush out Moa in the 1400’s. This shows that either their religion evolved, or the group that burned the forest indiscriminately (the so called Moa Hunters), were from a different place altogether than the real tangata whenua.

Now, with the concept of ownership (or otherwise), of land spelled out, let us examine the real guardians of the land.

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TANGATA

person, man, human being, individual, people, men, persons, human beings.

WHENUA

Land, ground, territory, domain. This word is an ancient Austronesian word with cognates across the Malayo-Polynesian world from Malay benua to Rapa Nui henua. It also means Placenta.

TANGATA WHENUA

Local people, hosts, indigenous people - people born of the whenua, i.e. of the placenta and of the land where the people's ancestors have lived or where their placenta's are buried.

Tangata Whenua are people belonging to a specific place. An Iwi or tribe living exclusively at Raglan, are the Tangata Whenua of that place. But Maori collectively, who live everywhere - do not fit the original intention of the word. Because when you came to this land you lived in one place, you had children and they were born of that land you worked upon to survive. You were Tangata Whenua. To call a group of fragmented tribes Tangata Whenua is completely wrong. Maori was just a word they made up to describe themselves collectively to the European. Tangata Maori adds a wider group yes and is the only reference used in the Treaty of Waitangi.

Waitaha in South Island could call themselves Tangata Whenua as they had the whole land united under one name as original inhabitants, but Ngai Tahu cannot claim the term in the true sense as their true customary land was actually in the North Island. If Ngai Tahu can now call themselves Tangata Whenua of Te Wai Pounamu, then so can Europeans living in the south who were born there. That is a fact of the nature of birth in the land.

Let's break it down further, to a more basic level accepted by Maori today. Tangata is man / Whenua is land. Tangata Whenua is man of the land. It has nothing to do with Maori in an exclusive sense, unless there was no one here before they arrived. But there was. Those between 1790 and 1840 talked about it often. I’d first believe an account of an old elder of 1830 than a 1/16th blood part Maori in 2016 telling me what is right and what is not. Back then, it was a term used by Maori in the same way those before them used it. Some say that what was recorded was a lie. But why would an old Maori man, steeped in the original, pure and true traditions, lie? Think about that one very carefully for those we call Maori transferred information by word of mouth. If those old Maoris were wrong, then anything or everything they said could be wrong. We do not believe that to be the case but use the analogy to be sure some Maori do not skew the intent of the careful oral teachings. All of it is true, or none of it can be trusted.

Be real and sensible. Back then there was no treaty, there was no money at stake, there were no major social problems (other than Ngapuhi killing 40-60,000 from other tribes at the time those stories were told). Why would old Maori men who was born before Europeans arrived, lie about anything? And why is it that non-political Maori I talk to, whether they be from the far north, Taranaki or Southland, all agree that there were people here before Maori. They say they heard that from their matua’s, who heard it from theirs, who heard it from theirs, who heard it from theirs… as far back as those that had actually seen them. Non-political Maori know the stories and acknowledge them. The political ones and those linked to the Treaty process, do not accept those stories. What is the dividing line? Is it truth, or custom? No - it's money!

Even within Maoridom today there are words specific to localities. There was back then too. The Maori language is different in variations to other Pacific nations due to the fact they adopted words, cultural applications, designs, folklore, Gods and other meanings of those already here.

Tangata Whenua then, in its simplest modern usage is a person or persons born in the land. The placenta has no bearing on your conception or birth – it is the afterbirth. You are not of the land because your placenta is buried there, you are of the land because you are born in that land…an effective citizenship right. But Maori would bury the placenta (whenua) where the traditional birth place of your ancestors was because the placenta is what held you while you developed. It's akin to man being 'created from the ground and to the ground he returns' type of analogy. In those days of course, you died where you were born because you lived in that place all your life. We will repeat that - in the old days before inter-tribal wars and slavery, you died in the place where you were born.

It is worth diverting a little to examine the practice of burying the placenta. It's not just a Polynesian practice as many ancient people all around the world have done the same thing. The Navajo Indians, Cambodians, Bolivians and Costa Ricans. Those in Turkey, China, Japan, Dalmatia (Yugoslavia), and Austria. The Masai of Africa also did so. In the Pacific the practice was followed by Nuie, Marquesas Islands, Tahiti and Hawaii. The Samoans burned it, and Tongans threw it in the ocean. It would suggest the Maori practice came from Marqueas, Tahiti, or Hawaii originally. In the case of burying the afterbirth, the land is seen as a mother who nourishes them back and provides food for the one born. Regardless, the true Tangata Whenua had a practice of burying the placenta as did Maori. That practice could have come from anywhere in the world. No one knows for sure but it is even likely that the North Sentinelese do the same.

If you arrived at a new land, you could bury a placenta for the reasons stated above, yet the first generation arriving could never be Tangata Whenua because they were not born of the land. So where did the term really originate from?

Whether they copied it or brought the practice with them, it became part of their culture and they called themselves the same thing that the true Tangata Whenua did - in a generic sense. Only since Maori had become political and the treaty involved financial gain has the term Tangata Whenua become to mean Maori exclusively. But tangata Maori was the correct term that Maori of the day used in the treaty they signed. Tangata Whenua is the generic term for all inhabitants of the land in the true sense of the word - as Waitaha originally meant. Waitaha was made up of many different people of different races and origins. Anyone of true Waitaha decent would agree with this. I had one old Waitaha man tell me so – but he warned much of the truth of things will be eroded in time and he told me that in 2006.

Tangata Whenua…as mentioned in the Te Tiriti o Waitangi, were the people of the land called Maori.... No, wait! The term Tangata Whenua never appears in the treaty at all! Not in the English version and more importantly - not in the Maori version! But if it did, (and it doesn't), there were other people of the land too. Waitaha, MoriOri etc. Collectively, they were the Tangata Whenua. In recent times, Maori have hijacked the word to mean just them. The proof is the treaty as spelled out in the ‘Maori’ version. Understand that each word, in Maori, was written down, read out, discussed over a few days and remained unchanged when they signed it. It was a deliberate purposeful interpretative wording.

I do not care for argument saying the word used in the treaty is wrong. Any Maori or European who would say such a thing is one who demeans and insults the chiefs who accepted what was written, as it was written. Back in 1840 it was often talked about, which isn’t now - that people were here before Polynesians arrived. Maori are Polynesian immigrants. Those that deny that is true can still not argue with the treaty wording. But a lot of history can be changed, hidden, misunderstood or even lost. However, to find evidence of a people Maori hierarchy say do not exist, with DNA that is different, carbon dated to a time well before they got here, buried differently, and of much greater stature, with different skull shapes would be proof enough wouldn’t it? After all, as at right now (officially), Maori deny they exist. Proof is all we are after, the rest is just stuff to discuss and debate.

Therefore, I am open to disagreement until that proof is delivered. And it will be, or we will cease all activity in this regard if nothing of note is inside when we finally break through for this is what we have promised since January 2016.