'Foreshore belongs to us' - tribe's lore revealed after surf shooting hits headlines

Tuesday, 28 August 2018

Arohaki Bay, where surfers say they were shot at, is fiercely guarded

The sea is calm at Arohaki Bay.

A handful of holiday baches sit quietly at the beachfront. A small swell bends around Honipaka, or Albatross Point, to the ill-famed beach where surfers say they were shot at.

Police visited village elders as part of their investigation and visited this scene. This coast is isolated and notorious. Outsiders are typically allowed to surf 'by invitation', according to Raglan's Daniel Kereopa.

Village matriarch Connie Hepi says shooting at people, if it happened at all, is foolish but she won't condemn her whānau for protecting their resources.

The stance infuriated many, including members of parliament, who believe the sea is free for everyone to use.

**READ MORE:

Ngāti Mahuta owns the sea, too, Hepi says.

* Access to break where surfers shot at 'generally by invitation'

* Taharoa surf turf wars: People don't call it the Wild West for nothing**

Ngāti Mahuta own massive tracts of farm and forest here as well as the ironsand mining operation over the hill at Taharoa.

And they own the sea, too, tribal matriarch Connie Hepi says.

The land and surrounding sea at Taharoa have been in iwi ownership since the beginning, Hepi says.

'We claim the foreshore right around and we are only protecting it. The worry is, for the kaitiaki of the moana, is [others] can come in by boat or jet ski now. They can get as much kaimoana as they want and nobody sees it.'

Hepi knows little about the alleged shooting - only what she's read in the news.

The ironsand mine over the hill from Arohaki Bay.

But the village talks. At some time in the past, shotguns have been fired into the air to ward off strangers from fishing and diving areas.

Still, shooting at someone in the surf, a 14-year old boy at that, is inconceivable.

'Rorirori,' Hepi says. Foolish acts of a brazen youth, in English, but she won't condemn them for protecting a finite resource.

'People don't know what they are really up to and if there was a shot - if there was a shot - they are only protecting it.'

The community has been stripped of its resources by outsiders before. Commercial eelers used to cross private property to set traps in Lake Taharoa, depleting stocks. Divers have pillaged shellfish beds.

The villagers live off the land here. Whitebait stands line the stream; a teenage boy takes off on a quad bike into the pines with two pig dogs behind; families gather firewood from the forest; people are on the beach to gather kai.

This old-time world dominated the headlines for a week after the shooting. The only reactions at the local club are shrugged shoulders and a bunch of 'don't knows'.

The surf break in question is so isolated, it's hard to know what's happened unless someone opens up about it.

There is no formed access, only two off-road tracks.

One of those tracks is a 30-minute four-wheel drive trip, past the sand mine on the Taharoa C block, across an old forestry section reclaimed by black sand, through two locked gates and up and over a steep muddy ridge.

For most of the year, it's the domain of wild pigs, feral goats and farmed cattle. Vistas stretch from the peaks of Taranaki in the south, Karioi to the north and, on a good day, Ruapehu in the central plateau.

There is no-one here on this Sunday.

'No-one is saying anything over here [in the village],' Hepi says after her son puts on a meal of pork sausages, farm-fresh eggs, reheated potatoes, white bread, butter and pot tea. 'There might be. I'm not going to say there wasn't but it would have only been through that kaitiakitanga of our whenua and our sea.

'Come back in six months when everyone has forgotten about it, then you might hear what happened.'

Ngāti Mahuta has its own system of resource management, kaitiakitanga.

Arohaki Bay is split between several extended whānau. Hepi's whānau gather kaimoana from the foreshore directly in front of their baches. The whānau at Te Arawī gather food in front of theirs and so on.

They don't cross into each other's territory without the exchange of conversation and a sack of kai.

It's how it's always been.

Angst has risen, more recently, since foreshore and seabed legislation came into existence and people found a way through the 'back door'.

The Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011 vested ownership in no-one.

Ngāti Mahuta, however, follow their own lore.

'It still hasn't been given back but we've put in a claim to the Treaty of Waitangi for that to be returned back to Ngāti Mahuta,' she says.

'The foreshore belongs to us and it has been ever since our ancestors came here.'

The people here have a saying - Ngāti Mahuta manaaki tangata or Ngāti Mahuta the generous.

Hepi recounts a year when a solo kayaker circumnavigating the country paddled around the Honipaka looking for a place to shelter.

Whānau offered her a safe place to sleep and food before she set out the next day.

But the generosity goes only so far.

'There are certain things and people will manaaki them and that was one. Ka tika te haere mai, ka manaakitia. Ka haere poka noa mai (If you come directly, you will be cared for. If you trespass). . . well, you leave yourself open.'

Foreshore and Seabed

In 2004, the government enacted the Foreshore and Seabed Act in response to the Māori Land Court considering the foreshore and seabed as Māori customary land.

Some sectors of the community were threatened by the idea they could lose access to the beaches and waterways.

Prime Minister at the time, Helen Clark, intervened, announcing legislation to put the foreshore and seabed into public ownership and taking the decision out of the court's hands.

Māori protested with thousands marching on Wellington to show their frustration.

In 2011, the John Key government repealed the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 and enacted the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act where no-one owns the foreshore and seabed.

East Coast iwi Ngāti Porou signed the first Foreshore and Seabed agreement in 2008 and, in May 2018, took a step closer to securing customary title with the first reading of the Ngā Rohe Moana o Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Porou Bill in parliament.