Historic Horeke: A village with everything, and nothing

Wednesday, 21 August 2019

Thousands cheered and feasted when the Treaty of Waitangi was signed at Horeke. Today, it's a village on its knees. Florence Kerr reports for 'No place to live/Kāore te kāinga, kāore te ora', a Stuff investigation into a housing crisis in the Far North.

The kuia's face is serene as she huddles close to the fire, warming her body against a cold southerly breeze. It's mid-morning in the small settlement of Horeke, which straddles the Hokianga Harbour. 

She sits outside a small wooden cabin - inside it's bare, with no insulation. An old cast iron pot sits on the fire with a pork slab sizzling inside - she has no oven. The cabin sits at the bottom of a gentle slope. Half way up is a crude, homemade corrugated iron box - that's the toilet. 

The home next door is worse. The one-room shack is in a state of disrepair, the paint has peeled back revealing rotting wooden boards. A rectangle window panel is missing from the front door, which allows visitors a quick peek into the life of the occupant.

An ageing caravan is sandwiched between the shack and a shed-like enclosure. There are freshly washed clothes on the homemade rope line.

A middle-aged man, with shaggy shoulder-length hair, wearing a yellow hi-vis bush shirt and jeans, is crashed out in the driver's seat of a maroon coloured four-door sedan parked by the shack. Beside him, on the passenger seat, are five empty pill bottles. The man shudders after a nudge on his arm; proof of life is established. In a haze, he says he doesn't live here: 'It's my brother's house,' he slurs. He stops speaking after that.

Dotted along Horeke Road, through the Utakura Valley and its surrounds are dilapidated shacks, a half-built mud house, most with no power or running water. Some have dirt floors - families, children, kuia and kaumatua live there. 

The population is predominantly Māori of Ngāi Tawake ki te Moana, Te Ngahengahe and Ngāti Toro - local hāpu that are part of the Ngapuhi confederation.

Horeke is an hour and a half north of Whangarei. It's the second oldest town in New Zealand and was the third stop for the British who traipsed across the country getting Māori to sign the Treaty of Waitangi.

It was there that Hokianga chief Te Taonui famously responded to Governor William Hobson's pledge to care for the 'natives': 'We think you are going to deceive us,' Te Taonui said. 'We are not willing to give up our land. The land is like a parent to us.'

Māngungu Mission House, where the signing took place on February 12, 1840, is still in pristine condition, maintained by Heritage NZ. The house, once occupied by Rev John Hobbs and his family, is now a visitor's destination where tours are available for a small fee. It sits atop a manicured grassy knoll overlooking the Hokianga Harbour - at its feet the descendants of the chiefs that signed the Treaty are destitute.

Any hope that Treaty settlement money could be used to improve their lives seems a long way off, as hapu in-fighting continues to prevent progress in Ngāpuhi's negotiations with the Crown.

COMING HOME

Dawson, who doesn't want his last name used, is a descendant of the chiefs that signed the Treaty. He's just arrived home from working behind the scenes at a tangihanga at Mokonuiarangi Marae, 400m up the road. 

A local says the road becomes gravel at the point where the Government 'stops giving a f…'.

At first glance, Dawson's house looks abandoned; the pink paint faded on worn or broken weatherboards. The small deck at the front of the house is a health hazard - crooked, unstable and slippery, the roof above collapsing. 

Through two missing wooden boards near the front door, Dawson can be seen pottering inside, getting things in order before he heads back to the marae to work into the evening. 

Despite the disrepair, Dawson keeps a tidy house. Photos adorn the walls. The floor feels unstable, there are several holes in the roof with buckets below. When it rains, the house becomes a water feature.

His home may be broken, but Dawson's manaakitanga isn't - he offers a cup of tea - a ritual in Māori homes everywhere. 

Dawson grew up in a Horeke that was thriving, people had jobs and ate from the land and sea. He grew up in this house. 

'Born and raised in Utakura, down through Horeke area on the top side of the Hokianga Harbour,' he says proudly, 

'My mum and dad, way back in the 50s, 60s, they had a couple of cows … eventually, their herd grew to 20, 30, 50, 60 cows.'

But the dairy industry slumped and an urban migration to Auckland began.

'There were probably 12 different families milking and then they finally migrated and went to the city to work. 

'My mum and dad stuck it out here in Utakura. I'm the youngest of 15 in our family so somebody had to stay home with mum and dad.'

When Dawson was old enough, he went to Wellington, where he did an engineering apprenticeship then headed to Australia. After he had his own family he felt the need to return home. 

'I wanted to bring them back and be able to share with my young family our tangata … our whenua,' Dawson says.

'So that when they grew up and went out into the world, they could always come back to the whenua. That's simply how it is, I mean, I was blessed through my grandparents, my mother and my father and now I'm sharing that with my tamariki and my grandkids.'

The return to the whenua was not easy - the lack of employment in the immediate area meant Dawson had to travel for work.

New problems have emerged in the last few years. The reversal of the urban migration of the 50s and 60s has hit housing and infrastructure hard. And whānau who have only known the city way of life are struggling out in the sticks. 

'We've got generations of families that are coming back to the area,' Dawson says.

'They're coming coming back with nothing and actually living on the land. Living in a car, living in a van. Just making do with a shack kinda building. 

'And they're coming with younger kids, which is not very good. So I mean, it's harder, harder for us here to try and help them because, like, we're financially under strain and what can we do? You know, they need assistance, we need assistance to help them. So it's a struggle, it's a real struggle.'

Dawson says the lack of good housing for whānau has always been a big problem in Horeke, but other evils have crept into the village, including methamphetamine.

A recent test for illicit drugs in wastewater across the country found their use in Northland was higher than any other region, per capita. 

The testing, instigated by police, also found that Māori were 1.8 times more likely to try amphetamines than non-Māori. 

Far North police area commander, Inspector Riki Whiu, says drugs are rife throughout the community.

'Alcohol is still a huge driver of family harm and meth is certainly there - it's a different beast, it has no religion, it has no culture other than destruction,' Whiu says. 

'Unfortunately, those that are peddling it have no conscience around the impact it's having on our people in the Far North.'

The Horeke community doesn't have the resources to help those hooked on drugs, Dawson says. 

'It's a combination of all those things, the poverty, and the higher levels of the white powder that's coming into your communities,' he says. 

'There's no work in these small communities. We've got over 5000 acres of pine trees, and the saddest part of it is that they get outside contractors who come from down the line.'

POOR DEAL

A deal between local hāpu landowners and Whitcliffs Forestry was signed in the early 1970s.

Government officials advised Māori landholders in the Horeke/Utakura area to combine their landholdings and create Utakura 7 incorporation to safeguard the perpetual ownership of their ancestral land. 

In the 2017 Utakura 7 AGM report chairman John Panoho writes about an under-current of dissent over the lease and the manner in which the incorporation was quickly established. 

Panoho writes: 'The business model promoted by Governments' agents was predicated on establishing a pine forest with external owners to support a burgeoning timber industry.

'From the outset, it was obvious that this would be to the detriment of the small dairy-holdings and quickly led to a leasehold arrangement which was heavily weighted in favour of the forest owner.' 

Utakura 7 receive a modest income from the 'stumpage' (the value of standing timber) the report says. 

'It is also true that while we remain simply passive beneficiaries of the forest economy it is unlikely that individual dividends will ever be paid at least until our ownership changes and our revenue is no longer from stumpage alone.'

The descendants of those who signed the contract, meanwhile, continue suffering the consequences of it. 

'The people who lease our land they do whatever they like, they have a contract. They make all the money off our land and they go back to wherever they are and we're still left here, we're in poverty, you know?' Dawson says.

The incorporation is negotiating with the company for a new deal when the current contract expires in 2038. 

Panoho doesn't blame Whitcliffs for the lack of employment opportunities for locals. 

He says jobs are limited but contracts have been held by locals. 

Panoho believes that if Ngāpuhi signed off on a treaty settlement with the Crown it would improve things for Horeke people. 

No settlement could ever cover the tribe's actual loss, but it would be a solid foundation, Panoho says. 

'What comes back is only a pittance but at least it's an economic starter, to get things underway, and with the proper stewardship, then it can make a difference.'

Whitcliffs owner/operator Bill Taylor could not be reached for comment. 

DISTRUST OF GOVERNMENT

Like almost any small New Zealand town, its economic fortunes are reflected in the local pub.

The Horeke Hotel is nestled on the edge of the Hokianga Harbour. It's the oldest pub in New Zealand and has a long history of drunken shenanigans that date back to 1835.

The current owner/operator, Peter Madrin, has been in charge for the past 26 years. The pub is closed now and only opens for those needing a night's accommodation. 

Madrin says past traumas from colonisation are yet to heal and the distrust is passed down through the generations. So is the poverty. 

'There are houses here that are packing cases you know, pallets down over a dirt floor with second-hand carpet on top.

'And generations of kids have grown up in that house. No running water, they bathe in the creek outside. You know houses like that have brought up two or three generations of kids. Made out of packing cases really just bits and pieces but the kids are fine. They grew up all right with no running water, just bathe in the creek winter and summer.'

​Madrin says the many avenues for income have dried up in the area which has seen many go from hard workers to state dependant or become 'slaves' in larger cities. 

It's a sad fall for a once-proud town where land confiscations and broken promises from successive local and national politicians have made locals wary of those in power. 

Madrin says he understood when local hāpu were skeptical of a plan to give land to the local council for a proposed cycleway. 

'They absolutely wouldn't go for it and it's a total distrust of government,' he says. 

'They said if they got that width of land they'd be pushing to take more, and the next thing we'd have a big highway through there. 

'This is how they're thinking … you just don't let any inroads anywhere into the land by the government for anything.

'We even took several members of our community and funded them to go and have a look at the Otago Rail Trail and the timber trail through Benneydale, there's a town like Horeke … and just see what has happened to Benneydale. 

'It didn't sway them. We have so much distrust, just an absolute hatred for the government, for the land thieving.'

​Madrin says he can't blame the urban drifters and their descendants returning back to the land despite having nothing. The cost of living in the cities is too high for minimum wage earners. 

'They went and worked for the railways down there, or on the wharves, went down and became labourers in Auckland and you know, their grandkids are now coming back to the land and that's because you can't survive in Auckland any more on a slave wage, you just can't do it without being a criminal at the same time. 

'You can't bring a family up there, but you can here, because there's plenty of food on the land. The government is trying to bribe them to go now to the city, so they give them a hand out to get them relocated to Auckland or Christchurch where they want the labourers, but they're going to go down there and they'll be slaves to a corporate, loading the supermarket shelves or lollipop boy for one of the road gangs … and you can't survive, you can't raise a family on a minimum wage for Christ's sake, you know. It's just nonsense.'

OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND

He Korowai Trust chief executive Ricky Houghton is working to house the newly homeless in the Far North. Based in Kaitaia, Houghton is asking the Coalition Government to declare a housing state of emergency in Northland.

Having worked in the social sector for 18 years, Houghton says the need is at critical levels.

He Korowai Trust runs a programme called Whare Ora which is a small village created by the trust that sees low-income families and individuals enter the bottom rung of home ownership. 

Calling a housing state of emergency would cut out the bureaucracy and exorbitant consent fees and allow him to bring more homes into the area. 

Families, like those living in poverty in Horeke, don't have the ability to do strategic planning, they survive day to day, Houghton says.

'When I grew up, they used to show cowboy and Indian movies and the cowboys always came over the hill as heroes,' Houghton says.

'But you know what, there's no one coming from Wellington, there's no one coming over the hill, not even the iwi down the road are coming through to bring a bit of kai to have a cup of tea with them. 

'There's no one. So they're left to their own devices and they develop within social groupings. They get together there and they say: 'oh well, we don't have to worry about being 50, we're not going to live that long'.

'So they develop all sorts of helplessness and hopelessness. They believe they are doomed - that this is it, this is their life, that this is all they're going to be. 

'But they are worth saving. They are all worth it.'

He says there is no silver bullet to fix the issues Northland Māori face today but believes there is a way forward. Fix the housing first, then heal the people.

Houghton says colonisation, theft of land and historic legislation that dehumanised Māori have played a part in the issues faced today.

'They're sick of being told that they're worthless,' Houghton says. 

'They know all of that - everything is deficit-based, nothing is values-based. 

'They hear it from those who don't understand: 'Well you're into the bloody drugs and alcohol and everything.' They know that.

'You don't have to go there offering them the gold and silver. You go there offering them hope and that costs nothing. Our plan has to be to save one family at a time and everybody has to commit to that. 

For now, the task continues to fall to community members like Dawson to try and figure a way through for his whānau returning to the whenua. 

'Our tupuna, way back in the native days used to live better than what they do,' Dawson says. 

'It's not easy. It's pretty tough out there for these young ones but what choice have they got, you know? They haven't got a choice. 

'That's the situation as it is … it is disheartening for me to see them like that. I wouldn't like my daughter and my mokos to live like that, but it's just the way the situation is. They need help. That's basically what's happening.'

Further up the road, the kuia returns to her chair by the fire and closes her eyes, she doesn't want to talk. 

Her serenity returns when her eyes are closed. Out of sight, out of mind, just like the people of Horeke.