Ground zero of the heart of the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti
Wednesday, 20 November 2024
One person in a crowd of tens of thousands can’t grasp the enormity of the moment, but for these people, the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti meant everything. Senior journalist Joel Maxwell reports from ground zero - the heart of the hīkoi.
Sue Garrett grew up in Cambridge, Waikato, in the 1980s - a town and a time not exactly synonymous with battles for Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
But here she is, in Waitangi Park, Wellington, at ground zero on a history-making day: one Pākehā among tens of thousands of humans about to walk to Parliament to make an emphatic point.
The Hīkoi mō te Tiriti made headlines around the world, but for this former small town New Zealander, it was personal.
“I’m tauiwi [non-Māori] … but we’re all New Zealanders, and that’s our constitution, our founding document, and if that goes…,” Garrett, trails off, frowning.
Read this story in te reo Māori and English here. / Pānuitia tēnei i te reo Māori me te reo Pākehā ki konei.
With a grin, her partner, Chris Watson, adds: “Just keep your hands off it.”
Garrett spoke to Stuff as one of more than 42,000 people who descended on Pōneke for the hīkoi - a march that drew people from across ethnic and cultural boundaries to support Te Tiriti.
The hīkoi formed in Waitangi Park, a 6-hectare grassed and wetland area on the waterfront. People with Tino Rangatiratanga flags, banners, signs, babies in pushchairs, pets, friends, schoolmates, poured through every open space. Elderly people rested on benches near Cable St, leaning on flagpoles sprouting red, white and black flags.
Justin Tamihana, from Foxton, of Ngāti Raukawa and Ngāti Huia, said the hīkoi was all about kotahitanga - bringing people together.
“Tau kē tēnei, kua whakapiri mai tātou te iwi Māori, te hapori ki Aotearoa, kua tae mai nei i raro i te mana i whakakotahi ai tātou,” he said.
“This is awesome, we’ve stuck together as Māori, the community in Aotearoa, who’ve come here under the mana that makes us one.”
When asked for his message to ACT Party leader David Seymour, “Whakarongo ki te tangata [listen to the people],” was his response.
“Ka whawhai tonu mātou, mō ake tonu atu, nā te reo a Rewi Maniapoto. Āe, e tautoko ana i ērā momo kōrero.”
“We’ll never stop fighting. That was what Rewi Maniapoto said, and I agree with those kind of messages.”
Switching to English, he continued with a sombre message: If the Government “takes it to the second reading, you’re not going to get the same response as today”.
He said he prayed that the Government listened to the people, united at the hīkoi.
National has agreed to support ACT’s Treaty Principles BIll through the public submissions stage in Parliament. The bill would replace numerous principles, outlining how the Treaty should be implemented, with three that would go out to a binding referendum.
At about 10.30am on Tuesday, the crowds which had been dispersed across the park, started to move towards the road.
From the street level it was impossible to understand the true size of the crowd - and the history that was being made. The total size was a mystery to each person, surrounded by hundreds of others but without a vantage point above the crest of signs, heads, banners and hefted bamboo poles wielding flags that hid the thousands more.
People were elbow to elbow, but the march was constant, the people friendly, Māori and non-Māori alike.
They were all ages too - Ariki and Micheal Rauhihi were there with daughter Mckenzie Rauhihi, 1, who was on her first hīkoi. Mounted on top of her pushchair was a tall, makeshift flagpole with the United Tribes flag coming along for the ride, too.
It was Mckenzie’s first hīkoi, her dad said, and he hoped it would be her last - that she might live in a future where such things were no longer needed.
Such were the numbers that by the time the tail of the march was reaching Parliament, it was packed to overflowing, crowds squashed in around the sides of the area.
Inside, as the politicians and pūkōrero (expert speakers) started their kōrero, at the very tail end of the hīkoi was Padre Phillips, on his horse, part of a contingent slowly clopping down Willis St with a group of friends.
He had come down from Hawke’s Bay, where he took part in the Ikaroa-Rāwhiti leg of the hīkoi. At his aunty’s request, he was proudly carrying a Māori Horse Association flag.
Being in Wellington for the final stage of the hīkoi was important for the man from Ngāti Kahungunu - he heard that some mates were heading down so he said: “I’ll come with the bro, if you’re coming through, I’ll follow up.”
Once the horses passed through, the streets emptied and regular business folk appeared from side streets, shops, and office buildings again.