![]() ![]() Qiane Matata-Sipu initiated Voices of Ihumaatao as “a comms strategy” to “push the narrative that this is a whānau issue, that this is a number of generations of people, it’s people of different experiences and different backgrounds”. And the government pays a little more attention to you.” Like the police leave when you’re peaceful and passive. ![]() One of the cousins summed it up: “I think the peaceful, passive thing has really opened a few people’s eyes, because a lot of people are used to going into these things on full force, and they can see that being peaceful and passive actually gets you somewhere. Claiming the front line to discuss what the protectors had achieved felt alive with significance. One of the research interviews took place on the frontline some weeks after the eviction when there were fewer police present. There were all ages, Māori were in the majority, lots of families, babies in pushchairs, people in wheelchairs, people pushing walking frames, young people, Pākehā families, Muslim families, someone mentioned a bishop being there, a Somali group turned up later in the day. She remembers being warmly greeted when she arrived, the volunteers making sandwiches and preparing hāngī food to feed the masses, and the heated exchanges on the paepae. Karen Nairn, who led the project and is based at Otago University, was there the first weekend. ![]() We witnessed first-hand the support and manaakitanga offered to all who showed up to protect Ihumātao. Despite the halt, the sheer number of people who came that first weekend consolidated into a mass occupation and reclamation. Three days after the police eviction, New Zealand’s prime minister at the time, Jacinda Ardern, halted Fletcher’s housing development until a resolution could be found. ![]() One of the protectors described how the road intersection was transformed into a paepae: “The first three days for me, you could see the paepae forming every day, turning into a paepae, turning into an ātea, and I was like we’re ready for Saturday, because we all knew Saturday was the big day that thousands were going to turn up.” The protectors claimed the nearby road intersection in front of a police cordon positioned to prevent anyone returning to Kaitiaki Village. I just wanted to storm through the police and then come to see if my whānau were alright, but we weren’t allowed to do that.” When we interviewed people about their memories of that day, “the emotional roller- coaster” was evident in tears and the weight of words: “I just felt so angry, so, so emotional that. Widespread outrage at such heavy- handedness brought thousands to the whenua. On the morning of 23 July, the small group of kaitiaki living on the disputed land were served eviction notices by a bailiff accompanied by more than a hundred police. In 2019 the people living in Kaitiaki Village were evicted from Ihumātao, this time by Fletcher Building. We began the research with Protect Ihumātao in 2018 as part of a larger Marsden-funded project about youth-led activism in Aotearoa, bringing together researchers from Otago, Victoria, and Auckland Universities. Image from a forthcoming BWB Talk, filmed at Ihumātao They gardened and cared for the land, “ keeping the heart of Ihumātao and Kaitiaki Village pulsating so that people continued to find purpose within the campaign”. Pania Newton (Ngāpuhi, Te Rarawa, Ngāti Mahuta and Waikato) led the occupation of one of the houses on the disputed land in 2016 and established Kaitiaki Village. The second centred on the overlapping roles of kaitiaki and ahi kā. One key strand of actions was designed to educate people about the whenua. The campaign to determine the future of the land began in 2015. The land in question had been confiscated from local iwi in 1863 by the colonial government and later sold into private ownership. Image from a forthcoming BWB Talk, filmed at Ihumātao. “We wanted to be able to say to our children: ‘We tried everything we could.’ What we wanted to achieve was to allow the people of Ihumātao to determine the future of our whenua” (Qiane Matata-Sipu, Te Waiohua (Te Ahiwaru, Te Ākitai), Waikato, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Pikiao ). When they first heard of Fletchers’ plans for a high-cost housing development at Ihumātao, they met and formed SOUL (Save Our Unique Landscape), which would later morph into Protect Ihumātao. The long, hard struggle to reclaim and protect Ihumātao was spearheaded by a group of six cousins who shared ancestral links to the land. This edited excerpt from Fierce Hope: Youth Activism in Aotearoa recalls that day, and the efforts to protect the whenua ever since. Today marks four years since eviction notices were served to a group of kaitiaki who were living on the disputed land of Ihumātao. ![]()
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