More Info →Oral Interview - Jo Ihimaera

Jo Ihimaera Interview 29 December 1994

Interviewee: Jo Ihimaera
Interviewer: Ian Matheson
Transcriber: Leanne Hickman

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Table of Contents

Growing up in Gisborne and attending Auckland Teachers’ College - p 2
Working with Whetu Tirikātene - p 3
Working at Manawatū Polytechnic - p 7
First Māori Representative elected at Manawatū Polytechnic Council - p 10
Initiating and Creating Community Development in Arts - p 13
Working in Community Development at PNCC - p 14
Highbury Whānau Resource Centre - p 15
Working with Pasifika and migrant communities - p 21
The Urban Marae Project - p 24
Working as the Principal Planner for Māori Resource Management - p 31
Impressions of the structure of Palmerston North City Council especially in light of restructuring in 1989 and 1993 - p 38
Te Waka Āwhina - Māori Local Government Association - p 44
Maatatua Declaration 1993, accepted by Geneva into the 1994 Bill of Rights for Indigenous People - p 45

IA: Right we’re away. This is tape 1, side A, Ian Matheson interviewing Jo Ihimaera at the Palmerston North City Council on Thursday the 29th of December 1994. Kia ora, Jo.
JI: Tēnā koe Ian. He mihi nui tuatahi. Kei te mihi au ki te whenua, ki te mana whenua o Rangitāne i roto i te maru o Rangitāne. Te mihimihi a te ariki nui o te ao marama o te ao pouri o te ao, mea katoa. Ko Jo Ihimaera ahau, nō Tūranganui-a-kiwa te tūrangawaewae, tāku pāpā mō te whānau o Michael Smiler Ihimaera e noho ana ahau kei Waituhi me te Tairāwhiti, te taha o tāku māmā, Ngāti Porou anake. Tēnā rā koutou katoa.
Yeah, hi, I’m pleased to talk to you today, and hope that we can have some fruitful interchange and discussion.
IA: Thank you Jo. I’d like to start this interview by asking you to tell us about your education and your work before you came to Palmerston North City Council, before 1988. So what were you doing before you came here?
JI: Right, I suppose when I think of my education, I think that I had a really broad learning and a lot of it was in the rich environments of the East Coast. And also I was born in a time where the emphasis on East Coast Māori people was education and particularly teaching. And so, we had lots of choices. We had shearing, bean picking, tomato picking and I actually enjoyed all those jobs. But at one stage we worked in the orchards and I just thought from that day on that there’s was no way I was going to end up an orchard worker and decided then that I’d have to apply myself academically. I did that, amongst all my other sporting and creative and family activities. We were a really strong family in terms of extended families and so we did lots of things together. We had Māori tournaments and a range of sports, we had lots of huis, we drove for miles for the ‘60s, you know for the era that we drove around and the ground we travelled was quite extensive. So I had very strong grandmas, grandpas,
nannies, aunties and families that made sure we were involved in all those. And so it wasn’t surprising that they shipped me off to training college. I didn’t actually enjoy training college. Yeah I went to Māori club one day and they were all Pākehās and I guess I hadn’t really learnt about the political status of Māori people and so I really didn’t realise that in the whole training college there were four or five Māori and the Māori Club we were the only ones there.
IM: Which teacher’s college did you go to?
JI: I went to Auckland Teacher’s and trained as a secondary teacher and commercial. My mother made me do commercial because she didn’t think that I could do professional and I didn’t want to be a cook so I wouldn’t take general. So, sort of, and I still can’t cook. But a lot of the things that happened to me, I think, were by accident. Or we would think they were accident. But on hindsight maybe there was a master plan and a master planner somewhere. Yeah and so my training college years were with about two other Māori women and one or two Māori men. And so I, sort of, was homesick and all sorts of things. Didn’t settle well and so I applied myself academically cause that seemed to be the only thing I could do. Yeah, got a heck of a shock when about – quite a long time after my baby sister went, she got the comment from my ex-tutors that I was the top student and I hadn’t even thought about being a top student. I had just thought about getting out of there. The faster I can pass my exams, the
faster I can move on and go away and go back home and say: ‘I did it, now can I stop.’ But it never happened like that. So I did teaching and I was a secondary teacher and I think all along the way I grew. And eventually from teaching in Gisborne, Hastings and Rotorua, I eventually made my way back to Hastings, at that time, where my parents lived and didn’t settle there very well as well. And ended up in Wellington working as a parliamentary secretary.
IM: To Whetu Tirikātene[1] some of them?
IJ: Now that was an interesting way I got hired too. Because I never really knew how to apply for a job. Because when you are a student and when you are a teacher, people more or less head hunt you, you see and our era we were really popular. When I look back I can see why, because we were the minute – the minor numbers – we were the minority. So anyway, I went to the States in ’72 with Te Aroha Nui, Māori Company and we did performing all around Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Salt Lake and stayed there for a number of weeks and had a really interesting, fascinating time and then returned to New Zealand and of course, there I returned broke and no job. So we were performing, now I think it was actually our welcome back and we were in Ngāruawāhia cause we had trained and lived at Ngāruawāhia for six week prior to going overseas and we trained from six in the morning until ten at night for six weeks and so that was really pressure stuff. And so we left our final concert, we left from there and our return concert was our first concert we had on our return. And then we travelled around the country giving concerts and I think we performed here in Wellington somewhere. And at that concert all the MPs were there, the Māori MPs were there and I’d always been a front row person, you know, just always been chosen and put in the front row and so I guess that’s how it was. Anyway, the MPs came and walked along the line and Whetu Tirikātene stood in front of me and looked at me and she said; ‘Can you type?’ And I said: ‘Yeah a bit.’ She said: ‘Good. Come and see me in the morning.’ So she gave me her card and I went to this big grey building. You know, the old ugly Parliament building and I looked outside it for a while and I thought: ‘Oh yuck’. But I was broke. And so I went in and she found me a desk. Cause they were brand new, it was ’72 and Labour had just got in. So she found me a desk and put an old IBM typewriter on the desk and gave me a whole pile of work to do that she needed that afternoon. And I thought: ‘Oh gee’, you know. So, I just went for it. Anyway, I was working for her for about a week and hadn’t got any money and anything and I didn’t know if she was paying me and because being Māori I thought: ‘Oh well I was just helping out.’ And she said to me: ‘Oh um has your pay come through yet?’ And I said: ‘Oh am I getting paid?’ She said: ‘Look just run along over to the office and see the PS, Public Service people and just tell them I’ve employed you and they’ll fill you in and put you on a salary.’ And I said: ‘Oh ok.’ So I went across there and they’d never heard of me and I’d been working for a whole week. You know they were so bureaucratic, I mean they were just blown away and how could this possibly happen. These Māori MPs get in and look what they do! They just run it like it’s a marae sort of thing. So eventually, I got officially processed and what-not. So I was off and so I worked very closely with her. I was her very first employee, her very first confidante, the
very first person, I think she shared a lot of things with me. A lot of her dreams and a lot of her aspirations. She shared a lot with me about her father who was Tirikātene Tirikātene[2]. And of course, he was a very strong Rātana person and a very strong Rātana priest. And of course, as well as that, Whetu was also strong Rātana. So I got closely involved at a very fast and quick pace in the Rātana kaupapa and in the aspirations of the prophet Rātana for iwi Māori. And I guess in lots of ways I was a person that soaked in knowledge without anyone really knowing I was listening or hearing it. And then I had magnificent eyesight and so I really learnt very quickly how to read stuff upside down that I wasn’t supposed to see. And got involved really closely with her in her political quest and so closely that I could write her speeches as though she was talking. So that was a really significant time of my life. She had her children at the time when I worked for her. So I became her, daughter in
particular May-Ana’s, I became May-Ana’s just favourite person. And Whetu would get really frustrated – we didn’t know what to call her, so she ended up saying us to call her ‘Madam’. ‘You can call me Madam.’ And anyway one day she came in and she was really frustrated because May-Ana wouldn’t sleep unless Josie came and read her story and she just didn’t know what to do about it, cause her husband, Dennis Sullivan, he was a physicist scientist, and so he was pretty busy as well and they had a child carer who just happened to be part-time Davida Mita who’s now over here at Polytech and ole May-Ana didn’t want to settle with her either. And so anyway, she brought this little child in and put her on my desk and said: ‘Now tend to her.’ So that was fine, I said: ‘Alright, I’ll see you about four.’ And took off and spent the day with this beautiful little girl, she was a lovely child. And so, anyway, when I got back at four she was even more frustrated because there was no one to keep her office flowing. So, she made a decision that I was her secretary. So, what I feel is that I had a very special and close relationship with Whetu. A very sad time when Labour lost after such a short time in power and very wide experiences in terms of understanding the political plight for iwi Māori in the long-term visionary range. I think on hindsight if I look back and I guess it’s a learning lesson we all learn, as beginners on a voyage, is that we never ever work as effectively as we can, because we never ever realise the pressures that are on us to make change occur. So on hindsight I think that the MPs in her day could have done a lot more. Could have been a lot more stringent, could have been a lot more direct in terms of policy development and Treaty initiatives. But of course, that Labour Government of that era created the Waitangi Tribunal and that’s an accomplishment. They introduced the Treaty for the first time into government legislation and that’s really significant.
IM: So how many years were you with Whetu?
JI: With Whetu, well she was only in power for three years, so really it was about three years in terms of working with her officially and then continued to work with her unofficially till I eventually left Wellington.
IM: And where did you go after you left Wellington?
JI: Um no I came here. Like, in Wellington I had other jobs as well. Secretarial jobs. But I think the parliamentary roll was the most significant. And the 1975 Land March culminated quite a lot. The ‘70s Ngā Tamatoa[3]. I was actually quiet at that time, I used to just hang around the tent and just listen. I think when I was younger I did a lot of listening. I think this was a reflection of my influence in Gisborne, because in lots of ways the families I was born into were quite confident about who they were and accepted status quo and we were raised to accept the respect for status quo. And I think I learnt my politics and acceptance of the change – that we would have to change as Māori to make changes for Māori in Auckland. Sort of at that time the big radicals: the Jacksons, a whole range of families, the Harawiras. Yeah there was a range of families that I mixed with in Auckland. So, I married a Ngāpuhi and I was married the time I worked in Parliament and had my children, had my daughter in ’76 and my son in ’78. So, I worked and got married and had my children. I enjoyed living in Wellington, I loved the sea, loved living by the sea. Loved the fast lane and loved the politics. So I was always involved in high legal politics. And, of course, the relationship didn’t work between myself and the kids’ father and I think in lots of ways I came to Palmerston because I had a sister here. And she was the only one out of my family who didn’t ask questions. So I came to Palmerston. In ways I joke about it but it was actually quite true I came here with two babies and a suitcase. Yeah I started with two suitcases but they were too heavy to carry. Yeah, I had the double pushchair for a long time. Palmerston, in a way, I always say, I came here by default. Because it was never ever the place I envisioned I would live. From my view it was very Pākehā. Extremely colonialised. It was very little strong base for Māori.
IM: Did you see an advertisement in the newspaper for the job that you came to here in the City Council? Or did somebody put you in touch with the job?
JI: Washing dishes actually. What happened was I was in Te Ataarangi with Davida who is a cousin of mine and in one of the sessions we had, we went to Davida’s home I think it was and we were washing dishes. And I met John Barnes, he was taking Te Ataarangi and he talked about the possibility of a position coming up here at Council somewhere in the future because he was trying to develop community development. And at that stage I think he was it, him and maybe Monty Callaghan or something. They were it. And I just didn’t say anything, I didn’t comment, because at that stage I had been offered work with the Polytech so I was working at the Polytech at the women’s return to workforce, women’s courses, on the communication courses and on developing your self-confidence. So I had, in terms of having two small children, I had adequate work and also I was doing part-time work at Awatapu College teaching Tikanga Māori and taking the Māori club. And doing similar things with, what’s his name at Freyberg? The old Māori man from Freyberg? Bill Hohepa. So I was working with Uncle Bill as well. I’ve never ever been short of work.
IM: So you had some networking in the community before you came onto the staff of the City Council. You were in touch with some of the organisations and some of the people in Palmerston North.
JI: Yeah and I had got really involved with a taura here, or, you know, a manuhiri group through Koro Mac Whakamoe[4] and Auntie Rana because they nursed me totally and they often came up to my drive and drove up my drive and just sat in my drive, the Korauna[5] would do that. He would just turn up on my back doorstep, just sit quietly in the car. And it’s interesting because year’s back when I taught at Rotorua my mother’s oldest brother used to do that to me. He’d just drive up the drive and sit in the car. And I’d go and sit out in the car with them and I’ve got no idea what they want but there’s no way I was going to ask, and they’d just start talking. And so Koro Mack used to do that for me and Auntie Rana used to do that to me. And at that time I was attending the local Mormon Church. And so I was very busy because I was a very busy person. I ended up with lots of jobs and I used to work quite industriously in terms of the Women’s Relief Society they called it. I did lots of w0ork there. And then I used to work with youth for many, many hours developing youth programmes, taking then camping, etiquette, fancy dress, dance, concert evenings that kind of stuff. So I did a lot of that and also I was involved in the local St Michael’s Parish. And at that time the Minister was Tamati Tuhiwai. Oh no it was the old man before him. The old man was just on his way out, I think. Oh from Ōtaki ,Uncle Hapai. So, I was in there too, just doing things with the kids, just attending sessions and just listening and things like that. Cause I always missed the hymns in Māori and the singing and that. And I never liked the fact in Pakeha churches, in the other churches you never had that. So, I guess there was always that pull. My mum and my father were really staunch LDS members and Mormon members. My grandfather was, and there was an expectation that we would be too. So that was a real big expectation on us. And Auntie Rana, she was. And so I was very much her, I suppose her niece – she adopted me and adopted my children. She always bought my children Christmas presents. Always wanted to know when their birthdays were.
IM: So, you would see yourself as a fairly good example of a person who wasn’t of Rangitāne origins, who had come into the district and was being involved with various Māori communities within the district in the 1980s. Did you feel an outsider in the Māori communities here, or were you able to feel at home in certain places?
JI: Well I never, ever felt of myself as a good person or a bad person. I was just the person I was. I did what I did, because I did that wherever I was. And however I lived and no I never, ever felt that I didn’t belong as a Māori at that stage in the city. I just felt like the city was free to anyone who could establish themselves. And given that I didn’t know many Rangitāne and they didn’t have a marae, and they didn’t seem to do anything Māori. We – I think too though, on the other hand, Ngāti Porou people and my dad’s iwi like Kahungunu and Aitanga a Māhaki people, we’ve always been travellers and voyagers and like Wellington has more Ngāti Porou and Kahungunu living than back home. And so I was a voyager and a voyager just makes themself comfortable and makes their own nest wherever they are for whatever time that is. And I think I just did that and I was working with Tu Tangata, the business studies course with Ngātata Love and I met him at a hui and he offered me the job at a hui. And so I was really significant in helping to write policies and develop it. And so I was really involved in general issues of Māori and somewhere along the line there was Rangitāne. It was sort of like they floated somewhere. At that stage it would have appeared to me that Raukawa had the stronghold in this area.
IM: So Rangitāne were fairly invisible in the mid-1980s. Would that be an appropriate term to use: relatively invisible?
JI: Yeah, and earlier ‘80s. I knew one or two like Rangi Fitzgerald always used to rear his head. When I think of it, he was consistent. At that stage Auntie Mina McKenzie was Ngāti Hau…– what is it – the Wanganui?
IM: Ngāti Haunui[6] and Ngāti Hauiti from Rata
JI: Yeah that was her iwi. But in terms of Rangitāne, I had an idea that the Fitzgerald’s were Rangitāne and one or two other significant families like the Larkin’s. So I knew the surnames, I knew the history because being the people I was I knew the connections. I knew there was a little marae at Rangiotū, but that was the church and people didn’t take their matē there. So once again for me it wasn’t a marae. And so I had a very indifferent attitude towards Rangitāne. And so in 1986, when I was shocked and chosen by a very large group of Māori people and in the attendance was Koro Mack, Kawa Kereama[7], Auntie Kawa. And all that calibre of elders. John – the old man – John, from Ngāpuhi.
IM: John Kaumare.
JI: Āe, Uncle John. Just all the big wigs. Ngātata Love. They all held this big hui at Tu Tangata. Because they wanted to have education programmes in Polytech for Māori. And so they were going to … we’ve been trying to work with the Polytech, the Polytech weren’t listening very well and then eventually they started to listen and they said they would put a Māori representative on the Polytech Council. So we had this big, big hui, and once again I was making sandwiches and taking notes and then they were choosing who their representative was going to be and the names nominated was Rangi Fitzgerald, Auntie Kawa Kereama, Kori Rogers. And so I heard the nominations and I went out and when I came back, my name was the other nomination and I won the nomination. And I remember distinctly Rangi Fitzgerald’s colouring changing, and he stood up and walked out of the meeting. And I just couldn’t believe why they had done that to me. But it was supposed to have been Kori Rogers. But in between time, she had
an accident, that nasty car accident and then it was me for sure. Cause I held back and said no it should be Kori.
IM: And that meeting was held at .. ?
JI: At Tu Tangata.
IM: In Fitchett Street.
JI: In Fitchett Street. Now it was about 1986 or thereabouts. It was round about that time. And anyway, that was really the first forging of my political focus or my political face in Palmerston North.
IM: And you were a full member of the Polytech Council. Full voting rights.
JI: Yes, and we wouldn’t accept it until we got that. So I was the very first Māori ever to be elected to the Polytech Council as a Māori, in a Māori portfolio.
IM: And were you seen as a representative of all the iwi living in the Palmerston North area.
JI: Yes, much to my shame. Yes, yes, yes. Aue!! You know, when I reminisce, I feel awfully sad but on the other hand I set a real high trend of political awareness, of Treaty awareness and of the rights of Māori in their own rightful mind. And the right for Polytech not to automatically assume that they have Māori funding and they do Māori training. And the right for Māori to train in Māori environments. So, I guess in terms of policy, the policy I put down …. [Tape stops].
IM: This is Tape 1 Side B. Jo Ihimaera talking with Ian Matheson. 29th of December 1994. Jo you were talking about your involvement with Manawatū Polytech and your roll on the Council. Can we – would you just like to continue with that theme for a few minutes?
JI: Yes, I think I might like to. I think that the introduction to Manawatū and to Palmerston North of myself, I guess through the Polytech played a very significant part in my development. The – we saw the beginnings of Māori women training programmes of inclusion in Māori in a range of ways and in particular, increase in Māori participation in the Polytech. I suppose though, what is also really important to me at that time, was the influence of Koro Mac Whakamoe, that he had not only upon myself but upon the city of Palmerston North. At that time Koro Mac, who was Tūhoe Kahungunu, was the most significant Māori figure the city had had. And when I remember him, I remember him marching into this Palmerston North building when it first had its renovations with a totem or a poupou of Te Aturangi Nepia planks and how he brought that poupou in and it stood and it was the most amazing bit of carving. And it told a collective story and history of the Manawatu and of the local people, but also of the taura
here people. And around about the era of the ‘70s and the ‘80s, for about twenty odd years, the Korauna[8] was the most prominent figure in all movements of Māori developments in this area. He was a very knowledgeable man, a very clever man, a very politically astute Māori elder. And he was significantly focused in terms of Māori access programmes which I worked really closely with him and Ngātata Love and the entire Māori movement to the government in Wellington to move Māori access into Māori hands and break away from general access. He was part of the movement where we trained 500 trainers – Māori trainers of which I was one of the primary initiators and organising team member at Massey University. The only and the biggest Māori training ever held in the country of Aotearoa. And that was in the ‘80s sometime. So anyway, as well as that he was a confidante and he was a friend and I had never, ever met anyone like him who had so much trust, and so much concern about my welfare. And who just loved me unconditionally. And it was a really big lesson in my life. And so his passing was a very, very sad event. I wrote a poem about him at that time. I might give it to you to go with the tape. And, you know, I guess the poem says it all. That things will never be the same in Manawatū without you Koro Mac. Haere ki te po [quiet speaking in Te reo].
IM: Yes he was certainly a very supportive man in many Māori movements and Palmerston North was really fortunate to have him. And in that feud in the 1970s and the 1980s when the old generation of Rangitāne elders had passed away where the new generation of Rāngitane kaumātua were not playing an active role in the city. I’m very pleased that you’ve mentioned him. So you moved on to the Polytech Council and you found this quite a struggle to bring about bicultural awareness on the Polytech Council.
JI: Sometimes. Sometimes I think about myself and I think I’m such a little fighter. And I’m such a strong believer and at times I’m so optimistic that I don’t actually realise that it’s the struggle. I think I see the vision, I know the cost if we don’t get the vision and I go for it.
IM: What was your vision for the Polytech?
JI: Well, actually it wasn’t my vision, it was a vision I shared with a number of Māori people, a number of Māori initiative throughout the country at that time. And the vision of Te Āpirana Ngata. E tipu e rea[9]. To just lift the education and the learning opportunities for Māori. And so I don’t actually think I ever own any of my visions. I think I just become the important player at a certain time. Though because I believe in the vision and because I’ve lived it and because I come from a very strong educative background, and because my tribal areas are so Rangatiratanga, my family are chiefs, I don’t know that it’s the struggle. And so in Polytech, I went for it. And they didn’t like it aye. They didn’t like it. But they had no one to complain to. Because nobody was going to listen to them from my group except Davida Mita and she was just an obstruction all the time. But what I did was still my whanaunga and have a loyalty to whanaunga. And I let her know very clearly that my loyalty to her as a whanaunga will never change and the aroha I have for her. But politically when I want something, if she’s not going to agree with me, she’s got to get out of my way. And we had that understanding. And she used to just get out of the way. But she caused a lot of pain in terms of being the colonialised Māori that didn’t know and didn’t understand how to let the restored and the repairing of Māoridom to come through. So that had its trials. And Gary Moxon he was just an asshole. I never really could understand how he lasted so long in such a prominent and top position. Given the fact that he came from an extremely white supremacist engineering background, you know. I think there’s never anything quite worse than people – white people who are good at engineering, because they have got absolutely no concept of philosophical values and people values.
IM: The mathematical training.
JI: Yeah. But I think Tapper, Tapper, what was his first name? He was the Chairperson of the Board.
IM: Oh Brian Tapper.
JI: I think he was ok, he was a socialist and he tried to work the changeover. And I think he was really significant behind the scenes. I don’t think I gave him any reason to think that I knew he was being significant. But I didn’t see that as my job, you know. I expected the power base people, the decision makers, the institutionalisers – I expected them to be the ones that made changes and that they assisted. And so I was never, ever one of those that was grateful for what they gave me. And I can remember, me and Davida, having this – oh kind of argument I guess, and she said: ‘But Gary Moxon’s a really good man.’ ‘Oh come on.’ She said: ‘He is, he brings me bacon bones.’ So I never forget that story.
IM: So, you were on the Polytech Council for several years.
JI: Yes, I was. And then I moved into the Arts. I was still on the Council, but I accepted a position to initiate and create the Community Development Arts for the Palmerston North community and on behalf of the Arts Council and along with myself, Kay Neilson and Orlando, we worked really closely with Tane Kapitco and sat down – I sat down and wrote all the policies that created and developed the Palmerston North Arts. I remember Kay Neilson, she used to come over to my home because we had just so much work to do and it was just so difficult to meet all the deadlines and all the funding requirements to get the funding we needed. And she’d come over home and she’d look after my children and she’d feed me and she’s just put me behind the typewriter and just keep me working until I was really tired and then she’d say: ‘Well go and have a little sleep.’ I’ll have a nap on the sofa and as soon as I woke she’d put me behind the typewriter again. And so along with all the research – I guess, one of the
skills I had, I could research really quickly. I could bring a lot of notes together, I could listen to what the people wanted and then I could sit down and turn it out, and give it back to them. I was never any good at English, you know, at school – or that’s what the English teachers reckoned. But the things I do, you have to be really skilled in language. And Kay Nielson was excellent. She’d work twice as hard as me, in terms of running around fixing things, making things flow. She’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. And then she’d work out the writings and the things we should write, and then bring them and her and I would talk about them. And so, I guess, it was really team work that got us there. And then I got involved in Tangata Whenua I guess, through the actual Arts because we started looking for Tangata Whenua Tikanga and of course, at that stage the taura here became a lot weaker and softer because they had lost their giant. And so the tōtara had
fallen and new seedlings were growing. And so that was an exciting, fun time in my life where politics were only at the periphery and where we just held lots of Arts concerts and did lots of practical art – travelled well throughout the country. And just encouraged the philosophy of community development in Arts. And I guess it was about this time too that I knocked into John Barnes and he let me know there was a job here in community development.
IM: Right, if we look at this job, Community Development, what did you think community development was at that time?
JI: Well I would say I was a whanaungatanga person. And I would say that for me I was well skilled in hapū development and in whānau development and I never, ever believed – I always believed that the Pākehās had borrowed our behaviour of whanaungatanga and had reinterpreted it as community development. And that community development to Pākehās was a western term and that when they came to New Zealand they were so individualistic and they were so in for themselves that they had no community spirit. And so for Pākehās to claim they had community spirit they created this term: community development. And it was Pākehās effort to teach their own people to work collectively together on collective views. You see now, when Pākehās do that what they do is they restrict the parameters of community development and so they say: ‘All right this is collective agreement, collective development, collective decision-making and it’s going to be about a hall that’s going to stand on this land and how we’re going to use
that hall on this land.’ There’s always an asset involved. Whereas when you look at whanaungatanga, whanaungatanga has no parameters. It’s not about assets in terms of buildings. It’s about the quality of life in terms of people. And so everything begins from how you behave with your family. And then how that family needs are worked out and so you have a certain way of meeting that need and so meeting that need might mean you all have a fishing expedition. And you all go fishing to get kaimoana for that family function. It may be that the youngest daughter or son is just turning the age of marriage and wants to marry and so the whole family then come and work all together about making that a really good affair for the family to enjoy. Or, maybe that trouble has struck the family and it’s terrible trouble, whatever it is, maybe it’s one of the children, or even the dad or the mum might have got into some strife. And so the family rally around to make it work. But you don’t have to have an asset base and you don’t have to have a defined project.
IM: Good point. I seem to remember at this time Council’s Community Development activities were very much focussed on the Highbury Whānau Resource Centre and there’d been a considerable amount of debate in Council about funding that project and getting that building on that piece of land. Certainly the emphasis was on a building to address some issues. So did you find yourself having to operate with the building as a focus of your attention.
JI: Yeah, and I think this has been the continual trend in terms of the objectives of Council. And so when I worked with Highbury Whānau we had the manager at that time – by this time the Community Development section had grown and there was myself, Molly Callighan, Gail Munro was part-time, I was full-time. And Heather was the secretary. And at that time it was about the productivity that was coming out of the Highbury Whānau. And they were really worried because they had employed two youth workers and both of the positions had disintegrated and at one level, one of the positions was sadly, you know, thrown out to the public and there was quite a bit of media hoohah about it. And so by the time I got here it was floundering really badly, the Whānau was floundering. The Council had had this wonderful initiative, they had given them this beautiful building and how dare they, it wasn’t working. And so I challenged my manager about the philosophy of community development and in fact what that philosophy meant in terms of Māori urban development and why we needed to actually look wider than the term community development and we needed to see what Māori development was. And that stage, Māori people used to call it Māori Community Development and the Māori Community Development Act of 1962. And so, in fact Māori people themselves had borrowed the term as well and they were forgetting about whanaungatanga. And so not only did I have this concept that I was born with and I brought to the city. But the challenge against that concept actually came from the Māori Development, Community Development Act of 1962, and of course under that Act was the Māori District Councils and the Māori National District Council. And so Raukawa was in charge of this area. And so I came a cropper against them as well. Because I started spouting out in the community that whanaungatanga was different. We weren’t Māori community developers at all. We were Māori people retaining our rightful heritage as whānau, hapū and iwi. And
whanaungatanga was not community development. And so I was getting challenged all over the place, by St Michael’s once. I got challenged in a hui there. Who did I think I was? St Michael’s was doing all this Māori community development work. You know and so, I got challenged by a range of Raukawa people, particularly in the movement of the Raukawa District Council. And, of course, by this stage too Rangi Fitzgerald was really on my head as well. And so I had all these challenges. Now I had to be really naïve or just a floater and I think I was just a floater. Because I didn’t really realise the impact of those challenges. And I wouldn’t back down. You know I had all the chiefs telling me, who did I think I was? What do I think I am doing? And I don’t even come from this town, and I’m not even Rangitāne, although I’m Rongomaiwahine, I’m the mother of the waka of Kurahaupō. And look there was all this – I guess it was underneath the anger that was starting to boil from below the surface. And I
used to challenge the Raukawa District Council. ‘Well, who are you?’ You know, and by this time I had learned about boundaries. And I said to Rangitāne: ‘well if this is Rangitāne then who are they?’ Because they were actually having a lot more to say in this city. Anyway one of my, and I’ll come back to the whānau later, one of my biggest challenges was when Ken Tremaine called me in his office. Cause I think Ken Tremaine is a very, very flamboyant, very brilliant, very astute and a very special person in my life. Cause he came to my interview and apparently I was the only interview he came to. And he just said to John: ‘That’s who I want’. I mean, he didn’t even bother to go to the other interviews. I mean, when you talk about processes, he had at least had to have been seen to sit with everyone else, but he didn’t. And I was really lucky because Molly really wanted me. And, of course then John went along with it because Ken wanted me. But Ken took me under his wing and he called me in his
office once and he said that he’d been talking with Professor Durie, and other prominent Raukawa people and they wanted the trusteeship of the Square to be under Raukawa Muaūpoko and Rangitāne. And as his Māori advisor, he had no one inside to get him advice from. He wanted to know what I thought. Without any hesitation, I said: ‘Ken, if this area of tangata whenua is Rangitāne, then those other two areas have no right to be the trustees of whenua that’s Rangitāne.’ And that was my very first statement that made me aware that if we don’t help to look after Rangitāne their going to lose it all. Anyway, Ken in his wisdom took my advice. So from then on, he accepted my advice. I suppose when I got to the whānau, they were this group of lovely Māori women who just wanted to look after their children and just wanted to make a better place for displaced, uncoordinated Māori children in terms of this - the system and the educational processes for them, so that they would have a better place to go to and
they’d have hope. Most of these parents, their children had been either in trouble or were heavily into glue sniffing, been beaten up a lot, abused children and so the parents were really caring.
IM: Was it Māori women who were the driving force behind the Highbury Whānau?
JI: Oh yeah, I think so. I believe it was the Māori women. I think there was one or two Pākehā women who captured the voice. And I think this is just so unfair because when I look at it now, the movement was for Māori by Māori and then a couple of prominent Pākehā women went ahead and pushed it forward and at one level it caused such a problem that they asked them to leave the Whānau. And then at another level there was that ownership over who actually owned the baby. And I think there was a confusion, because by now you had Māori and non-Māori working together harmoniously at one level to try and pick up the standard for all their children in that area. But then you also had the clash in cultures, but I think not so much a clash in cultures, but they actually hadn’t articulated their differences. And Māori had just – like we always do – you know when you get urbanised and you get marginalised and you get forced away from your homeland, you just learn to survive. And if that’s one thing I’ve learned about indigenous Māori people is that we have just been forced from so many different climates of structural change and learned to fit in and survive and then tried to maintain a few or our values. And so when I sat in the Highbury Whānau at an their very first official meeting and that was Rosina Peipei was there and she’s been very much a mother of the Whānau, Bob Tamihana, Aunty Rangi, Maurice Henare and his wife and a range of parents. It must have been about 20 or 30 parents there. And I started to talk about whanaungatanga and there was this most amazing, wonderful hush. And then they started talking about it. And I started saying: ‘Well from now on, we will start developing this Whānau the way that we are as Māori’. They said: ‘But the Council said this is it.’ And I said: ‘It doesn’t matter what the Council says. We will develop it, we will meet the standards we need our way and then we will take them to the Council and we will show the Council how we want to work.’ And of course, Councillor Forde[10] was blown away by this. Cause I saw him out at the, you know I saw him one-on-one, told him. And he said: ‘But …’ And I said: ‘No.’ And he agreed and then he supported it. And of course, Yvonne Marshall[11] was very, very strong. Cause the Whānau didn’t only become a place that we worked, it became a home for people like myself, my children and so for iwi Māori who came to the city, that’s what the Whānau was starting to become. It was becoming our little place that we went to. And, of course, Councillor Marshall lived in Highbury so she always had a vested interest in Highbury development and was always a strong supporter. So, when we brought our submission to Council about how we felt the Highbury Whānau should work, Council agreed to it. And that was the beginning of openly talking about whanaungatanga.
IM: We’ll just pause there Jo, we’re almost at the end of side B. So I’ll just cut off at this point. [Stop]
[Begins again 1:01:17]
IM: Side A, Jo Ihimaera talking with Ian Matheson, 29th December 1994. Jo we were talking about the Highbury Whānau Centre and the operation from there. What other thoughts about the operation of the Highbury Whānau would you like to record.
JI: Just that in terms of Council, I think the Council can be congratulated because what the Council did was they accepted that the Whānau wanted to work in a particular way. I haven’t talked at all about John Barnes[12], but John Barnes was a very effective manager in terms of change management for communities. And so, John was a very – at times he’d get really scared of the things I’d come up with and sometimes I think he’d wish I’d just go away. But generally, at the end of the day, he’d come up trumps. And between John, myself and several other people in the staff, the Council at that time had Jill White, Merv Hancock, Bernard Forde, Steve Maharey, Ailine Pengelly and a couple of others that were very strong social reformist and were very supportive and very excited about the development at Highbury. And so the Council, not only learnt to fund building, then they learnt to fund people and so the people component of community development was enhanced along with the asset. And the building was
beautified, the grounds were beautified, the sports teams at that time by a young man, Alan …, I can’t remember his surname, he was from the Wairarapa Rangitāne family anyway, so he was the young youth worker at that time with the young people and we were developing softball teams, basketball teams, we had uniforms for the kids. They were winning their grades. We had the Davidson children became prominent Manawatu reps in softball and one of them has made the national New Zealand squad. My children were children who also made a tremendous mark on it, we had the first school C children from that area come out in the era of my daughter and send all of her friends in lots of ways I give the credit of my daughter’s support and education, her and two other – no one other – were the first seventh formers from that area. And so there was an overall improvement in sports and attitude and it was a really exciting place to be and a very busy place. And we changed youth workers regularly and that would always a
problem, always getting the right youth workers, having the right – best people there. But I suppose we were all developing whanaungatanga, we had a Māori cultural group beginning. And the kids were becoming more aware and more proud of who they were and where they came from. So, things were really well and then we struck a real bad patch. We – one of the youth workers just was very abusive to the young women. The standard of his language was absolutely unacceptable and at some level he’d used physical force on other youth. And the Council, of course, would have automatically sacked this person had it been the Council employee. But because they had empowered the Whānau, there was some discussion that we would let the Whānau hold a Whānau hearing. And I thought yeah. I had been as a child, I had watched tribal hearing and tribal courts and I had every faith that it was just going to work out fine. The kids were going to be appeased, the right decision as going to be made by the elders or by the
whānau – wider whānau. Anyway, on the actual night of the event, about 30 of the particular workers whānau arrived – iwi, the whole Highbury Whānau management and the whole room was just overflowing with all these adults. And the only young people there were the ones that had been, I suppose, offended against. And how I got to hear about it is that they came to me because they decided that they could trust me, that I would work to help them. And I really thought I could. I guess, the thing that sticks in my mind at the end of all that process, is that often we think we’re ready for more than what we are. And often you forget the effects of a mixed upbringing and a mixed colonialised affect that it has on us. And it turned out really badly. It turned out I got abused by heaps of people. And I got challenged to stand up and have my say. Yeah, it was quite a frightening experience. And of course, there was myself, a non-Māori nurse who was the community nurse at that time, a Pākehā parent, and – she
was married to Māori and a Māori parent who wasn’t really very eloquent in speaking in public forums. And I just never thought that I would see such a kangaroo court in my life. And I saw it. And it just blew me away and feeling a kind of shame you feel when you take responsibility of such a big position on your shoulders. And the young people standing there and them seeing that there was no justice for them after the trusting a method that they thought would get them heard. And I remember anyway, they challenged me, and I stood up and I just talked about the protection of those people that could not protect themselves. And the responsibility we had as human beings to protect the young, to protect the people who do not have the support and that the role of any of us should be an enhancing role. Anyway, it ended on an unpleasant note and I don’t think I was ever quite the same after that. I think I learned heaps, and I learned that I didn’t kind of get 100% disappointed in the people I worked with, but I learned that to everything there is a time and a season and that change is a really slow and painful process and that whilst we talk about the policy changes, the structural changes, that the people changes is the most arduous and the most difficult and the most painful of all. But I believe now that the Whānau are still experiencing some difficulties but in terms of a community development group in this city, it has strongly survived a number of years. And it has proven that it can accomplish the objectives and the tasks that it set out. And also, I think, because it’s like a Māori marae, it’s family orientated, because I let that happen and I let the major families who were involved just organise it and just work it and it worked, it was successful. But I think the trend today, in the new look – the modern – the way that I see community development occurring right today is that they’re going to pull away that base and they’re going to replace it with what they call a more distributive representation
of the community. So they’ll pull on people who have never been there before, or people who don’t have that same painful growth history with it. And it’ll dramatically change it. And I guess if I can just fly right to my farewell when the Highbury Whānau and the taura here collectively presented me with that massive big pounamu that’s about the size of a patu and then on the spot it was blessed by my uncle and the blessing that he gave it, I felt really honoured, because I felt that I had come through this group. I had struggled with them, I had fought them, I’d stood up to their management when I didn’t agree with them – when I didn’t agree with what management was doing. I stood up to the kaumātuas and the kuias. And we lived through it. Eventually this particular youth worker proved himself inappropriate and eventually they had to ask him to leave. And they were still going and my new job moved me right out of the area of community development work, but they were there in full force to say to me
that I was cared for, I was loved, I was blessed with peace, tranquillity and protection. The pounamu is so big and so amazing, I feel really shy to wear it, but I know that it’s there for me and that it says a lot of love from a very, very significant and stable part of my life. And I didn’t have a family here and I needed a whānau and when they looked after me and my children, like we were in part of a marae development. It’s been my closest resemblance to whanaungatanga and hapūtanga working in the Highbury Whānau.
IM: Is community development about empowering people?
JI: I think that if you don’t set out to empower people, you don’t set out to enable people to be thinkers, to be their own decisionmakers, to be their own creators, then you fail quite drastically in your attempt to improve the quality of life for the communities we live in. I think that the whole concept of community development consensus decision-making. collective decision-making, was really about helping neighbours care about neighbours. And helping communities to make decisions that are the best decision for them but also the best decision for the community. So when you make a decision about what you’re going to do about your home, you also consider your neighbour. So if you want to get a rottweiler, you’re decision is made because it enhances your neighbourhood, not because the rottweiler’s going to keep everyone away out of your lawns.
I think too that this city has to be more aware of the need for Polynesian opportunities in community development, or the ethnic Cambodian groups that come into the city. Cause what happens is the Polynesians come into this area, they have nowhere to go, they have no place for themselves and nowhere to practice their own cultural identity. And so community development has to enable communities to have opportunities to be able to practice all their cultural requirements without the threat of law and order Without the threat of noise officers and without the threat of criticism of neighbours who don’t have the same cultural responsibilities. I think community development has to help the new immigrants. We have Greek communities, you have Italian communities. Now we have a whole range of people that work as a community and live, and it seems such a crime that in lots of ways, the very individualistic type of lifestyle introduced to this country came from the power makers, when the majority of the
communities that you live and work in would rather have some resemblance of community development, community focuses, community halls, funding for community projects for community celebrations, for community submissions, joined processes together, to help communities develop.
IM: Have you had the opportunity to actually work with Pacific Island groups.
JI: Yeah. I worked with the Pasifika several years ago because they kept chasing me to work with them. And I have to be really honest, I had just such a tremendous big workload and at that stage, people like Gail and I and one or two others – one other, we carried the whole community load for the whole city. And so we had a tremendous workload. And we worked really hard and so when the Island communities used to ask for me specifically, it used to be a really hard and difficult thing to do. Because at that time the city wasn’t even acknowledging that Māori were tāngata whenua and so I had this struggle with: ‘What are they going to do about us?’ And then there’s our sisters and our brothers from the Islands. So what I did is, I worked really closely with the Island communities in terms of helping them to develop their objectives, to develop their submissions and to develop their dreams and aspirations of what they wanted and how they wanted it. And so to balance that, I used to have to attend a
number of their social functions because you don’t just walk into a Polynesian community and help. You go to their functions and you have to get up and do the hula and all that kind of stuff. And then eventually you get to their meetings and so it’s all a process of cultural appropriateness and cultural respect. Whereas the programme you would have from Council, would enable to have your say in one meeting, whereas in reality I would have to attend three of four different hui, normally in the weekends and normally for long hours in the weekends. And so it was a lot of work before you even got to talk to them about the Annual Plan process, or about submission processes. And of course, then the other side of it was, when you actually started to talk to them and they didn’t have scribes. And so I’d have to teach their people how to write, teach them how to apply for funding. So, I’d have to do it first and then they did it next. And I mean, I had gone through all this with the Highbury Whānau, and now I had left the Whānau with people who knew now how to type, who knew how to do funding submissions, who knew how to develop projects and who just had the skills to know what they had to do. And I had to work years with them and now I was having to work all this with the Island communities. And so it was really tiring work. And I worked with Cambodians and now that was by surprise and by accident. I used to just do what they call family home visits for local – meals on wheels I think. We used to give meals on wheels to homes. And, you know, I was down this end of town, down Awapuni dropping off some meals on wheels to these people and then the little Cambodian woman came screaming out of her house, screaming, screaming. And her husband had almost chopped his finger off on one of those electric openers – can openers. And came running out to me and pulling me into her house because she couldn’t speak English. So I went in and I saw it and I just got some ice packs, iced it and wrapped it and pushed it
together and rang the ambulance and sat with her, they took him and stayed and his finger got saved. And then came back to her in the house, she was too distressed to clean the house so I scrubbed the house out cause by then yucky everywhere and then found them something to eat and their cupboards were empty. So then I had to visit to the food banks and that stuff, showed her how to get food when you didn’t have food. Introduced her to Methodist Social Services, I think it was a social worker. Got a home nurse to visit the home and then sort of got tied up, without even meaning to. Got tied up with this little Cambodian family, then other families would come and ask for help. It was quite awesome actually, it was quite frightening. Because I never, ever thought I had those skills to begin with and that wasn’t even on my job description and nobody even knew I was doing it! So, I kept doing these things you weren’t supposed to do, according to your job but were really an integral part of community
development. And a very integral part of us as the people who live here and how we look after the people who come here. And how we look after people who can’t speak English.
IM: So this is an area that the Council will have to spend more energy on in the future do you think?
JI: The Council’s spent no time at all in that area. They are developing what they call an Ethnic Council and maybe this Ethnic Council will be the driving force. But the other thing the Council isn’t equipped with, they aren’t equipped with the resources to cater for this. You see, one of the very big personal dilemmas I have is when do you say you have helped tāngata whenua enough. And when do you say you have to get extra funding or different funding to look after other ethnic communities or minority communities in our city. And who makes those decisions? And how those decisions are carried out. So I have this dreadful dilemma where I believe that tāngata whenua have not been looked after, they have not been catered for, the budget isn’t going to cater for as much as they need to be looked after, yet on the other hand you have all these other fledgling and very new born babies to this country that don’t speak the language English.
IM: The big challenge for the future in this whole area.
JI: I think so, I think that community development is never ending. It’s eternal, I think that it’s an eternal, philosophical commitment that we make, not only in the fiscal way we support people but in the spiritual dimensions we afford to it and the respect we afford to the influence of the environment, the influence of all the other factors that help people feel really good and healthy about themselves.
IM: Turning to this point about tāngata whenua being inadequately catered for, an urban marae in Palmerston North, or a Rangitāne Marae in Palmerston North, what’s been your level of involvement with this project.
JI: Right. Well I started a long time ago with this urban marae dream. And I think it was a dream not only by Koro Mac and our group. Cause in the Koro Mac era, the dream was for us to build a marae for us and that’s taura here. And so I came here with that dream and with that expectation from taura here that we were going to make it happen. But when I got to Council, and after making that first stance a few years back with Ken about Rangitāne, and after working really extensively in indigenous plights all over the country. Like I’d worked internationally with the Geneva Conference with inter-continent intellectual property rights and I’d got a really broad understanding of indigenous people. I knew that if we were going to be any value in the city we had to assist Rangitāne in Rangitāne developing themselves. And I guess my naive little dream was that they need a marae and a urupā. And of course, the taura here dream was to get a urupā. And we had decided in taura here that we wouldn’t push the
marae until Rangitāne had developed theirs. So really, we had come a long way, in terms of recognising that we were also responsible and we had to accept some responsibility for not helping Rangitāne to honour Rangitāne. And that was about the time as well that I walked out of the Polytech Council for the same reason that we said that they had to go back to Rangitāne. And that although I believe we had filled an era by working and becoming a Polytech Council member that there should be no other Council members in there unless it’s with the blessings of Rangitāne. And originally the Council and Gary Moxon and so we withdrew all our Māori services and support for the Polytech and that was the way we actually forced the hand of Gary Moxon to respect Rangitāne. So all along the road I guess I was building up a dossier of respect for Rangitāne. And in this time I had met Ruth Harris. And she was a visionary person in her own way, she was excellent, she was a fighter, she was clever, she had more financial
capital support than most Rangitāne people and so she was in a better position. And she wanted to listen to me because I think Rangi Fitzgerald just never, ever made me feel welcome and so I never ever knew how to talk to him. But Ruth was different and so as many years as I was working in Council, I started working with her, in her home. Started talking to her about whanaungatanga, about hapū development, about the value of a marae, a place to bury your dead, a place to sing, a place to teach your children. And started to tell her about just little stories I had when I was a child, just experiences I’d had and how significant the marae was in my life. And at that time Rangitāne was reviving and they had created their Te Runanganui o Rangitāne, they had amalgamated with Wairarapa, Nelson, Dannevirke and Palmerston. And they were getting really strong and so the first year of the – was it 1989? 1990 – 1989? The first year of the Council’s Annual Plan process … [Stop]
IM: Side B, Ian Matheson and Jo Ihimaera talking together on the 29th of December 1994. Jo, we were talking a few minutes ago about the Rangitāne Marae proposals and I’d like you to comment on some statements that you made in the Guardian newspaper published on Wednesday, December the 21st where you stated what is happening here in Rangitāne in terms of reaffirmation of Rangitāne right to mana whenua is absolutely natural and normal for a fledgling nation which has to pay the high costs of colonisation.
JI: Oh Kia ora, Ian yeah I did say that didn’t I? Sometimes I say things, I’m not even sure I’ve said them and when I read them it’s me alright. I think that my understanding of Rangitāne is that in lots of ways they were more displaced than most iwi Māori in the country. And particularly in comparison to my very strong Tairawhiti upbringing. That Rangitāne suffered quite savagely at the hands of a number of marauding Māori tribal groups and then the Europeans came and they suffered at the hands of the Europeans and I personally believe that the decisions they made, or the elders made for them at that time, was about the way they felt that they would survive, their own people and their own generations. And of course, preserving your generation is the most closest and nearest and dearest thing to Māori. So it reminds me of a story that I was told about Rangiotū that where it was placed originally was closer to the river. And about that time, Raukawa – warring parties of Raukawa was just damaging the
population numbers of Rangitāne. And so the chief of Rangitāne at that time, sent one of the most beautiful young Rangitāne maidens down the river on a log. And when the chief of Raukawa saw this maiden, and he went over and he looked at her, and his eyes fell upon her and she was really beautiful and he desired to marry her. And he sent a message back that from that day on, Raukawa would no longer fight with Rangitāne. So, I suppose that sort of shows that the reverence and the strength that Rangitāne had for themselves. But also the understanding they had when they were numerically outnumbered, warfare outnumbered, and this is reflected, I think, in the very quick transition that they made to European culture. And also we have a place here called Te Marae O Hine, and I think once again, that illustrates the chief Te Awe Awe[13] at that time and Te Panau[14] and the important of Rangitāne elders at that time. How important it was for them to also establish this relationship with Europeans. I think the bastardisation of colonialization is that the Europeans never respected us and that they just stepped in and possessed, destroyed and had absolutely no respect for cultural things that they had never seen or heard and so they just continually got rid of the Māori beliefs and the faith in the environment, the faith in healing and the faith of the collective Māori development. So I’ve worked in Rangitāne for a long time and I think the impact of lost Māori knowledge has got a devastating – has left a devastating trail of pain and of loss of knowledge – of Māori knowledge, of hapū knowledge, of whanaungatanga knowledge to the Rangitāne young people. And so you get people here in Rangitāne my age that have absolutely no idea what hapū means. And so you get this desire of a revival from different groups of Rangitāne people but with different visons or aspirations or requirements or needs.
IM: Well Ruth Harris has been a mover and a shaker in the main stream proposal Tanenuiarangi[15] house and the urban marae proposal there. Do you see this as a positive move for Rangitāne growth?
JI: I think that myself, that in terms of Ruth Harris, I’ve worked very closely with her and I think that she’s got a lot of drive and I think that given her upbringing and the fact that she lived a long time away from here, there’s been a great sense of loss to her as well. And she’s returned to this city with an astute business mind and an extremely clever manipulating and manoeuvring skills and very astute dealing with business people and generally non-Māori communities. And I think that she has got some excellent valuable skills that she’s brought back with her and tried to put her energies into developing a more economic-type base. I think that the desire and the dream of an urban marae is a good healthy dream. I think it will help to stabilise Rangitāne. It will help to stabilise and assist other Māori people in this area. And it will act as a focal point for inter-play between Rangitāne, non-Rangitāne and non-Māori. The dream of Aunty … and the Morehu Committee was a very strong and powerful
dream. The vision is correct. The – what seems to be the political battle at the moment between the two major factions of Rangitāne in this area is representation. How will the asset development – and that would be the urban marae – that would become an asset development area and an economic development for Rangitāne. The health centre – the wellness centre at Awapuni in Maxwell’s Line. That will become a very positive health initiative, an asset management development for Rangitāne. I think those two areas in particular, Rangitāne people are asking: how will we know we’re truly representative on it? How will we become the real decision makers and how will we know that our children will be the beneficiaries of those fruits? And I think that those are the basic issues that are surrounding the very hard core of the Māori political drive in this area.
IM: A few weeks ago we saw the formation of the Rangitāne Kaumātua Council and the fact that they have declined to support the marae activities in Main Street. Do you feel that – has Ruth gone too fast? Why has she lost the support of the kaumātua or some of the kaumātua.
JI: I am aware of the particular hui, it was in December I think – early December. And my understanding was there was 23 Rangitāne elders there out of the 23 – the 23 almost every elder who was an elder from the actual Manawatū area attended. And I think this is extremely significant, because for a long time in Aotearoa we have actually lost the kaumātua perspective and we’ve actually been alienated on tribal development. So I think it’s really significant that occurred, cause what it is showing is that there’s a significant important number of Rangitāne elder or the majority of Rangitāne elder who are concerned with what’s happening with the urban marae project. I think also what was significant about that hui, it was the biggest gathering they’ve ever had in 80 years. The biggest hui called for Rangitāne where so many Rangitāne attended. I understand that it was greatly attended by young Rangitāne, by the pākiki age group and by the elders. So I think in terms of the physical appearance it would
appear that the Rangitāne people are saying to Mrs Harris and to Tanenuiarangi the organisation that’s been created to nest her initiatives taihoa. We don’t know what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, is what we really feel is best for us as people of Rangitāne people. So I guess, if we’re talking about a weakness, we’re talking about understanding what they call a democratic society, a bureaucratic society, understanding the systems and working the systems to suit the outcome. You see in Māoridom, unless you’ve got your hapū or whānau how do you develop the outcome. And this is the definition I was trying to define between community development and Māori development, is Māori development is a way of life that involves the everyday breathing, sleeping, eating and just every day work and play and spiritual things of Māori. So Mrs Harris, I believe hasn’t done, is she hasn’t networked and helped to put time and effort in strengthening the whānau and strengthening the hapū until it’s got to such a
climax that – it’s an anti-climax really because the other side is saying: ‘no more.’ And that is strong. I suppose what really needs to be done in the long term is for the other side to say: ‘but this is a better way that we want to work together.’ Now whether or not that can be achieved – I mean it’s natural. In Māoridom we had separations, we had small whānaus they became bigger whānaus. Ngāti Porou owned all Whānau-ā-Apanui[16] once upon a time. And Whānau-ā-Apanui was a child and he got discouraged and he didn’t like living with the other family, so he broke away and he created the other coastline for Whānau-ā-Apanui. So, in terms of the two groups not really working together that could be what happens in the long term. Then it is good and proper and appropriate for one group to build their own little marae to cater for their needs and the other group to build their own. What the issue is in here though is bigger than that because one group wants to claim the whole area. And will want to claim that marae as their marae. And for me that’s a very modern concept of tribal development. It certainly is not a traditional – you see it is very much a contemporary – you see a new kind of Māori emerge, a new kind of tikānga a contemporary attitude and so you get all these different things thrown in this big pot and you stir it all around. So you come out with – it might look Māori, they might karanga, they might tangi Māori but the actual concept is across the board. So I suppose the other problem it too, is the inclusion of the Council and the Council funding. Now is the Council prepared to fund two marae? Or three marae? Or four marae? Should the Council actually assist in all the different marae developments? Where should these marae be placed? How should they function? See in the small area I’m in Waituhi, we have left now, we had three major marae standing and my family belongs to the three and we affiliate closely to two out of the three. And they’re all within five minutes’ driving from
one to the other. And we all live in cohesive harmony with one another. And when there’s a big hui, we use the biggest marae and the small ones feed off and catch the overflow. And we work like that, we’ve never worked any other way. Now, here they haven’t experienced that. They have never experienced the joys of working together collectively to organise a function of significant importance. And so, you know, if Tanenuiarangi goes ahead and builds their marae, is that ok? Traditionally, yes not a problem.
IM: But if Tanenuiarangi claim to be the Rangitāne authority for the whole area then the other groups of people naturally resent this and tensions arise.
JI: Yes. And so what it is, it that they’re not the one voice. They are just the voice for their hapū.
IM: Yes time will tell.
JI: And then it’s the same as with the other group, and if they keep trying to destroy each other to become the one voice, then it’s really difficult to say what the outcome will be.
IM: At the moment the City Council is obviously perplexed. The Councillors themselves don’t know which way to go. They’re hoping that the two groups will come together and present a united front that the Council can feel comfortable to support. But do you feel that the Council itself by making so many promises to Tanenuiarangi and Ruth Harris have in fact helped create some of these issues? Should the Council have moved more cautiously? Should they have talked with kaumātua more than they did? What do you feel about that?
JI: I think the whole area of local government is really perplexed. And – what’s happened in this particular area I believe is that the Council – I don’t think that the decision to give Tanenuiarangi the marae was a bad decision. I think that’s a good decision. But I think that the Council should then match the same offer to the other group. And then that would be the perfect decision. Cause after all that is what King Solomon would do. You see, when we talk about the wisdom of Māori - traditional Māori then you have to try and think well where does local government get their wisdom from? And how do they work their wisdom? And if they were being really wise parents, which is what they should be, and wise carers of a displaced and colonised indigenous people that have been at the suffering of all their parents and their grandparents and their great grandparents. Then they would look at the fairest way to share the – to share with – to share the uplifting of the pain that those indigenous people have
suffered. And they should not have said to one group that you don’t get yours. They should have said to the other group: ‘come back to us with your proposal and we should look at funding yours as well.’
IM: I think many Councillors still see Māori people as one homogenous group, rather than seeing them as hapū and iwi. I feel many Councillors are only just realising that instead of there being one Māori community in Palmerston North, there are in fact many Māori communities and this is difficult for some Councillors to get to grips with.
JI: Right. I talked about, in that same editorial, I talked about power-based institutions having to let go and to have those things happen and still do the utmost to fulfil their role in accepting the responsibility in colonialisation, but taking the challenge of trying to put things in a better perspective for future generations of Māori people. Now what I think that statement is really trying to say, it’s trying to say that Councillors have a responsibility of learning and re-learning and restructuring their thinking capacity about how to treat the indigenous people or mana whenua and what Councillors don’t do, is they don’t do that. They agree to assist tangata whenua because we now have a law that says that they have to. Now with the same difference in the 1860s when the law said they didn’t have to, they didn’t. And so in the 1860s they did everything possible to destroy and to own and to take over anything Māori, land, knowledge – anything you name it. Now in the 1990s they’ve been told: you
were very naughty children. I mean that’s over 130 years later. You’re terribly naughty children. We’ve been really neglectful parents. Now we’ve got to make up to these people. But they haven’t gone back and looked at that 130 years. And gleaned from it the very vital lessons of marginalisation, the effects of the raping of land, of the people, the values of their tohunga-ship of the values of the whakapapa, of the spiritual dimensions of Māori. And so they fund a Māori that is bright, that is business-like, that has bright lawyers around her, that has bright policy writers that picks on a kaumātua she thinks is cleverer than any other kaumātua. They think: ‘Oh wonderful!’ But what they haven’t grasped is the fact that it’s only one very small part of Māoridom. And they have that responsibility to affording that same respect to every other Māori group. And that the issue of local government is to help facilitate the sharing of those resources. And one marae is not really enough anyway. So, for
example, I think there is two clearly distinct situations here. One is the situation of the relationship between local government and tangata whenua, or local government and Rangitāne, and the other relationship quite divorced from all that is the relationship between Rangitāne and Rangitāne. So I think that that stand that the Rangitāne made at the Rangiotū marae in December is a very clear signal that they’re not going to take any more. However, that signal then has to spell out how they want to work in future.
IM: Jo, I’d like to ask you about the nature of your job in the recent months and the difficulties that you’ve encountered.
JI: Right, I was employed as the Principal Planner for Māori Resource Management. And the main perspective of my job was to help a better relationship and a better understanding of resource management from a Māori perspective and how the Council may be able to enhance and strengthen the relationship with mana whenua in terms of the Council’s decision-making role towards all areas of resource management. I think we need to be really aware that resource management is anything in the air, the land, the water. And so in fact it’s a big area of decision making. It’s all about the laying of sewerage; it’s all about the new development areas for housing; it’s all about the class quality of lands; it’s all about whether they want to put a bridge across the river; it’s about whether they want the river to be used for other areas apart from recreational or fishing or for speed boat racing. And in terms of Te Ao Māori, I just wanted to quote – I’ll quote a quote here: Ko te Amorangi ki mua, ko te hāpai ō ki muri. Ko te tūturutanga mahi whakapono o te Māori mana motuhake. So the whakataukī taku ūkaipō te whenua, taku whenua te ūkaipō is about the value of everything in the environment that holistically is purposeful to the existence and the co-existence of people, of plants, of animals, of everything in the earth above, below and throughout the universe. And so the job itself is the very first time in the life and the history of Māori since the 1800s that the government has now acknowledged that Māori must have a say in what happens with their land management and waters, like I said before. So that was my job, so it was a really big job. So, to get my job done people had to understand what it was. So the very first difficulty in my job was: who understands it? How much depth do they have to that understanding? And how can they make that metaphysical, as people talk about it on one level, the metaphysical, the physical, pull together to make a holistic view. So, talking about disenfranchised people and displaced people often means that a lot of those traditional and traditional histories and traditional oral stories of the Māori have been lost. And so my job wasn’t only to develop the relationship but it was to try and enhance opportunities for Māori to learn from those fortunate Māori who had gained and gleaned the information historically and were able to put it forward in a learning environment. So that was the biggest challenge of my job in terms of Māori. In terms of the local Government structures, I think a lot of the problems that I had, is that quite a few of the planners just want to get the job done. And the law says it, and they want the minimum. So if that’s the minimum then that’s all they want to achieve. And in lots of ways they hadn’t had the learning and they hadn’t had the opportunity and in other ways they didn’t want the learning and in other ways all they wanted to do is damn well get things working and get things done. So, that was a real major hurdle.
IM: Did you feel lonely within the planning unit.
JI: Yeah. I think my very first six weeks here I learned really quickly that if I didn’t survive on my own wits, I wasn’t going to survive at all. I think my very first difficulty came up with the Resource Management Planners when they, well the strength of them anyway. Whether they all agree is to me is irrelevant. But the strength and message I got was that: I’m not a trained planner like they are and I’m not planned to think. I’m not employed to think. And I’m not employed to answer all those thinking questions on planning. I’m just employed to make sure they meet with tangata whenua and get their job done. So that was a major problem when I first came. I think also I didn’t expect to be treated like a whānau but I expected to be treated with respect and as an equal and that didn’t happen as well. And I think the management was nurturing the structure of the old babies and the new babies were still left out in the cold. So I’ve learnt really quickly in my very first initial period in this job, that I didn’t have the kind of support that I needed inside to actually convince people. And one thing I still regret about this job is that, as a Māori policy section, we were never, ever given the mandate to travel throughout the Council let alone our own area and talk about who we were, why our job was different and why at times they – people we worked with would have to me more patient and at other times we would have to be more patient. And those things didn’t happen. [Stop]
[Restart 2:00:34]
IM: Tape 3 Side A. Jo Ihimaera talking with Ian Matheson, 29th of December 1994.
JI: The other part of my job was actually developing training opportunities that would assist Council to understand the Resource Management Act and how it affects Māori perspectives. So, we were able to do this in June this year with Hirini Mataunga[17] one of the leading authorities in terms of Māori knowledge and the preservation of Māori knowledge. And that went down really successfully and then with the same opportunity we tried to relay that same training opportunity to mana whenua at Aorangi Marae and I think unfortunately we had a lukewarm programme, but that had nothing to do with the presentation or the presenter or what the people wanted. It became an inter-tribal complexity, I guess. So that was a shame and then later the Councillors were ready to have the same training programme. So, at one level I think that in my job, I was actually able to accomplish quite a lot that was expected of me and I worked quite closely with Tanenuiarangi[18] for quite a time. But my position was about trying to assist all mana whenua, hapū and whānau to understand the Resource Management Act and the Māori perspectives. And I worked really hard to do that. And I think what really happened, and the effect was – it showed one group, how they should be involved and, you know, like I always felt really strongly that as Māori we needed to convince ourselves and our young to feel pride in ourselves and in what our tīpuna knew and not to feel ashamed of that knowledge and that Māori had to value our own knowledge and our own traditional knowledge before we could convince Pākehā about how important this knowledge was to us. And so I really wanted to work really closely with mana whenua. But that had its own difficulties because it really meant that I wanted to work across the board with all the groups and I didn’t want to have a preference group. Historically I had come through the ropes working with Tanenuiarangi in terms of my community development work, particularly because the other group didn’t want to work with me as well. So I think that was the first thing that happened. And then secondly my job was different and my job role was different. And I converted to the job role because I believed in the job role. And the traditional group I had moved through with didn’t want to see me make that conversion. So I think then it became an issue of who do you think you could work with and how could you work? And how effective would someone like myself be in the job? And then later it became that old-age argument that happens in all Māori societies: you’re not from our iwi, you’re not married to our iwi, you don’t have our iwi children. And I’m reminded of a story in Rongomaiwahine in the wars – the Kahungunu Wars when the confederated tribes decided to wipe out Kahungunu[19]. And of course, Kahungunu is my father’s side. Kahungunu nau mai Wahine. And so all the confederated tribes, all from Raukawa, all from this area, all from the side tribe Tūwharetoa, all the major tribes got together to get rid of Kahungunu. And Kahungunu would battle and then they’d get pushed back, they’d battle, they’d get pushed back. Well some of the Kahungunu survivors ran through the track and survived on the other side of Taihape and created the nest of the Kahungunu people of the other side. And the other rest of the Kahungunu people went by sea and got to Rongomaiwahine and some of them went inland. And so by time the warriors got to Rongomaiwahine – to Mahia, the scouts had sent enough word back to Kahungunu. Because what had happened was Kahungunu had been the strongest iwi and then of course the gun came. The famous pū. And so what had happened was the gun was killing warriors that didn’t know about guns and didn’t have them. So by the time they got back to the last maraes back home in Moumoukai and in Kai? The marae? Kaiaka? – Anyway the marae on the hill. By the time they got back to those maraes they had had enough of the emotion of the power of this gun and they had built a number of fortresses, you know like wooden
fortresses. And they had one line, then they had left a gap, another line, left a gap, another line, left a gap and they had made them wide enough so when these bullets hit them the bullets couldn’t get through. Then they’d have warriors waiting for when they had to fight the Māori way and come over the top. And so they did all this, but the aggression and the anger and the determination to wipe out Kahungunu was so great that they really didn’t know how they were going to survive. So anyway, other people came down and helped them to fight. And they had a brother in Tauranga and he sent guns by sea and at night they pulled up the guns and they eventually ran the enemy over. And it says that they killed so many of the enemy that they ran over their bodies in the Mohaka River which was red, to chase the rest away. Now that was a real terrible history for Kahungunu, because we lost the majority of our people. So anyway, amongst those warriors was a Ngāpuhi man and he’d come through Tūhoe, because Tūhoe
had come to help us. And he’d come through the Ngāpuhi , because Tūhoe and Puhi were brothers and Puhi went up to Auckland, so he came through that. And he had helped to strategize in the wars and he became a really strong ally for Kahungunu. And they afforded him the mana and the right to speak and to be part of the Kahungunu Council, Tribal Council.
Now that kind of history doesn’t happen very much where another iwi makes room for another iwi, if there’s no marriage, if there’s no children, and if you’re not a whāngai to that iwi. And, of course, I’m none of those and I’m a very strong Kahungunu and of course, they see Kahungunu as their enemy, because we were one of the warring tribes that came this way. And every now and again when my ancestors wanted to have a bit of play they’d go through Dannevirke wipe a few Rangitāne. And of course, Pōrangahau[20] use to be Rangitāne and Kahungunu won that off them. In a similar kind of inter-tribal strife where Kahungunu said I can feed you better and Pōrangahau said no we can feed you better, so they decided the one that could feed the other the best won. And it just so happened that when it came to Kahungunu all the crops were plentiful, they had fresh veges, fresh food, fresh birds, everything fresh from the land. And in Māoridom nothing can beat the kaimoana – seafood, and so Pōrangahau just thought
they were going to win. However, the day before Kahungunu was due to eat with Pōrangahau the seas were rough and they couldn’t get any seafood, so they had to serve them up all the dried food which they call maroke. And so Kahungunu won that. So, there’s a history in Rangitāne to hate Kahungunu. So Kahungunu’s tribal boundaries goes right through Dannevirke and right to Te Ore Ore Marae[21]. And so over the last five years those areas have been fighting with Kahungunu saying: ‘Get out this is our land.’ And yet both is this close blood. So, of course, that’s my ancestry, so in this area I’m unhealthy. And in terms of the change in mana whenua strength which is healthy, which is good for Rangitāne, I’m really not in a good position. So, I guess it’s a long way round to answer the question, but I would think that it would be difficult for non-Rangitāne people to work in this area – Māori people given the tribal strife and given now that each tribal group will want whoever is employed in this area to be their person. What I did suggest to my manager, was that they do something similar that what is happening in Waitakere. Is they give a full-time employed person to Tanenuiarangi and a full-time employed person to Rangiotū or to that group, you know, that strength of Rangitāne. And then they hire someone quite different for inside, and the inside person’s job is to carry out the inside parts of the job description, like training the Councillors, doing the database, pulling together the cultural and intellectual property rights data, guiding the Council from inside. But that the Council develop direct links with Rangitāne.
IM: So that money would be given to Rangitāne hapū for them to employ whoever they saw fit.
JI: Exactly.
IM: Rather than for the Council to employ somebody and then expect that person to develop the links.
JI: Yeah exactly. And also that excess funding is given to them to assist in terms of administrative support, vehicle training, you know the whole shebang.
IM: This, in fact, would be similar to the operation of the Highbury Whānau where the Whānau was given the power to select the youth worker even though the money came from the Council.
JI: Yes. Exactly. And I think that given the climate and given the atmosphere and the things that happened to me, I don’t think that there are a lot of Māori people in the country with the maturity that I had and I brought to this job and the wide range of experiences I had. And I think I had to play a very fine line at very uncomfortable times and under undue stress to manage. And I don’t think that it’s a clear answer about what Council expects or what they want. I think it’s about Council letting go of power and letting go of the decision making and giving it over to tangata whenua. Now Waitakere does this. Waitakere funds the local tangata whenua plus a fully employed Māori development area. Plus a taura here Māori. Excellent, actually their excellent network. And so every group is met, you know, all their needs are met.
IM: Let’s hope that something similar does develop here in Palmerston North.
JI: Well I’ve really advised it and I really think that if they were listening to my advice. Like, on the other hand, if I had ridden the tides, next year I would be acceptable again. But that will be because certain elders in the other group have actually seen through all the murkiness and actually started to understand what my job is and started to give me credit for doing my job. But that’s going to be the continual – I think the continual pathway for this job is going to be like that. You’re going to be – some months you’re going to be fine and other months it’s going to be absolutely highly sensitive and political. Sometimes you’re going to feel like you’re doing a really good job and other times you wish you weren’t here. And I think from my perspective, my life is getting shorter and I just wanted to be positive, I just wanted to have a positive input. I wanted to be able to share a lot of the skills and knowledge I have while I feel really healthy and energetic and still able to dream dreams
and believe in visions.
IM: So, you’re going back home. Back to the Gisborne area. What’s the position that you’re going to be undertaking?
JI: Well it’s called the Iwi Social Services Manager. It’s a bit frightening. You know, I know I’m a good manager and I know I will do a good job but I actually saw myself a lot better in strategic planning and in the actual head stuff and the actual writing policy. Because in Gisborne, the relationship between Gisborne and the District Council is even more divorced that what it is here.
IM: So plenty of challenges for you ahead in the next few years Jo?
JI: Yeah. Can we have a break for a minute? [Stop]
IM: Jo, we are nearing the end of this interview. I’d like you to give some impressions about the structure of the Council since you came here. You’ve seen two lots of restructuring 1989 and then again last year 1993. Has this restructuring been of benefit to community development and Māori development? Or is the bureaucratic structure actually hindering this sort of work? What do you feel?
JI: Like I believe one of the greatest challenges facing Māori today is the ongoing effects of colonisation of our minds. A letter dated in the 1830s from the British Foreign Office stated that: ‘These natives are very strange, they judge the value of men not by what he owns, by what he gives away. It is clear that if we are to civilise them we must teach them greed.’ Challenges to Māori are to be de-programmers of colonisation. And the future navigators of our own self-empowerment. And I suppose in effect we are talking about our own self-determination and tino rangatiratanga. Now in the 1980s – the mid-1980s, the government came out with this policy of devolution. And the policy of devolution was supposedly to give power back to the people. And part of that devolution process, they dreamed up from the 1984 Hui Taumata[22], and in the Hui Taumata, Māori people, and that was the very first national gathering of Māori leaders and Māori young people. They said it is time for us to take charge of our
own futures, of our own opportunities and of our own effects and impact upon our life. So, the Government thought: ‘Right this is great. We’ll devolve everything, we’ll get rid of the Māori Affairs Department, We’ll get rid of all these things that hang onto us and give the power back to the people.’ And that was the actual plan. In 1989, they devolved so dramatically and so drastically that the solo parents, the unemployed, the low-skilled, the low-employed and the young school leavers suffered the most – more than they had ever suffered before. So, the 1990 economic package actually disadvantaged the people that they said they were trying to help. Well the same effect has been on Māori people. So when I think of restructuring, the restructuring was basically designed by a National Government, a capitalist government to cut costs. So for me, 1989 I was reflecting right at the beginning while you were saying karakia, how hard my team mates and team work colleagues worked at trying to project the value of community development, the reason why it should exist and why it should carry the name of the area, should be community development. And it should be the Community Development Unit and everything should fall off it. And we wrote, and we created, and we debated, and we got into all sorts of heavy ways of talking to one another, and by this time we had Gail Munro was the senior, myself, Adrian Beard, Nikura Hemi, Potaka Tate had walked through those doors. Oh look I don’t want to forget anyone. Other members Robyn, John was the manager, Desiree Hunt, Diana, Kay Neilson. So there was this real group of us and as community developers, we really believed that we should be the forefront. And of course, recreation wanted to be the forefront and John just wanted to get away with what he could with the least amount of trouble. And we ended up with the Social Services, so we didn’t even get the name we wanted. We ended up becoming a social service. And, of course, there’s some real big distinctions between social service and community development work. And I won’t go into those distinctions but they are there. Course we just worked and wrote submissions and we worked as hard as we could in bringing together our thoughts. We produced a grey booklet of community development principals, we produced a white paper, a pink paper, you name it and we just kept losing.
IM: In those days there was a structure of a director as well. John Barnes was your manager, John reported to Lex Bartlett. Do you think this hierarchical structure stultified some of the initiatives in the community development area.
JI: Well I really think that the change of Councillors, the loss of Jill White and Merv Hancock and people like that, it changed the atmosphere in Council as well and the new directorship at that time, I don’t believe for one minute that Lex Bartlett knew what he was doing. I think things have changed quite a lot now. But at that time there was always fights going on, arguing and debating and John and Lex never seemed to be able to come to any decisions. And so it was a really frustrating and really tough time. And then we’d lose the debate. And then we’d have to resettle in a new position, new job roles, reapplying for our positions and I think my personal perspective is, that I learned to be smarter. Every time the rules changed, I learned my own set of rules. And to do what I had to do, I made sure that I could develop the rules within the rules to allow that to happen. I know I feel a lot differently from a lot of my colleagues and I work differently from them, and I never got as angry as they
did. But I think one of the arguments we used to have internally amongst ourselves was about this: who’s angriest the most? In frustration once I said to my Pākehā colleagues: ‘You don’t know what anger is until you’re Māori.’ And my parents, my grandparents had to learn to survive, so that there was a world for me and their mokopunas. And if we spend so much time being angry we’ll never ever be effective in our job. And we have a responsibility to helping people to be happy. And I know that at times they used to think that I was off my tree. And that’s the way that I felt, it just wouldn’t work. And I always had – ever since I was a child – always had this deep spiritual faith that, you know, there was someone caring for us. And sometimes it was my grandfather, at other times it was my nannies and my friends, or really special people who have passed away, my auntie and things like that. And so in a way I think I was a little bit different. And so all through the struggles and sometime we fought
with each other but we tried to be united and work as a team. Each time we lost a battle, I learnt a new skill of coping. I learnt an new way of talking, I learnt a new type of person to get on with. And John was a good person, Gail was a good person and I think because we were good people and we had good intentions, we fed off each other and we survived. Of course, the next restructuring wasn’t so easy because then they got rid of John. And oh gee, can I have some more tissues.
IM: Jo one of the things I’ve always admired about our community development people here at the Council, is that their strength, the fact that they’ve mainly been women. I think it’s one area of the Council where strong women have been to the fore and I’ve always admired the staff of the community development section. And I’ve seen a lot of that strong energy has been dissipated by having to face restructuring on more than one occasion. Do you feel that a lot of energy was expended on these restructurings to the detriment of work out there in the community?
JI: Oh most definitely. Like it would be two months that we would lose, easily. I remember on one occasion when we were really united and we were working really hard as a team with all the difference we had within the team. And we had a meeting with Michael to tell him how we felt and what we felt. And when I look back it was just a waste of time. And it takes its toll. Like it takes its toll on your energy. You get more distant from your groups, you lose really valuable group therapy time. You miss deadlines, you miss funding area support, you have to curb really carefully your national training programmes. And so much happened aye. In 1989, 1990, it was just all happening just everything was going. And it was a really drastic and sad time for lots of households. And I remember the bleak Christmas that lots of people had in 1990. And then having to still want to have the desire, and the strength, and the belief that what you’re doing is worthwhile. So I think the first restructuring took a
toll, I think the second restructuring was devastating. And I knew that I couldn’t carry on working in that atmosphere. Cause they didn’t want John there anymore, put heaps of pressure on. Both seniors ended up leaving and of course, I left I think, just in time for me, because I moved across to my new job. But before I moved across to my new job I did run this most amazing national conference of the Aotearoa Community Development Conference. And that looked at the Treaty of Waitangi and the Treaty partners. And just, I know we did just a fantastic job. But at the end of the day, the team were really tired and I just pushed. I just kept pushing and kept pushing, and kept pushing, and then to get the evaluation out again all I did was just push just to get it to the press and just to get it out. So I think in terms of how we work together, the admin took a fair beating. I’ve always respected admin and had a good relationship with them. But even that relationship got strained. It was just lots of
stress and lots of pressure. And lots of – cause that whole area of restructuring changed our whole way in which we worked. Because now we had to work project based and we had to forecast futuristic projects. We had to forget about the everyday crisis, reactive stuff in the community which was about 90 or 80% of our job and you couldn’t let people all of a sudden find out they had a need because if it didn’t meet the projected plan. Management really tightened up. I don’t actually believe that management has a commitment, in terms of their conviction, for community development work. I really feel that they didn’t appreciate John Barnes and the real skills that he had. And that the replacement they had for John is just not anywhere near to that skill base and comes from a quite different perspective in life.
IM: Side B, 29th of December 1994. Jo Ihimaera.
JI: What I was thinking in terms of working in community development so long, it’s such and inbred type work that you often become best friends and worst enemies to the people you work with as colleagues and I really wanted to say that because there were times when my colleagues were my most admirable, my most cherished friends and then there were times when we just didn’t meet eye-to-eye. And I just wanted to say how much I appreciated the years that I worked in community development because I think what it did for me, I really matured and really grew up and I really learnt about focussing and assisting in a very effective manner people who were less fortunate than what I was. And I learnt to cope with the pain and I remember this group I worked with it was E tū whakaihi a pono. And it was a group of basically Māori people – men – who had had imprisonment and who had had a long-term record of being drug abusers, alcoholics, physical abusers to their partners and families and I was approached to assist them in developing their group and after the first meeting I went with them, I was really, absolutely psyched out to see the number of families that come from these backgrounds and I had to examine really closely my values and how I would be an honest assistance to them. And I went back for quite a few months and tried to help the best I could. And learnt a lot of other things about empathy, about compassion, about reality. And I do know even to this day, the kind fondness that they think of me and yet they would never know how hard it was for me when I used to go home from those groups and I’d have to debrief myself and I’d have to let go of all this swelling of heartbrokenness I’d feel, cause of what society – of what was happening in society, what was happening to young children and to women and to men. And I learnt a lot about how many men are being abused and that the cycle of abuse is endless. And so one of the highlights in community development for me was working in the non-violent programme we
have and having the plaque put in Te Marae-O-Hine and growing a rimu tree in remembrance of those that had endured suffering and for better peaceful. And on that plaque – it’s the only place in Te Marae-O-Hine that’s got the name Te Marae-O-Hine and I was really pleased to be part of those kind of projects. I worked with the Peace Organisation here in Palmerston North and helped to develop them and stabilise them. I’ve worked with Women’s Refuges, I’ve worked with St Michaels, in terms of the cultural group. And so I’ve had a really wide across the board experience working with people. And I was just thinking, it can get really depressing being a community advisor, cause you see a lot of sadness, you see a lot of poverty, and you see a lot of abuse, and you see a lot of struggling. And you meet families that don’t believe that they’ve got a future. I guess you want to be an answer to all their problems. And you bring the stress back to the Council and the Council don’t want to hear about it. And I
think that if you don’t learn how to manage that stress, you start disintegrating and destroying yourself. And I think that’s what happening to some of my colleagues over the road. Because for whatever reasons their head cannot contain the – that reality of society, which is a great proportion of our society. And because the Council doesn’t provide a range of support systems, a range of outlets that they just keep getting angrier and angrier. And I always used to think that the lifetime of community advisors was about five years. And after about five years you’d have to get out. And so when I hit year five I really started looking to moving. But amongst all that poverty and that denigrate of human society, I think I was able to be happy and I think part of that was the thrust for Māori development, because it was so exciting and it was so adventurous and it was new and we were going places. And also in 1989 we went to Wainuiomata for a local government community development conference. And I had a
programme to run, a workshop on promoting and marketing community development. And at that conference we realised as Māori, there was nothing for us as Māori. And so I always work hard at conferences, but I always have a lot of fun too. So I went to Corf because I had a lot of contacts in Wellington, we had some dates in town and a little bit of a party and a social function to go to. So we went off and we went to this function. It was great. Had a great time. But still my head was really heavy because I’d found over all the years I’d gone to community development conferences they never, ever dealt with what was happening for Māori or the differences between community development and whanaungatanga. Or if there was a difference and if they even needed to consider it. And so we’d go on to marae and they’d walk past the woman who was doing the karanga, they’d trample on all our tikanga and then they’d even hand us paper sheets in the carpark to show us the songs we were singing. I mean these Pākehās
they used to just blow me away. So I thought: ‘Oh look, I just can’t put up with that,’ and in 1988 a group of us had gone up to Hoani Waititi Marae, group of Māori community workers, and we had made an attempt to do something. Now I had just been a visitor because I was quite new to the whole scene and it was Tau Henare who was driving it. Anyway, it didn’t go anywhere but I could see that he wanted it to go somewhere. So anyway, it really ended up a flop. Lovely time, great weather, but no productivity in terms of initiatives. So, I still had that in the back of my mind. So in 1989 at about 3 to 4 in the morning as we were driving along the Petone foreshore, I said to my friends, and that was myself, Wai Te Ahoaho from Hamilton, I think Hine Kura, she was there and one other. There was four of us there. So anyway, I said: ‘Stop the car I want to go for a walk,’ Oh, and it was Muriel Pomare, sorry mate! The most important one of all. I said: ‘Stop the car mate, I want to go for a walk.’ And they got used to me asking and doing really different things at different times. So they all stopped the car and we went for a walk and I was just looking out at the sea and it came to me. ‘We can have our own waka and we can row the oceans of Te Moana-nui-a-kiwa.’ I thought ‘Wow!’ So I just said that to my mate Muriel, I said: ‘Stuff these bloody huis. We’re not learning nothing. They’re doing nothing for us.’ I said: ‘Let’s do our own,’ and she said: ‘Right mate. Let’s do our own.’
Anyway, it wasn’t until a few years later that Muriel relayed the story to me about - after that we drove for a Māori hui. Māori local government for Māori. And we were in Auckland in 1990 – 1989, 1990, around about that time anyway. We were in Auckland at this big conference. It was between me and Muriel and I said to her: ‘Now I want you to find Hirini Matunga.’ And she said: ‘Why?’ And I said: ‘Find him he’s the best, he’s the only senior Māori planner in the country. And he’s the best that we’ve got and I want him at that meeting. So, she found him and the three of us were at that meeting and Moana Adams, she ran around, she made all the cups of tea, she looked after us, she was wonderful. And we sat and we had this hui. I flew in on a plane about 8, we started at 9, I flew out at 6. And we only had a break to eat while we were talking and I flew out and Muriel told me about it. And she said how her and Hirini marvelled when I left. And she said: ‘The stuff that was coming out of your head
and the writing he was doing, just writing, writing. And we got out the Kaupapa that is still the Kaupapa today for Te Waka Āwhina. And it was really simple Kaupapa and it was to provide the opportunity for Māori people in local and regional government and iwi rūnanga to discuss and debate and learn about the various social, economic and political issues which impact on Māori people. The objectives was to gain a better understanding of the Treaty of Waitangi biculturalism and resource management processes and the implications for Māori and local government. To improve the understanding of tikanga Māori among Māori involved in local government. To assess ways of improving effectiveness and setting and achieving Māori goals for local government. To establish a national Māori network of Māori involved in national and regional government. And it was Me hoki ngā mahara ki ngā muri ngā tikanga Māori te wāhi whakawhitiwhiti whakaaro. For Māori people in local government. Training by Māori for Māori.
And those were the objectives that we had done that day and it just really worked. And so when I got back to Council I started to write reports to Council and started to really challenge the Council. And at that stage Council was still having Pākehās writing Māori policy and expecting us to be grateful for it. And one of them was Simon Peacy. And although he was an excellent social awareness person, he wasn’t Māori and so he’d come over to me and I would never help him. And I would refuse to comment. And in his frustration he exclaimed: ‘Well what the … do you want me to do?’ I said: ‘When you learn you’re not Māori, you won’t have to ask.’ And so we challenged – and so our challenges came right from our area, community development. John signed those reports. I went to Jill and then behind the scenes got them accepted in the Council process. And I believe that those were the initiatives that actually drove behind the scenes all the work and all the changes you see in this local government –
Palmerston North City Council for Māori development. And that Te Waka Āwhina has been a most amazing strong strength. And from a first hui of a dollar in the bank account and starting before we could even afford to pay for our food, to the first 60 people who attended that hui. And out of those 60, 20 listened outside the door. And we still marvel about how Māori people peered in every now and again at Moana Jackson and then pull their head out again. And then after two years their whole body was in the room.
In 1991, the second Māori local government, or Te Waka Āwhina o Aotearoa hui, we held in Palmerston North. And the impact that it had upon on our city manager was really profound because when I needed $4000 to assist us to even begin the hui he enabled us to have that through the Council processes. And prior to that we had been contributed $1000 from Council. In that way I believe that the city manager himself has shown a positive movement in supporting Māori initiatives. Four years down the track for Te Waka Āwhina we now have a hui that has over 3-400 people. And it is – just keeps growing and we have about 600 Māori workers all over the country affiliated to Te Waka Āwhina and what it has done, it’s starting to re-train Māori people and reprogram their thinking structures. Because what we need is – we need Māori thinkers and we need Māori people to believe they have the ability to think for themselves and make decisions for themselves. And until we get creative, strategic Māori thinkers, we won’t
see a change in a pattern in Māori development. And one of the other things I wanted to raise too is that through the movement of Te Waka Āwhina, it makes people more aware of initiatives like the fiscal envelope that the government is trying to encourage Māori to agree to, to stop Treaty claims. It helps in terms of the cultural and intellectual property rights and the indigenous world movements all throughout the world.
And I guess in a way Ian, I’d like to close and talk a little bit about the national and international networks I have and to say that at my farewell my manager referred to me to be the most networked person she’d met since Merv Hancock. So, I didn’t have any idea about that. But I do know that for many years I have worked in many Māori areas. The Council has afforded me through my job to attend a range of international and national huis, the 1993 World Indigenous People huis. The one in Christchurch for indigenous women was attended by 600 women from all over the world, where I became one of the primary writers of the policy out of that hui. The policy was sent to Geneva. The 1993 Cultural Intellectual Property Rights hui held in Bay of Plenty where we developed the Mataatua Declaration and that was taken over to Geneva in 1994 and accepted, two-thirds of it was accepted automatically into the Geneva statement for the Bill of Rights for Indigenous People. And I’d like to say that in many ways
Palmerston North has been a good city for me and my children. I came here quite broken-hearted. I leave with great wealth of things in my kete, in my kete I have two gorgeous teenagers. One who’s made the seventh form who’s now talking about going on to tertiary education. My 16 year-old who’s sorted out a lot of teenage difficulties in a hurry, wants to do a diploma course in management. I leave with a degree in Māori Studies and Business Studies at Massey. I leave with friends of all sorts of calibres and all sorts of walk of life. And really amazed at my farewell, cause they said there was about 150 who turned up and I thought that was great, that’s about $1 a head. And I also leave owning my own home, owning a car and all the other responsibilities that come with that. And I think my life in Palmerston North has been fruitful and I feel good about going home. Like I’m going home, but I’m going home healthy. I’m going home well and I’m going home knowing that Palmerston North has provided a
shelter and a safe place for both myself and my children. And so I do pay respect to Rangitāne. I do pay respect to the heavens and to all those carers who watch over people. And I do know that in my lifetime, I could have been lots of things and done lots of things but I’m happy with what I’ve done and I wouldn’t really want to change things anymore. And I think that, yeah, I have decided to return home while I have lots of energy and work with my own hapū and when I return on the 4th of January, I take up the position of Iwi Social Services Manager of Te Runanga o Turanganui a Kiwa. And those are my father’s iwi because three iwi are my father’s. So I go home to follow in the footsteps of my grandfather and my grandmother and all the Wipere’s and the Āpirana Ngata’s people who set up out on this journey in the beginning. And so I’d just like to say: Kei te whemai[23] ki te kainga au. Nō reira tēnā rā koutou katoa.
IM: Thank you Jo. I’d like to thank you personally for the contribution that you’ve made to the city and to Palmerston North City Council. I’ve worked for the Council for 24 years, I’ve seen it develop from a monocultural organisation through to a bicultural organisation, or one that is getting to grips with the issues of biculturalism and multiculturalism and I know that you have added some valuable ingredients to the Council’s basket of knowledge in recent years. So I wish you all the best for your future work back in Gisborne. God bless you Jo, and thank you again for putting your thoughts down on tape for the benefits of people in future years. Thanks very much Jo.
JI: Kia ora Ian.

[1] Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/6t6/tirikatene-sullivan-tini-whetu-marama
[2] Eruera Tīhema Tirikātene: https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/4t18/tirikatene-eruera-tihema-te-aika
[3] Nga Tamatoa: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/keyword/nga-tamatoa
[4] Mac Whakamoe: https://manawatuheritage.pncc.govt.nz/item/e590a209-1415-42d7-874e-8a5a060461c4
[5] Audio unclear, could be ‘koroua’.
[6] Could be referring to Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi https://teara.govt.nz/en/whanganui-tribes/page-4
[7] Kawa Kereama: https://teara.govt.nz/en/video/41174/the-karanga
[8] Audio unclear, could be ‘koroua’.
[9] Māori Development: https://teara.govt.nz/en/nga-tamariki-maori-childhoods/page-4
[10] Bernard Forde. Palmerston North City Councillor. https://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/news/107850622/former-deputy-mayor-bernard-forde-has-died
[11] Yvonne Marshall QSM, Palmerston North City Councillor 1985-1995, Kuia of Te Kura Kaupapa O Manawat?. http://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/lifestyle/obituaries/4092527/A-life-of-service-to-community
[12] John Barnes, Director of Social Services for Palmerston North City Council.
[13] Te Peeti Te Awe Awe, chief of Rangitāne: https://manawatuheritage.pncc.govt.nz/item/5d5d0b72-8cba-4a91-baaf-5b9548723da4
[14] Kerei Te Panau: chief of the Awapuni tribe: https://manawatuheritage.pncc.govt.nz/item/95344eec-01f9-46ec-ae38-a315285aae95
[15] Tanenuiarangi: http://www.tmi.maori.nz/
[16] An iwi located in the eastern Bay of Plenty and East Coast regions of New Zealand.
[17] Hirini Mataunga: https://komako.org.nz/person/1507
[18] The mandated iwi authority for Rangitāne o Manawatū since 1989. Its members are the natural descendants of the hapū of Rangitāne o Manawatū
[19] New Zealand’s third largest tribal group stretching down the North Island from M?hia Peninsula to Cape Palliser, their territory divided into three districts: Wairoa, Heretaunga and Wairarapa. https://teara.govt.nz/en/ngati-kahungunu
[20] Township near the south-east coast of the North Island about 45 kilometres south of Waipukurau.
[21] Near Masterton, on the banks of the Ruamahanga River.
[22] Hui Taumata 1984 (Māori Economic Summit Conference), https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/23124/hui-taumata and http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-HilMaor-t1-body-d8-d5.html
[23] Audio unclear, could be ‘awhi mai’.