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Wisconsin, Minnesota officials join march for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives
(ictnews.org)
This story was originally published by Wisconsin Examiner.
Frank Zufall
Wisconsin Examiner
Local officials from Duluth, Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin spoke to the crowd gathered for the 11th annual Memorial March for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives (MMIWR) on Valentine’s Day in Duluth.
The movement to address the scourge of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls started in Canada 35 years ago on Valentine’s Day. Later, missing and murdered men and relatives were added.
Held at the American Indian Community Housing Organization (AICHO), the event featured proclamations from both the cities.
Duluth’s proclamation noted that Native American women face murder rates 10 times the national average and that the “Minnesota MMIWR Task force reports that Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people are more likely to experience violence, be murdered or go missing compared to other demographic groups in Minnesota.”
Superior Mayor Jim Paine said because his wife and daughters are Alaskan Natives, he is personally invested in addressing the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women.
He described attending the State of The Tribes address by Nicole Boyd, chair of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa at the Wisconsin State Capitol on Feb. 10.
“The only time she broke down in that speech, the only time she wavered at all, was talking about Native women and girls and the fact that too many of them are missing, too many of them have been murdered, and the mission to save them, to protect them, to remember them,” he said.
Paine added, “We’re doing a lot more this year than last, but that work continues today, and every single day of the year, obviously, like you, the Native women in my life are the most important part of my life, I am deeply grateful for everything that they do for me, and I would do anything to protect them, like all of you, and that means on days like today, we have to speak as loudly and as clearly that the Native women that are in our lives, that are here. We love you. We will protect you. We will do anything for you. To the Native women that are missing, we will never stop looking for you, and to those that have truly been lost or have walked on, we will remember and protect and treat your legacy and memory with the safety that you didn’t have in life.”
Jana Williams, a member of the Leech Lake Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Minnesota, talked about the alleged failure of the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) to investigate the death of her niece, Allison Lussier, a member of the Red Lake Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Minnesota, whose body was discovered in February 2024 in her apartment. No death investigation was conducted, Williams said, even though Lussier had contacted the police to report abuse by her boyfriend.
“If you know Allison’s story, you know this, MPD saw an Indigenous woman,” said Williams. “They saw drug paraphernalia in her apartment and around her body, a staged scene. And instead of following their own protocol, a supervisor intentionally called off the crime scene. … That one decision destroyed every piece of evidence that could have brought justice to her name.” According to Williams, community members reported that her niece’s killer bragged about her murder. Because of Williams’ activism, the Minneapolis City Council has requested an independent investigation of the case.
“Who is going to fight for you if we do not stand together?” Williams asked the crowd. “We are less than 2 percent of the population. We cannot afford to be divided. We must stand as one.”
Rene Goodrich, organizer of the event, noted the official Minnesota Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives (MMIR) office in Minnesota, founded in 2019, the only state office in America officially focused on the issue, served 25 families in 2025 and was involved in eight new cases, including four that were resolved in the Duluth area with three being safely found.
Goodrich also noted the state’s MMIR office has a reward fund, up to $10,000 per person, that was inspired by a city of Duluth reward fund, the first in the nation, called Gaagige Mikwendaagoziwag or “They will be remembered forever.”
Late in the meeting, relatives and friends held posters and said the names of missing or murdered people, including Sheila St. Clair, missing since 2015, Nevah Kingbird, missing since 2021 and Peter Martin, missing since 2024. Others held symbolic red dresses.
After a drum dance, about 100 people gathered on the street with posters, banners and dresses and marched to the Building for Women where the marchers released tobacco they were carrying into a sacred fire, a tradition for seeking a blessing.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Jana Williams’ name. We regret the error.
The post Wisconsin, Minnesota officials join march for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives appeared first on ICT.
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Court rulings confirm duty to provide housing and safe water for First Nations. Now what?
(icmagazine.org)
Last Updated on February 21, 2026 Two Federal Court decisions delivered in December were a watershed moment. The rulings arose from two class actions, one led by St. Theresa Point First Nation in Manitoba and Sandy Lake First Nation in Ontario, and a companion case led by Shamattawa First Nation in Manitoba. In the decisions, […]
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Te Aniwaniwa Paterson. (Photo supplied)
Behind the marae gates, there’s a deeply uncomfortable conversation going on, writes rangatahi Te Aniwaniwa Paterson, who’s part of a group working to end sexual violence within Māori communities.
At Waitangi, sovereignty is often spoken about. But what does sovereignty mean if we can’t openly speak about harm within our own communities?
I’m the rangatahi representative on Ngā Kaitiaki Mauri, the Māori caucus of a national network to end sexual violence. In this role, I serve alongside kaumātua Russell Smith and Joy Te Wiata. When I ran into them at Waitangi this year, it was a chance to catch up on our kaupapa.
Matua Russell Smith told me that the first time he stood at Waitangi to speak about sexual violence, in the early 2000s, he was unsure whether his kōrero would belong in a space dominated by discussions of whenua.
It was Rangimārie Naida Glavish who steadied his nerves. “She turned to me and said: ‘They’re talking about the rape of our land, and you’re talking about the rape of our people. Your kaupapa absolutely belongs here at Waitangi.'”
The conversation reminded him that while the Crown has obligations under Te Tiriti, which might dominate the kōrero at Waitangi, Māori also have responsibilities to each other.
“We have He Whakaputanga and Te Wakaminenga, which guide the kōrero that happens inside the marae gates of our hapū,” he explains.
And within the marae gates, one conversation comes up time and time again: What should we do about sexual abusers, including paedophiles and intimate partner abusers, who want to speak on the paepae tapu?
Joy Te Wiata and Russell Smith with Dame Rangimārie Naida Galvish (centre) at Waitangi this year. (Photo supplied)
Joy Te Wiata says this can be a deeply uncomfortable conversation. But a good way to approach it is to think about “sexual violence” through the kupu Maōri “mahi tūkino”. That wording, she says, makes the abuser’s breach of mana and tapu quite visible.
“Cultural platforms like the paepae are not places to support people who have perpetrated harm. If our marae really want to be places of safety, then they need to uphold tikanga by ensuring that mana and tapu are upheld,” says Joy.
“We’ve got to be careful we aren’t colonised in our own sacred spaces. If we’re saying that it’s okay to allow these things without going through our processes, without hohourongo, that’s not tikanga Maori.”
Russell puts it like this — when people come forward saying their kaumātua abused them, he says: “Kaumātua do not sexually abuse. If someone has done that, we need to remove that status from them. They are not practising kaumātua tikanga.”
This does not mean those who cause harm are cast out entirely or disowned.
Through their clinical and kaupapa Māori work, Russell and Joy have worked alongside many whānau as they navigate the long and difficult process of healing. They have seen that restoration is possible.
While restoration means someone may remain part of their whānau and community, it doesn’t always involve a return to positions of cultural authority. In some cases, the paepae may no longer be an appropriate place for them, Joy says.
And that applies too, she says, to numerous positions across the marae, not just the paepae: “Are we remembering, there’s as much mana in picking pipi, washing dishes, and digging the hāngi pit?”
The pair’s kaupapa Māori approach to healing differs from clinical models that focus on the individual. Instead, their work considers the wider environment in which the harm occurred — the whānau, hapū, and the spaces and systems around that person. It then addresses the conditions that allowed the harm to occur, with supervision, boundaries, and restrictions on alcohol use.
“Our tūpuna left us tikanga for a reason, for safety,” says Joy. “We’re not calling our people to something different — we’re calling them back to their own tikanga.”
“Whakamua whakamuri,” adds Russell. “The way back is forward.”
But kaupapa Māori services like this remain under-resourced.
Late last year, the government moved to redirect $1.7 million from sexual violence support services. Some contracts were extended for six months, but that came with clear warnings not to expect more.
Joy says such funding cuts affect kaupapa Māori services more deeply, because their available resources must support entire whānau.
“We’re whānau-centred, which means that each dollar must expand to cover the whānau approach,” she says. “If we discontinue services, there is a breakdown in trust with whānau, and it takes years to build trust in the first instance. So, it’s not just the end of programmes, it’s a discontinuation of that trust and reliability.”
For Russell, the ability of Māori to sustain our own healing systems is an issue of tino rangatiratanga. “The problem we have today is we don’t have full autonomy over our own resources, and that includes our own mātauranga,” he says.
He describes this as part of a longer pattern: “The Tohunga Suppression Act is still active by the way they prevent our people from accessing us, through not giving us the resources that belong to us, and that’s the biggest Tiriti issue.”
For both, Te Tiriti affirms not only a partnership but also the Crown’s responsibility to ensure Māori can exercise their own pathways to healing. Without that support, Joys says, the obligation remains unmet.
They’ve seen some tauiwi services decline to work with whānau whose needs are complex, leaving kaupapa Māori providers to carry the responsibility. But there are very few kaupapa Māori services across Aotearoa that feel equipped to work directly with people who’ve experienced sexual harm.
“We’re in dire straits, and that has a knock-on effect for our people who are wanting and needing support,” says Russell.
Still, there’s work happening at a national level to strengthen Māori capability.
Ngā Kaitiaki Mauri of Te Ohaaki a Hine is developing tools and resources to support other Māori social services to build confidence and competence in dealing with sexual violence. Rather than centralising a single national model, the focus is on strengthening local Māori providers who already have relationships with their communities.
Over time, they hope to help Māori services expand their own capacity, so whānau don’t have to seek help in systems that are not designed for them.
“Our tūpuna gave us these tools. They are breathed quite deeply into us,” says Russell. “We are basically giving back to our people what belongs rightfully to them.”
Joy and Russell at Te Tii marae, Waitangi. (Photo supplied)
Te Aniwaniwa Paterson (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Rangitihi, Ngā Paerangi, Ngāti Kahungunu) is a journalist and digital producer for Te Ao Māori News based in Tāmaki Makaurau. She represents rangatahi on Ngā Kaitiaki Mauri, the Māori caucus of TOAH-NNEST (the National Network Ending Sexual Violence Together), which operates as a Tiriti o Waitangi-based partnership. She serves alongside Russell Smith and Joy Te Wiata.
The post A deeply uncomfortable conversation appeared first on E-Tangata.
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Aroha at Little Huia next to Te Manukanuka o Hoturoa (Manukau Harbour). Photo supplied.
Aroha Gilling has had enough of being the only brown face in the room. Here, she offers some advice to Pākehā employers who want to hire more Māori.
There’s a popular saying in military and IT circles: “Two is one, one is none.” It means that if you have one solution and it fails, you’re in trouble. But if you have two, at least there’s a backup.
A Māori colleague of mine uses this saying to explain the challenges faced by Māori in a predominantly Pākehā workplace: Two Māori combined may just get their point across, but one Māori alone often goes unheard.
Recently, I realised that I’ve been the “one is none” voice for too long now.
My work as a Māori specialist in a government department has always been lonely. But it’s become even more so now that my Māori mentor, and buffer against the white world, has retired. I’ve been left as the lone Māori voice in a wilderness of Pākehā perspectives.
I come to my job knowing that I’m going to regularly disagree with my colleagues, because I see the world through a completely different lens — an Indigenous lens, where Te Tiriti o Waitangi and tikanga are the paramount guides to behaviour and action. So I make no apology if some of my white colleagues feel uncomfortable when I refuse to share their colonial fantasies.
But I’m at risk of being characterised as the “angry Māori” when I continually disagree with the dominant narrative. Writing me off as “angry” is a simplistic and easy way to dismiss what I’m saying and avoid any deep thinking or analysis that might lead to discomfort.
As I’ve pointed out, we will never think exactly the same way, and I’m glad that we don’t. How do we foster diversity in the workplace, and avoid repeating the same mistakes, if we all think the same?
But I’ve reached my limit of trying to carry this kaupapa alone. I’ve taken a secondment, and I’m moving to the other end of the country. I’m leaving everything and everyone I know and love to join a Māori team led by a staunch ally.
Even though I love where I live and have fantastic whānau and friends, being “one is none” has become too hard.
So what needs to change?
Over the years, the question of how to make workplaces, projects and programmes “attractive” to more Māori has come up in multiple discussions. I’m frequently asked how departments can “appeal” to Māori.
A good place to start is with workplace and project policies. Do they reflect Māori aspirations as expressed in Te Tiriti o Waitangi? Doing this requires explicit documentation, and any gaps should be easy to spot.
The next obvious question is whether there are Māori and iwi at all levels of the organisation. Are Māori represented on the governance board, in upper management, and as key decision-makers? Or are Māori siloed into low-paying, low-status roles that lack real influence?
Another important area to consider is whether Māori, and particularly the iwi of a place, have been included from the outset, so they are instrumental in the conception of policies, procedures or projects. The “just add Māori and stir” approach, usually midway through a project, is so 1980s.
Then it’s worth asking whether the organisation embraces tikanga-based practices. How are new staff welcomed and farewelled? Are Māori staff supported culturally, or are they only used, once hired, to brown up the white world? Does leadership understand the importance of tangi and either attend themselves or make it easy for staff representatives to be present with a respectable koha? Are Māori staff rewarded and acknowledged when they go outside their job descriptions to perform cultural roles such as kaikōrero or kaikaranga?
One way to assess if the organisation’s interactions with whānau, hapū, iwi are merely transactional, or if there is relational depth, genuine feeling and connectivity, is to ask: What do iwi say about the relationship?
Another good litmus test of whether your organisation is welcoming to Māori is the atmosphere at morning tea in the staffroom. What happens when a Pākehā colleague deliberately mispronounces te reo or speaks in a faux Māori accent? Do non-Māori colleagues stand up and object? Or do they leave it to the Māori staff to call out privilege, prejudice and racism, and only mumble behind the scenes that they agree with what you said?
I think some of the most obvious clues to the health of the relationship come during the hiring process. Is there iwi representation on candidate selection and interview panels, and how does the organisation cope with whānau support for a candidate? My colleague who has just retired tells the story of his original interview where 120 of his whānau, hapū, iwi came to support his application. If today’s HR are discombobulated by two or three whānau, imagine the panic at that many.
Consider the interview questions too. Do they allow Māori candidates to demonstrate real depth and knowledge from their cultural world? It’s time for organisations to start getting their collective heads around the everyday parts of te ao Māori that showcase skills and achievements.
For example, if someone has experience as a ringawera, or a marae cook, it shows their ability to work under pressure, manage resources and time, and be part of a team. If you are the head ringawera, then those skills are amped up tenfold, to include managing a team, financial responsibility, and delivering food to a consistently high standard to show manaakitanga to guests. The mana of an iwi rests on its manaakitanga, and kai is critical in the process.
If someone has “kaihoe” (waka ama paddler) on their CV, then you’re getting someone who is mentally and physically strong, works effectively as part of a team, turns up for training, and understands commitment. Ask them about their racing experience. If they’re a steerer, then they’re in a position of responsibility and have developed specialist technical skills to make decisions under pressure. Maybe they’re a social paddler. Ask them what attracts them to the sport. Do they paddle because they enjoy the camaraderie, the cultural aspects, or because it makes them happy? A robust and thoughtful discussion along these lines will give you plenty of insights into their character and abilities.
I believe the standard, surface-level Treaty of Waitangi interview question — “Tell us about the Treaty of Waitangi” — also offers insight into your organisation’s cultural awareness.
My initial response is to ask the interview panel which Treaty text they mean. Are they asking me about the principles of the Treaty, or my understanding of Treaty history? This approach either kicks off a lively discussion or results in astonished silence. Both responses display where an organisation is in its Treaty journey.
Finally, if you want to hire (and retain) more Māori, look around. Does the building reflect Māori realities? Are posters, pamphlets and signage in te reo Māori as well as English? This is easy to do, and while signage can often be used to dress up a predominantly colonial organisation, it is one of the simplest ways to flag the cultural diversity and openness of an organisation.
In a recent office upgrade, the place I worked for acquired new furniture for the tearooms. The new additions were a sort of low table, but with chair cushions and seat backs fixed on top. I couldn’t decide whether they were chairs or tables. Rather than risk tikanga by inadvertently sitting on an eating surface, I avoided them at all costs and perched on a stool instead. It might sound minor, or even picky, but such decisions tell me that even very basic cultural considerations weren’t factored into the redecoration plans.
Making your workplace, project or programme more attractive to Māori requires mental, emotional, physical, and financial commitment to change and continual growth.
Yes, it will push your organisation out of its familiar white colonial world. But you might just end up with an amazing organisation or project with increased Māori participation that creates enduring and positive change.
And who knows? If you do away with the surface-level sham and go for a real Tiriti o Waitangi and tikanga-based approach, the Māori participants may even consider sticking around for a while. Then you’ll realise that two is one, one is none, but many is fun!
Aroha Gilling (Te Whānau a Apanui) is an adviser to government departments on Te Tiriti o Waitangi and mātauranga Māori. She has a Master of Indigenous Studies from the University of Otago and a background in adult education and social work. She recently relocated from Nelson to Auckland.
The post One Māori in the room isn’t enough appeared first on E-Tangata.
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This story was originally published by Maine Morning Star.
Emma Davis
Maine Morning Star
The movement to return more sovereignty to the Wabanaki Nations continues as lawmakers and members of the public convene Thursday, Feb. 19, to reignite debate, even as the prospect of full restoration under the current administration remains slim.
But the idea is to continue building engagement and momentum around the issue — “that keeps that fire burning even if we don’t have big legislative wins right now,” as Maulian Bryant, executive director of the Wabanaki Alliance, put it to Maine Morning Star in the fall.
With Gov. Janet Mills termed out after this year, that goal also extends to getting commitments from gubernatorial candidates, many of whom have already vowed to back the type of sweeping reform Mills has rejected.
Two bills are slated for public hearings in Augusta. One is an omnibus proposal to restore full sovereignty, while the other would reinstate the Wabanaki Nations’ access to beneficial federal laws. Both are nearly identical to past proposals, which were blocked either by the governor or through the Legislature’s opaque funding process.
The Penobscot Nation, Passamaquoddy Tribe, Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians and Mi’kmaq Nation — collectively known as the Wabanaki Nations — are treated differently than other federally recognized tribes, more akin to municipalities than sovereign nations because of a 1980 land settlement agreement.
Wabanaki leaders have said that their Tribes signed the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act to get fair compensation for stolen lands, not to give up the level of sovereignty that has been interpreted by the state and courts to date. Remaining barriers to self-governance have left persistent disparities between tribal citizens and other Mainers, such as health inequalities and limited economic mobility.
Mills, a Democrat, has rejected sweeping attempts to overhaul the act, instead approaching changes on a case-by-case basis, such as expanding Wabanaki authority over prosecuting crimes, permitting the Tribes to handle and reap profits from sports betting, and aligning the tax code with the rules that apply to other tribal nations throughout the country.
Those changes are not naught.
“Almost eight years ago, we sat in front of a crowded audience at Gov. Janet Mills’ first State of the State address in the Augusta Civic Center. In her address, one of her promises to the state of Maine and the Wabanaki Nations was to improve the relationship between the tribes and the state,” wrote the Chiefs of the Passamaquoddy Tribes Amkuwiposohehs “Pos” Bassett and William Nicholas Sr. in an op-ed published Wednesday. “We can tell you from our standpoint, she is leaving this relationship in a much, much better place than when she inherited it.”
Still, many Wabanaki leaders and allies to the cause are skeptical that the pending bills will ultimately be successful this year. But with Mills soon termed out (and running for U.S. Senate), the proposals could have more luck under the next administration, as several gubernatorial candidates have already made day one pledges to restore full sovereignty to the Wabanaki Nations.
With an eye toward the next executive, the Wabanaki Alliance, a coalition formed in 2020 to push for state recognition of tribal sovereignty, is hosting a series of gubernatorial candidate forums to discuss policy affecting the Wabanaki Nations ahead of the November election, with the first slated for March 19 in Houlton.
The Maine Legislature formally recognized a need to alter the Settlement Act in 2019 by tasking a bipartisan group of state legislators and tribal chiefs to recommend changes. Those 22 recommended changes have been taken up in several proposals with varying success and are again a focus of the legislation now being considered.
Repeat proposals
LD 785 is omnibus legislation that would implement the remaining task force recommendations, serving as the means to overhaul the rest of the act. LD 395 focuses on just one of the recommendations, restoring the Wabanaki Nations’ access to beneficial federal laws. Both are sponsored by Sen. Rachel Talbot Ross (D-Cumberland).
The omnibus legislation is essentially the proposal that the Legislature initially passed in 2022, but lawmakers on the budget committee did not fund the bill, essentially killing it, despite its relatively small fiscal note.
The proposal regarding federal laws mirrors a bill that the Legislature passed in 2023 but Mills vetoed, writing in her veto letter that she doesn’t “want to see the Wabanaki Nations unfairly excluded from benefits that are generally available to federally recognized tribes” but she fears the way the legislation sought to do so would “result in years, if not decades, of new, painful litigation that would exacerbate our government-to-government relationship and only further divide the state.”
The Settlement Act made it so the Tribes are unable to benefit from any federal law passed after 1980 that interferes with state law, unless they are specifically mentioned in the law. LD 395 would flip this paradigm by allowing the Wabanaki Nations to access federal laws unless they are expressly excluded.
Other legislation passed, pending and rejected
Among the many federal laws that do not apply to the Wabanaki Nations is one that offers federally recognized tribes the right to exclusively regulate and take in revenue from gambling on tribal lands.
In 2022, the Legislature amended the Settlement Act to permit Tribes to handle sports betting. Last year, they expanded that authority further, giving the Wabanaki Nations exclusive rights to operate internet gaming in the state. Mills delayed her decision on the bill until this year, ultimately deciding to allow it to become lawwithout her signature, though it won’t take effect until the summer.
Meanwhile, another gambling bill related to the Tribes is still in limbo. The Legislature carried over into this year a proposal that would afford the Tribes more revenue from gambling at private casinos.
There are also two other bills backed by the Wabanaki Alliance from last year that lawmakers have yet to issue final decisions on, though those proposals currently sit on what’s known as the “appropriations table” awaiting funding. Few proposals that make it onto this table ultimately make it off.
One bill would ensure the already required teaching of Wabanaki studies is effectively implemented in Maine schools. Lawmakers attempted to do the same during the prior Legislature — after a 2022 report found school districts have failed to consistently and appropriately include the curricula — though were unsuccessful.
“I have experienced first hand what little has been taught to Maine’s youth about Wabanaki people,” Mi’kmaq Nation citizen Mak Thompson said during a press conference in Augusta earlier this month, advocating for the bill. “This weighs on Wabanaki students to teach their peers about the existence of our people that have occupied this land for centuries.”
The other bill on the table would provide Indigenous people free access to state parks.
Another proposal the Wabanaki Nations advocated for has already seen a definitive decision against them. Mills vetoed legislation last year that sought to prevent the state from being able to seize tribal land for public use.
The post Maine Lawmakers again consider returning more sovereignty to Wabanaki Nations appeared first on ICT.
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A new book on Forest & Bird’s history deserves closer scrutiny, says historian Martin Fisher. (Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon)
A book commemorating the centenary of Forest & Bird skips lightly over its complex relationship with Māori — highlighting small positive interactions, but ignoring its fierce campaign against the Ngāi Tahu settlement deal in the 1990s, writes historian Martin Fisher.
In November 1997, after more than a decade of gruelling claims before the Waitangi Tribunal, various court actions, and Treaty settlement negotiations, Ngāi Tahu’s chief negotiator, Sir Tipene O’Regan, would’ve been forgiven for not sporting a giant grin during an interview on TVNZ’s Breakfast.
But such a smile was necessary to disarm Pākehā suspicion of what a Treaty settlement might mean.
Treaty negotiations minister Doug Graham didn’t front that morning, so it fell to O’Regan to explain the momentous occasion — the impending signing of the Ngāi Tahu Deed of Settlement.
Tā Tipene O’Regan smiles his way through a TV interview in 1997, during which he was asked to allay fears that Ngāi Tahu would restrict public access to conservation land.
Midway through the interview, O’Regan was asked about the fears of conservation, hunting and fishing lobbies that the settlement would cut off public access to conservation land: “Can you put their minds to rest?”
He replied: “We’ve never said that . . . That’s one of the fears that’s been generated by those lobbies.”
He paused, as if choosing his words carefully, then flashed that famous Cheshire grin: “We’ll remember their names.”
His comment was prescient. As a new book on the history of Forest & Bird demonstrates, it would indeed be left to Ngāi Tahu to remember the names of those who fought so hard against the iwi’s Treaty settlement.
In 2023, to mark the 100th anniversary of the Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society, the organisation commissioned environmental historian David Young to write its centennial history.
The result is Force of Nature Te Aumangea o Te Ao Turoa: A conservation history. Sadly, Young had health problems and wasn’t able to complete the book. Author Naomi Arnold carried on Young’s work with help from Caroline Wood and Michael Pringle.
Force of Nature is filled with short, consumable takes on the environmental challenges that Forest & Bird faced over the last century, and is beautifully illustrated with photographs and artworks gracing nearly every page.
There are a number of short biographies of key figures in Forest & Bird, including founder Val Henderson and various presidents and CEOs, as well as less well-known figures, such as Gilbert Archey, Jacqui Barrington, Violet Briffault, Lily Daff, Christine Foxall, Basil Graeme, Matekoraha Te Peehi Rangihika “Bessie” Jaram, Lance McCaskill, Alistair McDonald, William Roy McGregor, Peter McIntyre, Perrine Moncrief, Isabel Morgan, Geoffrey Orbell, Margaret Peace, Kevin Prime, Fraser Ross, Colin Ryder, Ralph Sylvester, and Diana Shand.
These snapshots of grassroots organisers, fundraisers, helpers, artists, workers, and gardeners are a real highlight of Force of Nature, shining a light on those whom history too readily forgets.
I assume the authors would’ve received fairly explicit instructions for the kind of book they should write. Like other centennial histories, this one takes stock of what the organisation has achieved over its century of work. It also covers Forest & Bird’s early struggles to gather enough funding for its environmental work at a time when such work wasn’t widely accepted or appreciated.
In other words, the authors weren’t tasked with writing a critical history of Forest & Bird — and Force of Nature certainly isn’t that*.* The book jumps from story to story, painting a picture of a scrappy, plucky, underfunded, volunteer-led group that went on to become arguably Aotearoa New Zealand’s most successful non-governmental organisation.
Not everyone will share Forest & Bird’s rose-tinted view on its own history. There will be the usual suspects — farmers, fishers, loggers, miners and various captains of industry who couldn’t stand what they saw as a preening, arrogant, know-it-all group of “tree huggers”.
But there are also less well-known critical views of Forest & Bird’s conservationist attitudes and actions — most notably from Māori communities who suffered through the worst of colonisation only to be confronted by a different kind of coloniser: the “Greenies”.
Force of Nature acknowledges that Forest & Bird has largely been a Pākehā-led environmental organisation. Nonetheless, the authors contend that, at various points in its history, Forest & Bird has engaged with “biculturalism”.
For example, it points out that during the 1950s, Forest & Bird worked with Māori communities to prevent the logging of native forests in Te Urewera. The authors believe this represented “a possibly unprecedented display of positive race relations from a cautious Pākehā-dominated organisation attentive to what we today would call its treaty responsibilities”.
Other bicultural success stories are presented, including Forest & Bird branches in Hawke’s Bay working with the Ngāti Pārau hapū to protect remnants of the giant estuary, Te Whanganui-a-Orotu.
Later, the clash between Forest & Bird members and loggers at Minginui in Te Urewera is presented as an effort to save the Whirinaki forest. The account fails to note the impact on the loggers’ livelihoods in Māori communities at Murupara and elsewhere.
In the discussion of Forest & Bird’s work on Kāpiti Island, a passing reference is made to sheep belonging to Ngāti Toa and the environmental damage they caused. This epitomises the clash between Māori tino rangatiratanga and the Pākehā conservationist ethos. And in fact, it was this clash that initially drove the establishment of Forest & Bird. Founder Val Sanderson would stare out at Kāpiti from his home on the coast in the early 1900s, focused on saving the island’s forest and birds, without sparing a thought for the rights of Ngāti Toa.
Unfortunately, the book references only one Waitangi Tribunal research report (by Klaus Neumann on Whirinaki Forest), and none of the Tribunal’s final reports. These would have been very helpful for contextualising the numerous interactions between tāngata whenua and Forest & Bird. The authors nibble at the edges of the story but sadly refuse to go deeper, which is a shame in such a rich site of Māori-Pākehā relations.
One section — on efforts to manage the environmental state of the Whanganui River— directly addresses the clashes between Māori and conservationists, and notes that Forest & Bird “underestimated the relationship of local tribes to their river and the dynamics of the new era of the [Waitangi] tribunal”.
There is also recognition of the adverse effects on Māori of early conservationist efforts, including a quote from Henry Fletcher, an original Forest & Bird member and missionary, who noted the “double injustice to Māori in taking their remnant beauty spots for reserves”.
Nonetheless, politician Harry Ell is described glowingly in Force of Nature as the “godfather” of Forest & Bird, even though his Scenery Preservation Act 1903 devastated remnant Māori landholdings.
The authors state that Forest & Bird’s president from 1996 to 2001, Keith Chapple, had “limitations [which included] his difficulty in understanding Māori perceptions”. They note that “this changed following his injuries in a car accident in 2004” when the Whanganui Māori community came to Chapple’s aid and provided moral and emotional support. Perhaps because Chapple’s case presented a redemption story, the authors were open about his “limitations”.
They don’t extend the same treatment to Chapple’s predecessor, Kevin Smith. None of Smith’s significant limitations, including his fervent anti-Māori rhetoric and (like Chapple) his “difficulty in understanding Māori perceptions”, is included in his biography in Force of Nature. Instead, only Smith’s efforts to work with Ngāi Tahu whānau in the 1980s to help “save” forests at Ōkārito in Te Tai Poutini (the West Coast) are mentioned.
The roots of the challenges that would confront Māori and conservationists were apparent from the beginning. As Force of Nature rightly notes, the early work of Forest & Bird was connected to the efforts made by acclimatisation societies across Aotearoa New Zealand. Such societies imported exotic flora and fauna, such as rabbits, to remind settlers of their home countries.
Most observers would expect these two organisations — one focused on protecting indigenous forests and birds, the other on introducing exotic flora and fauna — to be at loggerheads. But that wasn’t the case. The first secretary of Forest & Bird was the president of the Wellington Acclimatisation Society, and Forest & Bird’s first headquarters were in the office of the Wellington Acclimatisation Society. This colonial connection would be reflected in Forest & Bird’s future role as a key third party in the Ngāi Tahu settlement negotiations.
Rolland O’Regan, the father of Sir Tipene, appears throughout the book. Rolland was almost a founding member of Forest & Bird. Force of Nature includes an extended quote from him addressing 250 attendees at a Forest & Bird family camp at Waikanae in 1971: “Never was the need greater for a political pressure group to stop environmental destruction.” His name is also listed on a 1935 Forest & Bird petition. In the second half of Force of Nature, Rolland is identified as Sir Tipene’s father, but no further comment is made about this important connection.
Ngāi Tahu are referred to throughout Force of Nature in small, positive ways. The authors note the successful efforts of Forest & Bird volunteers working with Ngāi Tahu muttonbirders in the Deep South to fight the rat menace, and their work with kaitiaki of hoiho. They also mention a gift of pounamu to Kevin Smith for his efforts in helping save forests at Ōkārito.
But they overlook a fundamental part of Forest & Bird’s history — its role in the Ngāi Tahu Treaty settlement negotiations. Along with other environmentally-minded organisations, Forest & Bird worked to delay the settlement for many years through its obstructive and persistent opposition.
Intense, consistent, and often irrational opposition was cultivated within and across conservation, tramping, and public access groups that shared interests with Forest & Bird. This included the Federated Mountain Clubs (FMC) and, possibly worst of all, Public Access New Zealand (PANZ), led by Bruce Mason, a fervent admirer of a monocultural Pākehā New Zealand. Mason was an active board member of Forest & Bird in the 1970s and ‘80s, and his connections with the organisation continued into the 1990s, when intense media campaigns and political lobbying opposed any proposed redress in the Ngāi Tahu negotiations beyond urban commercial land.
These groups (along with, initially, the Fish & Game Council) were suspicious that the conservation estate would be the primary means of addressing claims, and that any resulting Ngāi Tahu participation in the management of conservation areas would curb public access.
The campaign by Forest & Bird, FMC and PANZ took on an unfortunate racial element. Historical tropes such as the stereotype of the “greedy Maori” were perpetuated in press releases that portrayed Ngāi Tahu as wanting the entire conservation state for itself. Simultaneously, these groups questioned whether Ngāi Tahu had any connection at all to mountains and rivers inland, and painted the iwi as just another private (even foreign) interest.
During numerous consultation meetings involving Ngāi Tahu, iwi members were often outnumbered and vilified. Eventually, Ngāi Tahu representatives couldn’t justify attending consultation meetings where they were treated in that way.
For all intents and purposes, Forest & Bird waged a media and political war on Ngāi Tahu and the Crown during negotiations. Yet, Sir Tipene was himself a life member of Forest & Bird, while others in the wider negotiating team, including Anake Goodall, were members.
It would have been fascinating to learn more about how the Ngāi Tahu members of Forest & Bird viewed the organisation in light of this history, but the authors don’t cover this territory.
Force of Nature goes on to proudly claim that Forest & Bird was a key figure in the establishment of the Department of Conservation (DOC) during the Fourth Labour Government.
While the accomplishments of a permanent conservation-focused government department are to be lauded, especially in light of this country’s destruction of its natural resources in record time following formal colonisation, the immense challenge to Māori communities that DOC has posed (and continues to pose) needs to be emphasised.
In many ways, Forest & Bird was DOC, and DOC was Forest & Bird. Together, they were highly successful in limiting conservation redress in the Ngāi Tahu settlement.
They also played a significant role in delaying negotiations for several years, including the breakdown of negotiations between late 1994 and mid-1996. It was only once the conservation lobby’s influence was set aside, after the Crown and Ngāi Tahu had engaged in years of good-faith discussions with conservationists, that significant progress was made. Finally, in June 1996, an interim settlement was reached.
In August 1996, Forest & Bird strongly urged the government to hold consultations with conservation groups about the proposed settlement.
Yet Forest & Bird refused to attend nearly all of those meetings and, along with PANZ, then released selective quotes about the settlement and its provisions to heighten Pākehā fears of being denied access to conservation land.
Neither organisation’s media releases noted that around 30,350 hectares of high-country pastoral leasehold land would be retired to the conservation estate as a result of the Ngāi Tahu settlement.
Forest & Bird also opposed the creation of a conservation board sub-committee for Whenua Hou (Codfish Island) and even spoke out against the Crown returning the Tītī Islands to Ngāi Tahu.
And yet, in most areas, public access was not only guaranteed in the final settlement but significantly expanded.
Organisational memory is important to Ngāi Tahu whānau and the iwi. The Crown is often accused of organisational amnesia, largely due to persistent staff turnover rather than malicious intent. In Treaty settlement negotiations, some third parties can suffer a similar affliction, especially if their conduct during those events doesn’t reflect well on the organisation in hindsight.
The centennial history of Forest & Bird does a wonderful job of highlighting the important social good the organisation provided over its first century. It would’ve been helpful if the brief to the authors had included an acknowledgment of Forest & Bird’s limitations, and a more extensive, open discussion of them to ensure they aren’t repeated.
Forest & Bird has come a long way in its relationship with te ao Māori since the back-to-back presidencies of Kevin Smith and Keith Chapple.
If only this book could have assessed, celebrated, and maintained that progress. I regret that it does not. It therefore falls to Ngāi Tahu, as it so often does, to “remember their names.”
Dr Martin Fisher is a senior lecturer above the bar at the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre, University of Canterbury.
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At board of trade talk, WFN leader imagines prosperous future ‘for many generations to come’
(indiginews.com)
c̓ris Jordan Coble, a councillor for Westbank First Nation (WFN), gives a state of the nation presentation to members of the Greater Westside Board of Trade and other dignitaries in syilx territory on Feb. 11. Photo by Aaron Hemens
During a talk to the local board of trade, a Westbank First Nation (WFN) councillor reminded businesses that any investments in the community should be mindful of the wellbeing of Youth and future generations.
“The work that’s being done as communities — and that includes everyone in this room — is empowering our children to grow up to be proud of who they are, where they come from and what they can strive to be in the future,” c̓ris Jordan Coble told the Greater Westside Board of Trade.
“All these investments, all this growth, all this planning and visioning for the future, it’s all for the wellbeing of our next generations to come.”
Coble made these comments during a State of the Nation presentation in syilx territory on Feb. 11, filling in for WFN y̓ilmixʷm (Chief) simo Robert Louie, who was away at the time.
Coble provided members of the Greater Westside Board of Trade with updates on WFN business ventures and future projects, and spoke about the responsibilities that all local leaders hold — such as maintaining healthy water and land, and properly managing how waste is handled.
The Greater Westside Board of Trade is an association representing around 400 businesses operating on WFN homelands. In addition to association members, a number of dignitaries in attendance for Coble’s presentation included WFN councillors, and elected officials from both the City of Kelowna and City of West Kelowna.
“We live in paradise. But it’s a responsibility that we have to make sure that this paradise continues to be a paradise for our future generations,” Coble said.
“As we continue to grow and expand and evolve our communities, I really want to emphasize that it is still a responsibility to be a good neighbour. To look out for one another. But also, look out for the land.”
A member community of the Okanagan Nation Alliance, WFN has been under a self-government agreement for more than 20 years. The First Nation has their own sets of laws around conservation, education, culture and language, and more across 5,340 acres of reserve lands.
c̓ris Jordan Coble, a councillor for Westbank First Nation (WFN), gives a state of the nation presentation to members of the Greater Westside Board of Trade and other dignitaries in syilx territory on Feb. 11. Photo by Aaron Hemens
According to Coble’s presentation, there are 828 businesses operating on WFN reserve lands, with 124 of them being businesses owned by First Nation members. The Snyatan Shopping Centre, for example, is 100 per cent owned by WFN’s Ntityix Development Corporation.
There are more than 12,000 non-nation members living on WFN lands, and 914 band members.
Economic growth has also been significant. A graphic that Coble shared revealed that the assessed value of WFN lands this year is measured at approximately $4 billion. In 2016, that number was just under $1.5 billion.
While noting that WFN “takes a lot of pride in our growth and our development,” he said that it’s important to be mindful, again, of community water sources and where waste goes.
“How do we prepare for that growth and change as they come?” he asked.
As far as waste goes, he pointed to Ntityix Development Corporation’s partnership with Brenda Renewables, which is a regional organic composting facility. He highlighted how organic waste, when converted into soil, can be turned into a revenue generator.
“We’re pretty innovative people — we have been for thousands of years. And if you can make money off of waste, well, we’re going to go ahead and do it,” he said.
Coble also gave an update on a separate major WFN initiative that is still in the proposal stages, which is a wind power project with Innergex Renewable Energy Inc.
After being selected as a participant for BC Hydro’s Call To Power initiative, WFN’s project would see the development of 25 to 30 wind turbines within their Area of Responsibility, providing power to up to 40,000 homes.
WFN’s Area of Responsibility stretches nearly 400 km, running west of “Peachland” along the border of the Thompson-Nicola region, to the east in “Slocan” in the Arrow Lakes area.
The proposal is subject to a WFN membership referendum, and traditional land use studies are being undertaken. Should the proposal succeed, the wind turbines could be in operation by 2031.
“We want to make sure that we have recognition of greener energy initiatives — greener solutions,” said Coble. “But we also recognize that if you put a bunch of wind mills up on our lands, it’s going to affect our lands — it’s going to affect our animals, our hunters and our gatherers.”
He said that it’s important to be investing in opportunities that reflect syilx values: “looking after the land, from now into the future for many generations to come.”
“This work doesn’t matter much if we’re not investing in it for our children, for our Youth, for our young people and for our wellbeing,” he said.
“If we forget that we’re doing this for our kids, then what’s the point?”
He acknowledged that it’s not just WFN members who are upholding the responsibility of looking out for their Youth — it’s the nation’s partners and collaborators as well.
“It’s everybody. Many of you in the room help lift up our children and support them, as we look towards the future,” he said.
He noted that he and many other WFN members benefited from past generations investing in them, something that he said should always be at the centre of community priorities.
“I can only speak my [nsyilxcən] language because of the investment our community put into me to learn that language,” he said.
“Everything that I know to be true, came to me through language; came to me through teachings from our Elders; and all the additives from the education system. Good partnerships and good relationships all contribute to my well being, to my knowledge.”
By looking out for the children, “our future generations will be good and healthy,” he said.
“Our kids are beautiful kids, and they are proud to be sqilx’w (Indigenous). That’s not something I could say when I was a young child.”
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T. Melanie Puka Bean, an assistant professor at the University of Utah, is a New Zealand-born tagata Tokelau. (Photo supplied.)
Tokelau is New Zealand’s last and only remaining colony, and this month marks 100 years of that imperial relationship. While the relationship continues to be framed by Tokelau leaders as a “partnership”, the reality is somewhat different, writes Melanie Puka Bean, an assistant professor at the University of Utah.
Most people don’t think twice when I tell them that Tokelau is a territory of New Zealand. Having grown up with Tokelau and New Zealand’s political relationship as the context for so many of my family’s realities, neither did I for most of my life.
Both of my parents were sent to New Zealand in the 1970s, as 10-year-olds, to attend schools in the Wairarapa under a scholarship programme funded by the New Zealand government. From as early as I can remember, our lives in New Zealand were shaped by a narrative in which my parents, and Tokelau more broadly, were the beneficiaries of a benevolent colonial government seeking to improve Tokelau’s future.
It’s only after a great deal of study and conversations with others that I’ve come to realise that this political reality is a distortion of many things.
That includes how New Zealanders understand the New Zealand empire — if they even know about it at all — and its impact on the relationships between the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific, including Māori from Aotearoa and the Cook Islands, Niueans, and tagata Tokelau.
Most New Zealanders know something about the settlement of Aotearoa by Europeans and the ongoing consequences of settler colonialism. But relatively few know how or why people from Tokelau, Niue, or the Cook Islands came to live in New Zealand as part of its Realm.
February this year marks 100 years of Tokelau’s imperial relationship with New Zealand since annexation in 1926. And while the relationship continues to be framed by Tokelau leaders as a “partnership”, the reality is very different.
Melanie with her brother, Antonio, in Atafu, Tokelau, in 1999, when the Puka family lived there for a year. (Photo supplied)
How Tokelau became ‘part of New Zealand’
Tokelau historically comprises four atolls, located just south of the equator, about 500km north of Sāmoa, spanning approximately 350km of ocean.
One of those atolls, Olohega, has since been lost to us (more on that later), so Tokelau now officially comprises three atolls: Atafu, Fakaofo, and Nukunonu.
Although each atoll has its own identity and characteristics, they’ve maintained political and marital relations throughout history. This history, including the importance of Olohega (also known as Swains Island), is well-remembered by Tokelauans.
How did Tokelau become New Zealand’s last and now only colony?
Let’s go back to 1916, when the British annexed the Tokelau Islands, then known as the Union Islands, and incorporated them into the colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands (now Kiribati and Tuvalu).
Ten years later, in February 1926, the UK handed the administration of Tokelau to New Zealand, which it then delegated to the High Commission of Western Sāmoa. In 1948, Tokelau became “a part of New Zealand” by way of the Tokelau Act 1948, which formally transferred sovereignty from the UK to New Zealand and granted New Zealand citizenship to Tokelauans.
At that time, Olohega was still recognised as part of Tokelau, but its status was complicated.
Politically, the island is a US territory and has been privately owned by one family since 1856. The record of how it came to be owned by Eli Hutchinson Jennings, an American whaler, is murky at best, as journalist Laray Polk sets out in this paper. Jennings was responsible for the near destruction of Tokelau when he helped Peruvian blackbirders raid the other three Tokelau atolls in 1863.
The current reality is that Olohega is inaccessible to tagata Tokelau. In 1925, it was annexed by the United States as part of American Sāmoa. Tagata Tokelau on the island became US nationals. In 1953, the island’s inhabitants were evicted by the Jennings family to American Sāmoa. Most of them, and their descendants, have since made homes elsewhere, in Hawai‘i and the continental US.
Although Olohega remains historically, geographically and culturally part of Tokelau, there’s little chance of Tokelau reclaiming it, thanks to the 1980 Treaty of Tokehega signed by New Zealand and the US, which cemented the American claim to Olohega and its tuna-rich exclusive economic zone. Many Tokelauans are still aggrieved by the treaty, which they feel was forced on them by New Zealand, under heavy diplomatic pressure from Washington.
Tagata Tokelau in New Zealand
Tagata Tokelau born in Tokelau are automatically New Zealand citizens who hold New Zealand passports. Those who meet the age eligibility requirements qualify to draw on superannuation, even if they are normally resident in Tokelau. The right to vote in New Zealand general elections doesn’t automatically follow, unless one of the additional living requirements is met. Tagata Tokelau living in Tokelau aren’t required to pay taxes to the New Zealand government on their income.
One of the lasting legacies of Tokelau’s relationship with New Zealand is its loss of population and capacity, through both the resettlement and Tokelau scholarship schemes.
Today, around 8,600 people of Tokelauan descent live in New Zealand, while only 2,500 live in Tokelau.
Both the resettlement and scholarship policies, enacted in the postwar period, resulted in hundreds of tagata Tokelau being relocated to New Zealand for work and education. From 1963-65, the New Zealand government trialled assisted migration to New Zealand for young, unmarried people to help meet the labour demand of the postwar boom. This was formalised in 1966 as the Resettlement Scheme, where the New Zealand government offered grants to families to relocate, mostly to Taupō and Rotorua so that the men could work in the forestry industry.
By 1976, when the resettlement scheme was suspended, 528 tagata Tokelau had been resettled. Many moved to urban centres, notably Porirua and Auckland. The Tokelau Scholarship Scheme, at least in its first formalised arrangement, operated from 1963 to 1982. During that time, 186 Tokelau students were sent to New Zealand on scholarships. Before this, scholarship children were sent to (Western) Sāmoa and American Sāmoa for formal education.
It seems the resettlement scheme was intended to be permanent for families, and that Tokelau understood this. As the 1966 Hansard record shows, the New Zealand government’s position was that maintaining a population on Tokelau wasn’t feasible. Its intention was to depopulate Tokelau entirely because of the administrative costs of running it as a colony, as well as concerns about cyclone activity in 1966.
The scholarship scheme, however, wasn’t so transparently an effort to relocate families. Instead, the purported purpose was to enable children to seek specialised knowledge from the outside world and then return to help improve life in their villages.
My parents were two such students, sent out at the age of 10 to schools in the Wairarapa. My father has often used the phrase “He mafua ma tamaiti” to describe his understanding of his responsibility as a scholarship recipient. The literal meaning is: “The children must be fed.” It was understood as a kind of mission instruction to the students — to go out and “catch the fish and return to the village”.
Those in the villages held high hopes that students would return as trained professionals who would uplift their people, but many were disappointed by the relatively low rate of return. This was what the villages were promised during the development of the scheme, but despite New Zealand’s willingness to facilitate the departure of Tokelau’s most promising, no effort was made to encourage their return.
While there’s no substantive data on the number of scholarship recipients who stayed in New Zealand, we know anecdotally that the majority didn’t return to serve Tokelau, either temporarily or permanently. This was certainly the case among scholarship students sent to the Wairarapa, where my parents went to school.
This isn’t a criticism of those who, for whatever reason, didn’t return to Tokelau to complete their mission. It simply reflects the broader structural inequities between Tokelau and New Zealand.
Ioane Puka, Melanie’s father, aged 12, at the Sedgley Boys’ Home in Masterton in 1976. (Photo supplied)
In the early 1980s, Tokelau stopped sending students at such a young age, and instead sent them only at secondary school age. There was a brief hiatus in the late 1980s when Tokelau stopped sending students to New Zealand altogether, instead sending them to other parts of the Pacific — Sāmoa, Niue, and Tonga. In the early 1990s, when the scholarship scheme restarted, students were sent to New Zealand only for the 5th, 6th and 7th forms.
One of the reasons the scholarship scheme in its first iteration came to a halt was that so few students passed School Certificate and University Entrance, the two major academic assessments in New Zealand. This made it impossible to access further professional training in the areas identified by the villages, including teaching and medicine.
Both exams assumed a command of English that would have been a challenge, even for first-language learners. All scholarship students were at a boarding school, and some students who were sent before they were eligible to board as secondary schoolers were placed in a residential boys’ home (as my father was). And all were completely unfamiliar with life in New Zealand. There was very little institutional support at the time to optimise the chances of Tokelau’s best and brightest to “catch the fish and return to their villages”.
Many, including other tagata Tokelau, will read this and see Tokelau and its people as lucky beneficiaries of imperialism, or argue that Tokelau is better off with New Zealand than it would otherwise have been.
This ignores the historic and continued cost to Tokelau of being “a part of New Zealand” and underscores the insidiousness of the paternalism that permeates public discourse.
Colonisation not only distorts relationships with other Indigenous peoples, but it also distorts the way tagata Tokelau understand ourselves in relation to each other, across multiple borders and the atolls from which we descend.
For instance, there’s a tendency among tagata Tokelau to catastrophise the state of the Tokelauan language based on the proportion of the global population that can speak gagana Tokelau. Yet the vitality of the language at home remains healthy. Outside Tokelau, our access to gagana Tokelau isn’t purely a measure of how much we care for, or desire to engage with, our language — it’s a reflection of the imperial logic that prioritises assimilation.
What is the future for Tokelau?
Two referendums (in 2006 and 2007) showed that most Tokelauans support self-government, but they narrowly failed to achieve the two-thirds majority required. Now a third referendum is being proposed for this year.
But we’re far from ready for another referendum. We need time to ensure tagata Tokelau are well prepared to have robust conversations about Tokelau’s future.
There are hard questions to be considered. How does our imperial relationship with New Zealand constrain our sovereignty — not just over our lands and waters, but also over our intangible treasures such as language, caretaking, and other types of knowledge? How might reframing our relationship with New Zealand empower us to bridge the rupture of the Treaty of Tokehega and the various policies that sought to depopulate Tokelau?
After 100 years, this is as good a time as any to take stock.
T. Melanie Puka Bean is a New Zealand-born tagata Tokelau who also traces ancestry to Sāleimoa and Faleāsiu in Sāmoa. Melanie has a PhD in geography from Louisiana State University and is an assistant professor in the Department of Ethnic, Gender and Disability Studies at the University of Utah.
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A major new Arctic oil field prompted a deal to protect caribou. Then Trump officials backed out
(ictnews.org)
Max Graham
Northern Journal
Originally published on Northern Journal.
As oil giant ConocoPhillips forges ahead with construction of one of Alaska’s largest oil fields in decades, a new battle is emerging over a deal to protect a nearby caribou herd from the development.
After approving the Willow project three years ago, the Biden administration quietly signed an agreement with the nearby Iñupiaq village of Nuiqsut.
The deal gave leaders of the village power to regulate development across some 1 million acres of caribou habitat near Teshekpuk Lake — one of the most ecologically sensitive areas in northern Alaska and an important source of traditional foods about 50 miles northwest of Nuiqsut.
But now, after a sharp reversal by the Trump administration, the agreement’s fate is in the hands of a federal judge.
Late last year, Trump officials abruptly backed out of the deal, saying it undermined federal policy seeking to boost oil production in the federal reserve where both Willow and Teshekpuk Lake are located.
The move has sparked strong pushback from local leaders. Nuiqsut last month filed a lawsuit challenging the decision, saying it came without prior notice and threatens the village’s subsistence traditions.
Abandoning the agreement “jeopardizes decades of collaboration with local communities,” the village, represented by law firms in Anchorage and Washington, D.C., said in its January legal complaint.
The dispute comes amid a flurry of industry activity on the North Slope and near Nuiqsut, in particular.
Recent oil discoveries have led to a flood of investment and construction in the area, including Willow and another major oil field, Pikka, that’s being built by an Australian company. Meanwhile, ConocoPhillips is pushing a separate project to pump oil just two miles away from the village, within clear view and potentially earshot of Nuiqsut’s homes.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, is keen to open more of the region to drilling. It just announced a new oil and gas lease sale across more than 5 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, an Indiana-sized region of wild tundra, wetlands and foothills west of Nuiqsut.
Open to bidding are some of the very spots Nuiqsut and the Biden administration agreed to protect, near Teshekpuk Lake and the calving grounds of the Teshekpuk Lake caribou herd.
“A carefully crafted balance”
Teshekpuk Lake, some 25 miles long, is the largest lake on the North Slope, and it has unique importance across Alaska’s North Slope, including in Nuiqsut, where many Iñupiaq residents still practice subsistence lifestyles.
Located near the Beaufort Sea coast between Nuiqsut and the North Slope hub town of Utqiagvik, the lake is surrounded by wetlands and tundra that draw tens of thousands of migratory birds each year. Teshekpuk also provides ideal habitat to its namesake caribou herd, which numbers some 60,000.
Iñupiat not just in Nuiqsut but in other North Slope communities, including Utqiagvik, Atqasuk and Anaktuvuk Pass, have long hunted and depended on the Teshekpuk herd.
Sam Kunaknana scans for caribou along a channel of the Colville River near Nuiqsut in July 2019. (Max Graham)
“That is where most of the caribou are coming from,” said George Sielak, president of Kuukpik Corporation, Nuiqsut’s Indigenous-owned village corporation.
Given its ecological and cultural value, the Teshekpuk Lake area has been the focus of conservation efforts for years. Aside from a few old exploration wells and seismic surveys, the area has seen little oil exploration.
But ConocoPhillips has been steadily moving in the lake’s direction over the past 20 years, as the industry’s roads, pipelines and drilling rigs spread westward from Prudhoe Bay.
The Willow project will be closer to Teshekpuk Lake than any other major onshore development. It sits about halfway between Nuiqsut and the lake, within a caribou migration corridor and not far from the main caribou grounds.
Willow is nearly half built and on track to start pumping oil in 2029, Andy O’Brien, ConocoPhillips’ chief financial officer, said in a recent corporate earnings call.
ConocoPhillips executives have said the oil field could act as a hub for further development in the petroleum reserve, where the company is planning extensive exploration this winter.
The industry’s westward expansion has provoked mixed feelings in Nuiqsut.
Oil pays for schools and government services and is the backbone of the local cash economy. But when ConocoPhillips first proposed Willow several years ago, local officials, including some who historically supported the industry, feared that it would harm caribou.
Those concerns — and a lawsuit from conservation groups — ultimately led ConocoPhillips and federal officials to shrink the scope of the initial project proposal and make a number of changes to it.
One of those changes emerged in response to a suggestion from Kuukpik. It involved a permit provision directing the federal Bureau of Land Management to explore durable protections for Teshekpuk caribou, whether through co-management with local governments or other legal avenues.
Those protections ultimately took the form of a conservation area around the lake, where BLM, in a rare move, gave Nuiqsut ability to regulate oil and gas activities. That power was to be held by Nuiqsut Trilateral, a nonprofit made up of the village’s tribal and municipal governments, plus Kuukpik.
The agreement didn’t give Nuiqsut title to the land, but rather the rights to use it for subsistence and to limit development there until Willow stopped operating.
Nuiqsut’s disputed conservation area encompasses about 1 million acres around Teshekpuk Lake in the northeastern National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. (Bureau of Land Management)
Although the deal got little attention relative to the Biden administration’s broader decision on Willow, some local officials viewed it as a critical tool to offset the oil project’s impacts.
“This was a carefully crafted balance,” said Andy Mack, Kuukpik’s Anchorage-based chief executive.
The more oil drilling pads near the village, and the bigger the operations, “the more impacts,” added Sielak, Kuukpik’s president.
“It’s in our backyard,” he said. The deal with the BLM, Sielak added, gave Nuiqsut “an assurance that our caribou could be protected.”
A new court battle
About a year after the Teshekpuk agreement was signed — and after President Donald Trump took office — Nuiqsut officials received a letter from Kate MacGregor, the new U.S. interior deputy secretary: The administration had decided to cancel the agreement.
Over nine pages, MacGregor explained her agency’s view that the protections were “improperly issued.” In last year’s budget bill, she wrote, Congress required oil and gas lease sales across the federal reserve encompassing Willow and the caribou grounds. And the White House, she added, has directed her agency to maximize oil production in the reserve.
Critics of the administration’s decision have noted that Congress, in the 1976 legislation that still governs the reserve, called for a balance. The bill says oil exploration should be done in a way that ensures the “maximum protection” of subsistence and other values around Teshekpuk Lake, and in other ecologically and culturally sensitive areas.
In 2021, U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason determined that the first Trump administration failed to consider that directive when it initially approved the Willow project a year earlier, and Gleason halted the development.
In 2023, the Biden administration and ConocoPhillips agreed to a scaled-down version of Willow, which included the locally-backed provision calling for durable protections for Teshekpuk caribou.
In a legal ruling allowing the amended project to proceed, Gleason explicitly cited the new caribou mitigation measure — though she also said Congress “clearly envisioned” that the broader Teshekpuk area would be developed.
MacGregor, in her letter to Nuiqsut, said that companies have shown interest in conducting “exploration activities” in the conservation area as soon as this winter. “Expeditious cancellation is necessary to ensure these activities can proceed without delay,” she said.
She said that the area around Teshekpuk Lake has some of the “highest potential” for oil and gas in the 23-million-acre petroleum reserve — though companies would have to drill to know exactly how much oil and gas is sitting there.
An Interior Department spokesperson declined to elaborate, citing the pending litigation.
There’s limited public geologic data from around the lake, according to Dave Houseknecht, former U.S. Geological Survey petroleum geologist and North Slope oil expert.
The exploration results that do exist — and that are available to the public — don’t indicate the presence of large oil deposits, Houseknecht added.
There have been no lease sales around Teshekpuk Lake in recent years that would provide an indication of industry interest in the area.
And ConocoPhillips has actually abandoned holdings near it. Following the Biden administration’s approval of a scaled-down Willow, the company gave up 68,000 acres of leases, mostly at the northern edge of the project toward Teshekpuk Lake.
That acreage is now being re-offered in the Trump administration’s upcoming lease sale, scheduled for March 18.
ConocoPhillips, meanwhile, is working around the recent toppling of a huge drill rig and pushing ahead with plans to drill exploratory wells and to do a seismic survey in the federal reserve this winter. That work will be well south of the disputed conservation area.
The company has stayed quiet about Nuiqsut’s agreement with the feds, and the interior department’s decision to cancel it.
A company spokesperson declined to comment on the cancellation, citing the lawsuit.
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“I wanted to be drenched in the colour of kawakawa. I wanted it to whoosh through my eye sockets and into my brain and give the bone bowl of my skull a good clean out,” writes Becky Manawatu about working on her novel Kataraina. (Photo: Kararaina Pene)
Last year ended with a bang for Westport writer Becky Manawatu. In the space of a week, she won two of Aotearoa’s leading literary prizes: the Sargeson Prize for an unpublished short story, The Vase, and the Keri Hulme Award for her novel Kataraina — the sequel to her celebrated first novel, Auē*, which won the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for the best book of fiction in 2020 and has sold over 30,000 copies.*
Here, Becky reflects on the challenge of writing Kataraina — and how an uncle, a tangi, and a dream brought clarity.
When Kataraina won the Keri Hulme award, it made me think about the book’s whakapapa. It made me reflect on those early months of working on the manuscript, sometimes writing for days and days on sections that wouldn’t make the cut. Screeds of false starts. My process is very uneconomical, but no writing is pointless, I tell myself.
When I set out to write Kataraina, it had a different title altogether. I named it Papahaua, after the mountain range that runs the length of Birchfield and beyond.
Birchfield is a little place five minutes north of Waimangaroa, where I spent a lot of my childhood. You could see the mountain range through the front windows of our small wooden house, and at the back, there were some paddocks, and then there was a swamp.
I loved that swamp. It had this huge broadleaf tree which bowed over the dark water and had heavy flat branches which you could scramble across, like they were a friendly giant’s fingers that wouldn’t let you fall.
What I loved most, or what I love most in my memories, was the colour. The deep green of kawakawa pounamu. Glossy, rich, and bright with life. After Auē was published, I had a craving to be surrounded by this colour like a woman who’s hapū and finding they have a craving for kaimoana, or a bloody steak. Dirt, even.
I wanted to be drenched in the colour of kawakawa. I wanted it to whoosh through my eye sockets and into my brain and give the bone bowl of my skull a good clean out.
The colour of a vibrant forest, a swamp, was the only thing that could help me, I thought. The need was feverish at times. I wanted to go bush, pull up some sphagnum moss and press it to my head and let the colour of ngahere cool me through.
While I was writing Kataraina, I needed to have a full hysterectomy. During the recovery, I slept in our sunroom alone, the windows all framed with bright vegetation. I couldn’t write during the recovery, but I could read and sleep, read and sleep.
Finally, the day came when I felt up to an outing, and again I craved the feeling a place could give me, its colour, and so we drove to the Nile River, another place of my childhood, another shadowy green place, with deep, cold water.
Our life was very busy when I was writing Kataraina. I didn’t even have the time or attention span for the two, maybe three, false starts. It was going to be a sci-fi time-travel book in which I restored all the people who were killed in Auē to life. It was going to be written from the third-person point of view. It was going to be written as meta-fiction by Kataraina herself. Even *Auē’*s lovable but murderous Beth got a look in at telling the whole story at one point.
Whatever my original idea was for the book, it didn’t stand a chance against the spiritual thirst I had for kawakawa green to spill across my life and work, which was the desire to respond to the deaths and violence of Auē. The need to whakanoa.
The small scene at the end of Auē in which a group of the Te Au whānau sit and eat was a start, but I knew more was needed. More kai — fill their bellies! More stories — fill their hearts! More context — fill their minds! More waiata and karakia. Tihei mauri ora!
I wanted Kataraina to feel like a hākari and a poroporoaki, and I wanted the water to ooze up out of its pages and into the minds of its readers, because, I hoped, many of those readers might be readers of Auē, and many of those readers might still need the milk bottle tied to the gate.
My husband’s uncle, Victor Manawatu, died while I was writing Kataraina, and we went to Kaikōura to farewell him. Sleeping in the annex of the wharenui with all the young ones, I had one of the best dreams of my life. In the annex, there are low windows — a smart addition for a room where you sleep on mattresses. You can open your little window without even getting up and let in cool air. You can gaze out at the harakeke.
I had a dream that I was sleeping there on my mattress with the little window, and that I woke in the middle of the night and needed some fresh air, so I opened the window. Outside, a thick blanket of snow covered the ground, which glowed bright in the night.
I looked with wonder, and my whole being felt pure and content and okay with myself and who I was and what I was and how I spent my days, for what felt like the first time in forever.
Who else should I thank for that but Uncle Vic? Kia ora, Uncle!
While writing Kataraina, my husband, Tim, and I went on a research trip to Ōkārito so I could spend some time in the place where Keri Hulme once lived and see the kūkūwai. We spent a whole afternoon kayaking, and we walked the Trig and Wetland walks.
The lagoon is large, about 3,240 hectares, and home to a ton of native birds, including the kōtuku. One morning, I walked down to the beach, and a kōtuku was stalking about the lagoon as it filled with the incoming tide.
I watched the bird for a long time before it flew away. It was in the dawn sky and reflected on the lagoon — I could hardly tell which was real — an image which made it into the final draft of Kataraina. Sometimes research trips aren’t just for facts, but images too: taoka!
I felt extraordinarily contented by the honour of being named a finalist in the Pikihuia Māori Literature Trust’s Keri Hulme Award alongside Steph Makutu and Tina Makereti. I was so happy. When I shared the news on Facebook, Uncle Vic’s wife was one of the first people to message me. Are you coming to Rotorua, darling? she said.
Aunty Tarn was there to pick me up from the airport and took me to her home in Ngongotahā, where my room was decked out for manuhiri, with Polynesian tapa cloth hung on its walls and a big, cosy bed. Aunty Tarn is a tour guide, and manaaki is her gift.
She and her friend Paula had been busy all day, giving the house Aunty Tarn’s generous and colourful vibe, every room alive with brilliant details. Making kai. She’d only moved in a few weeks before.
For the awards the next morning at Te Puia, Aunty asked me what taonga I was wearing. I’d travelled with none, and I felt too shy to wear the korowai my sister and niece had given me. I was a bit embarrassed, but then Aunty had the solution: I should wear Uncle Vic’s obsidian toki, to ground me.
When I heard my name called out — the winner of the Keri Hulme Award! — a current of pure aroha for Kataraina flowed through me. I walked up to receive it, comforting myself with a little strange noise. “Aw,” I kept saying. Then, “Aw man!”
I was now to speak in front of so many incredible te reo speakers, so many incredible storytellers. I had to read from a piece of paper. I had to apologise. I always do, but maybe one day I won’t feel that need.
I was humbled and overjoyed when Robyn Bargh, the chair of the Māori Literature Trust, spoke about Kataraina, because I believed she felt love for this book, that she cared. It was as beautiful to feel this as kawakawa green rushing into my skull. It was as cleansing as snow. Aunty Tarn whooped for me.
I read a poem I’d written for the occasion, following the example of essa may ranapiri, who had shared one as the 2023 inaugural winner. My poem was a response to Keri’s poem “Ngā Kēhua”.
Ngā Kēhua
Did I know tears?
I thought I did. Indulged the prayers.
But that’s not truer than the truth.
That is a delusion.
Because here is a picture of me and you, my silent cousin, lying in the grass and I am smiling the smile of the lucky one.
You knew tears, my silent cousin.
What will happen if I let you be
free of the weight of me, e tama?
Will we weigh nothing at all?
Like in the photo,
like on the grass,
like in the bed when you peeled the thin skin from my back
after I had been sunburned,
and we went to the window and watched my skin float up into the night.
Like a ghost, weighing nothing at all.
Weighing nothing at all.
As if those that might hurt
the people
we love
had never been born.
I love writing very much. The trouble of it, the mistakes, even. I love watching the original idea fade away from view, as if you’ve set sail from that point and now you find yourself unmoored and alone in a sea of possibility.
What I feel when I read Keri Hulme’s the bone people — as if I’m grasping with no success at a school of silver fish, hoping to catch, gut, bone and skin them, instead being humbled into only watching the bright shimmer beneath the water’s surface — is wonder.
I am now working on the manuscript for a third novel. It’s had its share of false starts already, frustrating at the time, but I accept them as part of my slow process. The original idea is already a dot on the horizon, but I hope to navigate the journey from there for a while longer.
With some of the prize money I won from the Keri Hulme and Sargeson awards, I bought new things for hiking and booked myself to walk the Paparoa Great Walk here on the West Coast, traversing the ranges that cross from Punakaiki to Blackball. I spent three nights on the trail alone in the last month of 2025. There was plenty of green.
I had a pen and paper in my backpack, of course. I prayed for cool, clear weather and to find a fresh string of kupu to bring back home.
Becky Manawatu (Ngāi Tahu/Pākehā) was born in Nelson and raised in Waimangaroa on the West Coast. Becky’s first novelAuē won the Ockham prize for fiction in 2020. This year, Becky is a University of Canterbury Ursula Bethell Writer in Residence.
The post Becky Manawatu: Kataraina and beyond appeared first on E-Tangata.
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