GUEST BLOG: Tina Ngata – New allegations of Police intimidation against Maori and Pacific Women

Maori and Pacific Island leaders show the Police Helicopter in the background they won’t be intimidated

If ever we needed proof that New Zealand is a racist totalitarian police state – it was handed to us (and delivered by chopper), last Thursday, at Mission Bay Auckland.

Karanga for Tangaroa was a sacred ceremony co-ordinated by Pacific Panthers, supported by Auckland Peace Action and attended by many nationalities. As indigenous women from across the Pacific, we gathered in ancient prayer, and then called out to our Atua, Tangaroa. It was a collective call that invoked our connectedness, through genealogy and geography, to protect our oceans, our lands, and each other, from the ravages of war.  A practice that we have practiced, that our grandmothers have practiced, and all our ancestresses before them. A sacred practice that belongs to this land, to these waters, and the many islands connected by them.

And the space responded. A warm deluge of rain opened up almost immediately after the first call went out. By the very stories that form the creation of our islands, that is a blessing – a reminder of the grief that the skies hold for the land, a reminder of the wars that permanently tear our loved ones away. We grieved with the sky, our tears joining his, our cries echoing across the waters of Waitemata in grief for the violence visited upon Papatuanuku. We grieved for the violence war visits upon all women and children. We grieved for the violence visited upon Tangaroa, and his many mokopuna, in the name of war.

It was sacred, it was dignified, it was profound – and it was of this land.

One would think that in this supposedly safe, supposedly respectful, supposedly “bicultural” country, we would be safe to carry out this ceremony (most especially on indigenous land). Yet as we offered our final thanks to Tangaroa for the morning’s communion, an ominous thudding came into earshot, and looking up we saw a police helicopter approaching us across the water. It arrived directly in front of us, and slowed – and as we felt their eyes on us, we stared back. Mindful of the paramilitary practices employed against our indigenous sisters and brothers all over the world – Standing Rock, Mexico, Honduras, Mauna Kea… we raised our fists in the air and simply held our space – quiet and resolute in our defiance. It turned to face us front-on and hovered there for the longest time – long enough for us to sing a soft song of resistance and unity to keep ourselves strong – before finally advancing over our heads and back to wherever it came from.

Fulfilled by the sacredness, and disgusted at the intimidation, we turned back to face the shore and – as if the helicopter was not enough – we found ourselves surrounded by a group of 18-20 police officers, all in high-vis vests, hands on batons, with a paddy-wagon. As if they expected to beat us and drag us off. They sent their police photographer to take photos of us during this sacred event – as if this was some kind of criminal activity that needed to be documented and filed. They maintained this practice of visible intimidation for the entirety of the event. While we hugged, while we sang, while we had our barbecue…. They stood, and watched, and at one point even threatened arrest.

We asked those officers would they surround a catholic prayer event in this way, would they disrupt and intimidate it with such an unnecessary display of force? They refused to answer – a couple of days later, we received our answer to that question. Auckland Peace Action organised a “Prayers for Peace” event outside the front of the St. Stephen’s Cathedral, in central Auckland. Police presence? Two – both of whom sat relaxing in the shade across the road. The only difference between our events was that our event was indigenous – indigenous people carrying out indigenous prayers. The Pope can pray for peace and decry war. The United Nations can decry war and the military industrial complex. But when indigenous people do it, on our own land, using our own practices, it is met with the heavy hand of the law.

We were purposeful in our ceremony not only as a means of being true to who we are as indigenous Pacific peoples, but as a reclamation of our indigeneity from the military industrial complex. They simply do not get to claim our own Atua (as they do in naming their wargames “Operation Mahi Tangaroa”), and our practices (by purchasing indigenous “welcomes”) and our language (by giving their weapons indigenous names such as “tomahawk”) in their sick pursuit of power, at the costs of indigenous rights, indigenous territories, and indigenous lives. The militarisation of the Pacific impacts upon indigenous people first, and worst. Paramilitary forces are mobilised against indigenous protectors of land and waters every day around the world. It is obscene in the extreme that these forces claim any measure of indigeneity while actively co-operating in indigenous genocide.

According to indigenous rights advocate Sina Brown-Davis – “the heavy handed policing we experienced on the day is a continuation of colonial violence that we have been subject to since colonisation. Being Maori in Aotearoa is to be subject to intimidation and threat of violence by the state”.

Peaceful resistance in Aotearoa has a long, proud history – the days of Parihaka, where indigenous resistance was met with colonial forces, should be long gone. Once, for a brief time, we showed promise. We stood up to global bullies. We stood for peace, and for an end to nuclear weapons. Our Prime Minister Norman Kirk sent the HMNZS Otago and Canterbury to Mururoa in protest of nuclear testing “bear silent witness with the power to bring alive the conscience of the world”. Once, we led the world in our pursuit of peace, and social justice.

As famed nuclear disarmament expert, Dr. Helen Caldicott says – “New Zealand, you’ve been wonderful for many years, but now you’re not”.

The NZ Police treated our sacred indigenous ceremonies as criminal activities. They criminalised a peaceful family event and in doing so, violated not only our indigenous rights, but also our human rights.  Their racial profiling betrays the truth that lies behind the thin facade of biculturalism promoted by this government – we have regressed into a heavily colonial, racist, totalitarian state that ignores the human rights of indigenous peoples to practice our religion, and privileges the demands of corporate war machines over the global cry for peace. What the police response demonstrated is that even though police apologised for Operation 8 raids – it has, in fact, learnt nothing.  Even though the government claims to have advanced from its shameful past, it still holds no qualms about perpetuating colonial brutality, and even though we may find it easy to point the finger at nations such as the USA over its choice of leader, and treatment of indigenous protectors, Aotearoa is not, by any means, able to hold its head high.

Tina Ngata (Ngati Porou) works as a diploma and degree-level educator in indigenous environmental leadership. She lives in Te Tairawhiti and blogs underneath the name “The Non-Plastic Maori” about issues relating to indigenous rights and environmental issues.