Key observations during a year spent saving Ōwairaka's trees
Honour the Maunga’s spokesperson Anna Radford shares what she has observed during the past year’s tree-saving efforts at Ōwairaka / Mt Albert, and highlights some of the many questions that remain unanswered.
The past year’s events have revealed the maunga tree situation to be incredibly complicated and nuanced. I’d like to share some of what I have learned, and questions that remain unanswered.
It seems that in Auckland and beyond, ecology is being idealised into a ridiculous binary of native equals good and exotic equals bad. Ōwairaka’s birds and beasties don’t discriminate; trees are simply food, homes and shelter. Native trees don’t discriminate either, with nearly all of Ōwairaka’s self-seeded plants being natives, flourishing under the protective shelter of natives and exotics alike.
I also discovered Tūpuna Maunga Authority will stop at nothing to divert attention from the questions that need to be asked around this issue. To this day they have never agreed to a public meeting where people can get answers to their questions. Another distraction tactic involved making numerous extremely inflammatory statements about Honour the Maunga; statements the Authority knows are untrue. It is ironic and sad that the actions of a co-governance organisation created to give positive expression to a Treaty partnership has caused such division and discord.
The past year’s events revealed democracy may not be dead, but it is dying. Apart from Councillor Christine Fletcher, who has been a lone voice and had a really hard time of it, Auckland Councillors either avoid us or are openly hostile.
Tūpuna Maunga Authority is a co-governance organisation, so half its voting members are iwi representatives and half are elected Auckland Council representatives. One of our local Councillors, Cathy Casey, is on the Authority but refuses to engage with us. The Mayor won’t meet even though I have asked four times. Some of us have asked to address Auckland Council’s Governing Body but are always declined. Our local MP Jacinda Ardern refuses to meet. The tree situation is a big deal in Auckland. The Authority receives millions in ratepayers’ money. Our elected representatives don’t have to support our cause, but they should be prepared to talk with their communities. The only MP from anywhere to meet us is Melissa Lee, National’s Mt Albert MP.
I have been shocked at the fear and self-censorship around this issue. Honour the Maunga is visited by people from all over the country and all walks of life. Māori (Mana Whenua and others), people of all ethnicities, arborists, ecologists, Auckland Council employees and even some associated with Tūpuna Maunga Authority have expressed agreement with our cause. When we ask them to speak out in support, inevitably the answer is: “I can’t”. Everyone has different reasons. For example, many arborists rely on the Council for work. Some academics say supporting us is not acceptable at their workplace. Such silencing is concerning.
These observations raise many questions, including what is this all really about? When this all began, the Authority gave several reasons for destroying 345 healthy mature exotic trees at Ōwairaka and around 2500 at all Auckland maunga. They said the trees were “pests”, so we checked the pest register and found only a handful of Ōwairaka’s individual trees listed there.
Apparently Ōwairaka’s exotic trees are hazardous even though there’s no evidence of any health and safety assessment – or tree assessment at all, for that matter. Then they claimed single-phase felling of nearly half the maunga’s tree cover is best practise succession, which is untrue. We support succession to fully native vegetation over time, but best practice is for that to take decades, not weeks. The Authority also talks about the tihi (summits) needing to see each other yet Pōhutukawa obscure Ōwairaka’s tihi. Rest assured if the chainsaws come for the Pōhutukawa then we’ll defend them too.
Some of the Authority’s supporters have publicly stated their support relates to “decolonisation”. But what is decolonisation and how does spending many millions on destroying healthy mature trees during a climate emergency fix anything? And if the underlying reason is decolonisation, then why doesn’t the Authority say so and explain what exactly that means for all the people of Auckland? If it isn’t decolonisation, then what is it? I’d really like to know.
Despite numerous news and social media articles, nobody has asked: who is on Papatūānuku’s side? As our name suggests, Honour the Maunga has a deep and abiding love for and spiritual connection with the maunga itself. Yet Forest & Bird, the Tree Council and the Green Party refuse to stand with us on protecting Papatūānuku / Mother Earth. They all have their reasons but they’re not ecological ones. So, if we don’t stand up for nature, then who will?
I also ask: how is it racist to question a publicly funded co-governance organisation?
We have unwittingly walked into an intersection of issues that drive to the core of our society. In standing up for the environment, our group is constantly branded as racist by the Authority and our detractors. But are we racist?
Criticising any peoples is never ok and there’s no question about the need to embrace the redress intended by Treaty settlements. However, our society needs to have the courage to learn how to walk that difficult line between racism and unquestioning acceptance of inappropriate behaviours and practises. As I have discovered, it’s a challenging and sometimes uncomfortable process that requires a lot of self-reflection. The alternative is the silencing of perfectly valid questions about the environment, the lack of community consultation and the way that ratepayers’ money is spent. Consider what happens in societies controlled by self-censorship and fear, where a blind eye is increasingly turned. Is that what we want for New Zealand?
My final questions concern the Authority’s behaviour towards local communities. We acknowledge its primary purpose and priority is to administer Treaty settlement lands on behalf of the iwi and hapū who have guardianship of them. However, the maunga were vested in trust for the benefit of everybody because the Treaty settlement recognised that all Aucklanders hold the maunga dear in their own ways. This is why the Authority is a co-governance body.
Does the tree situation exemplify how best practice publicly funded co-governance Treaty partnerships should be? I hope not! The Authority could have achieved its native revegetation goals in a way that brought all communities with them rather than creating such division and rancour. I have spoken with people who hold a wide range of views, yet everyone supports the goal of native revegetation over time. The point of difference lies in the process of achieving that.
Wouldn’t it be truly transformative if the revegetation process was done in a sensitive and constructive manner that treated everyone, including local communities, with respect and integrity while building understanding of the many Māori and non-Māori histories and relationships over the past millennium? Imagine the positive partnership that could arise if the Authority genuinely engaged with communities in the two-way communication sense of the word – something that has never happened in relation to the trees.
I have thought deeply about a way forward and how to heal the rifts that the past year’s events have opened up. This has involved discussions and reading, including the book Imagining Decolonisation, which proposes a model that could provide a path.
Between 2012 and 2015, more than 5000 Māori participated in the Matike Mai programme of nationwide discussions about constitutional transformation. Participants recognised the need to put Papatūānuku back at the centre of all political and personal relationships, in accordance with the following values:
Place: The need to promote good relationships with and ensure the protection of Papatūānuku
Tikanga: The core ideals that describe the ‘ought to be’ of living in Aotearoa and the particular place of Māori within that tikanga
Community: The need to facilitate good relationships between all peoples
Belonging: The need for everyone to have a sense of belonging
Balance: The need to maintain harmony in all relationships, including in the exercise of constitutional authority
Conciliation: The need to guarantee a conciliatory and consensual democracy.
A recent media article observed both sides of the tree debate have become very entrenched. Had these values been applied then we probably wouldn’t all be in this situation. They could provide a way forward.
This is an abridged transcript of the speech given at Honour the Maunga’s first anniversary celebration. See here for a video of the whole speech.