It's time for a recap. Glenn McConnell talks to those who have witnessed and studied some of the most pivotal moments of New Zealand history. Here's a short history of our race relations.
Remember these dates: 1881, 1978, 2019. Three years, three consecutive centuries, three very similar stories.
In each of those years, government force has torn down longstanding Māori papakāinga (or settlements), with those in power claiming their use of police or army resource was needed to maintain the rule of law.
In 1881, we saw the first raid of the peaceful Parihaka village in Taranaki.
In 1978, the Government finished its long-running campaign to confiscate the Takaparawhā land in Auckland. Ngāti Whātua Ōrakei had lived on the land at Bastion Point, which was their home and housed their marae and urupā. But the Government wanted to use it for housing, so it sent in the army and police to remove peaceful protesters who refused to leave.
Now, it's 2019. In July, police arrived at Ihumātao in Māngere at the request of developer Fletcher Building, which wants the land to be turned into housing. Māori with mana whenua connection to Ihumātao say it's one of Auckland's most sacred and significant sites. They have promised, like those before them, to stay until the end.
It's the same story, in a different century. It seems like history is repeating.
Manying Ip, an author and professor of Asian Studies in Auckland, is perhaps an unlikely expert when it comes to race relations in New Zealand. She arrived in New Zealand during the era of the Dawn Raids and Springbok Tour protests, as a graduate from Hong Kong. What a time to arrive. She says she was "very confused" at the time, because nobody could explain why this was happening.
During the Dawn Raids, police started randomly checking Pasifika people as part of a supposed crackdown on overstayers. Police raided homes, forcing Pasifika families to constantly carry immigration documentation through the 1970s and early 1980s.
Watching this happen, Ip says she "couldn't understand why the police would go and do this" – what's worse, she says nobody could explain to her why this was happening. "At that time, nobody knew New Zealand's history".
Ip is a well-respected social scientist whose focus is often on Māori, Asian and Pākehā relations. Her books cover topics such as Te Tiriti, immigration and assimilation.
In 2019, she says we still have a lot to learn.
Just look, for instance, at the common perception Asian people are recent immigrants here. Before he was in Government, Minister Phil Twyford said every "Asian-sounding name" on a property record equated to the level of foreign ownership.
To say anyone with an "Asian-sounding name" must be a foreigner isn't much different from what Norman Kirk and Robert Muldoon said in the 1970s, that every Pacific Islander must be an overstayer.
Ip says she's met Twyford on a number of occasions and he "means well, but genuinely did not know" what the issue was. She says there are plenty of people who don't know the history of Asian New Zealanders, or this country itself, which is why these issues arise.
"They often have not met many Asian people at all," she says.
"They can't tell one Chinese or Korean person from another and they tend to think they are all new. That's because they became aware of them only during the new wave of immigration, because [Asian New Zealanders] have been kept hidden so well."
In fact, Chinese people have lived in New Zealand since 1842 – just two years after the first signing of Te Tiriti. But "white nation" policies, which Ip says continued until about 1987, have meant the stories of coloured Kiwis have not been told.
"Before then, it was clearly stated that New Zealand preferred immigrants from 'traditional sources countries', meaning the United Kingdom."
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