Māori-titled farmers believed their history of setting aside large reserves and forgoing intensification opportunities proved they had been careful stewards of their land and conscientious about
protecting the Lake from harm. The Trustee quoted below recalls one of several instances of land development restraint.
This block here - that got planted into trees in the mid 1990's. There was a dairy proposal for that, and that was actually a better proposal, numbers wise, than the forestry proposals. But the owners there said “if we go dairy, we’re going to end up polluting the stream and polluting the Lake, and we don’t want that”.
Variation 5, therefore, was almost insulting, as the following Trustee (from another Station) explains:
144The Ahuwhenua Trophy is an annual, national award for farming excellence amongst Māori-titled farms.
The Ballance Farm Environment Awards are annual, regional and national awards for sustainable land management. In 2011 another Māori-titled farm, partly located in the Catchment and owned by Waipapa 9 Incorporation, won the Ahuwhenua Trophy for sheep and beef farming.
We have always worked sustainably … So the very idea that we don’t know how to look after our land was just not - well, it didn’t go down well at all. So we were very upset about that.
Further, the previously little-known problem of groundwater contamination, once in the public arena, would have been addressed, as this same Trustee explains.
I’m quite sure we could’ve worked [it out] together [rather than legislate], because otherwise the [tribal] elders would have heard about it, and said “Oi! You’ve stuffed up the groundwater, why don’t you go up there and talk to those Council people”.
Underlying Tuwharetoa’s objection to Variation 5 was the Māori tradition of stewardship or guardianship (kaitiakitanga), which embodies their world view and their approach to managing
resources145.
We all know the mantra –your job is kaitiaki, you’re there to look after the land, you’re there to make sure the Incorporation [or Trust] is in a better state than when you first got it and then you hand it on to the next generation. That’s your job done.
The centrality of this concept to Māori management of land is borne out by the lease agreements
drawn up with the government for the eastern forest plantations, mentioned above. The first three objectives of this agreement stipulate that forest management must (a) protect streams, rivers and lakes by preventing erosion, (b) protect wildlife and fish habitat and (c) protect sacred sites
(Rotarangi, 2011). Only after these conditions have been met can forest management turn to raising a commercial crop on the land. As a result, about a third of the land is retired or reserved (Rotorangi, 2011).
But kaitiakitanga has a social dimension as well, as explained by Kawharu (2000:349).
Kaitiakitanga should be defined not only as ‘guardianship’ as has been emphasised by the Crown, local government and some Māori, but also as ‘resource management’. Kaitiakitanga embraces social and environmental dimensions. Human, material and non-material elements are all to be kept in balance … Moreover, kaitiakitanga is a fundamental means by which survival is ensured—survival in spiritual, economic and political terms.
The aim of kaitiakitanga, then, involves both nurturing the land (and protecting the Lake) as well as nurturing society. These are both then handed on, in an improved state, to the next generation. The same Trustee quoted above, explained her interpretation of this balance as follows.
145 The Te Ara Encyclopaedia explains Kaitiakitanga as a deep kinship between humans and the natural world since Māori see humans as part of the web or fabric of life. Retrieved February 20, 2017 from:
The land is the sustenance of the people. So yes, we’ll do all of those things [that you listed] but better to leave the Incorporation in a better state than when we took it on – so that’s not just land (although that’s our core business). But we’re more than that. It’s about the wellbeing of our shareholders. So we’ve got to ensure our shareholders are in a better state, a better condition, when we pass it on.
The vision statement for one Māori-titled farm, for instance, is “…To develop and manage the
resources of [Name] Incorporation in a sustainable manner for the maximum benefit of successive generations of owners”146.
Although groundwater contamination was not widely known before Variation 5 brought it to public attention, this new problem would simply have been added into kaitiakitanga according to one Trustee:
Nothing is simple – it’s not linear. You’ve got to balance everything - yes it’s about groundwater, but what about feeding the people? What about their wellbeing? So you balance all these things that you’ve got juggling in there.
For the owners of Māori-titled land, then, the regulations presented something of a conundrum.
Protecting the Lake is of prime importance – it is intimately bound up with how they view themselves
and their place in the world - but they are also concerned about the well-being of their people, now and in the future.
The imperative to improve the wellbeing of the owners was demonstrated by the Ngāti Tuwharetoa
Agricultural Group submission to the Waikato Regional Council Hearing in 2006. In their presentation the Hauhungaroa 2C Incorporation claim that only 30% of their owners owned their own home in
1996147. This compares with 70% home ownership nationwide (Statistics NZ, no date) in the same
year and unfortunately, this has not changed in the intervening years. The Ngāti Tuwharetoa Māori
Trust Board (2014) report that currently 26% of Ngāti Tuwharetoa own or partly own their own
homes. Further, they report that in 2014, 16% of Tuwharetoa were unemployed compared with the national average, at that time, of 7%.
146 Support Notes, Open Day Five, (p. 9) Lake Taupo Monitor Farm Programme, Meat + Lamb NZ, 25th
February, 2010.
147A study by Houkamau & Sibley (2015) indicates that low rates of home ownership amongst Māori are
widespread and so not limited to Ngati Tuwharetoa. They found that Māori (and particularly those of Māori
appearance) are less likely than all other ethnic groups (other than Pacific Islanders) to own their own home, even when factors such as level of education are taken into account. Their study suggests that this is because banks are less likely to lend to those who are of obvious Māori appearance. If this is correct, then the ability of the Māori-titled farms to pay dividends to their owners is of increased importance.
The Tuwharetoa Agricultural Group wanted to continue to develop their land, as the Group submission states (Tuwharetoa Agricultural Group, 2006:99)
Our preferred position is to be able to continue to develop and use our resources for the betterment of our people. This proposal [Variation 5] is denying us the continued use of our land for that purpose.
Thus the owners of Māori-titled land have been caught in a dilemma. They understand and support
the move to protect the Lake, but they also want to increase production and income from their land in order to improve the financial situation and well-being of the owners/shareholders.
Thus kaitiakitanga, and the difficulties of reconciling this way of being with the scientific perspective
of protecting the Lake, was the background context to the responses of the Māori-titled farms to
Variation 5.