A group of Ngati Kahu activists occupied Kaitaia airport for several days; five were arrested.

Hard to believe that any Maori protest could be anything but peaceful and law-abiding but, well, there you go.

The protesters were aggrieved that they were not involved in a decision pertaining to airport land, claiming it was in breach of their rights.

You know, I think somebody ought to write up some sort of contract or agreement or something between Maori and European New Zealanders; some way of easing all this tension regarding ownership of New Zealand and the land therein.

Hold on. Somebody has. It’s called the Treaty of Waitangi. It was signed in 1840 by both sides. It was intended to achieve just this resolution.

Apparently though the land up for dispute – Kaitaia airport land – has been on loan from Maori since the 1840s as aid in New Zealand’s World War II effort, and was supposed to be returned on conclusion of the war.

At this point I must concede confusion. How does one ‘borrow’ a piece of countryside, then later ‘return’ it? Far as I understand the white man never actually took the land anywhere and when they were supposed to ‘give it back’, it wasn’t going to be so much of a hand off as it was a simple verbal exchange – if that.

This brings me to my next point: since 1840 it seems Maori activists have been constantly aggrieved at supposed mistreatment at the hands of the white man. It’s almost as though these activists close their eyes and totally shut off from everything happening around them until they sense the arrival of an opportunity where they can feel injustice.

I understand that they feel they have had something ‘stolen’ from them. I can completely empathise with this feeling of indignant hardship, but from the perspective of someone who has seen his country go through this same rigmarole again and again with no ostensible outcome, and shake his head in dismay each time it happens, to the activists, I say, simply, look at what your people have gained.

Honestly, if I had my way, to these groups of Maori activists who are always discontent and never quite appeased, you can have back every piece of land that you feel the white man ever stole from you; in return, you must relinquish everything – every modern convenience, every scrap of technology, every piece of life – that the white man has ever given you.

You seem to enjoy living in this modern society, yet you refuse to play by its rules..?

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Uk T Vest

Photography by Trea T Still-Mint