New Zealand: Protect Maori land from developer!

Militant/Baskaran Appu

AUCKLAND, New Zealand — “Take a stand, save the land!” chanted 80 protesters outside an Auckland City Council hearing on a proposed housing development on Maori ancestral land at Ihumatao near Auckland Airport.

The Feb. 3 rally was part of a campaign by Save Our Unique Landscape, a group initiated by Maori at Ihumatao, to incorporate the land into an adjacent historic public reserve instead of permitting Fletcher Residential to construct 480 houses on it.

The area was polluted by sewage ponds until recently. The Maori village there was among the last in this city to receive sewage, electricity and other government services. The cleanup of the sewage plant has now put the land in the sights of capitalist developers.

Backers of the residential development claim it will provide houses for local Maori to buy. However the $500,000 price (US$332,000) is unaffordable for the majority of working people from Ihumatao.

The site’s landscape includes lava caves used as Maori burial grounds. Fletcher’s lawyer acknowledged Maori have lived there since “at least the middle of the 14th century.” The area was confiscated in 1863 during the land wars waged against Maori by the New Zealand government.

— JANET ROTH