Making our Place: Exploring land-use tensions in Aotearoa New Zealand

By Otago University Press

Fascination with the interplay of people and place inspired the editors to bring together New Zealanders from different backgrounds and disciplines to explore some of the stories and sites of conflict and change to be found amongst our sacred, historic, rural, urban and coastal landscapes. All of the writers in making our place engage with the underlying question: are there better ways to reconcile the tensions inherent in our struggles with the land and each other?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Otago University Press
• Release date: Jan 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781927322192

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Published by Otago University Press

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First published 2011

Volume, introduction and conclusion copyright © Jacinta Ruru,

Janet Stephenson and Mick Abbott 2011

Individual chapters copyright © individual authors as listed in contents list 2011

Extract on pages 112–13 from Monday's Warrior by Maurice Shadbolt

Reprinted by permission of David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc.

Copyright © 1992 by Maurice Shadbolt

ISBN 978-1-877372-88-9 (print)

ISBN 978-1-927322-19-2 (EPUB)

ISBN 978-1-927322-20-8 (Kindle)

Publisher: Wendy Harrex

Cover concept and editing by Georgina McWhirter

Type design by Fiona Moffat

Front cover image: Towards Aoraki Mount Cook, copyright © A. Thompson 2010.

Ebook conversion 2015 by meBooks

Contents

Front Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword

Shonagh Kenderine

introduction

1. Tension lines

Jacinta Ruru, Janet Stephenson and Mick Abbott

challenges

2. The Political and Juridical Battle in the Salt-sand Environment

Jacinta Ruru

3. Domesticating Rural Coastal Places: A case study of the Tutukākā coast

Raewyn Peart

4. The ‘Big H’: Naming and claiming landscapes

Lyn Carter

5. Being Landscape

Mick Abbott

transformations

6. Beyond the Orderly Appearance of Productive Rural Land

Tom Brooking

7. Bounding the Land: Cadastral framework on the Taieri

Mick Strack

8. Ecological Heritage in the Taranaki Region

Bruce Clarkson

9. Auckland Landmarks: Architecture and the shaping of national identity

Murray Rae

negotiations

10. Waikato: River of life

Linda Te Aho

11. Transforming Merino Country in the Mackenzie

Anna Thompson

12. Ngā Pakanga mō Wāhi Tapu: Battles over sacred places

Robert Joseph

13. ‘Just part of who you are’: The hidden significance of landscape in the wind-farm debate

Janet Stephenson and Seth Gorrie

conclusion

14. Shifting positions

Janet Stephenson, Mick Abbott and Jacinta Ruru

Contributors

Notes

Index

Back Cover

Dedication

To our families and friends in Christchurch,

a place irrevocably changed on 22 February 2011

Foreword

Shonagh Kenderine

Former Environment Court Judge

Making our Place offers fresh perspectives on the tensions and transformations inherent in the ongoing development of our natural and physical resources. The stories told will be infinitely readable for New Zealanders who are passionate about ‘their place’ in these extraordinary islands at the bottom of the world. This lively and imaginative book will raise public awareness of our need to better engage not only with each other, but also with the lands and seascapes that shape us. The stories navigate where, as a nation, we have come from, what has transformed us both socially and economically, and the ways we negotiate the inherent contradictions of protecting valued resources alongside the need for development.

Some of the stories are startling in their implications, such as the dairying expansion planned for the iconic landscapes of the Mackenzie Basin. Other essayists explore with fresh eyes the new systems of governance emerging out of recent legislation, Treaty of Waitangi settlements and co-management arrangements. A succinct resumé of the legislative history and political responses to the customary ownership by Māori of the seabed and foreshore traces one such journey. Another essay outlines the importance of the Waikato River to the Waikato-Tainui peoples, and the co-governance arrangement made possible by Treaty settlement. While these journeys have been difficult, both essayists conclude with a sense of optimism.

The inappropriate development of the nation’s treasured coastal landscapes is explored in an illuminating case-study of the Tutukākā coast. The region has a history of failed landscape protection efforts by communities and organisations, and the author puts forward a creative proposal for ‘Heritage Coasts’. The value of place names in New Zealand culture is explored in an elegant piece in which the author examines the way in which the two cultures have ‘bestowed, ignored, adapted or adopted place names’. The author details the origins and resolution of the ‘Wanganui’ versus ‘Whanganui’ debate, and explores the wider significance of naming.

Three insightful accounts discuss the impact of colonial and post-colonial settlement. One explores how the work of the early European surveyors disrupted forever the values, needs and expectations of Māori landowners. Another essay discusses the background of those who came from England, Scotland and Ireland to settle on the land made ready by the surveyors. A third traces the ecological transformation of Taranaki’s original landscape from a unique reservoir of indigenous biodiversity, to the devastating impacts of human settlement, to recent initiatives to protect and restore ecosystems. All of these themes fundamentally shaped, and continue to shape, the rural landscapes of today.

Wind farms and other renewable energy projects will become increasingly part of future landscapes yet their impacts on landscapes are contentious. This essay suggests that more explicit identification by both cultures of their values in landscapes is urgently required, and that communities should be engaged before development processes begin. Conflicts have also been far too common between development and protection of sacred Māori sites, and this essay offers a timely analysis as to what is and is not a wāhi tapu. It ends with optimism for the future of wāhi tapu through the emergence of a legal system that recognises both European and Māori values.

There are strong links between our architectural history and its symbolism in the landscape. Using Auckland as an example, one chapter explores the built structures on the city’s high points, all of which are reflective of significant stories in our development as a nation. Another imaginative essay explores, with instructive photographs, ways communities can better interact with the public conservation estate so they can become more intimately engaged with them.

In the final essay, the co-editors suggest ways forward which may lessen conflict and enhance mutually nurturing relationships between people and place. This book peels back layers of misinformation around many of our most difficult land-use tensions. It provides a timely platform for greater understanding of the relationships between people and our environment, and suggests innovative ways to reduce these tensions so that we can more peacefully ‘make our place’ together.

introduction

chapter 1

Tension lines

Jacinta Ruru, Janet Stephenson,

Mick Abbott

Aotearoa New Zealand is a land apart, a series of islands located in a remote corner of the Southern Pacific. Its economy has been built on both natural resources that support export-oriented agriculture and other primary industries, and spectacular lands that entice international tourists. But can land-use changes such as coastal development, energy infrastructure and dairy farming be reconciled with retention of highly valued landscapes? How should a balance be struck when beauty and industry are both vital to the country’s economic wealth? Moreover, what happens when another dimension is at play – the claims of indigenous peoples for a share in governance over resources in a country that prides itself on being a world leader in race relations? And, just as contentious, how are we to grapple with twenty-first century realities of urban and coastal development and new technologies, such as large-scale wind farms, on arguably sacred or fragile landscapes?

Despite the apparent diversity, all of these issues have one thing in common – each altercation is played out in a specific place about which people feel passionate, albeit for diverse reasons. Our fascination with the interplay of people, place and contestation inspired us to bring together a group of New Zealanders from different backgrounds and disciplines to explore some of the stories and sites of conflict found along our coastlines and rivers, in our forests and tussock uplands, and amongst our sacred, historic, rural and urban landscapes. The nuances of the sites and conflict differ in each, but all engage with the underlying question of this book: are there better ways to reconcile the tensions inherent in our struggles with the land and with each other in making this land our home?

The stories in this book of conflict and change place issues fundamental to identity at centre stage: rights and restitution, development and conservation, claiming and naming. Our authors bring differing perspectives about the nature of spatial conflicts from a variety of disciplines, including architecture, ecology, design, history, planning, law, surveying, theology and tourism. Together, we seek to explore different ways of framing landscape tensions, to seek new understandings of why such passion, reverence and contest is generated, and to identify new approaches to resolving problems.

Tension and change

Political dimensions are implicit in any place, and particularly in the processes of place-making. Landscape theorist Kenneth Olwig suggests that society shapes its landscapes within a dynamic of disparate interests contesting the way a locale is understood and utilised.

Spatial conflicts are perhaps most commonly depicted as a clash between the property rights of a landowner and the rights or interests of the wider public or a particular group. In most cases, one side consists of those who do not hold ‘ownership’ rights, yet argue that the place has values that are of shared significance to non-owners. In this sense, altercations can be construed as existing within a field of legal argument, with its origins in the establishment of fee-simple titles over communally owned Māori land during the colonial era, as discussed by Mick Strack. Yet concepts of resource ownership are evolving, introducing new and different dynamics into how place is understood and contested. Take, for example, the debates over ownership and management of the foreshore and seabed, or the Waikato River. Here, the opportunities for new concepts of governance are being forged against the background of the Treaty of Waitangi and recognition of customary rights to resources. Jacinta Ruru, Linda Te Aho, and Robert Joseph each explore dimensions of this debate, and how it is shifting the ground on which understandings of place are contested. The greatest ecological change has been a shift from a forested country to a pastoral nation, a transformation explored by Bruce Clarkson.

For many years the rural lands of Aotearoa New Zealand were the food basket of Britain, and agricultural production continues to be a major component of the national economy. Tom Brooking examines this legacy, and Anna Thompson explores some of the tensions inherent in agricultural intensification.

Spatial conflicts are often dismissed as NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard), where it is suggested that opposition arises merely from people’s desire not to see change in their immediate locality. Yet is this really the case? Janet Stephenson and Seth Gorrie tease out the greater range of attachments people have to landscape, and Raewyn Peart identifies the wide range of interests in conflicts over coastal development in Northland.

Evolving ideas about landscape are found not only in the interactions between people and place, but also in the consequences of different peoples seeking to inscribe the landscape with their differing aspirations. Murray Rae tracks how the dominant landforms of Auckland have been inscribed over time with events and structures that represent the dominant interests of their eras. Lyn Carter explores how naming the landscape can not only bring places into being but also overwrite other associations and cause alternative understandings of place to be diluted. Mike Abbott looks at how we interact with our conservation lands, and what it means to belong.

All of our authors touch on how memories, stories and the heritage of a place create multiple senses of belonging and thus create landscapes that are ripe for contestation. Added to this are globally driven shifts in resource use, fluctuations in wealth and aspirations, and the shifting grounds of governance arising from recognition of the Treaty of Waitangi. It is hardly surprising that altercations emerge over both ownership and mandates for new voices to have a role in decision-making.

Our place

This section briefly outlines aspects of New Zealand’s history and legal framework to provide a background to the chapters that follow, particularly for international readers. The islands of Aotearoa New Zealand were first discovered and peopled by Māori (indigenous Polynesian peoples) some time around or after AD 800. Grouped into distinct peoples, the Māori tribes became, literally, the people of the land (tangata whenua), living upon Papatūānuku, the earth mother, below Ranginui, the sky father, and alongside ancestors (all descendants of Papa and Rangi) that stand as mountains, rivers, flora and fauna. Of the approximately forty distinct iwi (tribes) and hundreds of hapū that self-identify today, each derives their identity from specific mountains and waterways. The common language (with regional dialect differences) captures this interrelationship and personification of the landscape. For instance, hapū means ‘sub-tribe’ as well as ‘to be pregnant’, whānau means ‘family’ and ‘to give birth’, and whenua means ‘land’ and ‘placenta’. Relationships with place are underscored by the importance of whakapapa (genealogy), whanaungatanga (family relationships), tapu (sacredness), rāhui (prohibition or conservation), manaaki (hospitality), kaitiakitanga (guardianship), mana (authority), utu (balance) and tuku (transfer). These foundational concepts resulted in a legal system embedded in values, rather than rules, and conveyed in stories of creation, songs, dance and artwork rather than statute books. These values dictated how a community ought to interact with one another and with the surrounding environment. For some hundreds of years, the landscape knew no other way.

Following the British explorer Captain James Cook’s circumnavigation of Aotearoa in 1779, European (consisting mostly of British and to a lesser extent, French) explorers, whalers and missionaries began arriving in these lands, bringing new and distinctly different worldviews, technologies, goods and animals. With the British keen to make Aotearoa their home, representatives of the British Crown proposed, in 1840, the signing of a bilingual treaty of cession, the Treaty of Waitangi. Two versions were signed and read slightly differently. In the Māori version, the Chiefs gave the Queen of England the right to govern and, in turn, she agreed to protect the Chiefs’ ‘unqualified exercise [tino rangātiratanga] of their chieftainship over their lands, villages and all their treasures [taonga]’. In the English version, the Chiefs ceded sovereignty to the Queen and, in turn, she agreed to protect the Chiefs’ ‘full exclusive and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates Forests Fisheries and other properties which they may collectively or individually possess’. Despite more than 500 chiefs from throughout the country signing predominantly the Māori version, the country has since been colonised according to the English version. Aotearoa New Zealand became a British colony.

Transfers of land initially took place through the Crown’s sole right to purchase land from Māori. In the 1860s, war, land confiscations and the creation of the Native Land Court tasked with converting Māori customary land into a freehold title were used to ‘free up’ the lands for colonial settlement. By the 1930s, very little tribal land remained in Māori ownership (today it amounts to 6 per cent of Aotearoa New Zealand’s total landmass). Of the scattered land that stayed in Māori ownership, few blocks were permanently inhabited because that which remained in Māori hands represented mostly remote and non-arable land.

On the colonisation front, the earliest incentives to come here were whaling and sealing, followed by a gold rush in the 1860s–70s, but most enduringly, farming. The colonial economy flourished, especially after the development of refrigeration for ships, which allowed frozen meat to be transported to Britain. It was not until 2010 that tourism took the top spot from the dairy industry as the economy’s biggest export earner. Tourism, largely based on the pull of Aotearoa New Zealand’s ‘natural’ landscapes, now generates an estimated NZ$6.3 billion in foreign exchange annually. The successful tourism message of ‘100% Pure New Zealand’ (and its 2011 revamping to ‘New Zealand 100% Pure You’) flags the potential for tension arising between tourism and the primary industry, a theme that is discussed in several of the upcoming chapters.

The country’s resident population now approaches 4.4 million. The dominant ethnic group is Pākehā (European of mainly British origin), with Māori constituting about 15 per cent of the population, Asian peoples about 10 per cent, and Pacific Island peoples about 7 per cent. The majority of the population lives in the North Island (and this was similarly true in the pre-European era), with almost one-third of the population living in the Auckland region.

Decision-making on the use and development of New Zealand’s natural and physical resources is largely governed by the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA). This establishes an all-encompassing regime for the sustainable management of land, air and water. Central government retains some responsibility to influence this regime, primarily through setting national environmental standards, national policy statements and a coastal policy statement. However, most decision-making is vested in regional councils and territorial local authorities (district and city councils). These bodies prepare plans that contain rules concerning the use of land, air and water where appropriate, and stipulate when and where proposed activities may require resource consents to permit the use. In formulating district and regional plan rules and issuing resource consents, the RMA requires consideration of specific principles and, in particular, the sustainable management of natural and physical resources. The Act defines sustainable management as:

managing the use, development, and protection of natural and physical resources in a way, or at a rate, which enables people and communities to provide for their social, economic, and cultural well-being and for their health and safety while (a) sustaining the potential of natural and physical resources (excluding minerals) to meet the reasonably foreseeable needs of future generations; and (b) safeguarding the life-supporting capacity of air, water, soil, and ecosystems; and (c) avoiding, remedying, or mitigating any adverse effects of activities on the environment (section 5 RMA).

Further sections provide for matters of national importance and include directives to preserve natural character, outstanding natural features and landscapes, areas of significant indigenous vegetation and habitats for indigenous fauna, public access to lakes, rivers and sea, respect for Māori relationships with the environment, and the protection of both historic heritage and customary rights. It also demands that particular regard be paid to a range of specific dimensions, including principles of kaitiakitanga, stewardship, amenity values, energy efficiency, climate change and the benefits of renewable energy. Further, the RMA requires the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti o Waitangi) be taken into account.

Many of the chapters in this book touch on the RMA because it provides the overriding framework within which many spatial conflicts and tensions are played out. Other laws, such as the Historic Places Act 1993 and the Wildlife Act 1953, are referred to by our authors in relation to specific situations.

Challenges, transformations and negotiations

Each of the next twelve chapters takes a different perspective on tensions between people and place, or between peoples in a place. Most authors situate their discussion in a particular location – Tutukākā coast, Auckland, Waikato, Taranaki, Whanganui, Taieri, Mackenzie Country, Central Otago. Others consider particular types of landscape, including farms, wāhi tapu, and the ‘salt-sand environment’ of the foreshore and seabed. The chapters are clustered into three sections that represent dominant themes: Challenges, Transformations and Negotiations. However, this is not to say that the chapters confine themselves to these topics – in fact many of them explore all of these themes – so the divisions should be seen as wayfinders rather than separations.

Challenges

Landscape challenges take many forms, and we start with one of the most contentious contemporary issues in Aotearoa New Zealand: the foreshore and seabed debate. Jacinta Ruru lays out the legal background to the issue, and describes the various attempts at reconciling the challenge of conflicting interests in governance and use of the salt-sand landscape. Raewyn Peart takes us a step back from the sea, and explores the ongoing tensions between coastal development and landscape protection on the Tutukākā coast, an issue that is shared across most of our accessible coastlines. In the next chapter, Lyn Carter discusses the huge significance of place names in local and cultural identity, using the recent Wanganui/Whanganui conflict as an example of the challenge of realising our bicultural nationhood. Mick Abbott challenges the perception that the conservation estate should be a museum of biodiversity and a gallery of the picturesque, arguing for greater opportunities for people to interact with our most ecologically native places.

Transformations

The second group of chapters discusses some of the major landscape transformations that have occurred since European colonisation, and their legacies for our nation today. Tom Brooking touches on some of the tensions associated with present-day agricultural transitions, then looks back to the colonial era to trace the backgrounds of the English, Scottish and Irish farm immigrants and their influence on the physical and political landscape. Mick Strack also looks back, to reflect on the consequences of the first surveyed lines on land in Otago, and to contrast how these demarcations supported the agricultural development of the Taieri while remaining at odds with the values, needs and expectations of Māori customary relationships with land. Changing attitudes to native vegetation are explored by Bruce Clarkson, who traces the dramatic loss of biodiversity in the Taranaki region and the recent concerted efforts to re-establish a linked network of the area’s diverse ecological heritage. Turning to the urban environment, Murray Rae discusses various key landmarks of Auckland city and how these built structures reflect changing conceptions of social and cultural identity.

Negotiations

The previous chapters illustrate how contentious change can be. Yet it does not have to be so, our authors suggest. Many of the previous chapters highlight the urgent need for more inclusive and creative solutions and they, together with the authors in this section, offer a broad range of approaches for achieving better resolutions in place-centred conflicts. Linda Te Aho describes how a world-first resolution has been negotiated between the Crown and Waikato River iwi for the co-management of the Waikato River, for the purpose of restoring and protecting the health and well-being of the river and its environs for future generations. Anna Thompson tracks the debate on the introduction of large-scale dairy farming into the Mackenzie Country, and its potential impact on other sectors, particularly tourism, and discusses various ways forward including a proposed Mackenzie Sustainable Futures Trust. Robert Joseph shows how the law has become increasingly protective of wāhi tapu (Māori sacred sites), and suggests that we are starting to see the emergence of a hybrid legal system that recognises both the English legal tradition and some elements of tikanga (Māori values and principles). Janet Stephenson and Seth Gorrie explore peoples’ resistance to wind-farm proposals, and suggest that a great deal more attention should be paid to identifying those landscape qualities that are of shared significance, and that this could reduce strife by informing community consultation, site selection, project design and RMA decision-making.

In our conclusion, ‘Shifting Tensions’, we weave together strands from all of the chapters to reveal patterns of similarity and difference across these accounts of place-based challenges, transformations and negotiations. We hope that this book will bring fresh perspectives to recurring tensions, and help inform the development of practical, inclusive and innovative techniques to work beyond them.

challenges

chapter 2

The Political and Juridical Battle in the Salt-sand Environment

Jacinta Ruru

Ocean View foreshore, Dunedin. Andrew Geddis

Aotearoa New Zealand, an island country that rests between the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean, is interminably bordered by rugged coastlines