The Strength of the Ttara Tree

By Lois Carter

He considered himself an ordinary, uneducated Mori man but Joseph Harawira, QSM, was a tireless worker who became spokesperson for an organisation called SWAP (Sawmill Workers Against Poisons). SWAP relentlessly presented their evidence to authorities, for work place poisoning causing ill health, for thirty years until those authorities finally listened. Post-colonial New Zealand had seen huge developments in industry and farming alongside extensive use of toxic chemicals in forestry, polluting the land, waterways and poisoning people. Joe mainly worked at the Whakatne sawmill between 1963 and 1992. The two main chemicals of concern were PCP (pentachlorophenol) and dioxin. Still working and in declining health, Joe had been looking for the 'right' person to record his journey. A series of unexpected events led to his choice of author, a retired Pkeh woman, a stranger with a Master’s degree, with whose partner he had recently reconnected through work. Joe grieved the loss of mentorship by Mori elders which left some Mori men feeling disconnected, sometimes resulting in violence, suicide or gang affiliation. He blamed some of this on poisons and understood there were also other factors. He wanted today’s young men to see that they too could believe in something, educate themselves and gain respect through their efforts. Joe felt keenly that even though there was some recognition of chemical poisoning in male sawmill workers, women cleaners and wives who dealt with contaminated clothing and gardens were, and still are, ignored by authorities. Ironically, sawmill work was not his first choice but events conspired to place him in a position where he could be spokesperson for the important issue: chemical poisoning of the land and of the people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Sep 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781984506573

Lois Carter

The author retrained as a secondary school Teacher in her early forties after gaining a Master’s degree in Anthropology. While studying, she also worked to support people who live with disability and mental health diagnoses. Teaching helped hone her writing skills, rekindling her love of poetry. Health issues, her partner John’s new job opportunity and a feeling of wanting to start again, saw the couple move from West Auckland to Kawerau, near John’s family area of Whakatane. She spent almost a year with Joe in 2016, recording notes and reading information Joe gave her. Suddenly in early 2017, Joe died and she was in despair. A gap followed as she collected herself after this promising collaboration and friendship suddenly ended. There were many frustrating rewrites but she had to find her own direction, without Joe. During this time, she started up a wholesale plant nursery at home. This became an all-consuming passion that rescued her and slowly allowed finishing the book to be a reachable goal. She is collating a series of children’s stories she has written, mainly about farm life, where some of the animals explain their points of view. She enjoys solving crossword puzzles and code crackers, as well as spending time in the garden with her cat.

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Copyright © 2020 by Lois Carter.

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Rev. date: 10/26/2020

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CONTENTS

Preface

Part One: Joe’s Journey

1 Shared Histories

2 Brought up with Kaitiakitanga

3 Telegraph Office to Sawmill

4 Whakatāne Sawmill Processes

5 The Green Chain Effect

6 Hospital and New Hips

7 No Safe Level

8 Lost Records

Part Two: Spirit World Intervention

9 The Gift of Healing

10 Queen’s Service Medal

11 Whakapapa, Rainbows and Hawks

Part Three: The Chemical Paper Trail

12 Plantations and Forestry Poisons

13 Pentachlorophenol (PCP)

14 Other Sawmill Chemicals

15 Soda Ash, Bleach, Mercury and PCBs

16 Deadly Dumping

17 POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants) and 80,000 Chemicals

18 Could You have been Poisoned?

19 You and Chronic Chemical Poisoning

Part Four: Who is Responsible?

20 What is Government’s Responsibility?

21 Honesty is the only Policy

Part Five: Bioremediation for Sawmill Poisons

22 The Kopeopeo Canal

Part Six: Poisons on Land and Sea

23 Agent Orange

24 Chemical Factory at Paritutu

25 The M V Rena Shipwreck and Corexit

26 Too Much Poison Everywhere

27 A Few Last Words

28 Memories of Joe

29 The Tōtara Tree

Acknowledgements

Glossary: Māori and other terms

Bibliography

Disclaimer

I am not a scientist, although I would have loved to be one. Girls weren’t allowed to study specialised Science subjects at my high school in the 1960s unless they were good at Maths and I wasn’t. My Master’s degree, gained in later life as a single parent, is in Anthropology with Archaeology and other papers.

First and foremost, the purpose was to tell Joe’s story about sawmill poisons in a context and as things progressed, it seemed necessary to try to explain why he chose me to do this.

A lot of information is from recorded interviews and notes from discussions with Joe. I have used many secondary sources and have accepted information from these as also being correct, without always tracking down the original source. If I have not referenced an original source, this is not intentional. It is because someone else has failed to do so and this has not been obvious to me.

Where there is more than one source having similar information, I have referenced the one I actually read. Direct quotes have been used where necessary and in other places, because of the huge complexity of information, I have taken a ‘big picture’ approach, based on Joe’s or my own opinion.

Nearly everyone seems to have something to say about things that interest them and it is so easy to do so, in this age of communication.

Where I feel the evidence against a chemical product is overwhelming, such as it being banned by countries, then I have come out negatively against this product. Sometimes I have mentioned the ‘other side’ of the argument, as in the toxic boron, where I feel that the use of this has been well-explained and opposition to it has been treated seriously.

My stance is that every chemical is toxic, as are some substances in nature. Some would argue that it’s all about how you use these safely. That’s better than denial or claiming to have ‘proved’ non-toxicity in the face of existing evidence against a chemical. Just don’t insult the intelligence by claiming how ‘safe’ everything is; it’s not.

I have tried to present and link this fascinating information in a way that can be easily understood.

I want this book to challenge the ordinary person to think about the life they live and how this impacts the Earth, directly or indirectly. That’s what Joe wanted, too.

Please use the Bibliography at the end of the book to look up information for yourself.

© 2019 Lois Carter

Although this book is about suffering due to sawmill poisons, Joe hoped this would make people pay more attention to our poisoning of the land, so he gave me this poem to include in the book.

LISTEN TO THE LAND

KA RONGO AU I TE RĀKAU, KA

RONGO AU I TAKU TUAKANA

KA RONGO AU I TE HAU, KA RONGO AU I TE HAUORA

KA RONGO AU I TE WAI, KA RONGO AU I TE WAIORA

KO AU TONU RĀ TE URI A RANGINUI,

RĀUA KO PAPATŪĀNUKU

KOIA TAKU AU WHAKAHIRAHIRA, MAI

I TE WHENUA KI TE RANGI

HE TANGATA AHAU, NŌ TE KĀKANO

I RUIA I RANGIĀTEA!

TIHEI MAURI ORA!

When I stand in the presence of a tree, I stand

in the presence of my elder brother

When I feel the wind upon my face, do I

know that he gives me breath

When I gaze upon the glistening waters,

do I know that I am the water

I am the vision of the Gods, born in the womb of the land

Between the land and the sky do I exist

People….. from the seed sown

In Rangiātea! Tihei mauri ora!

I sneeze and breathe life

(Author unknown)

PREFACE

Joseph (Hohepa) Harawira was born in Whakatāne, New Zealand, on 13 March, 1946. As a child, he lived at a time where Māori traditions and post-colonial needs were combining to change the fabric of Māori society. He was part of a big family and tried to meet his traditional obligations to them, tempered by living in and adjusting to, a new world.

Joe wanted us to understand why, in post-colonial New Zealand, the imposition of poisons used in sawmills produced almost irrecoverable long-term effects on Māori society, due to the kinds of work available to Māori men at that time. He wanted to increase awareness through sharing his own experiences.

My dad was called Fred Turumakina Harawira, son to Hohepa Hawawira of Ngāi Te Rangi iwi from Tauranga. He married a Whakatāne girl, my mum Koau Susie Hona who was from the Ngāti Awa hapū Te Patuwai, daughter of Wiremu Hona and Te Ara-Paparahi Kerara Rewiri from Ngāi Te Rangihouhiri.

The Whakatāne sawmill was opened in 1939. Early owners were Robert Holt & Sons, Carter Consolidated, Alex Harvey & Sons and L.J. Fisher & Co Ltd. It was bought by New Zealand Forest Products in 1981.

Joe first worked at the Whakatāne Sawmill in 1963. SWAP (Sawmill Workers Against Poisons) was formed in 1988. Before they could convince anybody to take action, Joe and SWAP first had to prove to authorities that sawmill workers were sick because of their exposure to chemicals on the job. It was an uphill battle that should not have been this way.

In the early days, Nikora Curtis, Matiaha Kohe, Robert Gillies and the late Tai Moeke were some of the founding members of SWAP and its spokespersons. When Joe became involved with SWAP in the early1990s, he often got upset and angry, when told by authority figures ‘we’re sick and tired of you fullas’ when they tried to present evidence that the men had been poisoned. Matt’s and Tai’s steadying influence in those early days, helped Joe develop some resilience to the racism and classism he endured that still shocked him, thirty years later.

It became real for Joe, that he may not live to finish his part of the SWAP story because he had seen so many people who were significant to SWAP, pass on before their time. He felt he had to keep going, even though he no longer had the two staff members previously allocated.

Tired and very ill, Joe took redundancy in 1992 after almost 30 years’ exposure to the poisonous cocktail of chemicals used at that time in sawmills around New Zealand.

Joe worked for SWAP, three days a week until the end of 2016, in terrible pain. He was fond of saying ‘if I hadn’t had this (cause), I’d have ‘snuffed it’ long ago.’

When I first met him at the start of 2016, Joe was Coordinator of SWAP, working out of the Whakatāne office of Te Tohu o Te Ora o Ngāti Awa, a Non-Government organisation (NGO) commonly known as NASH.

He worked with Kereama Akuhata who was also affected by sawmill poisons. Kere became responsible for managing the day-to-day wellbeing of the sawmill men, coordinating things after Joe’s passing.

Joe wished he’d had the experience and benefits of a university education. He seemed impressed that I had these qualifications. He also wanted a writer previously unknown to him. Joe was driven to record his experiences with SWAP and less about himself as a person but of course, the two intertwined. I found him to be a modest man who downplayed his leadership.

In December 2016, I still had lots of questions that it seemed only Joe could answer and suddenly, he was gone. It took all of my inner resources to keep going. It was not until May 2019 that I felt ready to try and fill in those gaps. Many times, I had thought the book should be ready to publish and felt knocked back, when it became obvious that it simply wasn’t. I had to dig deep and remember how many re-writes of university assignments I had needed.

When I became a High School English Teacher in 2000, I studied writing samples so that I could teach students how to pass their NCEA exams in creative and formal writing at senior levels. I coached school debating teams on the pros and cons of issues they argued, drove them to debating venues one or two evenings a week and supported the seniors writing group.

While these experiences whetted my appetite, I was not as well prepared for telling Joe’s story, as I might have been. We’d never met before and came from different cultures and backgrounds, so I was surprised at how well some of our life experiences meshed. Writing Joe’s story was something meaningful I could do at this stage of my life and I welcomed this.

I met weekly with Joe and learned for the first time about the many illnesses and early deaths of sawmill workers. Joe showed me his diary that documented his visits to these men in hospital and I could not help but be drawn into the suffering of their last days. He never did give me the diary to look at properly; he seemed to need to hold it close.

Joe told me stories about dioxins and other toxic chemicals used on farms during my childhood, that made the land still so unsafe that some current owners could not stay there. I went away to think about my farm upbringing.

It was clear this was becoming far more than just writing down what Joe told me. My brain was reeling. I accumulated such a reservoir of information that I thought I’d never sort it out and hoped to not lose sight of the original purpose; Joe’s story. Others had written much more knowledgeably about Māori than I ever could. My admiration of Joe grew and grew. Wow! I thought. How did he know I could do it?

Joe often reflected that the impact of World War Two contributed to the loss of two generations of Māori men who would have become kaumātua (elders) with in-depth knowledge of the land, cultural structures and whakapapa to pass onto their descendants.

How would life have been, had these missing generations of kaumatua, along with their wives, sons and daughters, still had control of all their land? The land was an important part of making and keeping alliances, using and trading resources. With traditional land ownership, Māori language and traditions would have been strengthened; these traditions and cultural practices would have helped keep the language alive.

Boys, particularly needed these role models at a crucial time in Māori society’s development, just as Māori women needed their husbands’ support but were often put in a vulnerable position, due to Pākehā patriarchal views and practices.

Once again, I was forced to go back and think about my own family experiences, to get some sort of perspective.

We were taught to value what our parents and grandparents did and how they lived, as ‘pioneers.’ My New Zealand-born, English grandfather on my dad’s side was a kauri bushman, cutting and dragging out timber logs with a team of men and bullocks. Thousands of ancient kauri, totara and other native trees were felled for profit, changing the New Zealand landscape forever.

He was in both World Wars yet lived to a good age, despite bayonet wounds and the amputation of one leg in his later years. Life was hard, yet he lived the way he wanted to live.

He got on well with Māori and learned rongoa from his Māori friends, while my equally strong and resilient grandmother grew all the family’s vegetables, looked after children, grandchildren and land that had been taken from Māori by the government and balloted cheaply to Europeans.

I was told as a child that Māori were ‘allowed’ to occupy a portion of my grandfather’s land, at a certain time of the year. Mum and I went to have a look at part of this; a small, hollow area which had a little grass, limestone rocks and blackberries. I remember having questions about what Māori did there and why, that were quickly shushed up.

Stolen and confiscated land, at every level, contributed hugely to the fragmenting of Māori society and my ancestors were part of that. It’s not a nice feeling.

When dad’s parents moved into town in their later years, their small back yard was filled with grape vines espaliered against fences and sheds. Fruit trees had many varieties grafted onto them. I remember him proudly trying to explain, in great detail, what grafting is all about. I wonder if he ever thought (or hoped) this would have such an impact on my later life?

I believe I have inherited my love for growing trees, from him and other tūpuna on my mother’s side. They had an orchard on the main highway at Oakleigh, south of Whangarei, Northland; across the creek from my father’s family but that is another story.

My mother’s father died when she was a young girl. He also used Māori healing methods and he asked her to gather tea-tree (mānuka) to help his various illnesses. She spent a lot of time keeping him company and listening to his stories. My mum is gone now too and my tree-growing obsession remains.

My dad, a sensitive intellectual, had to help an uncle on his farm and never had the chance to finish high school and train to become a lawyer, politician or accountant, which would have suited him much better than dairy farming. How many Māori men also never had a choice for their future? What could Joe have aspired to?

How did colonisation lock both Pākehā and Māori into lives they should have lived better?

Joe believed the loss of mentorship by Māori elders to be a main cause of Māori men feeling disconnected, sometimes resulting in violence or suicide and in gang affiliation. He saw this as men acting from their desire to belong in society, expressing their frustration that they couldn’t find solutions to problems created by progress and poisons.

He said that by taking into account the effects of poisons and the subsequent loss of the potential strength for good of Māori men, we can form a model of dealing with the violence we see in society today. Joe’s ideas about this for the future