The Mangaparae restoration project and our whanau motivations to action our collective vision should be considered in a historical context. We are not motivated by the impending and real threat of global warming and environmental degradation. Hundreds of years of colonisation motivated by state and individual greed that has stripped Aotearoa of its forests and saw the earth slip into the rivers and tributaries. This to indigenous peoples is not new, the crisis has been with us for long.
We know that our project cannot affect the overwhelming environmental problems in our region, it is more than insignificant it will take over a thousand years to restore the whenua and this would need to be achieved only by restoring native forests so that all other life can be restored and then we the people will also be restored. |
We are doing what we can by changing our land use from economic use to restoring well-being. We are not unrealistic as we understand the need for economic sustainability that can address inequities but we are making a different choice that supports both aspirations.
Prior to colonisation, our peoples cleared the Turanganui flats of our indigenous forest cover, but forests in the headwaters of the Waipaoa were retained. By the late 1880s, however, we had lost most of our low altitude lands through Crown confiscation and predatory acquisition. |
As a response to resultant poverty, we attempted to develop land in the Waipaoa headwaters. These attempts were conducted under indigenous models of collective governance which proved incompatible with Pakeha systems of tenure, finance and administration. As a consequence of loan defaults and commercial insolvencies, we steadily lost control of the upper Waipaoa.
Some blocks were placed under statutory management, while others were leased or sold to Pakeha to service debt. Between 1890 and 1920, Pakeha land managers burnt and cleared most of the indigenous forest in the upper catchment as preparation for pasture (Coombes, Brad 2003) |