Rev Left Radio - Protect Ihumātao: Māori Indigeneity and the Fight Against Colonialism

Episode Date: August 20, 2019

Donate to, and materially help, the Protect Ihumatao campaign here: https://donate.actionstation.org.nz/saveihumatao   The Shit Hot People's Politburo podcast interview with Pania Newton (as mentioned in the show) is here: https://soundcloud.com/peoples-politburo/episode-24-protect-ihumatao-an-interview-with-pania-newton-other-shpp-nonsense   Follow Kate on Twitter @yardsoflenin Follow Emmy on Twitter @cannibality Follow Organize Aotearoa on Twitter @orgaotearoa   Learn more and follow the campaign at   https://www.protectihumatao.com   Follow, connect with, and support Kate and Emmy's organization, Organize Aotearoa here: https://www.facebook.com/OrganiseAotearoa/   Outro Music: "Ka Manu"    --------------------- Learn more about and support Rev Left Radio here: www.RevolutionaryLeftRadio.com 

Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. Today we have back on Emmy for a second appearance and Kate, who are involved in an indigenous struggle in New Zealand at the moment. Emmy and Kate, would you like to introduce yourselves, maybe say a bit about yourselves for people who don't know you, and then maybe talk about how you got involved in this current struggle that we're going to be covering today? Hello again, everyone. My name is Emily Rakiti. I'm a Maudiwam. woman from New Zealand. My ancestors actually aren't from the area that we're going to be talking about, but because it's happening in the

city that I live in, the largest Polynesian city in the world, Auckland, I've been trying to get involved in this struggle as well. And I'm the Māori Caucus Coordinator for a socialist group here called Organised Aoteeroa. Hiora everybody. My name is Kate and I'm also a member of organised

Alteoroa. My ancestors came to Ateoroa from Cornwall, Scotland, Ireland Sweden and parts of England, and I got involved in the campaign to protect Ihumata a few months ago when I moved myself up from Wellington and went to live at a place that we call Kaitiaki Village, which was a station on these 33 hectares of land that we're trying to protect. I pretty much only intended to stay a week, but then I realized that I couldn't leave. I actually did go home for a couple of weeks, and then I came back, basically. I find this land really beautiful and really important. And, yeah, I'm just really happy that the campaign is moving forward and that I think we're going to win it.

For sure. And, you know, that's why I really wanted to have this episode. And we've sort of put together last minute because it's so timely and things are constantly developing. The Western and especially the American media does not adequately address international issues. We aren't taught in American schools about much. about the rest of the world. So a lot of people on the American and maybe even Canadian left are pretty ignorant

about what's happening right now. So for those who might not know what is currently happening, can you sort of summarize the events and give people a way to orient themselves to this discussion? Yeah, it's funny because we know everything that's going on in America. I'm going to shut up about you guys. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. So Ihu Ma Tau is pretty much the oldest settlement in Auckland.

It was settled by Māori in the 14th century when they sailed across Polynesia and came to Altooroa. It is old, it's archaeologically significant. It's a world heritage site. There's these stone walls that are hundreds of years old that were used to shelter these giant gardens that they had. And it was where a lot of really sophisticated agricultural farming and techniques were cultivated, developed. And it tells us a lot about how Māori were living before colonization. And so in that sense, it's a world heritage site. It's also one of the one remaining slice of green space in Auckland.

And so a lot of people are really inclined to protect it for environmental. mental reasons, but this land was stolen in 1863 under the New Zealand Settlements Act, and that was a law that was passed to justify the taking of land in cases where Māori rebelled against the crown. And so in the 60s, the Ihu Mattao Manifenoa, that's the word for people who are from the land, their Manafinua supported the Kingitanga movement, so they supported movement for a Māori king and in response the land was taken from them it was granted to settler farmers from Scotland and they owned it until 2016 and it was later sold in 2016 to Fletcher's construction for a housing development so this land has never been

returned it was never ceded willingly and it has huge significance both historical and cultural and spiritual, and it's suffered a lot over the years. What exactly is the New Zealand government or the corporations trying to do right now that caused this current struggle to happen? Yeah, there's a blame in a lot of places here. So there's the Wallace family, who were the Scottish settler farmers, who sold it to this housing company. Then there's the Auckland Council, and they have plans for basically a super-success.

The city of Auckland is sprawling and getting bigger and bigger every day, and there's constantly new housing developments stretching out all over the place because we're in the middle of a housing crisis, and that means that housing companies are always looking for new places to grab profit. I was just in the North Shore the other day where Emmy lives, and there's a lot of very recent housing that's cropped up there, and it's all really ugly. there's no neighbourhood planning. There's no community centres or parks or anything like that.

It's just like shoebox houses or cram together to make it to stretch out the profits of that land. And this is sort of what's happening in South Auckland right now. There's constantly development going on all over the place. So new factories being built, new housing being built and all of that kind of stuff. I'm sure Emmy can speak more to the super city bullshit because I'm not actually from Auckland and still learning that stuff. Yeah, Auckland is kind of like a mummy's curse kind of city where you come here once and it gets your, it's grips on you.

So Kate, you've come up and stay with me for the past couple days, and I'm sure I'll be seeing you again and again and again as your soul gets bound to this place. The super city development is actually really interesting because originally at Yuma Tau, it was farmland, right? It was being used as farmland by this settler family. but in the kind of mid-2010s, it was rezoned to be a special housing area, which meant that some of the planning restrictions

that a company like Fletcher might ordinarily face when it was trying to put up a development didn't apply to those developments there. So the state actually paved the way for Iphumato to be desecrated. Kidd didn't mention it, but it's also a grave site. So we're talking like nearly a thousand years worth of bodies out there. And when this was initially brought up, of course the Labor government actually were very deeply opposed, or the Labor Party rather, the Labor Party was deeply opposed to there being a development on Ihumata now that they're in power all that's turned around.

But this entire process has been facilitated by municipal capitalism and this drive to constantly, you know, invest capital into areas where it's mostly poor, brown people, so the housing is, the property isn't worth too much. But just by sinking that capital in, you raise the prices and you can then sell stuff for much more than you bought it for. It's small imperialism, basically. Yeah. This is a beautiful stretch of land. It has amazing views. It has the most gorgeous sunrises I've ever seen. And it's surrounded by this beautiful council reserve, which the rest of the land, the 33 hectares that the housing development is going to go on, was originally intended to become.

part of that council reserve, but when the land was rezoned, they made that impossible effectively. There's blame on the council, and they've kind of acknowledged that they fucked up, but they don't know how to fix it. So there's blame on the council, there's blame on the crown for confiscating the land in the first place. There's blame being put towards glitches for being so eager to buy it and so unwilling to actually come up with a solution. I believe that they are kicking themselves now that they've bought the land but um you know they've got promises to their shareholders they've got um they're still really eager to go ahead with this development and actually build on it and they've sought out local um local tribal representatives who can um

who they can kind of put a friendly face on their colonialism and and make it look like it's a partnership between maori and a capitalist housing company instead of what it is which is colonization. And we've talked many times on this show with various indigenous groups on the concepts of decolonization, et cetera. And what always comes through is that, you know, the sort of Western capitalist way of understanding land as just, you know, nature to be beaten and submission and developed in order to make profit, indigenous people's relationship with land is much deeper and goes back.

It forms a part of their own self-understanding and really is seen as a part of themselves. And so when you have situations like this, you have this capitalist development, having no care in the world for the sacred grounds and lands that they're actually developing and they just are seeking profit at all cost. Here in the U.S., if you're trying to find an analogy, a few years ago we had the Standing Rock situation where, you know, corporations were trying to build oil pipelines through indigenous territory and indigenous people, you know, stood up and bravely resisted an onslaught by the capitalist state, which was incredibly violent. one case, a woman lost her arm. They were shooting, you know, people with, with water cannons in the middle of winter. And you guys are on the southern hemisphere. So it is, it is currently winter on your half of the globe. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. I just wonder if you could talk about sort of how this campaign to protect this land emerge. What are some of the, the groups that are coming together to occupy this land and what exactly is currently happening right now on this,

on this patch of land. I just want to shout out to Standing Rock. We were following. Everyone was following that in New Zealand and we've had visitors from Standing Rock at Ihumata before the eviction notice was served back on the on the 23rd of July we were had visitors from all over the world coming through always like to meet with the land protectors there and to you know tell us their stories about their struggles on the other side of the world now what was your question again how has campaign emerged Yeah, yeah, how the campaign emerged and what groups are active in it. Yeah, so a group called Save Our Unique Landscape was founded by six cousins in 2014, I believe,

when the protest leader, Pania Newton, one of the protest leaders, discovered survey pigs on the land and subsequently learned about the planned housing development. And, like, this land has seen so much desecration over the years, especially when the Wallace family owned it, their sacred mountains were quarried. Their river and their sea were polluted by die spills and used for wastewater treatment. So the whole harbour used to smell like shit back in the 70s.

Yeah, the sacred mountain is literally like a barren hole in the ground now. It's been like not just flattened, but hollowed out. It's completely gone. And, yeah, to rub salt in the wound about 10 or 20 years ago, the Auckland airport planned a second runway and that ended up going over a burial site. And so corpses were dug up and handed back to Manafinawa and sacks. So like this is just, I can't even convey how much historical pain the people of this land have already experienced. And so like to see that their last little stretch of land, the last thing that they have,

that was supposed to be part of a council reserve is now going to be desecrated by a housing development. They just, that was just the last straw for them. And so they formed Save Our Unique Landscape to do everything they could to stop this housing development from happening. The housing development was meant to finish.

Construction was meant to finish in 2016. So I'd say they've been very successful so far, given that the last Fletcher's vehicles actually rolled out of the land a few days ago. So, yeah, we're winning this campaign. But yeah, so they formed Seoul and they started this campaign and they've gone to the United Nations. They've exhausted every kind of legal means to try and oppose this. They've been to the environmental court. They've been, they've been talking to politicians for years and trying to like come up with a solution that won't

involve a mass occupation and it's all just fallen on deaf airfares they've so much legal bullshit getting in the way of them actually seeking justice through through non-direct action means and so that's how we got to this point today where the occupation was the last resort and but they've committed to this I got I only found out about the campaign back in January and that was when Panya went to this sort of activist retreat called Otaki Summer Camp that I wasn't actually at but apparently she made such an inspiring speech that an entire solidarity group was formed in Wellington

to support this campaign from the Capitol and so there've been rallies down there and there've been a bunch of people postering all over the place and collecting signatures for their petition and so it was hard not to know about it after that and I got really invested when we thought the occupation was going to start back in March, but then it didn't. But that's when I went up there.

So, like, this campaign's been going for five years, but it's really, really heated up this year in particular as we've moved into the occupation stage. Okay, so just to summarize that really quickly before we move on, a long sort of multi-year fight has been brewing around this exact problem, but only very recently has the actual, after, you know, exhausting every other legal and regular means by which to address the problem, the occupation was the final movement that had to happen. And when exactly did the occupation itself start? There have been people living on the land for like three years. So when I was there, there were about 10 land protectors. And it was just about keeping a presence

over those years. But the mass occupation began on January 23rd when the eviction notices were served and we were actually moved off these stone fields and the occupation is mainly going on on Ouro Rangi Road which is this road in front of the land that they're planning the housing development on and we also took back a couple of fields so there's tents set up all over there so we've actually been blocked off from Kaitiaki village and the old farmhouse where I was living before so a bunch of my clothes were still up there um over for the past four weeks and I only just got a lot of it back there's still shoes that are missing um but so we have effectively been evicted and pushed off but we've moved the occupation on the onto the road and

onto the fields and there's no way they can get any vehicles up there right now so besides for the eviction, can you maybe talk about some of the other tactics that the corporate state has used to repress or try to intimidate or, you know, harass you into leaving? Yeah, so the repression has actually been really interesting. So for like a couple of years now, I've been involved in direct action around, you know, the arms traders running weapons fairs in the country. And this is probably the weirdest repression just because the cops kind of alternate between being very, very heavy-handed and then pushing really hard for kind of public relations opportunities.

So we have this weird situation where the cops would come in and evicted Kate and held her underwear hostage for four weeks. And then they would say, oh, we, yeah, we had to evict you guys and we're really sorry about that. However, we want to have a sit down with the protest organizers and work out, you know, how we're going to go ahead with this. And at those meetings, they were like, well, we promised. that we won't bring in any trucks to start construction, which was a compromise that protest organizers were willing to go ahead with because no trucks means that nobody is going to be getting a digger out

and tearing up any old skeletons from the field, who are these people's ancestors. But then within a couple hours of making that agreement, the cops rolled up first thing in the morning with a bunch of heavy construction equipment. So the cops keep doing this cycle of saying, oh, yeah, we were a bit heavy-handed, let's make a compromise, and then immediately breaking that promise. And so when I got out to the land the day after the eviction notices were served with a bunch of other people from organized Alteiroa,

one of the first things that we did was set out barricades and start running checkpoints on the roads to make sure that the cops couldn't get in. Up to this point, every 45 minutes or so, the cops would be driving up with vans for mass arrests and just drive up and coasts around for a little bit just to try to disrupt the logistics of the camp as it started forming.

And over time, that changed into, once we kept the vans out, that changed into cops just marching up in formation of about 100 cops and trying to march straight through the camp to get up to the land and to get up to Kaisaki Village where Kate's underwear were being held, tied to a chair, probably, IRA style. But because there was so much public interest in this occupation, as the day went by, actually too many people had come down for the police to be able to use that kind of tactic. And so we managed to successfully force the cops. Rather than them marching through the blockade line, the cops actually had to turn around and leave and sneak around through fields to get into the areas that they're trying to keep control of. So very early on, it was really apparent that actually

there's so much mass support for this occupation that we're capable of shoving the police around in a way that I've never really seen in a blockade before. So the use of physical barriers has been a really, really effective means of making sure that this camp stays protected. And I think that's something that I really hope other leftists who do, actions of this kind of overseas pick-up on is that we often kind of valorize the idea of

putting our bodies on the line to defend something that's really important to us from the pigs. And I think that's a really, really noble sentiment that we should all stand behind. But the problem of putting our bodies on the line is that cops are usually bigger than us because we sit in the basement and read Lennon all day, which was literally, that's what I was doing before this interview. Go to the gym, yeah, that was a cell phone. I've got no hit on people who want to sit around reading Lennon all day. But pigs are really big and strong. They're not big and strong enough to tear down a barricade made out of wooden pellets though

they're not big enough to shove through a line of you know we just drive street signs and dragged them into place and so I think that's a really effective tactic that we started using that I hope people will emulate overseas yeah I mean shit that goes back to the to the Paris commune itself so building barricades is a long leftist tradition and it works

that's why it keeps happening so why do you think this this struggle has gained like mass appeal instead of being merely seen as just a local struggle in your opinion. What about this campaign has made so many people in the country and out and internationally be drawn into this to this struggle? So there's a couple of reasons that I think that Ihu Amatao has kind of not just been a side issue. One of them is that it's really clear

that the state is wrong on this one. You know, Auckland was ethnically cleansed with a declaration by the Governor General that any Māori in the city who didn't swear an oath of loyalty to the Queen would be considered enemy combatants and shot on site. So that was how the land was taken. So there's no kind of case to be made here for, oh, Māori just did a bad business deal with Pakeha, and so it's fine if we take the land off of them. No, this land was clearly stolen.

The other thing is that it's clearly really important. We've already discussed that it's one of the longest inhabited sites of humans in the entire country. Pani and Yushan often says that Ihu Mata is where Polynesians became Māori. So it's so important to everyone in this country, not just to us. I think that's another thing on that is that Fletcher's is terrible. I think even

ordinary people hate this fucking company. So it's been pretty easy for people to message around it and communicate. We shouldn't let this multi-million dollar corporation. Yeah, multimillion dollar Australian and corporation tear up something

that's so precious to all of us. But one final thing, and I think one of the, I like to think, one of the more important things is that from really early on, there's been quite heavy solidarity involvement from groups who aren't native to this particular area, right? From people who aren't Māori whose ancestors are buried on that land, but just from communists and socialists and anarchists all across the country who recognize that this is a really important struggle to take part in. It's really easy, I think, to kind of relegate indigenous issues to a side problem.

And I think that's a really destructive way to think about how we can be doing politics. because actually what this struggle shows is that all private property in this country not just figuratively theft it's literally stolen land that was taken at gunpoint

from unarmed Māori who are powerless to resist the theft that is a pretty crushing blow against the idea of private property relations and the capitalist relations of production in this country in general and so it's been really productive to have these solidarity groups going

I mean for months now people from different groups have been living on the land but for years people have been doing messaging around this, putting up posters about the injustice at Ihumatao, supporting the local community and organising against the desecration. And I think it really shows that we as communists

and as socialists or as whatever you want to call yourself are actually capable of making extremely positive interventions in these places where we take on a kind of role of supporting these struggles as they start to play out. because it means when they're small they grow and it means when the shit really gets going we can scramble a hundred people out there

to throw up a barricade in an hour and a half that literally just stops the cops, stops the capitalists, stops anyone who wants to try to act against us. That's really powerful strategically. Yeah yeah completely.

It's worth pointing out that this is not the only land rights struggle that's going on in New Zealand right now. and it's just one that has a lot of visibility and a lot of energy behind it. So it's getting heaps of attention in particular because the leaders are quite young and quite charismatic. And so it's getting a lot of like young people really interested. And I don't want to get into this whole generational divide stuff because that's been very overstated. And it's not true because the campaign has the support of local elders and has a lot of, has a lot of intergenerational.

solidarity going on. But there are land rights struggles going on all over the country, and the struggles that are being Forte de Humatal are resonating across the country with people, and it's not just about that colonisation is the

crux of this whole thing, but people are also getting invested because of environmental reasons, or because they just really hate capitalism, they hate fletches. They're getting involved because of things that resonate with them about the campaign as well and they see this as like an intersecting a space where a lot of these

issues are intersecting climate change you know sustainability preservation feminism colonization capitalism all like all swirling around in this one campaign and so there's something there for everyone to kind of connect with in a lot of ways yeah yeah archaeology is well, historical knowledge is another one that people find really important, the fact that it's a world heritage site. Yeah, no, I think that's beautiful, and it's really analogous to Standing Rock in the same way that it really galvanized a bunch of different people to, you know, engage in that struggle. And we've covered settler colonialism and decolonization a lot on this show, precisely because if you live in, on a settler colonial country, like New Zealand, Australia, America, Canada,

et cetera, there is going to never be a successful revolution on stolen land without indigenous comrades, without us engaging earnestly and principally in their struggles as our own because that is absolutely essential to a real revolutionary movement. You can't be a settler on stolen land not engaging with indigenous struggles and think you're going to form anything that's even resembling liberation for people. So the fact that this has been so galvanizing and getting so many people involved is beautiful and I think that's so important and leftists especially settler leftists need

to understand that these struggles are not and cannot be separated from our ultimate struggles against the forces of capitalism and reaction in their totality. Yeah. To speak to that as a settler or like as Pakeha is the word that

settlers are called by Māori, settler colonialism was the process of bringing capitalism into a world, a region, a society where it didn't exist before. And so that's how capitalism was brought here at gunpoint and through the theft of land, the theft of land that was originally commonly owned and shared and communally.

And these societies that planned themselves in a really egalitarian way, suddenly all these concepts of private property and private ownership and, you know, the capitalist economy was just rammed into here. So, like, there's a direct correlation there between that. And speaking as a settler, like, a lot of us get a bit knee-jerk, and we think that decolonization means we have to give up something. But, I mean, it's true that there's things we have to give up,

but I see it more as a gain for everybody to live in this kind of, to live in this world where everyone, is elevated up and so the whole of society rises as the lowest strata elevated. I see it as paving the way to a better world for everyone. So I just don't really accept that settlers have to lose out by being involved in decolonial struggles because I think we have a lot to gain. And I've seen that in the way that Ihu Martal has kind of operated. I went there with the intention to do as much work as possible and be as useful as possible,

and I definitely did a lot of work, and I came really self-sustaining, and I didn't want to be a drain on the people, and I showed up, and then just they kept giving me shit, like, and keep sharing all this stuff, and, you know, feeding me and, like, looking after me, and I don't think that I should have come into the land any other way than being self-sustaining, and prepared to look after myself. But it was like showing up without that expectation of receiving and then receiving anyway and being given so much and having the opportunity to give back as well.

Yeah, Kate, you've given like a really good kind of key colonial perspective on why this kind of solidarity work is really important for Marxists. So I'll give like, despite being the Indigenous person on the podcast, I'll give the really like hardcore tanky argument for why this kind of work is really good. And I think, like, the reason that we might be interested in indigenous struggles as Marxists, well, we can look at the idea of base in superstructure, which comes from Marx's contributions to the critique of political economy, right? This idea that there's a material base for society, the relations of production that let it keep going. And then there's also an ideological superstructure that corresponds to that base.

Well, we live in a capitalist ideological superstructure, so we have a capitalist ideological superstructure, and we fight against that as communists, right? But for indigenous societies, the overwhelming majority of those societies were communist in terms of the relations of production, right? And that means that the ideological superstructure, the cultural practices of those societies, well, those are communist ideologies. Those are communist cultural practices. And those can be a really important part of how we think about how we do communism, what our communist work looks like. So I think that's a really immense gain is that we have all of this communist history right where we are right now, even if we aren't living in the former social. Soviet Union or even if we aren't living in the People's Republic of China. But we have all this communist history right at our fingertips and we can all become part of that. And I think that's

really, really valuable for Marxists. Yeah, yeah. Both of those points were amazing. Totally agree. I never really thought about it in that context, but that is 100% on point and an incredibly important point to make. I do want to move on and I want to talk about your prime minister, Jacinda Arden. Can you talk about, I think we all agree that is sort of the Justin Trudeau of New Zealand and that there's this very progressive facade, but underneath is this rotten neoliberal politic. So can you talk about her and maybe her political party and what role she's playing in all of this?

Kate, do you want to denounce the prime minister first or shall I do it? I don't know. Like, I think we're both quite eager to denounce the prime minister, right? I'll start. Jacinda Ardoin actually follows me on Twitter from before she was prime minister. So I hope she's not paying too much attention to the timeline or I might get some passive aggressive DMs. Jacinda, so she actually came to the campaign to become Prime Minister really late.

The Labour Party was running this other guy, who, Andrew Little, who was basically his campaign was just, he was holding a big dial turned racism, and he would turn it up slightly and then see how people were responding and to see how high he could turn the racism on his campaign until people started to get mad at him. Around the time that the Labor Party started looking up for Chinese sounding names, the people who were buying houses in Auckland, it's still. started to be a bit much for most people. And so Andrew Little stepped back, and Dessinda Ardern started running for Prime Minister for the Labour Party. She got in on this kind of campaign that she ran on the idea that she would be like a bright, new, young, social democratic voice for everyone, and she would represent all of New Zealand.

And she managed to win in a coalition government with New Zealand first and with support from the Green Party. And basically from day one, she's worked really, really hard to betray every single promise that she ever made on the campaign trail. So Ihumatao explicitly, she was explicitly in support of the campaign to protect Ihu Matal, until she became Prime Minister, at which point she started saying that she'd really rather that the government keep their hands off of the situation and let the Iwi work it out with Fletcher. Now, the fact that the police work for the government seems not to have occurred to her,

but when they were punching everyone's heads in the other day, I don't know, maybe those are a different police force. But basically, this is like the dilemma of well-meaning goody-to-shoes who think that you can have social democracy in an imperialist country or in a capitalist country like our one. It actually doesn't work in practice. It looks good on paper, but it doesn't work in practice. What you get is this kind of dual responsibilities.

On the one hand, the Labour Party's got to represent the interests of the rich, because if they don't, they're not going to get in. But on the other hand, they seed all this really nice ship. while they were running. And so you just get these treacherous fucking worthless liars who like betray you the first the first opportunity that they get. And I think that's really worrying when you see that the main opposition to American imperialism in the states at the moment is groups like the DSA whose entire platform is to get a social democratic politician elected. We've had social democratic politicians elected in New Zealand and it turned into

a total shit show. It's worrying that the kind of, Jacinda I do in is like a blueprint for what politicians in the social democratic vein actually end up looking like when they get into power.

She's interesting. I wouldn't even say she's a social democrat. I think she's like a textbook third way or like neoliberal. She's to the right of our previous Labor Party Prime Minister, Helen Clark. And she, Helen Clark also did a whole lot of colonialist stuff while she was in power.

So there was, in 2004, the foreshore and seabed Act. So we have this body called the Waitangi Tribunal, and they found that the foreshore and seabed was the property of Māori, and then Parliament basically passed a law to reverse that. So that's the kind of historical precedent of various Labour parties in New Zealand. like Labor parties have been often just as colonial as national parties, but they'll always come in on these false promises and this idea that things will change.

Jacinda Ardun would not have won the selection without the Māori voters or without the Māori electoral seats that Labor won all of them. She just would not be in power without Māori and to then turn around and just she ignored this campaign for years. They were, the sole campaign was sending her letters. They were getting school groups to send her thousands of letters from children who were coming through Kaitiaki Village in school groups and just completely ignored.

And then the eviction happens and she turns around and she says that this is a youth-led movement and that Manafenua actually support. Fletches, which is not true. One iwi has publicly declared, one tribe is out of seven has publicly declared support for flechers. And there's a few Komatua who are working with Fletcher's to try and get some gains out of this housing development for themselves. But she has no reason to be this ignorant because she's had every opportunity to learn

about it. And New Zealand is quite small. and politicians are generally quite approachable compared to a lot of other places. So it's really easy to set up a meeting with a local politician or local member of parliament and generally really easy to get an audience with them. So it's just really disgusting.

And a lot of people are pissed off because she's done a lot of cultural stuff. like she wore a Māori cloak made of Huia feathers and Huia is an extinct species in New Zealand now she wore that on her visit to the queen and that's a huge gift that she was given she had a baby who has a Māori middle name and these like things that people loved

before when they thought that she was on the side of Māori but now that she's turned around and has denounced any support for the campaign to protect DiHumato people are really pissed off because it just shows that all of that stuff before wasn't actually meaningful. It was just tokenistic gestures and when push came to shove

and when Māori really needed her to take a side against colonisation she just took the easiest route out of there as she could easiest route out. Yeah, the comparison to Justin Trudeau is a really, really good one, right? First, like this PR blitz of what a great guy I am, you know, I'm going to be a really awesome Prime Minister and take care of everyone. I think that racism is bad. But when it's actually time for it, they work really, really hard, not to do any hard work that will support Indigenous struggles. Exactly. And that's that position as like the leader of a capitalist state. You know, you cannot have decolonization without getting rid of capitalism. And there are a government that exists, in the Leninist sense, exists to uphold the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, to uphold capitalism and to protect it from revolution, working class uprisings or anything that would, you know, take the power of capitalists away from them.

So, yeah, so that's her caught in the middle of this contradiction where she would not have the power she has without the Māori voters. and then, but she also has a responsibility to the capitalist class. And when it comes down to it, she and the Labor Party and the government will always go with the capitalist class and uphold their interests over the interests of the people. Absolutely, absolutely. Now, we are kind of coming towards the end of this sort of brief discussion. And the reason why it's brief is it's an ongoing thing and we want to get this out in a very timely fashion. But I do want to take a moment to say that our comrades over at millennials are killing capital.

capitalism have already talked to both Emmy and Kate and they are going to host them on their show in a few months perhaps to give updates about this ongoing struggle. But I do want to give you a chance to link this struggle to international struggles for indigenous sovereignty. So before we wrap this up, do you want to talk about how this is connected to a bunch of other indigenous struggles going on concurrently with this one? I spoke before about how there's all these other land rights movements, land rights struggles happening across Alteoroa, and so this is something that people across Alteoroa are really invested in, and all eyes are on Ihumata right now. But I also mentioned that we have had visitors from Kaitiaki Village from all over the world,

and there's so much stuff going down all over the world. I was at the front line where there was a fire going, and we were doing a circle, a sharing circle, where we were just like talking about why we were here who we were and just sharing our stories with each other and someone put it in these words that Papatuanuku which is you know the way the Māori word for like Mother Earth is crying to be returned to her people and so all over the world and especially with intensified

with climate change intensifying indigenous people are demanding that land be returned that sovereignty over the land has to be returned to them because they're the people who are going to save it because they're the people who have that knowledge of how to live with the land and work with the land

in sustainable and healthy ways that don't exhaust what it can give. So we've had we're looking to Mona Kea in Hawaii. We're looking at Jaburang and Debin Creek in Australia.

We're looking towards the Wetzeliten pipeline protesters in Canada and the Amazon rainforests in Brazil. And we're seeing these uprisings happening all over the world. And it's part of this global movement. It really is where all over the world, indigenous people are taking back their land and fighting against its ongoing desecration against colonization. And I've been like around in the left for a while. and I haven't seen any movement have as much energy as Ihumata or as much public goodwill.

Like even liberals who are oriented towards justice are really supportive of this because they get on some level that this is what's right. Emmy, did you want to say anything else before? Yeah, I think this isn't just going to exist for indigenous struggles, right? Like Pani-on-Nuton has been really clear when she talks about what's happening at Ihumata that this is a necessary consequence of trying to have capitalism. If you have capitalism, you have to have these kinds of desecrations. And so I think absolutely we should connect what's going on here at Iphamata to these indigenous

struggles around the world, but also to wider class struggles around the world, right? Like, we're all fighting for the Belfast workers who just seized the Titanic shipyard. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking about. In Belfast, the IRA joke that I made before, that was just a joke. I want to be clear now that we're talking about Belfast. connection to the IRA. That, yeah, there are really vibrant struggles happening everywhere. If you're listening to this show, there's almost certainly going to be a fight going

on near you that has to do with the liberation of our class from the dictatorship of capital. And I'm, you know, I'm an indigenous woman, but I'm also really proud to be part of this movement all around the world that we're all part of to try to get the fucking bosses off of our backs. Yeah, and also not just thinking about like, you know, anti-colonial struggles and settler colonies, but also like extractive kind of colonies of the United States, like Puerto Rico and anti-imperialist struggles in places like Iran and like Cuba, like all over the world. Venezuela,

people are fighting like against this global empire that is destroying the world. And time is absolutely is running out, you know, and so these fights are intensifying and we need to be a part of them and we need to connect them up. They can't be seen as just disparate, unconnected fights. They're all part of one big fight, and we have to make that very clear. Before I let you both go, can you, just like, what do you want the international left to take away from this discussion? Do you have any last words or anything you really want to tell people that, you know, might not live in or around Australia and New Zealand, but want to help out or participate in those struggles? Yeah, so message number one for international listeners. Um,

Dessenda Adern sucks. Really fucking bad. She's terrible. So, And there's a big international colds around her, so cut that out. Yeah, please cut out. She sucks. She's terrible. She's as bad as Justin Trudeau. So when you see her, like, on the Guardian, you know, saying something really cool and nice, but how, what a wonderful leader she is in New Zealand.

Just remember, everyone here loves her for exactly this kind of shit. If you want to help out with the struggle at Icomatile, if you look up for protectepamato. dot co.n.z, I think, is the URL. They're putting updates about what's going on so you can know what's happening here. You can donate to the campaign and you can also boost messaging that's coming out of it. And we can really bring that international pressure

to bear on the government which, frankly, I think really cares about its international kind of standing that I think really cares about what you guys think about the leadership of this country. So the more Dessenda knows that she looks terrible from this, I think

the more leverage that we're going to have down there on the ground, And that's a really material way that you guys can support us. Yeah, I want to support that because every time I see some kind of like gushy article about Jacinda Ardenne, I just want to like bang my head against a wall. It really speaks to how sad the rest of the world is, how fucking dire global capitalism is, that this stale third way neoliberal is seen as this fresh and progressive leader.

But I, so like I think it would, be cool, you know, if people could do, you know, solidarity pickets or just like take a photo or release a statement supporting this and condemning this shit out of her. But also like what I want is for people to, it's very easy to get invested in indigenous struggles on the other side of the world, but a lot of people forget to, you know, look in their own backyard. So it's, what I want people to get out of this is to like understand how important it is to lend your solidarity to, you know, indigenous sovereignty struggles and to, you know, orient yourself to find out what's going on in your backyard and to find out ways that you can help there. I think that's

the best way that you can be in solidarity with indigenous people is to just do it where you are. Yeah. Well, you know, you two are awesome. You have friends here at RevLeft anytime you need it. It's an absolute honor and pleasure to talk to both of you. Keep up the amazing work that you're doing and RevLeff sends all of our love and our solidarity to you and the indigenous comrades fighting that struggle right now. And again, you know, Emmy and Kate will go on. Millennials are killing capitalism podcast to do an update. So people be on the lookout for that. But before I let you two go, is there any other plugs that you want to make? And then also can you let listeners know where they can find you in your work online? Thanks, Brett. So we did an interview on the podcast

I'm a part of Shit Hot People's Politburo with Pani and Newton before. the evictions and before the mass occupation kicked off. So if you want to hear one of the initial organizers talking about why she's fighting for her land at Ihumatao, you can look us up, shit-hot people's pollute bureau. It was like a couple months ago, but it was a really, really cool interview to have with her, and she talks in a lot of detail about how they put this campaign together,

what they think the main problems are going to face are. So even more interesting to listen to now with the benefit of hindsight, seeing what the state did, the strategies that the cops used, to try to force them off of the land. I think it's well worth listening to. And if I wanted to plug something, it'd be really cool if you guys looked up, organised Aoteeroa.

It's the socialist group that Kate and I are both a part of, but we've been holding it down out there on Yohama Tau for the last month or so. Working really hard, and it'd be cool if we could start to build some international connections with you guys out there. Totally, and if you're like, we've got a lot of, like,

international actions happening in support of Bihu Mata. I saw something in London. It was like a big poster stuck up near the underground. So if you want to send any pictures of any kind of thing that's going on to O.A., I'll definitely make sure it gets seen by people here because I'm one of the social media admins. So that would be great. You can find me.

I'm on Twitter. I'm at Yards of Lennon, which is a part. Yeah, that's a capital pun. Yeah, and I'm on Twitter as well as at cannibality. Cool. Yeah, and absolutely. I'll link to the episode you referenced, your organization, and both of your Twitter accounts so people can follow up with you

if they want to ask you questions, show solidarity, and any organizations that can get in touch with your organization and show international solidarity and make those connections. That's incredibly important. So thank you both again for coming on and keep up the amazing work. Solidarity. Pillarity. Culinarity.

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Thank you.