‘Our Pacific Through Native Eyes’: Māori Activism in the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement, 1980–5

ABSTRACT

The Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement (NFIP) developed a grassroots regionalism in opposition to nuclear colonialism in the Pacific. This article concerns Māori interactions with other Indigenous Pacific peoples within the NFIP movement from 1980–5, and what this meant for the Pacific as a conceptual and political region. Voyaging back across the Pacific, Māori drew on whakapapa, identified cultural commonalities, and parallel colonial legacies between themselves and other Pacific peoples. They saw a shared Pacific struggle: that between Indigenous and colonizer. While this was contentious to some, this article argues that it allowed Pacific peoples to draw upon an alternative network of political action outside formal politics or peace and humanitarian discourses.

Key words:

• Nuclear colonialism
• trans-indigenous
• indigenous
• Pacific
• nuclear free and independent pacific movement
• Māori
• regionalism
• activism

The Maori people are the indigenous people of Aotearoa, the land known to the international community as New Zealand.

We are also children of the Great Ocean of Kiwa (the Pacific), and we trace our ancestry back to the lands of Hawaiʻi and Tahiti Nui.

The indigenous people of the Pacific are small nations and often our plights go unheard. And yet, isolated though we are geographically, our histories of colonisation match almost exactly those of our indigenous brothers and sisters throughout the world.

Even though in a different time scale, our treatment by European invaders also parallels that of Asia, Africa and the Americas.

We too have suffered the sham of the treaty process

We too have been subjected to genocide

We too have been victims of land alienation

We too have been decimated by the diseases of Europe

We too have had to pay dearly for our hospitality

We too have been forced to carry our cultures within our hearts and wear the culture of the European like a second skin.

And today, we too are but second class citizens in our own homelands.

None of these things is new to the Indigenous World, but it is important that we of the Pacific do all we can to bring our struggles to the awareness of the International community … 

And now, as if that were not enough to cope with, an even greater and more deadly monster looms on the horizon of the Pacific – Nuclear Death.

The Superpowers have invented a new war game. The Pacific is the battleground. Pacific peoples are the pawns … 

But despite all this, the spirit of resistance is strong … 

Born out of the Nuclear Free Pacific Movement, the NFIP movement has broadened its scope to include the demands for support for self-determination and the independence movements of the Pacific.

Formed by grassroots Indigenous and non-Indigenous activists and organisations, it now functions as an ever growing body of international support and solidarity … 

The indigenous peoples of the Pacific observed the same laws: of respect for Mother Earth; of respect for the ‘religion’ of natural law; of respect for the wisdom of ancestors and elders; of respect for human life; and of respect for those yet unborn.

That is the way of all Indigenous Peoples.

Armed with this knowledge, this understanding, this common ancestry, the Indigenous people have begun forging links.

The past five years have been years of establishing contacts, and we are now moving into the area of committed solidarity.

The sharing of skills, development of common international action, the support from specific programmes – in these and in many other ways are we reclaiming our rights to identify with each other, and share together in the struggle to return the Pacific to its First Inhabitants – Nga Iwi Whenua o Te Moana Nui a Kiwa. (Hone Harawira, ‘Pacific Region Statement’, spoken to the Commission on Indigenous Peoples of the International Non-Governmental Organisations Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Decolonisation and Apartheid, 5–8 June 1983, Geneva, Switzerland)¹

In the early 1980s, the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement (NFIP) was a powerful regional force opposing nuclear colonialism. As Māori contributed to this movement, traversing Te Moana nui a Kiwa in ways that evoked the voyages of old, their renewed connections formed the basis of an activist network. Drawing on shared whakapapa, while seeing cultural commonalities and parallel colonial experiences between themselves and other Pacific and Indigenous peoples, Māori were exploring collective identity on larger, oceanic and global scales. This had powerful implications for Māori as a Pacific peoples, global Indigeneity, and the functioning of Pacific regionalism.

So, while Hone Harawira was a long way from home speaking in Switzerland, he remained grounded – clear as to who he was and what he stood for. Moreover, as his speech suggests, he was confident in his identity not just as Māori, but as a Pacific and Indigenous person.²

Harawira’s effort formed part of a broader expansion of Māori into international spaces – initiated centuries ago but accelerated and broadened during the late 20th-century ‘Māori Renaissance’ through overt organization. Central to this expansion was the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement, a decentralized, grassroots coalition of interest groups resisting nuclear colonialism in the Pacific. Formalized in Suva in 1975, the NFIP movement included a diverse range of Indigenous rights activists and environmentalists, church figures and politicians, peace protestors and trade unionists. Between conferences held every two to three years, NFIP activists travelled the Pacific demonstrating solidarity and acting in each other’s struggles.

A key focus of this article, the Auckland-based Pacific Peoples Anti-Nuclear Action Committee (PPANAC) heralded the first coordinated Māori involvement within the NFIP movement.³ PPANAC organized Te Hui Oranga o te Moananui a Kiwa, local versions of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific conferences that brought Pacific activists to Aotearoa. Between 1982 and 1988, five Te Hui Oranga served to educate hundreds of Māori about regional issues, with Pasifika activists learning about Māori movements in turn.⁴ By engaging their Pacific counterparts, Māori contextualized the struggle for land rights, cultural retention, and self-determination.

This article showcases the arguments of Māori activists that advocated identification, even unification, between Indigenous Pacific peoples, before discussing how these played out in tangible ways. It shows how Māori involvement in the NFIP movement reshaped the Pacific both conceptually and politically. Bringing together Kānaka Maoli, Kanak, Native Americans, Māʻohi, and other Pacific peoples, Māori proposed a united front. The anti-nuclear issue, they suggested, was a subset of a broader struggle: that between the Pacific Indigenous and the Pākehā colonizer. Essentially, if one were to get the colonists out, the nukes would follow. However, nuclearism was only one colonialism advancing injustice throughout the Pacific. The solution? A pro-Indigenous movement stressing the need for self-determination and celebrating the shared aspects of Pacific cultures: language, collectivity, love for the land, non-Western spirituality, and respect for elders. This organizing provided different outlets for Pacific independence activists outside of Pākehā-led humanitarian or exclusively anti-nuclear efforts. Both overseas and at home, then, Māori co-created trans-Indigenous spaces in which knowledge, solidarity, and aroha flowed freely.⁵ We might say the view out to the Pacific was radically different from inside South Auckland’s first Native American sweat lodge.⁶

Despite activists’ rich articulations about the place of Māori in global discussions of Indigenous rights, the Pacific, and anti-nuclear and independence protest, there has been very little written on the subject in mainstream scholarship. In historical circles, this scant attention comes both from historians of the Pacific, who focus on the ‘Island’ Pacific, and Māori scholars, who have thus far engaged primarily with domestic resistance.⁷ Only recently has emphasis shifted to an expanding Māori world in the late 20th century.⁸ This is hardly surprising considering many Māori scholars were the activists busy forming new Pacific or global activisms and indigeneities; living the history rather than writing it.⁹ In the public eye, of course, Māori protest is often reduced to ‘treaty grievance’. Some might even be surprised by the globalism and professionalism of activists such as Harawira, who are remembered more for breaking up haka parties in their ‘angry’ youths. While stories are known and told in Māori communities, they do not reach the academy and the academy has not reached out.

In the nuclear-free New Zealand story there is a more conspicuous silence. To date there has been no published work dedicated to Māori anti-nuclear activism (or involvement in the NFIP movement).¹⁰ This is a glaring omission when one considers the place of New Zealand’s anti-nuclear legacy in constructions of national identity and history. Public remembrance has tended to focus narrowly on state responses to French nuclear testing and the Pākehā peace movement’s reaction to the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior.¹¹ There has been no room for Māori in a popular protest imaginary replete with sandals and yachts. Credit is not afforded even if Herbs is the soundtrack.¹² Without diverse and critical voices, the nuclear free New Zealand story risks becoming sanitized, self-congratulatory, and saviourist. There is seldom discussion of New Zealand officials’ attempts to undermine domestic anti-nuclearism or complicity in precluding a substantive nuclear free zone in the Treaty of Rarotonga, for example.¹³ Here we ought to remember that when New Zealand became nuclear-free it did so exclusively, without independence or the Pacific – in other words, ‘NF’ without the ‘I’ and the ‘P’.

Importantly, and as this article argues, because Māori activists did not see their struggles in isolation or separated from colonialism, it did not serve to speak of a ‘Nuclear-Free New Zealand’ outside of a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific. This challenges us to see the Pacific impetus in New Zealand’s anti-nuclear legacy, but it also requires seeing that legacy as a compromise against a more ambitious and far-reaching Pacific-led protest. Removed from a regional movement to oppose nuclear colonialism, New Zealand’s anti-nuclear position had a constrained impact on French or United States’ military interests. Indeed, a PPANAC newsletter released after the signature of the Treaty of Rarotonga made clear Māori dissatisfaction and an unshakeable commitment to the whole Pacific:

Well the NZ Government sold AOTEAROA down the drain at the recent South Pacific Forum. Lange’s attitude was to settle for less and work for a totally Nuclear Free Zone. It is a basic sellout on the policy that brought their Government to power.

Walter Lini, the Prime Minister of Vanuatu, refused to sign the watered-down treaty because he said it did not go far enough. If Lange had made the same stand instead of cowtailing to intimidation from Australia and the United States, we may have gained some ground in working towards a NUCLEAR FREE AND INDEPENDENT PACIFIC. Once again he has left his little Pacific ally on the outer limb. The question is will Lange try and persuade Lini to change his mind.

Let us not forget the work of the small nations in the Pacific, who strive for independence for the whole of the Pacific and not just for themselves.¹⁴

This article addresses absence by centring Māori understandings. This history looks different, removed from the canons of US warship visits and Oxford Union speeches. It seeks to provide space for Māori voices, retain the mana of the actors involved, and attempts to faithfully recreate the picture as they saw it, without undue and intrusive commentary. A commitment to Indigenous history practices has meant exploring whanaungatanga and whakapapa both as a driving force in history and as objectives for history making. Where available, and admittedly under some time restraints, the author has consulted those involved for their perspective and permission. My thanks especially to Hilda Halkyard-Harawira, Tāme Iti, Reverend George Armstrong, Nic Maclellan, and Reverend Hirini Kaa for their support. Beyond this, there is a wealth of sources to work with, and no value in speaking for those who have already said it better themselves.

Concerns about historians’ relationships with their subjects should extend beyond people to include their lived environments.¹⁵ This point might be immediately apparent when the ‘environment’ at stake is an irradiated island, but it is equally as important when talking to, say, an entire ocean which is storied. When speaking to Māori environments, it is important to foreground original voice and known whenua, while keeping communities front of mind. However, Aotearoa holds many voices and diverse lands, which means acknowledging difference and situation. The Pacific whakapapa centred may not hold true for all iwi, all the time. Tahu Kukutai and Melinda Webber have pointed out that Māori identity is elastic and purposeful rather than fixed and timeless, so that there has been a ‘constant remaking of Māori identity to better suit changing contexts, communities and collective needs’.¹⁶ We might ask then how Pacific whakapapa influences the relationship between individual and collective Māori identities and sense of place. Put simply: when, how, and why are Māori tangata moana, people of the Pacific?¹⁷

This brings us to the terms ‘Indigenous’ and ‘Pacific’ themselves. As demonstrated, many Māori activists involved thought explicitly in terms of ‘Indigenous’ (and ‘colonizer’) and used the term self-consciously as one of solidarity and empowerment. They forged connections under this guise, formed a network, and indigenized a Pacific that was previously grouped ethnographically or along colonial demarcations. However, there is a limit to Indigeneity as a base category. The term can flatten out experience and proffer commonalities where none exist. We should be cautious not to use the term ‘Indigenous’ uncritically, assuming those concerned necessarily felt the grouping explained their situation. Likewise, ‘Pacific’, although used to suggest similarity between islands (and between diasporic Pacific communities in the case of ‘Pasifika’ or ‘Pacific Islander’), glosses difference within and between Pacific locales. The Pacific is not a homogeneous entity, and there are vast variations in size, language, culture, colonial experience, and environment between different islands. These factors influence the outlook and priorities of various groups and particular locales so, often, it does not serve to talk of a ‘Pacific’ experience any more than it does an ‘Indigenous’ or ‘Māori’ one. Similarity perhaps, but not singularity.

The question then, is how critical to be of those Māori who did speak of the singular. Just as ‘Pacific’ or ‘Indigenous’ can be used by historians to label or group those who would not claim such for themselves, activists within the movement used the terms to characterize the struggle for a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific. This did not sit comfortably with all. Amelia Rokotuivuna, a Fijian and founding member of the movement, had this to say about the NFIP on reflection in 1990:

I for one worked in the movement with the high hopes of Pacific Islanders controlling the agenda but alas our efforts have once again been thwarted. The claims of Maori, Aborigines, native Hawaiians and natives of America that the similarities of indigenous issues should be paramount is invalid, because the reality of the matter is that we have different concerns … Indigenousness or ethnicity is not the issue for most Pacific Islanders, it is rather justice that has been denied us by our own indigenous leaders and some aspects of our traditional systems.¹⁸

This is the critique that many have seized upon. Much commentary surrounding Māori involvement in the NFIP movement has dwelt on these knotty questions of Indigeneity and documented so-called ‘radical’ activism, shaping Māori as the wedge that ultimately drove the movement apart. Peace researcher Owen Wilkes caused controversy following the 1987 Manila conference when he suggested ‘The [Islanders] tend to have little patience with indigenous movements which are seen as trying to highjack the NFIP movement to further their own campaigns over such matters as land rights’.¹⁹ Journalist David Robie picked up this theme in a 1990 piece titled ‘Anatomy of a Hijack’:

Many activists regard the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre (PCRC), the Auckland-based coordinating secretariat of the movement, as having been hijacked by a small Maori ultra-indigenous clique … ‘The present dominance of the viewpoint of those located at the [Auckland PCRC] centre on the organisation and its ideology is unprecedented’ says an influential Fijian activist. ‘And it is as oppressive on Pacific Islands’ political and ideological development as metropolitan and majority culture might have tended to be in the past’.²⁰

Putting aside interpersonal and philosophical clashes, the broader accusation is that Māori were naïve about the true nature of Pacific politics, meaning their catch-all Indigenous category smoothed over contradictions and considerations of class, race, or gender. It is important to note that the issues of ‘Pacific Rim versus Pacific Island’ and ‘Militarisation/Nuclearism/Pollution versus Indigeneity/Independence’ were present from the beginning of the NFIP movement. However, there has been much commentary, some of it polemical, about Māori support of ‘Indigenous rights’ during the 1987 coups in Fiji.²¹ There were sharp debates between Fijian NFIP activists (such as Rokotuivuna), who bore the brunt of military repression after the coups, and perspectives from some Māori and Hawaiian delegates who supported the coup as an expression of iTaukei resistance to colonial legacies. On reflection and in support of Rokotuivuna, Vanessa Griffen, of Fiji Anti-Nuclear Group (FANG), outlined her concerns for this latter depiction of the coups and its broader implications for the movement:

The problem is not so much the indigenous issue dominating the NFIP movement but rather a particular and limited framework for viewing all issues where indigenous people are involved as indigenous vs. other ethnic group domination … In the specific historical context of some NFIP countries, this may be the most applicable assessment and interpretation of the problem facing the indigenous people. In many Pacific Island states, this interpretation is sometimes not applicable at all to contemporary political, economic or social problems … When Fiji’s military coup occurred the NFIP relied not on inside views but on common media information and what is more, the explanation offered by the military coup leaders because their explanation was that the coup was to protect indigenous people from racial and political domination. We will not mention people who have been in the NFIP network who found this militarisation of Fiji a heroic advancement for the Fijian peoples and said so while remaining under the NFIP umbrella.²²

We might note here that the Fijian argument does not completely discount Indigeneity, suggesting instead that it is an umbrella that fails to cover-all. Indeed, we might further reflect on the particular trans-Indigenous assemblages Māori formed, with the predominance of ‘Fourth World’ Tahitian, Native American, and Hawaiian affiliations and the comparative lack of diasporic Pacific influence in groups such as PPANAC, for example. Halkyard-Harawira writes that this was not simply a reaction to the perceived privilege of Māori or dismissal of their pro-Indigenous arguments by those from the island Pacific. She felt some Pacific Islanders could hold an air of superiority with ‘slight “contempt” for the noisy Māori, native Indians, Kānaka Maoli and Aboriginal [peoples] who “gave away their land” and “lost” their language’.²³ Acknowledging these tensions is not to discount the connections, so while strong pan-Pacific or Indigenous identification might not have been the entire (or even the typical) experience, it was a strengthening one, with vocal and mobile Māori providing rich explications on their own identities and place in the Pacific.

In sum, this ocean is vast, and navigating it requires a certain reflexivity. Indeed, on the surface, the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement appears a key episode in a ‘global Indigenous history’, or a test case for such globalizing styles of analysis. However, because of the explicit conflict around identity, scholars of the NFIP movement must be wary of obscuring the particular in service of the general. In recent years there has been a small group of historians undertaking conscientious Indigenous historical practice on these larger, oceanic scales. To chart a course between particular Indigenous knowledges, we might turn the helm over to Toeolesulusulu Damon Salesa, who assures us the diversity of the Pacific means ‘there can be no single way of experiencing the present, and no unified way of representing the past’, but we might overcome this relativism in a thoughtful way by bundling representations, or stories, as they relate to place, to the ocean.²⁴ These storied places or ‘native seas’ are attuned to difference, while remaining useful by speaking to broader Indigenous knowings of the Pacific Ocean. Regarding Māori, we might see action as taking part upon an active native sea – Te Moana nui a Kiwa – a space remembered and travelled across for generations. When Māori travelled, it was not simply to make new associations but also to reconnect – with people and place in voyaging homelands such as Hawaiki or Tahiti Nui. Indeed, Māori were explicit about these thought-journeys and they often formed the basis of action. In stressing this aspect of Indigenous Pacific mobilities, the story told here looks different to that within Tracey Banivanua Mar’s Decolonisation and the Pacific, which describes ‘networks of solidarity’, guided by a ‘transnational, race-conscious, stateless philosophy’.²⁵ So where Banivanua Mar looks at race or ‘the unifying concept of Blackness’ as ‘[shifting] the focus of decolonisation to identity’ (and thus from territory to people and the collective mind), my concern is also with globalizing Indigeneities as they relate to Pacific sense of place. These are complementary endeavours and, as Salesa notes, the Indigenous presents and the native seas of those therein, ‘stand not in opposition to other great forces at work in the present’, such as the decolonization or Black Power movements Banivanua Mar describes, ‘but are articulate with them, as well as with a deep and resonant past’.²⁶ Native seas can run up against one another or overlap, much like categories of race, gender, and class. A point of departure, however, is that where Salesa predominantly describes Indigenous understandings on bounded or ecumene native seas, Māori at this time were describing truly global or wholly Pacific, Indigenous spaces, conversant with discourses of global Indigenous rights and pan-Pacifism. Rather than talking Pacific within its bounds, now those within Te Moana nui a Kiwa mobilized their knowledge of remembered place to argue for rightful ownership on the world stage and welcomed allies from as far afield as South Africa or the Americas in mutual solidarity.

We might say, then, that here is a global Indigeneity as seen by one group: a view upon a native sea turned Indigenous ocean flowing outwards, and seen from, Aotearoa. This is our Pacific through native eyes.

[Hawaiʻi] made such an impact on my political beliefs that it fuelled me for many years ahead … As a Maori I understood the grieving of the indigenous peoples for the theft of land and the subjugation of culture; however non-indigenous were more focused on the damage of ecosystems and health … All the nuclear extractions and testing took place on indigenous lands and the nuclear powers were cold and calculated when they deemed indigenous lands and lives worthless and disposable. For many of the Pacific nations they felt the only way to be safe from the nuclear colonial threat was to be independent from foreign powers who subjected them to this terror. (H.H.H.)²⁷

Hilda Halkyard-Harawira immediately saw the relevance of the 1980 Nuclear Free Pacific conference for Māori self-determination. She brought resolve and a new direction back from Hawaiʻi into a swirling protest culture and expanding Indigenous network, forming the Pacific People’s Anti-Nuclear Action Committee. PPANAC brought the first consolidated Māori presence in the NFIP movement, with its members seeing their role as twofold: ‘to raise the Nuclear Free and independent Pacific issue within Māori circles; and to give an indigenous perspective of the anti-nuclear issue within the predominantly Pākehā Peace Movement’.²⁸ The first section shows how PPANAC would achieve these aims over the following decade, but not without difficulty as those surrounding grappled with Māori dynamism and directness.

The 1980s were a high point for Māori protest energized by the Springbok Tours and marches on Waitangi as well as new-wave Māori feminism and te reo initiatives.²⁹ At the intersection of larger anti-racism, peace, and rights movements, Māori protest groups carved out niches and offered unique voices to a broader chorus. This was internationalizing, Linda Johnson outlines, with a ‘geographic movement of Māori activists from initial contact with Australian Aboriginal activists’, to contact with Pacific independence protestors and, later, North American activists.³⁰ Alongside this, she states, ‘there was an accompanying progression from single issue and local events to participation in forums and formal organisations’ – such as the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP) or indeed the NFIP movement.³¹ In the case of NFIP, we should see PPANAC as moving anti-nuclearism from being a sub-issue for Māori, to a key concern that sustained new organizations. This was not easy, with Hilda Halkyard-Harawira and first PPANAC member Grace Robertson making a three-month case for office space to Kokiri Te Rahuitanga which believed ‘local issues were more important and support for foreign [issues to be] a frivolous, selfish waste of time’.³² And while Māori had been present from the beginning in Aotearoa’s regional NFIP representation, they were crowded amongst New Zealand’s church, trade union, peace, and environmental groups.³³ Tacitly, then, such initiatives could represent protest within and against protests; an objection by those who felt certain needs or perspectives were not being represented adequately.

Situated within new suburbs, and as part of a self-identified ‘urban underclass’, PPANAC brought a roughshod critique to well-heeled Pākehā and a perspective grounded far from the activities and experience of previous anti-nuclear action in New Zealand.³⁴ Away from the beaches of the Waitematā, Devonport’s villas, and the Queen Street golden mile, NFIP protest found a home in Ōtara with PPANAC’s new office. Farmland before the 1950s, the concentrated construction of social housing had remade South Auckland and Ōtara into Auckland’s Māori and Pacific heartland. From the leafy suburbs, Ōtara appeared a site of dislocation and disorder where new urbanites struggled with the rigours of city life. Within the suburb itself the view was quite different: not a brown proletariat but a hotbed of community action. Filmed as part of a widely watched documentary New Streets–South Auckland, Two Cities, Hilda Halkyard-Harawira spoke of Ōtara’s strength as ‘[coming] from the local people themselves … wardens, Stormtroopers, teachers at the school and generally the church groups and family groups’.³⁵ Donna Awatere concurred, stating:

Consciousness of people here is rising. All the best movements in New Zealand come from here. We’ve got the strongest black women’s indigenous group in the world. I describe the situation in Ōtara as political dynamite. There’s a time bomb here and, if and when it blows, you better all watch out.³⁶

Perhaps it is not surprising then that the anti-nuclear protest of urban Māori took on the character of Ōtara itself: in part self-determination, in part resistance. PPANAC’s office building and whare hui sprung up through donations and working bees.³⁷ Fundraising rallies asked people for koha in whatever form they could muster: money, labour, or a song. Many activities were based locally: on Nuclear-Free Pacific week ‘PPANAC launched a three person speaking team into six Auckland secondary schools which had high Māori and Pacific student populations’, presenting to 17 classes.³⁸

A basic refusal to disconnect social justice issues within Aotearoa from the group’s anti-nuclear and pro-independence Pacific message meant attacking the realities of living in Ōtara. PPANAC called out police for ‘overkill’ and ‘random arrests of young Māori and Pacific Island youths’. They speculated grimly about ‘blacks [being] herded into South Auckland’ with barbed wire and nets, asking ‘are we to become another Soweto?’³⁹ Confronting Ōtara meant confronting privileged Pākehā, including those within the Peace movement. Māori insisted they reflect inwards before moralizing outwards. To Māori, the struggle was not ‘out there’ but all around them. If Pākehā would only care if the trouble was exotic and irradiated, it was time to decentre the Geiger counter as the barometer of oppression. Beauty pageant nods to world peace were met with flat dismissal, as were soothsayers peddling immaterial threats of global nuclear war. The war was on all right, but now rather than later, in Ōtara as well as O‘ahu:

… As we strive for a nuclear free and independent Pacific/world, we should always keep in mind the lack of peace within this country … 

Peace is … .

• Peace is a white man’s hysteria, he invented the bomb, and now he’s asking us to clean up his mess.

• Peace is having a house, a car, food and clothes for my kids.

• Peace is middle class privilege

• Hey you, before you dedicate the next ten years of your life to stopping the nuclear bomb, what about the little bombs that get dropped on us everyday.

• The peace of the Pākehā is worse than his war.

• How can the average Maori find a sense of peace in a country where the priests stole the land, where the teachers cheated on education and the only job going is unemployment?⁴⁰

Some people have said that the threat of the bomb has pulled us all together, indigenous and non-indigenous people. This is a very naïve attitude. Indigenous people have been fighting the little bombs ever since the first foreigners came ashore. An indigenous person does not give up struggle for land, culture and survival to be overawed by the threat of a big bomb. That would indeed be a luxury. Indigenous people have been facing the possibility of extinction and human degradation over 145 years. The NFIP movement is not necessarily just anti nuclear, anti military bases, anti superpower domination; it is also pro the land, pro aroha ki te whenua, pro self determination and pro independence.⁴¹

A Māori experience, characterized by land loss, material discrepancy, and ongoing discrimination in increasingly segregated societies, allowed easy relation with other Pacific locales. The need to educate both Pākehā and other Māori towards this end brought a dynamic solution. In 1982, PPANAC held the first Te Hui Oranga o Te Moananui a Kiwa: ‘A hui for those concerned about the wellbeing of the Pacific’.⁴² Aotearoa’s version of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific conferences, Te Hui Oranga brought Pacific activists to New Zealand for tours of speaking, protesting, and aroha. Between 1982 and 1988, five hui were held, with hundreds turning out to hear directly from nuclear-affected communities and offer support. Te Hui Oranga literally brought the issues home to Māori. They would be the vehicle to take Aotearoa’s involvement in the NFIP to its fullest operational extent and prefaced the hosting of the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre.⁴³ On reflection in 1983, Hilda Halkyard-Harawira said ‘It was not until [Te Hui Oranga] that we could gladly say PPANAC had achieved its basic aims. We were able to provide a forum, and the starting of a working relationship began between our overseas indigenous guests, ourselves as young Maoris, and with other concerned Pakeha’.⁴⁴

The 1982 event played host to four Pacific guest speakers: Indigenous Australians Grace Smallwood and Mike Smith, as well as Filipino Mariflor Parpan and the irrepressible Māʻohi activist Charlie Ching. Held at the pugilistic Reverend Hone Kaa’s inner-city Tātai Hono marae and culminating in a mass rally and a French flag-burning, the sense of purpose was clear:⁴⁵

One of our hardest problems is seeing our situation in isolation, and if we individually do not have the means or respectability to acquire an overseas trip to look at our struggle from afar, then the next best thing is to bring a handful of Pacific Island struggles to a hundred of us.⁴⁶

Beyond sites of connection, Te Hui Oranga were trans-Indigenous spaces, out of which came a Māori-inflected political vocabulary linking resistance and anti-nuclearism. Given Māori control over the event, the issues were framed by Māori for Māori.⁴⁷ Primarily, this meant pressing home the centrality of the link between nuclearism and colonialism but procedurally it also meant things done tikanga. Te Hui Oranga became the crucible for the red-hot, pro-independence views of PPANAC and those Pacific delegates in attendance tacitly supported a Māori vision. This is not to suggest that Māori were disingenuous with their intent or co-opted others’ voices – rather that Pacific delegates came to speak within a Māori programme, came to learn as allies in a shared struggle, and indeed came to be advocates for Māori issues at future events. Māori control meant an emphasis on a contiguous nuclear free and independent Pacific (following the official renaming of the movement) and thus a decolonial view of Aotearoa’s history. Contrary to New Zealand’s ‘best race relations in the world’ public relations that suggested Māori enjoyed a certain privilege amongst Indigenous peoples, Māori laid bare a history of disenfranchisement and oppression, demonstrating how they were victims of the same colonial legacies that other Pacific peoples faced.

In looking at our Pacific through native eyes it is inevitable that the white mentality be challenged. We must be realistic, white people invaded our lands and conquered and decimated the people and their culture. We have a history of superficial alliances and broken treaties. Our past is our present and our future. The nuclear bomb comes from the white past. Any joint action must be determined from recognising this reality.⁴⁸

Te Hui Oranga publications between 1982 and 1986 show an increasing confidence and fuller articulations of a shared Māori and Pacific colonial struggle. This was mirrored in an increasingly immersive schedule. In 1982, delegates visited Bastion Point and were lectured on Māori history. By 1985, visitors were marching at Waitangi, participating in nationwide speaking tours, and demonstrating their own cultural practices. Hone Harawira acknowledged this pivot in 1984, stating: ‘The past five years have been years of establishing contacts, and we are now moving into the area of committed solidarity’.⁴⁹

The 1983 Nuclear Free and Independent Conference, held in newly independent Vanuatu, signalled a peak for anti-nuclear and independence action across the Pacific. The feeling at the time was one of confidence, with attendees buoyed by the increasing momentum.⁵⁰ Attended by the largest Māori delegation yet, by way of New Caledonia, the 11 attendees showed the extent of Māori commitment to the NFIP cause and demonstrated the uncompromising pro-Indigenous direction that future protest would take.⁵¹ A two-day stopover in Noumea allowed for a reconnection with Kanak independence leader Yann Céléné Uregei and a tour of Kanak villages. For most present, this was a first taste of ‘external’ Pacific colonialism and a source of comparison: ‘the French oppression in great contrast to that of the independence [of Vanuatu]’.⁵² For many like Grace Robertson, Vanuatu provided an archetype and they returned convinced of the solution: ‘Just to walk amongst the tangata whenua, was to feel the aura of independence of a people proud to be in ownership of their lands and in control of their lives’.⁵³

Vanuatu provided the springboard for 1984 and the most vigorous wave of Māori and NFIP protest New Zealand would see. 1984 also takes centre stage in discussions of the nuclear-free New Zealand story, with the last nuclear ship visit USS Queenfish and the infamous snap election that saw the National Party’s Robert Muldoon unseated by Labour’s David Lange. 1984 brought the fullest expression of the Māori vision to date, having now been operational for four years, both at home and in the Pacific. The second Te Hui Oranga was timed to coincide with a hīkoi from the Waikato to Waitangi. Māori strode forward with a renewed sense of purpose.

As a prelude to the 1984 Te Hui Oranga, PPANAC held an Indigenous Peoples Retreat at the Āwhitu land occupation, Manukau Heads. Participants’ reflections provide a rich case study of trans-Indigenous expression. The organizers saw the retreat as ‘a chance for Indigenous people to get together to talk story about matters and philosophies pertaining only to native peoples’.⁵⁴ The overseas guest list was extensive, including: Native American Navajo Larry Anderson; Hawaiians Leianuenue Parker, Luana Busby, and Puanani Fernandez; Tahitian Charlie Ching; Belauan Roman Bedor, and Indigenous Australian Marjorie Thorpe. Āwhitu, a live land occupation and focal point of Māori land protest, was now folded into broader networks of contestation. It was a fitting venue for drawing out the commonalities between Indigenous concepts and participating in each other’s cultural practices:

… there was talk of the main philosophy and concepts, for example love for the land, the old people and all living things. This session was very challenging, people were able to catch a glimpse of the native religion and Awhitu was a very appropriate context. Commonality in thought amongst native peoples became very clear. We took part in a peace pipe ceremony, a blessing of the corn and a taro planting ceremony. These all gave us special insights into the lifestyles of our whanaunga. Waatara [the host] gave each of the overseas guests a bottle of spring water to use on their travel to purify themselves.⁵⁵

At Āwhitu, Indigenous protestors ‘shared common ground’ in more than one sense. Camped out on disputed land, discussion centred on a collective colonial experience and solutions through Indigenous conceptions of land and commonality. By sharing in story and ceremony, participants elucidated what it meant to be Indigenous. Not by way of dictionary definitions, but through lived experience and mutual understanding. When they came together in conversation, long-held knowledges of place and personhood were given new weight, both as a source of cultural empowerment and as ammunition in a collective struggle:

Indigenous people have so much in common. The recent visit of our international friends confirmed this yet again. It is strange feeling that when they talk of home, we Maori know what they are saying, understand it, feel it. Customs, what the family is up to, oppression, the struggle, similar, similar, similar. Susanna [Ounei, a Kanak feminist] tells us of land occupations and erecting symbolic houses to show ownership. Yeah … TAKAPARAWHAU … Susanna shivering in the cold, ‘Ow makalili’ – ‘Ae makariri’. Then laughing together – hey the same word! Or Charlie speaking Tahitian and us being able to follow. The Hawaiian’s whanaunga etc.⁵⁶

At Āwhitu, participants also solidified connections and learnt from others, contextualizing their experience within an expanding Indigenous world. Māori learnt from other Pacific Indigenous peoples, while affirming their own mātauranga Māori. The mostly urban and university-educated Māori of PPANAC and associated organizations spoke to the colonialism that stripped them of language and place. They strategized revitalization. By observing other cultural revivals and seeing culture ‘done right’ (or not) they ensured their own tikanga might be ‘more Māori’ (and not simply borrowed from others or responsive to Pākehā-inflected stereotype).⁵⁷ Conversation with other peoples on similar paths allowed for reflection: ‘We not only learnt a lot from the overseas visitors, we as Maoris learnt a lot about ourselves. We realized we couldn’t just ‘borrow’ things from others, because, our answers and solutions are here in Aotearoa’.⁵⁸ Through kōrero and through kinship, Māori coalesced both what it meant to be Indigenous, and to be Māori.

A month after Āwhitu, in a March issue of the University of Auckland student magazine Craccum, Māori student Hone Willis wrote of another reoccupation: a small, spirited Ngāti Whātua group camping out at Takaparawhau, Bastion Point, for the pronouncement of Kanak ‘Independence Day’.⁵⁹ In the shadow of the nuclear attack submarine USS Queenfish, and joined by South African international student Magkolo Magkolo and Kanak activist Susanna Ounei, the mood was, like Āwhitu, one of support and comparison.⁶⁰ Susanna worried for her friends back home while the group lamented the connection the wider (Pākehā) public ‘failed to make’: that between the nuclear warship in the harbour and the colonialism that underpinned the ongoing Pacific oppression they faced.

Comparing struggles is one thing, but close reading reveals local Māori found tūrangawaewae on the trans-Indigenous common ground of Āwhitu and Takaparawhau in a distinctly Pacific way. Willis started his reporting of the Takaparawhau occupation with the epigraph ‘Ko wai rawa he tangata hei noho mo to whenua, e i?’ [‘What person will survive to live in your land?’]. The extract is part of a larger oriori by one of Ngāti Whātua’s key ancestors, Tāoho. Willis traces ancestry to Kaipara in northern Ngāti Whātua territory and the recitation is both statement of place – grounding Willis in the particular territory that the waiata belongs to – and a reference to French and US destruction of whenua.⁶¹ By retracing genealogical ties to Pacific places, Willis cast his mind across native seas, demonstrating these are ‘cultured, practised spaces’ that encapsulate ‘encounters of experience’ and tie successive generations to the lands of their forebears through story.⁶² Collapsing space and time, voyaging past became activist present. Independence protest went beyond disparate ‘solidarities’ to shared struggle over time in a connected sea of islands.⁶³

Māori turned mental voyages into actual homecomings and thought of them as such. These native seas were alive, churning. Actioning present pasts, Māori activists’ travels through the Pacific were less publicized than the much-feted sailings of the Hōkule’a, Hawaiki Nui or Te Aurere, but no less real. Homecomings took place under many auspices. Sometimes they were Indigenous led and expressly for the NFIP movement, however mostly an Indigenous contingent formed a smaller subgroup of a larger peace or anti-nuclear protest party. As such, often homecoming testimonies have been subsumed into broader protest discourses, despite voyagers having their own and often divergent agendas.

Elected to the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre steering committee in 1983, Hilda Halkyard-Harawira had Pacific mobility unmatched by most Māori. In 1984, she visited Kahoʻolawe, a sacred island and focal point of Hawaiian NFIP protest due to its use by the US military as a target range. Hosted by the Protect Kahoʻolawe ‘Ohana organisation and joined by the protest yacht Pacific Peacemaker, Halkyard-Harawira presented the 1100 signatures collected by Dunedin Peacelink opposing the RIMPAC military exercises of 1984. Her recollection of the ‘access’ (visitors required military permission and guidance to visit Kahoʻolawe due to unexploded ordinances) is immediately striking for the way in which Māori understandings, anti-Western, and anti-capitalist sentiments came together to frame her experience and make it intelligible to a Māori audience:

To me Kahoʻolawe was like a marae. There were no city distractions. People had to work together to make anything come about. Kahoʻolawe had a real sense of sadness … like a quiet tangi. Kahoʻolawe is like an old kuia, who seldom sees her grandchildren – she’s happy when they are there but lonely when they are away. And where the land is bombed and plundered – a spirit of sadness is conveyed to the rest of the island. It is almost like the old kuia knows that the young people are her hope to keep her alive.⁶⁴

Here aroha ki te whenua met Aloha ʻĀina in a way reminiscent of the Te Hui Oranga meetings above. But, significantly, Halkyard-Harawira went on to describe a voyaging exchange, or active native sea:

[I] returned the kohatu (stone) that my husband [Hone Harawira] had been given last year when he was present on another access. One of the Hawaiian men, Makanani later said he was real happy to see the kohatu again, For him it meant they had sent the stone forth for support and it had returned bringing a message of solidarity … We then hiked to Mooula. This is the point of the island where the two ocean currents meet. There is where the Hawaiians came to plot their navigation courses through the Pacific with the help of the stars. This was probably the place where the migration to Aotearoa was planned when our ancestors left their homeland of Hawaiki.⁶⁵

Similarly, but drawing on different whakapapa, the ‘Maoris to Moruroa’ contingent of the 1985 anti-France protests came home to Tahiti Nui.⁶⁶ The sailing came as retaliation for the French-orchestrated Rainbow Warrior bombing, and in opposition to Tahiti hosting the South Pacific Arts Festival amid continued colonialism and nuclear testing. Māori ex-Navy sailor Turi Blake turned his first-hand experience of the bomb into a dual protest and homecoming on the protest yacht Breeze, which accompanied Greenpeace III and Vega to Moruroa:

In 1957–58 during the British bomb tests I was on one of the New Zealand frigates, Pukaki, that acted as support at Christmas Island, and it was from an eyewitness to the bomb, that I changed, my attitudes had changed … I feel that I have to go there, and show my protest, directly to the French. My ancestor, Turi, comes from Tahiti, I’m named after Turi, I’m a descendent of him. I don’t know how to explain it … to me, my family … part of my family is still there, living in the area where the French are testing.⁶⁷

In Hawaiki and Tahiti Nui, Halkyard-Harawira and Blake sat at the convergence of native seas, of overlapping understandings. Representing different groups, they traversed places understood in different ways by other Indigenous peoples (and military personnel). Nevertheless, while engaging these networks and understandings, it was in a way framed by mātauranga Māori and not detached from Aotearoa. Their experiences remained deeply personal and deeply Māori.

Voyages converged in Tahiti, and Māori met with others who, like native Hawaiians met by Halkyard-Harawira, felt the damage of nuclearism and militarism first-hand in their surrounding environments. The words of Tiare Rua, captured by Pita Turei’s camera for the 1988 documentary Hotu Painu, give some idea of Mā‘ohi grief:

I wanted to go on the Greenpeace ship to Moruroa to see my grandmother’s ancestral land. Deep within me I carry a feeling of desolation and grief for this Whenua [sic] which the French have spiritually and physically defiled. The old people say Moruroa was a very beautiful island. Now the homeland of those who gave life to me has been desecrated … I had a brother who worked at Moruroa. One Sunday while collecting shells on the reef he ate some shellfish. On the way back to the beach he started vomiting. By the time they got to the barracks he was dead. We were told he died from an accident but the French hid the fact that it was the shellfish.⁶⁸

Contact with Māori allowed Mā‘ohi to voice their struggle in alternative forums. In a neat connection, Rua used Turei’s platform to call for the release of a Māori ally, Charlie Ching, while denouncing the French state-orchestrated terrorist attack on the Rainbow Warrior:

If it was up to me I would never have let those two French agents come into my land. They were imprisoned in New Zealand because they had committed a crime. They killed a man yet they are brought to Hao. They should be in jail, they are murderers. Here in Tahiti people are imprisoned for nothing. Just because they protest against nuclear testing the French lock them up. There are many examples like Pouvanaa a Oopa and Charlie Ching who only protested for the good of their people. But those who really commit crimes walk free like tourists. Why not take them back to France, why bring them here? So they can kill us Mā’ohi perhaps? The French respect nothing. They are inundating us, taking our culture, our lands, our heritage.⁶⁹

A third delegation to Tahiti brought more convergences, as the peace fleet protest and Turei’s filming coincided with action against the South Pacific Arts Festival. Tahitian (or rather French) hosting of the festival had already courted controversy and subsequent Māori/Mā‘ohi cooperation: Oscar Temaru, the pro-independence Mayor of Fa‘a‘ā, visited Aotearoa to ask the Māori delegation not to attend. Māori and other support groups organized for Temaru to meet with the NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and he was interviewed by Te Karere, Radio New Zealand, and other news media. Coverage was national and around ten artists agreed not to participate in the festival, including Merata Mita, John Miller, the Topp Twinns, and Emily Karaka. PPANAC reported this as ‘a very positive move’, one which ultimately elicited a response as ‘Internal Affairs was left with egg on its face, and quickly boosted the numbers with others’.⁷⁰

Instead of artists, Temaru requested a small Māori delegation that might support him in counteraction. This brought a familiar name and face to Tahiti: Titewhai Harawira. While unable to visit her friend Charlie Ching in prison, Harawira spoke at rallies, joined a thousand-strong march through Fa‘a‘ā in support of the festival boycott, and had this message for the performers and sailors:

At the lead of the march there were three flags flying: the Kanaky flag, the Tahitian flag and the flag of Te Kotahitanga o Waiariki … The Tahitians are sick and tired of people sailing on boats just to talk about the bomb … The Tahitians are not just worried about the effects of the bomb, they are worried about the French colonialism that is destroying their culture and social structures. Peace and justice cannot be separated … Many times Charlie has supported our struggle. We must reciprocate that solidarity action in tough times.⁷¹

In the case of Rua and Ching, Harawira was right. A flag-burning veteran of two Te Hui Oranga, Ching made his position on colonialism unequivocal.⁷² Temaru, on the other hand, was more diplomatic and saw the value of the peace protest Harawira dismissed. His own take acknowledged the need for publicity and the shortcomings of formal politics, suggesting the solution – independence – would come through a mixed approach:

We have been protesting against the French nuclear testing for many years. Every year the South Pacific Forum take a statement against the French nuclear testing but we really think that it’s not enough … we believe that the coming of the Greenpeace here in Tahiti is stronger than the statement by the South Pacific Forum countries … every country in the South Pacific has to get our independence … I think that’s the only means to stop the French nuclear tests in Tahiti, in Moruroa.⁷³

Ultimately, by reaching out to Māori, Rua, Ching, and Temaru were able to circumvent the formal avenues they felt were failing them. Rua got no solace from French scientists, who insisted radiation levels were safe. Ching felt he was wrongfully imprisoned, a political prisoner for his outspoken views and position as head of an independence movement. Temaru thought the South Pacific Forum lacked teeth on the nuclear issue, and that New Zealand was tacitly supporting French colonialism by sending a delegation to an arts festival that was effectively a thinly masked and empty bribe. When France would not answer, the Pacific did. This was no collection of Pacific pen-pals, this was an alternative network of political action that garnered results. Māori played their part in reshaping political lines, forcing responses from both France and New Zealand.

Māori involvement in the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement culminated in the relocation of the PCRC Secretariat in 1987 and the staging of the 1990 NFIP Conference in Aotearoa. This would be the last official work of PPANAC. Māori activists had taken up the call, ‘me hoki ki te ūkaipō’, to return to homelands and work within community for self-determination and spiritual nourishment. Divisions had deepened internally and within the movement. Members reflected that ‘a group should always know when it is time to close down. Networks can always be revived. Sometimes an ending is a new beginning’.⁷⁴ For a decade PPANAC and its mana wahine like Hilda Halkyard-Harawira, Grace Robertson, Ngaire Te Hira, and Philomena O’Donnell had advanced the vision of a Māori peace within a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific.

This is but one current in an Indigenous ocean. Ever swirling, it doesn’t represent all Māori, it doesn’t represent all Pacific peoples. But we might see here an Indigenous perspective grounded in Aotearoa, and how it came into contact with others. This current flows from Auckland’s Ōtara because that was ground zero for segregation. It pours from Ngāti Whātua, where Hone Willis shared a place with Susanna Ounei. It runs forth to Hawaiki with Hilda Halkyard-Harawira and Tahiti Nui with Turi Blake, and returns to Awhitu, to Takaparawhau with manuhiri. A native sea. I ask how Māori activists saw the struggle, the ocean, and what that might tell us about the nature of the Pacific as a region and as a peoples. We have examined conferences or hui as trans-Indigenous forums that offered Māori the chance to educate others about their grounded struggle and frame the NFIP as an independence issue. Māori utilized their collective strength and experience of urban poverty to critique Pākehā and identify with other colonized Pacific peoples. To this resistance, they added cultural commonalities and shared philosophies, ultimately drawing on whakapapa to strengthen ties over water with blood. By seeing these sites of interaction within broader national, transnational, and trans-Indigenous networks, and by analysing the sentiments therein, we see how Māori projected out into the Pacific, recharacterizing and reshaping the region as a functioning entity. These efforts contributed to a theorizing of Indigeneity, and thus Māori shaped the Pacific conceptually – in what it meant to be ‘Pacific’ or how we might think of the Pacific spatially. This was no abstract mental exercise. We have seen how initiatives such as Te Hui Oranga provided platforms for others, how Māori activism was reciprocal, and how support was not contained within Aotearoa. Māori returned the committed activism of other Pacific peoples, both forming and reworking networks. Thus, Māori activism also reshaped the Pacific politically as a region and through the movements of Pacific peoples, nga iwi whenua o te Moana-nui-ā-Kiwa.

To glimpse ‘our Pacific through native eyes’ is to understand how Māori turned a native sea into an Indigenous ocean.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Auckland War Memorial Museum; National Museum of the Royal New Zealand Navy.

Notes on contributors

Marco de Jong

Marco de Jong – Faculty of History, University of Oxford, UK.[email protected]

Notes

¹ Pacific Peoples Anti-Nuclear Action Committee (PPANAC) newsletter, July–Aug. 1983, ‘Eph-B-NUCLEAR. [Ephemera of quarto size relating to nuclear weapons, nuclear power, anti-nuclear protests]’, Eph-B-NUCLEAR-1983/1984, Alexander Turnbull Library (hereinafter ATL), National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātaruanga o Aotearoa.

² ‘When I got to the conference however I noticed that I was the only delegate from the whole of the Pacific. I decided therefore (and I hope people will excuse my doing so) to present a statement to the conference on behalf of the whole of the Pacific’. PPANAC newsletter, July–Aug. 1983.

³ PPANAC was formed on Hiroshima Day 6 Aug. 1980. Te Hui Oranga o Te Moananui a Kiwa 1982, Personal collection of George Armstrong (hereinafter Armstrong Collection).

⁴ The Ōtepoti-based Te Whanau a Matariki hosted corresponding Te Hui Oranga o te Moana nui a Kiwa for Te Wai Pounamu.

⁵ Literary critic Chadwick Allen locates Māori writing and activism within an intellectual campaign to ‘seize control of the symbolic and metaphoric meanings of indigenous “blood”, “land” and “memory” at the level of the global’. This campaign to develop what he calls ‘indigenous theory’ constituted a ‘framework of survival and equality, dignity and pride’ for contemporary Indigenous peoples: a way of defining global Indigeneity on acceptable terms, to the ends of social justice and self-determination. Chadwick Allen, Trans-Indigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 113.

⁶ Te Hui Oranga o Te Moananui a Kiwa 1984, Armstrong Collection.

⁷ For Pacific-centred synoptic works see, e.g., Stewart Firth and Karen Von Strokirch, ‘A Nuclear Pacific’, in The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders, ed. D. Denoon, M. Meleisea, S. Firth, J. Linnekin, and K. Nero (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Teresia Teaiwa, ‘Bikinis and Other S/Pacific N/Oceans’, The Contemporary Pacific 6, no. 1 (1994); Stewart Firth, Nuclear Playground (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1987). For Māori protest, see Aroha Harris Hikoi, Forty Years of Māori Protest (Wellington: Huia, 2004); Ranginui Walker, Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou – Struggle Without End (Auckland: Penguin, 1990).

⁸ A sustained historical study into transnational Māori protest comes from Linda Johnson, whose 2015 PhD thesis explores how Māori opened ‘space’ within various international venues, ranging from the Pan-Pacific Women’s Association and the World Council of Indigenous Peoples to the United Nations and indeed the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific. Linda Johnson, Māori Activism Across Borders, 1950s–1980s (PhD thesis, Massey University, 2015).

⁹ Ranginui Walker, e.g., spoke before the International Friendship league. Johnson, Māori Activism Across Borders, 327.

¹⁰ Hilda Halkyard-Harawira wrote an essay on the origins of PPANAC, an essay she believed was lost until its rediscovery in early 2023. Hilda Halkyard-Harawira, ‘Te Puawaitanga o PPANAC, 1980–1990’, unpublished essay.

¹¹ For the peace movement and the Rainbow Warrior, see Michael Szabo, Making Waves: The Greenpeace New Zealand Story (Auckland: Reed, 1991); Frank Zelko, Make it a Green Peace! The Rise of Countercultural Environmentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); David Robie, Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior (Auckland: Lindon, 1986). For state responses, see Malcolm Templeton, Standing Upright Here: New Zealand in the Nuclear Age 1945–1990 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2006); David Lange, Nuclear Free: The New Zealand Way (Wellington: Penguin, 1990); Ramesh Thakur, In Defence of New Zealand: Foreign Policy Choices in the Nuclear Age (Wellington: New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, 1984). A notable exception is Maire Leadbeater, Peace, Power and Politics: How New Zealand Became Nuclear-Free (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2013). Leadbeater is sympathetic and dedicates one chapter to the NFIP movement, however the analysis concerns New Zealand and progress towards anti-nuclearism necessarily, rather than in-depth discussions about Māori perspectives and Aotearoa’s place in the Pacific.

¹² Herbs is an Aotearoa-based reggae group founded in 1979. Herbs had four hit anti-nuclear songs, including French Letter, which spent 11 weeks on the charts. Although its line-up has constantly varied, Herbs has featured Māori, Samoans, Tongans, Cook Islands, and Pākehā members.

¹³ These points are made more fully in Marco de Jong, ‘Ki te la Pacific! Get out of the Pacific!’: Anti-Nuclear and Independence Activism in Pacific New Zealand, 1970–1985’ (MA thesis, University of Auckland, 2018). See, also, Nicky Hager, ‘The Battle For and Against New Zealand’s Nuclear Free Policy – A Secret History’ (Michael King Memorial Lecture, University of Otago, 7 Sept. 2023).

¹⁴ PPANAC Newsletter, 11 Aug. 1985, ‘Papers relating to conferences on nuclear disarmament in the Pacific (54)’, Wilkes, Owen, 1940–2005: Papers, 2005-338-020, ATL.

¹⁵ Mary X. Mitchell, writing on nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, employs lessons learnt from Indigenous medical history in ‘the environmental archive’. The implication is that historians should be cautious when using environmental data collected at the expense of Indigenous communities, or under hegemonic frames that obscure Indigenous knowledges. Mary X Mitchell, ‘History, Ethics, and the Environmental Archive’, Somatosphere (2017).

¹⁶ Tahu Kukutai and Melinda Webber, ‘Ka Pū Te Ruha, Ka Hao Te Rangatahi: Māori Identities in the Twenty-first Century’, in A Land of Milk and Honey? Making Sense of Aotearoa New Zealand, ed. A. Bell, V. Elizabeth, T. McIntosh, and M. Wynyard (Auckland: Auckland University Press 2017), 82.

¹⁷ See, also, Alice Te Punga Somerville, Once Were Pacific: Māori Connections to Oceania (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 11; Tracey McIntosh, ‘Hibiscus in the Flax Bush: The Māori-Pacific Island Interface’, in Tangata O Te Moana Nui: The Evolving Identities of Pacific People in Aotearoa/New Zealand, ed. Cluny Macpherson, Paul Spoonley, and Melanie Anae (Palmerston North: Dunmore, 2001), 143.

¹⁸ Amelia Rokotuivuna, ‘Foreword’ (Nuclear Free Pacific and Independence Movement Conference, Ponape, 1978). Her reflections in 1990 can be found in Amelia Rokotuivuna, ‘suggestions in response to the circulated letter’, 2005-338-020, ATL.

¹⁹ Owen Wilkes, Conference Report, Feb. 1988, 2005-338-020, ATL.

²⁰ David Robie, ‘Anatomy of a Hijack’, New Zealand Monthly Review, Dec. 1990, 16.

²¹ These debates played out during the Sixth NFIP Conference in Aotearoa in 1990. See, e.g., Susie Newborn, ‘Fiji – A Contentious Issue’, in For Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific: 6th NFIP Conference Aotearoa 1990 (Auckland: PCRC, 1990), 98; Roy H. Smith, The Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement After Mururoa (London: Taurus, 1997), 146, 167–8; Nic Maclellan, pers. comm., 19 Nov. 2022.

²² To the author’s knowledge there has been no interpersonal resolution to these events. While it is not his place to pass judgement or suggest how redress should occur, such tensions hang over a younger generation that has come to study the NFIP movement and build their own solidarities. Vanessa Griffen, ‘Comment and support for statements by A. Rokotuivuna to NFIP Co-ordinating Committee’, 2005-338-020, ATL.

²³ Halkyard-Harawira, ‘Te Puawaitanga o PPANAC 1980–1990’.

²⁴ Damon Salesa, ‘The Pacific in Indigenous Time’, in Pacific Histories: Land, Ocean, People, ed. Alison Bashford and David Armitage (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 31–50.

²⁵ Tracey Banivanua Mar, Decolonisation and the Pacific, Indigenous Globalisation and the Ends of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

²⁶ Salesa, ‘The Pacific in Indigenous Time’, 31.

²⁷ Hilda Halkyard-Harawira, interviewed for Maire Leadbeater, Peace Power and Politics: How New Zealand Became Nuclear-Free (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2013), 63–6.

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ Harris, Hikoi, 107.

³⁰ Johnson, Māori Activism Across Borders, 15.

³¹ Ibid., 16.

³² Halkyard-Harawira, ‘Te Puawaitanga o PPANAC.’

³³ Titewhai Harawira attended the 1975 Nuclear Free Pacific conference in Suva, the only Māori representative amongst the 11-member New Zealand delegation.

³⁴ Chadwick Allen, Trans-Indigenous, 113.

³⁵ New Streets–South Auckland, Two Cities. Directed by Neil Roberts. TVNZ, New Zealand, 1982.

³⁶ New Streets–South Auckland, Two Cities.

³⁷ Named ‘Te Wai Hono a Kupe’, PPANAC shared the office with its sister organization the ‘Waitangi Action Committee’, PPANAC newsletter, Aug. 1985, Serials, ATL.

³⁸ PPANAC Newsletter, Mar. 1983, Eph-B-NUCLEAR-1983/1984, ATL.

³⁹ PPANAC Newsletter, Sept. 1983, Eph-B-NUCLEAR-1983/1984, ATL.

⁴⁰ Otara’s youth provided ‘Some Maori Thoughts on Peace’, Te Hui Oranga o te Moananui a Kiwa 1985, Armstrong Collection.

⁴¹ Te Hui Oranga o Te Moananui a Kiwa 1985; reprinted in Wendy Harrex and Diane Quin, Peace is More than the Absence of War (Auckland: New Women’s Press, 1986).

⁴² The hui were technically hosted by the umbrella organization Te Reo Oranga o Te Moananui a Kiwa, but I have retained PPANAC, who spearheaded the organization, here to avoid confusion. Te Hui Oranga o Te Moananui a Kiwa 1984, Armstrong Collection.

⁴³ PCRC was the secretariat for the NFIP movement, founded in Hawaiʻi after the 1980 Nuclear Free Pacific conference, but relocated to Auckland under the directorship of Tongan activist Lopeti Senituli in 1987.

⁴⁴ PPANAC newsletter, Sept. 1983, Eph-B-NUCLEAR-1983/1984, ATL.

⁴⁵ Hirini Kaa, pers. comm., 20 Nov. 2017.

⁴⁶ Te Hui Oranga o Te Moananui a Kiwa 1982, Armstrong Collection.

⁴⁷ Specifically, the organizing committee consisted of (among others) Ripeka Evans, Pat Hohepa, Hone Harawira, James Pasene, Wally Te Ua.

⁴⁸ Te Hui Oranga o Te Moananui a Kiwa 1982.

⁴⁹ Te Hui Oranga o Te Moananui a Kiwa, 1984.

⁵⁰ George Armstrong and Maire Leadbeater, pers. comm., Aug. 2017.

⁵¹ The Māori delegation, representing the groups PPANAC, Māori Network, Waitangi Action Committee, Te Amorangi, Hui Tane, Tu Te Kia, and Mana Wahine consisted of: Mei Heremaia, Ripeka Evans, Huhana Tuhaka, Cheryl Thompson, Grace Robertson, Aperira Papuni, Ngaire Te Hira, Adrienne Browne, Les Howe, Parata Hawke, and Sharon Hawke. NFIP Conference Report (Auckland: PCRC, 1983).

⁵² PPANAC newsletter, July 1985, Eph-B-NUCLEAR-1983/1984, ATL.

⁵³ PPANAC newsletter, July 1985.

⁵⁴ Te Hui Oranga o Te Moananui a Kiwa, 1984.

⁵⁵ Ibid.

⁵⁶ Ibid.

⁵⁷ Ibid.

⁵⁸ Ibid.

⁵⁹ ‘Solidarity for Kanak Independence’, Craccum, University of Auckland Student Magazine, 27 Mar. 1984.

⁶⁰ Susanna’s time in New Zealand was sponsored by CORSO. PPANAC newsletter, Dec. 1983, Eph-B-NUCLEAR-1983/1984, ATL.

⁶¹ Hone Willis, pers. comm., 9 June 2017.

⁶² Salesa, ‘The Pacific in Indigenous Time’, 44–5.

⁶³ Vijay Naidu, Eric Waddell, and Epeli Hau‘ofa, A New Oceania: Rediscovering Our Sea of Islands (Suva: School of Social and Economic Development, The University of the South Pacific, 1993), 7.

⁶⁴ Kahoʻolawe Access, excerpt from the PCRC steering committee Aotearoa/Australia report May 1984, reprinted in Te Hui Oranga o Te Moananui a Kiwa 1985, Armstrong Collection.

⁶⁵ Te Hui Oranga o Te Moananui a Kiwa 1985.

⁶⁶ ‘2 Maoris to Moruroa: 2 Maoris are taking part in the fleet to Mororua. Ranga o Te Aupouri has already left on the Alliance; and Tihema Galvin of Te Arawa will be leaving on Greenpeace Vega’. PPANAC Action Alert Aug. 1985, Eph-B-NUCLEAR-1983/1984, ATL.

⁶⁷ Hotu Painu. Directed by Pita Turei. Paradise Films, [television], 1988.

⁶⁸ Ibid.

⁶⁹ Ibid.

⁷⁰ Te Hui Oranga o te Moananui a Kiwa 1985.

⁷¹ Te Hui Oranga o te Moananui a Kiwa 1985.

⁷² ‘The only solution is to get independence for Polynesia as soon as possible. Because as long as Polynesia is called French Polynesia, France will continue its nuclear tests. The sooner we have our independence the sooner France and its nuclear tests will be gone’. Charlie Ching, interviewed for A Nuclear Free Pacific/Niuklia Fri Pasifik. Directed by Lesley Stevens. Pacific Stories Partnership, New Zealand, 1988.

⁷³ Hotu Painu.

⁷⁴ Halkyard-Harawira, ‘Te Puawaitanga o PPANAC 1980–1990’.