Hera Ngata-Gibson Te Aitanga a Hauiti, Ngati Ira, Te Aitanga a Mahaki, Ngati Porou, Ngati Whakaue is homegrown in Ūawa. She lives on the papakainga at Anaura Bay. Sarah is passionate about looking after ‘our place’ so that our people may continue to live good lives on our ancestral lands.
Bridget Parker was born in Waituhi, Patutahi, a tiny settlement north of Gisborne. She taught all age groups at Tolaga Bay Area School and farms beef, sheep, maize and kiwifruit with her husband, Michael, and two of their three children and 4 mokos on Broadlands. Broadlands lies between the Mangaheia river and Waipurapura stream in the catchment of Ūawa Tolaga Bay. Camping, fishing, hiking and spending time at the beach is enjoyed by their whole extended family and they have always sought to preserve and care for the environment. Poor pastoral management and forestry harvesting is having a severe impact on the rivers and beaches of the East Coast. Today it is unusual to visit any East Coast beach without seeing logs, debris, sediment and silt mixed into the golden sand. Their vision for the future is that our rohe will be filled with rākau of every kind, with minimal pinus radiata, as so aptly described as Future Forests in Dr Grant Dumbells infamous submission to Ministerial Inquiry into Land Use. Michael and Bridget have both been involved from the outset in the mahi with Mana Taioa Tairawhiti and many amazing and talented people to attempt to clean up this horrific manmade environmental disaster. This will continue over many decades and in fact may never return, in our lives, to its former environmental beauty.
Mana Taiao Tairāwhiti: A Case Study in Community Activism & Political Mobilisation for Ecological Protection
For more than a decade woody debris from pine plantation harvesting has clogged waterways, destroyed orchards and homes, covered beaches and deposited logs and branches across wide areas of coastal marine areas. In early January 2023 an unprecedented volume of debris was deposited as a result of ex-tropical cyclone Hale hitting Tairāwhiti. This event was the catalyst for a small group of residents to get organised and launch a petition to try and change the situation. Within two weeks 10,000 people had signed the petition and it led to a Ministerial Inquiry into Land Use in Tairāwhiti, a series of proposed regional plan changes and a number of court proceedings against forestry companies. This presentation will discuss the key elements and lessons learnt from the consecutive campaigns Mana Taiao Tairāwhiti has waged over the last two years to try and arrest the environmental degradation of the region in the face of an economy highly dependent on the land uses that are wrecking the region–and offer some glimpses of what a truly sustainable future economy for the region might look like
