Letters to the Editor

Money, greed, corruption
With Mangawhai growing so quickly it's obvious the carpark at Pacific Road needs expanding and more facilities provided.
However, the current proposal to create a carpark back from the beach is complete insanity.
People will be forced to traipse with their belongings for 500 meters to get to the beach.
Heaven help anyone at the beach whose child needs the bathroom.

It’s obvious the developers intention is to turn what should have been a national park for all to enjoy into an American-style exclusive enclave for the rich and famous. These will mostly be people from overseas who will probably only spend a few months of the year here. Hence the attempt to keep the public as far away as possible.


This is yet another instance where politicians have failed the very people they were elected to represent.
Money, greed, corruption and selfishness are the winners here.


Bruce Pedersen
Mangawhai

First peoples proof
In a letter to Mangawhai Focus (March 20) Ed Nathan takes Noel Hilliam to task for saying that he (Mr Nathan) was not tangata whenua, and asks Mr Hilliam to prove it. My dictionary defines tangata whenua as (1) Maori people of a particular locality, or (2) Maori people in general. If, however, he means that they were the first people of the land, they were not. Many Maori will tell him that! He wants Mr Hilliam to prove that he and his tupuna are not tangata whenua (as in first people).

It is difficult to prove, Mr Nathan, because of the legal implications of the matter. Understand that I am in contact with an archaeologist from the UK who had been in New Zealand for four years, and has aerial photographed the country from North Cape to the Bluff. He states that the number of sites that he would like to dig here number several thousand, and he would be arrested if he was to dig at any one of them!

Patupaiarehe, Waitaha, and Turehu peoples were here long before Maori, Patupairarehe arriving about the time of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Waitaha about three hundred years later. They lived here in peace and harmony for about one thousand years until the coming of the Maori, who decimated their populations. And why has the Government not paid them out, as it has to certain Maori tribes? Because if it did, it would have to acknowledge that they were the “first peoples”, which would prove that Maori were not, and they, both Labour and National governments, are loathe to do that, and that is why the payouts continue!

Noel Hilliam was with a party of scientists in the Waipoua Forest some years ago, investigating stone buildings and fences there. All of a sudden, the site was closed down, and embargoed until 2067! Why? I have seen photographs of these buildings, and they look to me exactly like those on the Orkney Islands to the north of Scotland! I am not belittling the money being paid out to the Maori elite (the grass root people have not received one bent skerrick!), then good on them! However, I believe that these first people should be paid out for the decimation caused to their populations as well!

One Maori gentleman told my UK friend that his ancestors were bought out here in a wing boat, and that he had not heard of a wing boat. My friend was able to tell him that a wing boat was of Chinese construction and that his tribe was bought out here by them!

I have offered a challenge to the news media, judiciary, archaeologists, historians, Parliamentarians, and anybody else who is interested to sort out the truth of our history. That challenge still stands. It may require quite a few of us. Somewhere out there, the truth exists, whether it is in a university library, museum or still in the ground.

How is that for starters?
Kevan George Marks