Fighting for Rivers and Ma¯ori

Wairarapa Moana descendant, Hoana Burgman, has been awarded the MNZM, Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to Ma¯ori and environmental governance. Based in North Canterbury, Burgman’s whakapapa is Ngai Tahu and Nga¯ti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa.

“My great-grandfather, Ihakara Karaitiana, married into Ngai Tahu; he and his brother both came down and married two sisters – two Ngai Tahu woman, and one was my great-grandmother.”

She said the link between her and Wairarapa was generations back, but she had visited her lands in Wairarapa. Burgman said she was overwhelmed when she heard she’d received the award.

“It’s a privilege that someone thinks it (my effort) has been worthwhile. It has to me; it’s just part of me.”

Burgman has been on the Te Ngai Tuahuriri Runanga executive from approximately 1990, and has been the Chair of the kaumàtua committee since 2016.

She said she had always been involved with the runanga (tribal council), but when the Resource Management Act was introduced in 1992, she put her hand up to represent Te Ngai Tuahuriri.

“I said, ‘oh well, I’ll give it a go’, only because my mother was always so concerned about the environment.

“The first place I ever remember going to was the Rakahuri river.”

Burgman was a founding member of Te Waihora Management Board and was involved in the establishment of a joint management plan for Te Waihora Lake with the Department of Conservation, and later the broader Te Waihora Co-Governance Agreement.

Hoana is also a founding member of the Mana Whenua Working Party, alongside Ngai Tahu Farming, to ensure best-farming practices are maintained.

To add to her belt, she was a trustee of Te Kohaka o Tuhaitara Trust from 2006 to 2017, responsible for the restoration and ongoing management of 700 hectares of native coastal wetlands.

Burgman has been credited as a key driver of taking a collaborative approach to Resource Management Act engagement by mana whenua, and she is a founding member of Mahaanui Kurataiao Shareholder Board.

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She brought together the five surrounding papatipu runanga in Canterbury to form a unified company to advance kaitiakitanga (guardianship).

Additionally, she helped to re-establish the Tuahiwi branch of the Màori Women’s Welfare League, has been Secretary and is still the President. Burgman said everything she had done had the environment, rivers, and Màori in mind.

As a child Burgman grew up by the water, fishing with her family. As time went by, she watched the much-loved braided rivers degrade until there were very few fish left. “I tell my grandchildren that my father used just to have string wound around a stick with hooks, throw it into the river, and we’d get three or four herrings all in one go.” Burgman said her mother would only take her and her siblings to areas where they could find food, be it fish, fruit and other commodities such as walnuts and firewood.

What had been teeming with life and kai (food) has now been destroyed by human-caused pollution and greed.

“We saw this happening 25 years ago, but no-one ever listened,” she said.

“All my whànau used to meet at the river, but that doesn’t happen now because they’re so filthy and there isn’t any water in them during the summer.”

Burgman said the loss of rivers had affected Màori in every way.

“It’s our whakapapa, our whakapapa goes with the rivers, lakes and the sea.”

She was hopeful for the future with young, environmentally-minded people coming into the mix, whom she has worked with over the past five to ten years.

Article provided by: Wairarapa Times-Age

Author: Grace Prior