Kia mutu te raupatu!
Let the confiscations cease!
Tiakina Ihumatao!
Protect Ihumatao!
We have all heard of Bastion Point. Most of us though are still unaware of a similar struggle to save Maori Land that is being waged just across the Mangere Peninsula from Auckland Airport.
Next time you go to the airport, take the rural road back to Auckland, along Oruarangi Road and around Mangere Mountain. You will pass through a little settlement of Ihumatao, and you will see a number of signs beside the road outside houses: SAVE IHUMATAO; SAVE OUR UNIQUE LANDSCAPE;DO NOT BUILD ON THE BONES OF OUR ANCESTORS. This little settlement of barely 200 people is the oldest community in the whole of the Auckland area. Many people there can trace their ancestry back 27 generations to those who arrived on the Tainui waka. They are a patient, long suffering community, who have faced the injustice of wrongful land confiscation in the 1869s, the destruction of their harbour by the Mangere Sewerage Treatment Plant and the loss of the remaining fishing areas with the arrival of the airport. Now though, they are resisting a fresh attack: the building of a 500 unit housing estate, on the farmland between their village and their sacred mountain, Te Puketapapatanga o Hape, the smallest volcano in the Auckland Volcanic field.
In February, 2015 , young people from Ihumatao formed the group SOUL, calling on the wider community to support their struggle for their ancestral lands.
Story by Farrell Cleary
SOUL is led by a group of whanau residents in Ihumatao and is inclusive of residents, ratepayers, community members and interested parties.
We believe that having a Special Housing Area (SHA) in Ihumatao will not contribute to making Auckland a liveable city, but destroy one of the few significant and unique historical, cultural, spiritual, social and environmental spaces we have left.
SOUL represent over 4000 local, national and international community voices who want and deserve to be heard by both National and Local Government as well as the foreign-owned developer.
Your donation will help us greatly as we endeavor to stop this development!
To find out more about the SOUL campaign, you can like, share, follow and join us on :
Facebook/Soul.noSHA
or email saveihumatao@gmail.com
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