Hon Dr Pita R Sharples
Minister of Māori Affairs
Speech to NZ-China Partnership Forum
12 April 2013
Diaoyutai, Beijing
Nimen Hao.
Tēnā koutou.
Greetings.
I acknowledge our honoured guests and key speakers.
Thank you for hosting us, as our Prime Minister has already mentioned ,
today’s forum realises a milestone goal for our Government as we
strengthen relationships and networks with the Chinese people.
I have been asked to speak about innovation through integration, to talk
about culture and connections. In my Māori culture when one begins a
speech, one begins by making a connection. As with concepts of
guanxi, Māori concepts of whanaungatanga are founded upon
diplomacy, culture and relationships.
Māori connections to China stretch back through time, 2000-years ago
the Chronicles of Hou Han Shu wrote that the skies above Beijing
glowed red as blood. Incredibly, the scribes of Han had recorded New
Zealand’s great Taupō eruption – one of the most powerful the world has
seen. More recently the skies above Beijing glowed red with a fireworks
display the likes of which the world had never seen: 8pm on the 8th of
August, 2008. The Opening Ceremony of the 29th Olympic Games was
an epic spectacle I’ll remember forever, celebrating a heritage both
ancient and modern. A people striving for excellence, innovation and
honour. That opening reminded the world of the Chinese people’s
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phenomenal and ongoing contribution to global culture, economy and
civilisation. And I am incredibly proud to say it is a civilisation, a heritage
and a people that Māori are intrinsically linked to. Thousands of years
ago our Polynesian ancestors set off from Asia. As they left, they looked
to the stars, using astronavigation they guided entire communities
across millions of square miles of ocean. Using advanced science they
crafted the world’s first long range, open sea faring vessels. From
Papua in the west, Hawaii in the north, Rapanui in the east and
Aotearoa in the south: over 80 generations they discovered and settled a
third of the surface of our planet. I proudly acknowledge our shared
heritage and pay tribute to all of our ancestors and acknowledge their
courage, audacity and genius. As we prepare for the future – we can
find inspiration in our not too distant past. We can look to our ancestors
from across the Asia Pacific region, the ultimate explorers, leaders,
innovators of their time.
So when Māori think of a long term investment we aren’t just thinking of
ourselves here in 2013. We’re thinking of those who have gone before
us and those yet to be born: upon our shoulders are huge
responsibilities, we are but one generation within a family tree that
stretches back through eternity. How far it will branch out into the
future? That part’s up to us. Instead of only focusing on how much our
assets are worth we need to ask ourselves: What can we turn them into?
How can we future proof them for future generations? I’ve been proud
to lead Māori trade missions to China where our generational way of
thinking resonated with our hosts, because like us, the people of China
are planning for the future while honouring the past.
Within a few
generations, China’s Dragon Economy has become our global
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economy’s centre of gravity. Our Māori Dragon Economy – or as we call
it our Taniwha Economy - can look to China, to Asia for inspiration.
Right now Māori control around forty per cent of all fish quota in New
Zealand; a third of all plantation forests; we own some of the country’s
largest farms; our tribes control billions of dollars worth of assets.
We know we must invest in science, innovation and education: this will
determine the future of our Taniwha Economy as well as the future of
our people.
Our Māori businesses are working with communities across China. I am
particularly proud of an agricultural exchange launched last year
between the People’s Republic of China’s Government of Guizhou
Province and my government department, Te Puni Kōkiri. We have
developed a strong and close relationship with the people of Guizhou, a
beautiful, unique province that is rich in cultural and natural resources
with huge tourism and agricultural potential. We are investing in the
future by investing in the education of students from Guizhou’s ethnic
minorities as well as our own young Māori farmers.
As well as ancient ties to China, Māori recognise more recent ties. We
recognise that China isn’t merely a foreign export market thousands of
miles away – Chinese people have lived alongside us for nearly 200years. Nearly a century ago the SS Ventnor ship sunk and the remains
of 500-men – en route go Guangdong for burial – were also lost. This
tragedy devastated their families who contemplated an eternity where
their loved ones souls could never be at rest. But a few years ago those
men’s descendents discovered their forebears hadn’t been lost at sea,
but had been laid to rest in sacred, tribal burial grounds. They’d been
cared for by the local Māori tribe whose members had recovered, prayed
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over and buried these men alongside their own ancestors and loved
ones. One week ago as part of Qingming (Ching Ming) 2013, Chinese
and Māori descendents gathered on our remote beaches to unveil
special memorials honouring their ancestors.
After a very successful time at the National Museum of China, New
Zealand’s exhibition of Jade treasures – Kura Pounamu – will soon head
south to Guangdong: we are delighted that our Greenstone will be
displayed in the ancestral lands of so many Chinese New Zealanders.
An ancient treasure prized as much for its beauty as its sacred links to
the Gods: few cultures share the same reverence for Yu or Pounamu as
Chinese and Māori people. We both believe Jade has a heritage, a
whakapapa linking us back to ancient times. We are also hugely
grateful to the National Museum of China for displaying a treasured
feather cloak that was gifted to Chairman Mao Zedong by our Māori King
Korokī in 1957.
Later this month I will be helping to host the Taniwha and Dragon
Festival: the world’s first event bringing together Māori and Chinese
communities to honour our cultural, historical and ongoing relationships.
We chose a Chinese Dragon and Māori Taniwha as our symbols
because like you we celebrate Dragons in legend and song, fearsome
and fearless, wise, lucky, powerful. Great Dragons and Taniwha
descend from the heavens and are personified in great leaders, tribes
and nations.
There is one other ancient bond we share with the people of China. Its
English name is the Godwit bird. In China, I’m told it is Ban-wei ChengYu. Māori call it the Kūaka bird. For generations of ocean navigators:
this bird was one of our many guides. Every year at the end of our
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Summer, thousands of birds, gather at New Zealand’s most northern tip,
we call Te Rerenga Wairua. For Māori it is a hugely sacred place, it is
the departure point for souls, back to our ancestral homelands, in
English it is called Spirits Bay. It is here and other sites that these birds
gather in their thousands before taking flight, crossing the Pacific in a
week and heading north to China: Stopping only when they reach
Dandong, Liaoning Province. Their amazing flight between Te Reinga
and the Yalu River is the longest non-stop flight of any bird on earth.
Every year this tiny bird traces the journeys of our ancestors back across
the Pacific, back to Asia, back thousands of miles and thousands of
years.
And in doing so, forever linking the peoples of New Zealand to
the peoples of China. It is fitting that this very week as I stand to greet
you: the Kūaka, the Ban-wei Cheng-Yu returns to China from New
Zealand.
We have a carving of this bird in our Parliament; I would like to leave you
with the Māori proverb carved beneath it:
Ko au te moemoea o te iwi: Te Tawhiti o tāku rere ka rite tonu ki te
hohonu me te mārama o a koutou whakarite.
I am the dreams of the people.
The length of my flight depends on the
wisdom of your decisions.
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