GRAHAM ADAMS: Māori gods rule the CRL underworld

Anyone reading the headlines last month announcing that Auckland’s underground City Rail Link had been “blessed” would not have needed to read the accompanying article to guess that it wasn’t Catholic or Anglican bishops conducting the ritual. 

It was, of course, mana whenua, who performed a formal dawn mahi ōkawa (blessing) of the new CRL stations.

The purpose of the blessing — led by Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei and supported by seven other local clans — was allegedly to “provide important tikanga and cultural safety ahead of upcoming ‘First Look’ public open day events and the commencement of passenger services”.

“Tikanga and cultural safety” will, of course, be meaningless to almost all the passengers who ride the trains. The only kind of safety they will care about is to not be assaulted by thugs during their journey and for the trains not to collide or lurch off the tracks. 

The blessing will not keep anyone “safe”. However, it furthered Māori nationalists’ mission of establishing themselves as the pre-eminent spiritual and cultural guardians over every sphere of New Zealand society and endeavour, including the natural and mechanical worlds.

It was yet another show of soft power given it is only Māori activists who get to officially endorse most public projects by offering their cultural and spiritual stamp of approval. 

It is evident the authorities in charge of the expensive rail project have decided that every Aucklander — whether they are Catholic, Anglican, Muslim, Jewish, Taoist, Buddhist or atheist — belongs to the Northern Diocese of the High Church of Treatyism. 

Treatyism arises from an interpretation of the Treaty as a “partnership between races”, as the 1987 Lands Case judges described it. That view provides the basis for co-governance that gives Māori tribes the opportunity to insert themselves into a range of enterprises — no matter how remote their connection or usefulness — as “partners”.

Act has identified Treatyism as “New Zealand’s new religion” with particular requirements for salvation. In a recent newsletter, it wrote: “Colonisation was the original sin, but if you wear the adornments around your neck, practise the rituals before your meetings, and smite non-believers as ‘racist’ then, maybe, you will be saved.”

CRL Ltd has certainly gone out of its way to “practise the rituals” of Māori religion and fully show off the “adornments” of Māori wonderfulness. The $5.5 billion publicly funded subterranean network has become a shrine to animistic spirituality — with the dawn ritual merely an amuse-bouche in an ongoing religious feast.  

City Rail Link tells us: “Three of the CRL stations are designed around the creation story with Ranginui (the sky father) and Papatūānuku (the earth mother), while Karanga-a-Hape Station’s design also references their son, Tāne Mahuta, God of the forest, who pushed his parents apart to create light (day).

“The gifted station names Maungawhau, Karanga-a-Hape, Te Waihorotiu and Waitematā reflect the mythology, atua [gods], people and aspects of early life indigenous to the landscapes.”

We also learn that “the [Maungawhau] station’s entrance wall is patterned precast concrete from floor to ceiling with basalt inserts. The giant wall design references the atua (deity) Mataoho, the creator of the basalt volcanic field in Tāmaki Makaurau.”

According to matauranga Māori experts, basalt, like every other animate and inanimate form, has “mauri” (life force or vital essence) flowing through it:

The CRL website notes: “In the Māori worldview, all natural and physical elements of the world are related through whakapapa (genealogy) and each is controlled and safeguarded through spiritual beings. All living things have mauri. The protection of mauri is essential.”

Science rejected animism and vitalism a long time ago and we can all be grateful that the physical safety of passengers doesn’t rely on traditional Māori “knowledge” and spirituality being taken seriously by the CRL’s engineers and tunnellers.

As it happens, the extensive Maorification of the train network is the culmination of a political project that was started 14 years ago.

CRL says it has had “a longstanding partnership with our Mana Whenua Forum which began in the early stages of the project in 2012. Part of the purpose of this partnership is to ensure Māoritanga is intrinsically woven through the essence of CRL at every stage.”

However, there are some inconvenient facts in the push to impose Māoritanga on Aucklanders. 

In his defence of Auckland Council spending $1.38 million on two bronze artworks by Māori artists positioned outside Te Waihorotiu station in Victoria St, councillor Richard Hills claimed Auckland is a “Māori city”.

Unfortunately, the 2023 Census figures don’t support his contention. Only 12.3 per cent of the Auckland region’s population is Māori, compared to 50 per cent European and 30 per cent Asian. 

Auckland is overwhelmingly a European-Asian city.

Undeterred, the authorities have decided that the information signs in the stations should have Māori words in bigger and heavier type than the English — and precede the words in the only language that virtually every person born here understands.

Thus “Ararewa” appears above “Lift”; “Putanga” before “Way Out”; and “Pārongo” before “Information”.

Yet they will be fully aware that only a tiny proportion of Aucklanders — and virtually no tourists — will be able to understand the words in Māori and will need to look for the English term, in smaller type, following them.

Like Latin in a traditional Catholic Mass, it is of no importance to the tribal clerisy whether passengers understand what the words mean. It is simply an assertion of the Māori elite’s power.

As a further way of asserting the dominance of Māori nationalists and language revitalists over transport policy, two of the train stations which already had well-established English names have been retitled.

Britomart Station — named after Point Britomart, a former coastal headland that honoured the British Royal Navy ship HMS Britomart, which first surveyed the Waitematā Harbour in 1841 —  has become “Waitematā”.

Mt Eden Station has been renamed “Maungawhau”.

It’s worth remarking that the “decolonisation” of the stations has meant a clean sweep of Māori names rather than two of the four remaining in English. This is a particular kind of “partnership”, which in effect means iwi saying: “Let’s compromise. Let’s do it our way!”

Auckland Transport’s explanation of why it “incorporated te reo Māori across its transport network” is a blatantly political manifesto:

“Te reo Māori in public spaces is essential for a thriving Māori identity in Tāmaki Makaurau. Since 2016, there has been a concerted effort by Auckland Transport (AT) to make the transport network bilingual. This began with bilingual announcements on trains, and has continued to include passenger wayfinding and bus services.

“In the last few years we’ve seen the presence of te reo Māori in our public spaces increase substantially — not just in Tāmaki Makaurau but across Aotearoa. These new [CRL] station names are part of AT’s commitment to ensuring te reo Māori is seen, heard, spoken and learned across our network.”

Anyone who still thinks the entire role of the transport agency is to provide efficient and safe ferries, buses and trains is clearly mistaken. AT has taken upon itself the task of providing compulsory language lessons to a captive audience when, according to the 2023 Census, only 2.6 per cent of Aucklanders understand te reo.

Perhaps the most preposterous aspect of CRL’s publicity campaign to manufacture a significant role for Māori in the new network is the “Waka Train”.

The company commissioned graphic artists to show a waka  morphing into a train carriage barrelling along the tracks. The tenuous link postulated between a canoe and a train is that where Britomart Station stands used to be water before the land was reclaimed. The image apparently “depicts the change from a traditional waka to a modern equivalent: a train”.

In fact, there is no obvious evolution between a canoe and a train given the former doesn’t have wheels because Māori never got around to inventing them.

The most pertinent link would be the evolution from a 19^th Century steam locomotive billowing clouds of smoke from its smokestack — like the ones on Auckland’s first railway line between the CBD and Onehunga, which officially opened on December 20, 1873 — to a sleek, modern, electric train.

However, highlighting that development would presumably be a tacit admission that colonisation brought vastly superior land-based transport to New Zealand.

Unsurprisingly, the long collaboration between CRL and the Mana Whenua Forum is only the beginning of the panel’s ambitions. It has decided a case study of the relationship will “provide a framework for future large infrastructure developments to enter into mana whenua iwi partnerships for the benefit of all”.

• The CRL opens on September 13.

Graham Adams is a freelance editor, journalist and columnist. He lives on Auckland’s North Shore.