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Wednesday, January 3, 2024

Tony Orman: Cabinet Minister Doug Graham had it wrong - anyone can love rivers/mountains


Former National government Treaty Minister in the 1990s Doug Graham once said that “Maori had spiritual feelings for lakes and mountains and rivers that Pakeha people neither shared nor understood.”

I would be surprised if Doug Graham had much to do with the outdoors and particularly with trout or salmon fishing and just going with the flow out there with the river. But those “spiritual feelings” he attributes exclusively to Maori are wrong and arguably racist.

No full-blooded Maori

Besides what exactly is a Maori? There are no full blooded Maoris in 2023 according to most people, although I understand there may be a very few. Certainly many of those involved in Maori advocacy have a minority of Maori ethnicity. It is said Sir Tipene (Stephen) O’Regan for example is only 1/16th Maori. So when Doug Graham talks of Maori’s “spiritual feelings for lakes, mountains and rivers” is he saying that Tipene O’Regan’s 15/16th European heritage has no emotional attachment to lakes, mountains and rivers, but the 1/16th Maori heritage does?

When I go trout fishing, I don’t have to catch a trout to have a great day on the river. I can sit there beside the river and just mentally merge with the current flow, the mountains and the fresh air. Yet I have no Maori bloodlines.

‘Maori’ friends

I have closely associated with some New Zealanders with strong Maori heritage. The late Ted Bason, life member of the Nelson–Marlborough Fish and Game, was a very close friend and confidant, a man I deeply respected and trusted totally. He was of strong Maori lineage. We fished together. I have had other friends with Maori bloodlines in rugby days and on other trout fishing and deerstalking trips.

“Spiritual feelings” to do with rivers, mountains and lakes can be felt by anyone, regardless of ethnic background.

In earlier times, noted historian Michael King rightly challenged Treaty Minister Doug Graham’s racial claim and would have none of the racial exclusivity to the felt emotion and renewal. In fact he laid claim to the emergence of an analogous Pakeha spirituality.

“Such a feeling among Pakeha people is now widely shared and as our Pakeha culture puts down even deeper roots into the soil of this country and as those roots become more hallowed by the passage of time, those feelings will become more intense.”

Pioneer Emotions

But then did the first European pioneers have that spiritual appreciation of lakes, mountains and rivers? Perhaps it never had to “emerge”, as Michael King suggested, because it already was there among the first and subsequent waves of English settlers arriving in New Zealand?
After all, the European pioneers must have had strong attachment to fishing rivers for almost immediately they set about releasing trout into rivers, streams and lakes and instilling into new laws, in line with the egalitarian society they wished to set up in the new colony, the right of all regardless of wealth or ethnic background, to go fishing.

Thus both the Fisheries and Wildlife Acts prohibited the selling of fishing, hunting or shooting rights. In doing so, the pioneers had shed the feudal system of the Home country where the right to catch a trout or salmon or stalk a deer, was by dint of access fees, the preserve of the wealthy upper class.

A River Never Sleeps

One trout fishing writer whose prose captured the feelings of being as one with a river was Roderick Haig-Brown. Few men know rivers so intimately and fondly as did Roderick. No one, before or after 17th century author of The Compleat Angler. Izaak Walton, has written of these long and deep-running friendships more lyrically, more eloquently, than Haig-Brown in his wonderful book. A River Never Sleeps. And why not recollect Roderick Haig-Brown’s expression of that spiritual attachment to rivers that anyone may experience and develop?

Roderick Haig-Brown, an Englishman by birth who emigrated to Canada, wrote, “A river is water in its loveliest form; rivers have life and sound and movement and an infinity of variation, rivers are veins of the earth through which the life blood returns to the heart.”

Rivers are veins of the earth through which the life blood returns to the heart. One may love a river as soon as one sets eyes upon it; it may have certain features that fit instantly with one’s conception of beauty, or it may recall the qualities of some other river, well known and deeply loved. One may feel in the same way an instant affinity for a man or a woman and know that here is pleasure and warmth and the foundation of deep friendship. In either case the full riches of the discovery are not immediately released–they cannot be; only knowledge and close experience can release them.

Rivers, I suppose, are not at all like human beings, but it is still possible to make apt comparisons; and this is one: understanding, whether instinctive and immediate or developing naturally through time or grown by conscious effort, is a necessary preliminary to love.”

Inevitable Love

“Understanding of another human being can never be complete, but as it grows toward completeness, it becomes love almost inevitably. One cannot know intimately all the ways and movements of a river without growing into love of it. And there is no exhaustion to the growth of love through knowledge, whether the love be for a person or a river, because the knowledge can never become complete.

One can come to feel in time that the whole is within one’s compass, not yet wholly and intimately known, but there for the knowing, within the last little move of reaching; but there will always be something ahead, something more to know.”

His favourite two rivers were the Campbell and the Nimpkish, both on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. But the Campbell was his favourite. “The Campbell is the simpler river of the two, easier to know and understand for all those reasons. Nimpkish is more wonderful, more impressive, more beautiful; but Campbell – and not simply because I live within sight and sound of her – is the better of the two to love.”

Tony Orman (MNZIS) is a Marlborough-based author, conservationist, journalist and former town and country planner. - This article was first published HERE

16 comments:

DeeM said...

It's just more faux-cultural nonsense claims to try and grab as many natural resources for themselves.
The Maori elite I'm talking about here. And it's got little or nothing to do with spiritual connection, but everything to do with wealth and power. Three Waters is the perfect example of that.

Labour and the Greens swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Just like one of Tony's trouts!
Now they're filleted and cooking in the pan. You'll need plenty of lemon and a nice crisp white wine to take away the taste of bitter defeat, though.

John S said...

Most of us have an affinity with nature whatever that may mean to each of us. What most of us do believe though is that we don't have rights to assert our views and feelings for nature over those of others. The fact that some do believe they have that right through some vague connection to the past is delusional, arrogant and self-serving.

CXH said...

It must be this affinity with the land that made them burn so much of the bush down on arrival. This same affinity that makes them want to cover land with pine that will stifle any native flora and fauna.

If only we all cared so much we could live in a barren wasteland.

EP said...

Thank you, Tony. Very well said indeed - although as one who had to go fishing on the Clutha with Dad every weekend in the season, I prefer tramping in the mountains, or waking in the bush. This racial division is abhorrent.

Robert Arthur said...

That many colonist descendants have a great love for and attachment to the land is very evident from Country Calendar. Judging from those observed illegally dumping during the inorganic collections, presumably the same do so in the country, not a sign of love of the land. Local maori claim great affinity for Lake Horowhenua yet a few years ago they rendered it an eyesore by mining the boulder bed. When tramping maori are far outnumbered by others, including oversea's visitors, who have great regard for the undespoiled country.

Anonymous said...

Mr Graham - just another politician responsible for and/or cheerleading the apartheid situation we find ourselves in today.

Anonymous said...

Dead right DeeM. Some folk can talk themselves into believing anything that suits. Also Māori cannot possibly presume to know how non- Māori think or feel and impose their world view on us surely? Ha ha.

Anonymous said...

It is absolutely BS for the watered down Maori elites to claim a superior guardianship over any of New Zealands wonderful resources. It's high time this hypocracy is taken down, exposed for what it is. The claim that a baby yet to be born with a trace of this Maori wonderfulness is going to be superior to a baby to be born on the same day without this trace, is condemning NZ to a troubled future. Peter

Terry Morrissey said...

"Now they're filleted and cooking in the pan. You'll need plenty of lemon and a nice crisp white wine to take away the taste of bitter defeat, though."
I'm afraid DeeM that it would take far more than a few condiments to remove the toxicity of the greens/labour cult.

hughvane said...

Can you modify the heading of your meritorious piece to, "anyone can love ... and have broad affinity with ... rivers/mountains.

As one who spent over fifty years in a small coastal community - and I do not have a shred of Maori blood in me - seldom did I find such spiritual connection as I did in that time.

Maori do not hold exclusive rights to an affinity, or one-ness, with the land and sea.

Anonymous said...


For this pseudo-cultural twaddle, one got a knighthood......

Let ordinary hard-working, non-racist NZers rise up........Enough!

Kawena said...

If everyone with Maori ancestry in this country were for this tribal twaddle, living in New Zealand would be untenable! Many are embarrassed by it. If this was an orchestra playing a symphony, my Maori mates would not want to hear a bar of it. Maori are not the only people who have an affinity with a river. Speaking of rivers and orchestras, you might like to "see" Bedrich Smetana's The Moldau, by the Gimnazije Kranj Orchestra, conducted by Nejc Becan. It is 15 minutes of a river in its many moods which is pure majesty.
Kevan

Anonymous said...

good one. please do constellations next :)

MC said...

Doug "Lombard" Graham had a greater spiritual connection with bullshit than anything else.

Anonymous said...

You’d think lots of Māori would want to be living in a roupo hut by the lake getting spiritual. No?. Could be done in the Urewera’s?

Anonymous said...

I have no Maori DNA. There was a place I had a deep spiritual engagement with and my family had been there for many years. Then fake Maori came along set up a tourist business and screwed it over. I no longer visit.

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