Peace walkers at Pokeno

Press, 30 January 1984, Page 8

Peace walkers at Pokeno

PA Hamilton Hundreds of Treaty of Waitangi protest walkers yesterday left Huntly’s Waahi marae on the second stage of the hikoi (peace walk) to Waitangi. After an en masse walk from Ngaruawahia . to Huntly on Saturday, they split into groups along tribal district lines for yesterday’s stage. Each tribal group of several dozen people walked on its own section of the road to Pokeno, just south of the Bombay Hills, before being ferried to Pokeno for a

mass lunch and discussions. From Pokeno the walkers were ferried in vehicles to Tuakau, where they were to spend last night on a Tuakau marae. This morning they are to be ferried back to Pokeno for the next stage to Mangere. About 400 people started from Ngaruawahia on Saturday. Some dropped out while others joined in as the walk progressed. The beat of a Red Indian drum accompanied the walkers as they poured out of Ngaruawahia’s Turan-

gawaewae marae just after noon. The organising Kotahitanga (unity council) President, Mrs Eva Rickard, admitted, “I had a big tangi (cry), didn’t I?” as the protest she has long worked for finally hit the road. “An old man came up to me and said in Maori, ‘lt is blooming now,’ and I burst into tears,” she said as she brought up the rear with a group of other black-clad Kuia (old women). The protesters were bidden farewell from Turangawaewae at a long cere-

mony and church service attended by more than 1000 people. A feature of the ceremony was a speech and song by Chief Larry Anderson, of the Dine nation of North America, who had been invited to join the hikoi on behalf of North America’s Red Indians’ organisation, the International Indian Treaty Coalition. Chief Anderson was one of the first protesters out the gates beating his drum as men chanted and a Turangawaewae kuia called a farewell karanga.