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Takaparawhau / Bastion Point is a coastal piece of land in Ōrākei, Auckland, New Zealand, overlooking the Waitematā Harbour. The area is significant in New Zealand history as the site of protests in the late 1970s by Māori against forced land alienation by Pākehā (European settlers). [1]
Bastion Point. Events In History. 1 July 1988. Bastion Point land returned. The government announced that it had agreed to the Waitangi Tribunal’s recommendation that Takaparawhā (Bastion Point) on the southern shore of Auckland’s Waitematā Harbour be returned to local iwi Ngāti Whātua. Read more... 25 May 1978. Bastion Point protesters evicted.
Led by Joe Hawke, the Ōrākei Māori Action Committee occupied Takaparawhā (Bastion Point reserve), a promontory overlooking Auckland’s Waitematā Harbour. Ngāti Whātua maintained the land had been unjustly taken from them and were angered by plans to subdivide it for a private housing development.
The Bastion Point occupation became one of the most famous protest actions in New Zealand history. Ten years later the Waitangi Tribunal supported Māori claims to the land, and the government accepted this finding.
On 25 May this year, it will be 45 years since police and army personnel invaded Takaparawhau, Bastion Point, and arrested more than 200 people. Led by Joe Hawke and the Ōrākei Māori Action Committee, the protesters were there to uphold the rights of Ngāti Whātua to their land.
The 700-acre Ōrākei block, known today as Te Whenua Rangatira, has its eastern boundary at Kohimarama (Bastion) Point. It extends across to Takaparawhau pā, then up to Pokanoa pā and across to Paritūtai pā.
It paid $3 million to the hapū, returned land, and set aside Takaparawhau/Bastion Point and Okahu Bay Reserve to be managed by representatives of the hapū and the Auckland Council.
On May 25, 1978, the New Zealand government sent in hundreds of police and army officers to evict protestors at Bastion Point, in what was the largest internal mobilisation in New Zealand’s history.
Politics, harbour views and lush lawns combine on this pretty headland with a chequered history. An elaborate clifftop garden mausoleum honours Michael Joseph Savage (1872–1940), the country’s first Labour prime minister, whose socialist reforms left him adored by the populace.
As a relative newcomer to the Māori world in 1977, I was excited by the Bastion Point occupation, but pretty clueless. I remember going into the Māori Studies Department of Victoria University — it must have been in March that year — to see the secretary, the redoubtable Mere Te Awa.
