Indigenous communities along New Zealand’s long coastline are feeling the double whammy of climate change and colonialism as extreme weather makes marginal land uninhabitable.
Eight months after a destructive cyclone hit New Zealand, Maori communities such as this one in the Tangoio Valley are still clearing away piles of silt from ruined fields. TANGOIO, New Zealand — The wharenui, or meeting house, stood forlorn. Usually the hub of this remote Maori community, it had been stripped of its wooden carvings. The bare cinder block shell gave the building an unclothed appearance. Wind whistled through holes bashed out by floodwaters.
“Some of these marae don’t have any other land if you take them off that flood plain,” said Bayden Barber, chairman of Ngati Kahungunu, the main Maori tribe in the region. Relocated by force during colonial times, climate change is forcing another kind of relocation on Tangoio. Experts call it “managed retreat.”When the storm struck Tangoio in February, Reti was trapped as a wall of water approached like a freight train. He huddled with his wife in the pitch dark. Somehow, trees uprooted by the storm piled up like a dam behind their home, parting the floodwaters around them.
Bickle, who has clashed with tribal officials over relocation proposals, understands the quandary. “We’ve come in and said there’s an intolerable risk to life and you shouldn’t be living there,” he said. “And they’re saying: ‘Who is going to help us find a piece of land that is safe?’”
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