Ae Marika! 7 May 2013

Posted on May 7, 2013 by admin in Ae Marika

Funerals are solemn occasions because they represent the passing away of loved ones, and here in the far north we’ve had a few lately of some very well-respected kaumatua and kuia, a couple of them in their mid 90’s. The lives they lived, the things they saw, the people they knew and the changes they had to deal with are almost impossible to contemplate. From a time before power to the iphone5, when people travelled by horse and cart to now when people are planning trips to Mars, and I can watch a boy from Kaitaia reporting from London while I type this article on my laptop in Waimanoni, the world has changed forever.

And those kaumatua and kuia – their knowledge, their histories, their reo, their loves, their fears, their hopes and their deepest thoughts, have gone with them and we are sadder for their passing and for our loss.

And gone with them of course is Parekura Horomia, shearer, East Coast rugby player, printer, labourer, Labour Department employee, Head of the Group Employment Liaison Service and the Community Employment Group, and for the last 25 years the Labour Party MP for Ikaroa Rawhiti, including a stint as Minister of Maori Affairs.

I first met Parekura some 25 years ago when I saw this big Maori guy stranded at the Road Services bus stop in Kaitaia. My whanaunga “Jeb” Brown had forgotten to pick him up so I brought him back to our place for the night and dropped him off to Jeb in the morning. Lucky too, ‘cause a couple of years later he repaid the favour by giving me a job!

Parekura was infuriatingly hard to tie down, dismissive of bureaucratic entanglements, impossible to understand (in Maori and in English), quick to anger and quicker to laugh, and possessed of the most unscientific personnel procedures I have ever seen.

At one time Parekura would have had the greatest collection of unqualified people ever employed by one government department, people that many others wouldn’t have even given an interview, and yet he was able to get the best out of people and push them to do things they wouldn’t have thought possible. He was bold enough to back his team’s decisions and ferociously protective when the bean counters and policy anal-ysts wanted to sack everyone and close down the projects we ran.

His parliamentary activities are a matter of public record, and although we had huge differences on a number of issues, I always knew that the next day we could have a feed together.

Parekura had a turn over Christmas and I tried, along with other Maori MPs, to get him to give away the politics but he wouldn’t listen. When I got home from overseas last Sunday and heard he was sick I jumped on the first plane Monday afternoon but by the time I got to his home in Mangatuna, he’d passed away.

His tangi was like the man himself – big, boisterous, sad and humorous, heaps of kai, heaps of korero, and heaps of good memories.

Parekura never ever changed from the guy I first met down on Redan Road – humble, funny and warm-hearted – and I suspect when he catches up with our kaumatua and kuia on the long journey to Hawaiki, he’ll win them over as well.

AE MARIKA is an article written every week by Hone Harawira, leader of the MANA Movement and Member of Parliament for Te Tai Tokerau. You are welcome to use any of the comments and to ascribe them to Mr Harawira. The full range of Hone’s articles can be found on the MANA website at www.mana.net.nz.