Saturday, July 21, 2007

The Ngatihine land dispute history and the media

Kia ora koutou katoa
I apologise for not being present at the PMC workshop but have been in Wellington for my address, last night at Te Papa and research today at the NZ Film Archive.
I am very pleased to be carrying out a research project under the auspices of the Pacific Media Centre/CIRI/AUT and wish to acknowledge the invaluable encouragement and support of Drs David Robie and Geraldene Peters in bringing
this about.
The Ngatihine Land/Forestry dispute of the mid-late 1970s saw a confrontation between two groups on a very uneven playing field. The imposing power of state judicial and bureaucratic agencies allied with big business was ranged against a very scattered and disorganised group of Maori landowners in the contest for control over 5514 hectares of Maori land in Northland.
Yet, against all the odds, the Maori shareholders concerned succeeded in parrying this attempt at sequestrating their property rights. The research proposal involves utilising documentary records to show how this issue was played out in the media and what effect this might have had on the final outcome.
The material at the my disposal comprises original press releases, numerous newspaper clippings, one TV2 News item transcript and a set of telephone logs kept continuously by the writer between April 1977 and May 1982 (with an additional period May-December 1983)
An adjunct to this resource will be documents kept by my late uncle, Graham Alexander, which may contain further material and the video documentation of aspects of this dispute made by the videomaker Darcy Lange, with whom I collaborated at the time.
A journey will be made to the locality of the forestry block in the mid-North where I will update my photographic record of it and visit surviving participants and record their recollections of events.
A report will be produced drawing all this material together and as the project proceeds, thought will be given to the output platform but it will be a combination of hard copy and electronic methods.
The Ngatihine legal dispute has a significant place in Maori land law but over the last 30 years has become a forgotten event. It would be valuable or both the younger generation of landowners and for scholars and others interested in this field to have some clear documentation of this period – just to show that a disadvantaged group can utilse the media to achieve a
positive outcome, for it. It will be of particular interest (and hopefully use) to the present Ngati-Hine Forestry Trust (these days, a very successful enterprise) whose own website contains no documentation relating to its
genesis.
Kia ora ano
John Miller
Photojournalist
Auckland

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Awesome work

Sounds like fantastic events at the PMC. Keep up the awesome work.

Ruth DeSouza
Centre Co-ordinator/Senior Research Fellow Centre for Asian and Migrant Health Research
National Institute for Public Health and Mental Health Research
AUT University
www.aut-camhr.ac.nz

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Saharawi media advocate to visit


Malainan Lakhal, secretary-general of the Saharawi Journalists and Writers Union, will be speaking on self-determination in Western Sahara at the Pacific Media Centre next week (Monday, July 23, PMC-CIRI, 24 St Paul St, AUT University). He has received a very good response from the media in Australia, reports on his tour can be seen on the union website, and if you go to the home page, it is a good source for hard news on the region.
A donation appeal is being made to help cover the costs of his visit. WILPF has kindly agreed to hold donations on behalf of Lakhal's visit. Cheques can be made payable to WILPF.
NZ Western Sahara Group
Auckland

Great stories

PMC is a fantastic project and has some great stories. Please keep up the good work.
Simon Oosterman
Publicity Officer
National Distribution Union
Auckland, NZ

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Training in diversity reporting

(Emailed 20 June 2007)
I found Ali Bell’s coverage of Arlene Morgan perceptive and thoughtful – until I got to the quote from me and the query about what I meant.
Ali Bell is surely being disingenuous. My meaning (I thought) was clear enough – train journalists in diversity reporting as they enter the occupation and make change from the bottom-up (as well as approaching the problem of patchy diversity reporting from the top-down).
I devote a lot of my time at the Journalists Training Organisation (JTO) working at these issues. Comments like Bell’s are understandable, I guess, since to her I probably represent the big bad media. Of course, I see myself as a facilitator working for positive change. Hopefully, any changes the JTO can make will eventually convince cynics like Ms Bell that not everyone is blind to the iniquities of what is happening.
Jim Tucker
Executive Director
NZ Journalists Training Organisation
Wellington
Ali Bell – BroadsWord: Seeking the ‘other’ voices of the nation