The Bastion Point occupation

The Ngāti Whātua chief Āpihai Te Kawau signed the Treaty of Waitangi at Manukau Harbour on 20 March 1840, after inviting Lieutenant-Governor William Hobson to live in Auckland. Te Ara records that Ngāti Whātua then sold 3,000 acres to the Crown for cash and goods worth £341, and that six months later the Crown sold 44 acres at public auction for £24,275; Wikipedia describes the transfer as a 'strategic gift' of 3,500 acres for the new capital. By 1850 most of the tribe's accessible land in Auckland was gone. What remained was the Ōrākei block, which the Native Land Court had declared 'absolutely inalienable'. The reserve was gradually reduced by compulsory acquisition, leaving Ngāti Whātua ki Ōrākei holding less than 1 hectare. In 1886 the Crown used the Public Works Act 1882 to take 13 acres of Bastion Point for defence. In 1941, when the Crown no longer needed Bastion Point for defence, it gave the land to Auckland City Council for a reserve instead of returning it. In the early 1950s the last inhabitants of the village at Ōkahu Bay were evicted, their houses demolished and their meeting house burned. Te Ara notes that Ngāti Whātua had been at the forefront of action over tribal land loss since 1881, when Paora Tūhaere hosted a pan-national assembly of Māori chiefs at Kohimarama.

In 1976 the Crown announced plans to sell Bastion Point land for high-income housing. On 5 January 1977, two days before construction was due to start, Joe Hawke and the Ōrākei Māori Action Committee occupied Takaparawhau (Bastion Point), a promontory overlooking the Waitematā Harbour. Ngāti Whātua maintained that the land had been unjustly taken from them. The government said the land had been sold to the Crown; Hawke replied that it had not been sold but confiscated under public works law. In April 1977 a disused warehouse was re-erected on the site as Arohanui Marae, but facilities were rudimentary and in winter the exposed promontory was a bleak place to live. The occupiers built housing and grew crops. In February 1978 the government offered to return some land and houses to Ngāti Whātua if the iwi paid $200,000 in development costs. The occupiers stayed put. The occupation took place while the new Waitangi Tribunal could investigate only present-day claims, although most alienations of Māori land had happened much earlier.

On 25 May 1978, 506 days after the occupiers arrived, a large force of police supported by the army moved in to end the occupation. Te Ara and Wikipedia put the number of police at 800. NZHistory says 222 protesters were arrested; its summary of events in 1978 says 218 protesters were removed. The buildings on the site, including the marae, were demolished. The eviction was filmed for television, and Te Ara notes that media coverage of the protest raised awareness among New Zealanders of Māori grievances over land. The occupation became, in Wikipedia's words, a major landmark in the history of Māori protest. The same year Eva Rickard led a protest against the loss of Tainui Āwhiro land at Raglan.

When the Waitangi Tribunal was given power in 1985 to hear claims dating back to 1840, Hawke's Ōrākei claim was the first historical claim to be heard. The tribunal's 1987 report found in favour of the claimants. It recommended that land, including Bastion Point, be returned to Ngāti Whātua in tribal ownership, with Bastion Point to remain public open space administered jointly by Ngāti Whātua and Auckland City Council. It also recommended an award of $3 million, the first cash payment recommended as part of a treaty settlement. The government accepted all the recommendations and agreed the following year to return the land. In 1991 the Ōrākei Act was passed to recognise the rights of Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei under the treaty. At dawn on 1 January 2000, more than 15,000 people gathered at Ōkahu Bay to welcome the waka Māhuhu-ki-te-rangi into the bay from which, 50 years earlier, the tribe had been evicted. In 2011 Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei settled its historical treaty claims for a total of $18 million.