The Toitū te Tiriti hīkoi reached Auckland on Wednesday, seeing thousands cross the Harbour Bridge and walk around the coast to Bastion Point. Lyric Waiwiri-Smith shares a personal account of a day joining them.

Atop Bastion Point, a crowd of red, black and white gathered at the end of what we’ve been told is a history-making moment. Some thousands of us had made the 13.5km walk here as part of the Toitū te Tiriti hīkoi, after coming across Auckland’s Harbour Bridge. The movement, though focused on the growing concerns of Māori, has continued to come back to one ache: David Seymour’s controversial Treaty Principles Bill.

According to the prime minister, that bill will never be passed. Nevertheless, the thousands-strong hīkoi has continued from Cape Reinga, where it started on Monday, and will now head down Te Ika-a-Māui to Wellington. The Auckland leg of the rally began at Onepoto Domain on the North Shore on Wednesday morning, before demonstrators took on the Harbour Bridge, then split into two groups, one of which verged off to Bastion Point/Takaparawhā in Ōrākei, the other south to Ihumātao. Many more thousands showed up at these points, and for myriad reasons – they’re pissed off by the coalition government, are continuing the kaupapa from decades past, are simply proud to be Māori or they’re feeling conflicted about their role as tauiwi.

An anxiety that my legs would fail me before I made it to Takaparawhā made fellow protester Herbert Patuone laugh – he’d walked this road before, and further. He was among the thousands who crossed the bridge in 1975 behind Dame Whina Cooper, having followed the Māori land march from Northland, until its end at the parliament buildings in Wellington after 29 days.

“I’ve been an activist my whole life,” he told us, though his kaupapa spoke for itself. Now in his 80s, Patuone smiled as he spoke about watching the work of himself and his tīpuna carried through today’s rangatahi – though governments continue to divide us, we still find a way to come together. He still has hope that New Zealand will see that we don’t have to be Pākehā and Māori, and instead we could perhaps just be people.

Once again, Patuone walked the bridge. He held a framed copy of a Gottfried Lindauer portrait depicting his koro, Ngāpuhi chief Eruera Maihi Patuone, with his life written in a small biography adjacent. Eruera was a peacemaker who had also fought alongside Hongi Hika and Te Rauparaha, consulted British authority on Māori policy and claimed to have been among the Ngāpuhi who watched James Cook’s Endeavour arrive in the Bay of Islands in 1769 (which would have made Eruera over a hundred years old at the time of his death in 1872). Only three generations apart, Eruera and Patuone have witnessed the objection to the creation of the Treaty of Waitangi and the mass mobilisation to protect it against change.

Protesters were let onto the bridge in groups of fewer than 250, to try to control the its famous wobbles. But the wind and people power still had the bridge swaying back and forth, sometimes lightly, and sometimes enough to slightly knock you off your feet. If you looked at your feet or the barrier between the bridge’s outer and inner lanes, you could see the ground beneath you move. So it felt better to look at the signs around instead: “Kill the bill”, “whaka round, find out”, “Seymour, say less”.

There were also the constant honks from the hundreds of cars that passed us. Many waved the tino rangatiratanga flag, others stuck out their thumbs and some threw a mana wave, which were always enthusiastically returned. They represented the many people who clearly support the kaupapa, but thanks to the responsibilities of work, family and, generally, life, their presence was needed somewhere else.

Not everyone who drove by was so happy to see us. One older Pākehā man, with an arm clutching the wheel of his classic car, stuck his other out the window and flashed his middle finger at us for the whole ride across the bridge. Another man who passed us later on Tamaki Drive muttered something about people who must have enough money to waste their time not going to work. I thought about the notification I received on my phone this morning: “your bank account is overdrawn”.

The hīkoi split into two groups at the end of the bridge: one to Bastion Point, another to Ihumātao. From here, the hīkoi found itself chopped into even smaller groups – rather than a grand march, we were hordes of very spread out people, who gained and lost members along the way. 

At Okahu Bay, just before Bastion Point, my friends and I stopped to catch our breath while our feet and legs, coated with rain and sweat, felt like they could seize at any minute. So to keep ourselves focused, we thought of whānau and tīpuna who might be happy to see us see out this hīkoi. I thought of my koro, Alan Taumata, the first Māori man to work in Government House, and my mum, who would probably just tell me to harden up. That made the walk easier.

Two hours after we had come to the end of the bridge we reached Bastion Point, where around a thousand protesters sat on the grass and watched the Toitū te Tiriti organisers be welcomed by Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei. Bodies slouched and lay down, but faces remained hopeful and enthusiastic. Around the corner, you could cut open and slurp some kina.

By 2.30pm, the rally wrapped up. As one, we made our way down Takaparawhā on swollen feet to swollen buses and traffic. The overwhelming feeling, other than exhaustion, was the belief that we had stood for something that protected the memories of our tīpuna and the futures of our mokopuna. And if not, at least we gave a shit about it.

Only a few hours later, a different march began around Auckland. In droves that resembled an inverted version of the hīkoi, thousands made their way through backed up traffic to Eden Park, where they will shout slogans and wear merchandise to demonstrate their love for Coldplay. We are always trying to walk towards something, whether it brings us a moment of catharsis away from life’s broader issues or a moment that makes us feel like we are standing for something bigger than ourselves. Hopefully the destination is something meaningful.