A piece of land can sit idle – grass overgrown, with empty tombstones slowly sinking back into the earth – vacant for generations, until one member of the kopu tangata or matakeinanga decides to awaken it and potentially build upon it, writes Thomas Tarurongo Wynne.

The flurry of activity stirs even our tūpuna, who have rested quietly on the land, until the commotion of this generation – and the arguments that inevitably follow – cause them to rise.

We may no longer draw blood from those we disagree with, or force one party to venture out beyond the reef and build elsewhere, over the horizon. Yet it seems our migratory DNA continues to echo this, as we count almost 10 people living beyond the reef for every one person remaining in the Cook Islands.

Perhaps it’s the activity around marae and Palace, the large umu pits and the weaving of rourou, that awakens us again – drawing us into the uriuri’anga manako of dissent, dispute, and disagreement. But is this who we are as a people? Have we woven, within the moenga of our identity, threads of disagreement alongside those of agreement? Did our tūpuna weave cords of dispute and hotly contested ideas beside the tau and noa of unity, coming together, and taokotaianga?

From Tangiia’s dispute with his brother, to Ariki titles, to Ngaputoru and Rongomatane, to Marouna and his warriors – land and the ownership of land have always been fiercely contested. We have become well accustomed to the visceral experience of reaching for our momore and korare, and going to war –even with those we love and call family.

But must the courts always be where these disputes are settled? Is there not another way?

For close to 125 years, we have operated under a system that, at first, we hardly understood – a system introduced by colonial powers to survey, section, number, and name lands that once existed within the collective care of Mataiapo, matakeinanga, kopu tangata, and Ariki. These lands fed us, clothed us, nourished and protected us – waterways and wells providing all we needed to survive and thrive.

Land kept us at a distance from the sometimes-marauding moana, and at times, marauding people – our ancestors living within the safety of the Ara Metua, the ancient road we now simply call the “back road”. This didn’t mean we were strangers to dispute. On the contrary, we went to war over land. Ngāti, Mataiapo, and tribes owned, distributed, and were placed on lands to show their allegiance and support for specific Mataiapo and Ariki. We are Ngāti Teava in Tupapa Maraerenga, Ngāti Kaena in Puaikura, and Ngāti Ingati in Enuamanu.

Our identity is directly tied – toketoke enua and pito enua – to distinct lands, tribal names, and genealogical legacies. But the arrival of Resident Commissioner (Walter) Gudgeon and a foreign land tenure system fractured that identity. It divided our lands and families into fragments – fragments now contested through adversarial court cases, lawyers’ fees, unscrupulous land agents, and misinformation.

It is an imported system that leaves so much land idle – abandoned by absentee landowners, fenced off as monuments to disagreement. Waterways are blocked, and land tenure disrupted – by our own greed, by natural cycles out of balance, and by our failure to steward the soil and the once-pristine lagoons.

It is not climate change alone – it is human action that has sickened our land and oceans. And it is our commodification of land, reduced to dollars and cents, that has further poisoned our toketoke. We tell others we are deeply connected to land and ocean as Māori – yet we allow the tonnes of waste we and 175,000 tourists create to leach into our water table, our land, and our lagoon. The coral is gone. So too are the fish. Waterways have been filled in for Airbnb’s, and another burger joint opens its doors.

Is there a better way? Absolutely – but it will take all of us to shift that vaka again.

And finally, can we be the village we tell others we are? Not just for our land and ocean, but for each other. Or will we continue to leave the elderly to care for themselves, the sick and infirm to fly – if they can – to New Zealand, the mentally ill to prison, or as in one tragic case, a 15-year-old incarcerated because we had no better option?

Courts will make their decisions. But the court of public opinion, the court of natural justice, and the court of God will render their judgments too.

Also read: Court injunction halts investiture on ancestral Makea Nui lands

> Historical judgments, customary law, and ongoing disputes surrounding the Makea Nui Ariki Title