Trauma, dislocation, pollution: why Maori leaders want control of the South Island's water

New Zealand's booming dairy industry has polluted 95% of rivers in pastoral land - now Maori are taking the government to court On the eve of their tribe's settlement with the crown, Gabrielle Huria and Te Maire Tau walked out on to the cracked, dry earth of Tutaepatu lagoon's bed.The lagoon's edges, once thick with flax, had been choked by imported weed, spiralling blackberry and English willow. The streams that fed it had been giving up their waters to irrigate the surrounding dairy farms and having them returned in a swill of effluent. Finally, they had run dry. On the far shoreline was the place where the tribe used to give up their dead to the mud, lowering them into its dark, hidden reaches along the waterline. Now the mud had baked to concrete, cracked and cratered like a desert. On its surface, thousands of tuna, the native eels so valued by the tribe, lay dead or dying in the sun, their smell mingling with that of the drying silt. Above them, birds were circling - so large that Tau thought for a moment he was seeing eagles. But they were only hawks, fat from so much carrion. Continue reading...