Activist Radicalized Maori

Peter Kitchin
The Dominion Post
Thursday, 6 September 2007

Syd Jackson, activist. Born Hastings, 1939; died (cancer) Auckland, September 3, 2007; aged 68.

Syd Jackson rattled conventions about the status of Maori, and did his level best to ensure the Treaty of Waitangi got on to the political national agenda and stayed there.

Any number of political figures can claim to have smoothed the treaty's path, but it's very likely that without his brand of advocacy it would still be a dusty historic remnant having more to do with Hobson's choice than its guarantees.

Mr Jackson was involved in the Maori rights movement for more than 40 years, during which the role of Maori in society switched from compliant assimilation to a sweeping renaissance, including a level of Treaty-levered sovereignty in language and growth in tribal-based business.

Mr Jackson was an important instrument of that change, and it required considerable courage to stay the course given the extent of the oppostion.

He was the son of 1937 All Black Everard Jackson and his wife Hineaka, and was raised in circumstances that were not always easy. For much of his young years he grew up with his brothers and sister in the shadow of the Whakatu freezing works near Hastings, where many of his whanau worked.

His dad, who had lost a leg in World War II, was a struggler and his mother worked for years in the Birdseye food plant at Hastings.

Money was raised to ensure Mr Jackson got what was known as a proper education, and he was sent to Nelson College..

The school gave him tools to study political science at university. He began with law studies, but by his own account stumbled into political science. By the time he had an Auckland University masters degree under his belt, he had analysed New Zealand's contemporary history, figured out that he had one of his own, a Maori one, and that it had been heavily sanitized.

In interviews about the period, he said he was shocked by the extent to which Maori had been cleverly marginalized. In his view, there was a case for Maori to resume control of their own affairs.

He was not alone in his views. With other young Maori he was instrumental in setting up Nga Tamatoa, an urban protest group which, among other things, became in the 1970s an important conduit for ideas about Maori language rights, sovereignty, and land claims. The group was noisy, smart and, despite its unrestrained zeal, well-grounded.

In the Kiwi context, what it was saying was revolutionary, and it soon attracted a great deal of reaction.

Rednecks, limousine liberals and even Maori leaders were outraged. Nga Tamatoa was vilified. When Mr Jackson went to Libya with an Australian aboriginal delegation in 1988, he received death threats, and more when he was critical of Maori sports "collaborators". Opposition and marginalization, however, brought solidarity.

If the style of Nga Tamatoa's politicking and its analysis had a touch of dialectic materialism, it was no accident. Mr Jackson had a solid grounding in the union movement, where organization was critical.

For 17 years till 1989 he was an organizer and secretary of the Northern Clerical Workers' Union, and for a time a member of the Socialist Unity Party.

For a decade he worked as a workers' advocate, but remained offside with the government. Many Maori thought he was a sitter for the new Employment Relations Authority in 2000, but officialdom discarded their views. For Mr Jackson, it was par for the course.

Despite his radicalism, he had an important attribute - he could bridge the cultural divide with ease. In Pakeha terms, he was handsome and eminently presentable. In Maori terms, it mattered as well - that and the fluency of his ideas and his unwavering commitment.

In recent years, he established Turuki Healthcare as a pioneering organization to deliver affordable and accessible healthcare for the people of South Auckland. He was also chairperson of Te Kupenga o Hoturoa - the first Maori-sponsored primary health organization - and a director of Te Roopu Huihuinga Hauora.

Mr Jackson was of Ngati Porou and Ngati Kahungunu descent. His wife, Hana Te Hemara, predeceased him. He is survived by Deirdre Nehua and their children.