Toby Mills (Ngāti Raukawa, Ngaiterangi) is an award-winning filmmaker with decades of experience both behind and in front of the camera. This year, together with Julian Arahanga, Mills co-directed and co-produced Mana Moana Mana Tangata, a new documentary about the seminal Māori Fisheries Settlement – aka the 1992 “Sealord Deal.”
How did the Mana Moana Mana Tangata documentary come to be?
Well, it’s an interesting journey because Moana NZ is based in Auckland and Te Ohu Kaimoana is based in Wellington and someone from Te Ohu Kaimoana had approached Julian to do a documentary on the fishery settlement, but unbeknownst to them, Moana NZ had approached me to do a documentary on the same subject. We found out that we were both doing the same story so we rang up each other and Julian said, “OK, should we just work together?” We’ve got a really good working relationship, and we had a few hui with all the the main stakeholders and we got ideas for the story. We’re both coming from different styles, backgrounds, perceptions. That was really good because it made us always debate and have discussions around the issues.
But probably more than that, through my previous work around the Treaty settlement space [Wai 262] I knew quite a lot about it. When they approached me to do something based around the fishery settlement or the Sealord Deal, as it’s known, I was very, very, very interested.
What drew you to this particular story?
The timeline of the negotiations and all the characters that were involved – it’s very seminal as one of the first pantribal iwi settlements that led and helped us realise a lot of other other settlements for different iwi. [The Sealord Deal] built capacity and it sort of became like a sounding board and a template for how iwi could negotiate with the Crown around their own tribal settlements. Going down to the marae for your meeting on the Sunday wasn’t gonna cut it anymore. We had to form rūnanga boards. We had to take minutes. It was very important in the time too, because all the shakers and groovers – you know, Matiu Rata, Sir Tipene O’Regan, Bob Mahuta – everyone who was anyone was involved, so it was a pretty exceptional and amazing time and moment in New Zealand history.
Julian and I were pretty in the dark [about fisheries] when we started the project, so what we wanted to really do was bring what is happening today in the Māori fishery. Who are the players working in the industry today? How are Māori still involved in the fishery? Because there’s been a lot of things happen over 35 years; it was important for us to find people who could talk to that story.
How did you balance all the different perspectives?
We didn’t want to make a corporate video – we were very clear on that. We went out and found different fishers who are working in different areas of the fishing sectors in New Zealand, right from recreational to commercial iwi. And then, of course, Sealord themselves as our main players in the industry today.
But also principles around kaitiakitanga were really important to us. How are we going to sustain this resource for our future generations? We need to walk the talk of our ancestors. They can’t just be catchphrases and words; they need to be somehow amalgamated into the heart of the industry.
There’s a lot of people who are still against the fishery settlement. That’s never gonna change. But for us, we wanted to honour the people who had been around at that time and who had seen into the future when the fishery was about to be privatised and said, “I’m sorry, you can’t do this.” They stood up and took the government on – it was a huge responsibility, but it was in that time of renaissance as well within Māoridom on a national and iwi and individual level.
The effort and coordination it took was amazing.
We owe a great deal to those that have come before us, for their resilience, their perseverance, the work that they’ve done. They come from all different walks of life, and they had their own jobs. The negotiations were never a full-time thing. It was always a part-time thing when you could fit it in. So they gave of their time, their energy, to try and put Māori back on the map, to give us some sustenance and some breath of life so that we could revitalise our culture and us as a people, too.
In addition to the history of the negotiations, the visuals of flensing the whale were very striking. What was the thinking behind it?
For me, that was a way for us to represent what’s going on in Māoridom. That we are in a process – and continually in a process – of revitalisation and reclaiming our ancestral knowledge. We’re always looking backwards to stand in the now to move forwards and that’s what that [scene] represents to me. We’re reclaiming our space and place in this country. It’s a connection to land. It’s connection to the sea. It’s a connection to animals and it speaks so loudly to who we are and what we want to be moving forward.
And what was it like spending time with all the fishers?
For them to invite us in to share this story and allow us to just partake in their day-to-day lives was really amazing. It was fun, you know, having good yarns, having a drink, having a kai. One of the joys of documentary is the amount of people that you meet in all different aspects of life. These are people who have committed to a lifetime in this industry. And man, they work hard! I don’t think people realise how hard the fishing game is. When you’re out on that ocean, it’s a total different space. Anything can happen at any moment when you’re on the seas fishing. They’ve got to be very attuned to their environment.
Yes – the documentary is filled with moments of poignant silence.
The change of pace was so we could give the environment something to say, too. It’s really important as a filmmaker to let your environment speak because it’s got its own language. They have a lot of those moments at sea. It’s fast and furious when they’re pulling in the net, but then there’s a lot of moments of silence and beauty. The fishermen talk about those moments. It’s a rare person who can be a fisherman.
Is the mark of a successful documentary the conversations it sparks?
Yes – that’s all it’s about, really. My school is making documentaries and I learn so much about the world, about myself, about other people. I don’t think today’s generation really knows those stories anymore, so one of the best things for me about this documentary is that we’ve been able to tell their story so it won’t be forgotten.
Watch Mana Moana Mana Tangata online for free on Whakaata Māori and Māori+
