Tributes are pouring in for the leading Māori legal scholar Moana Jackson, who died on Thursday after a lengthy illness.
Moana Jackson. Photo: RNZ / Patrice Allen
Jackson is being remembered as a gentle giant with a formidable intellect, who never lost sight of the kaupapa of criminal justice reform and constitutional change.
Professor Jane Kelsey, who was a close friend, said he was a rangatira of great patience and determination.
"Incredible tolerance and patience in the face of some quite extraordinary provocations," she said. "I think that was one of his huge strengths was that he never got diverted into any of those rabbit holes."
Of Ngāti Porou and Ngāti Kahungunu descent, Moana Jackson was the son of All Black Everard Jackson and the younger brother of Syd, a founding member of Ngā Tamatoa.
He studied law at Victoria University, which would award him an honorary doctorate in 2017.
After doing further study abroad, he returned to Aotearoa and co-founded the Māori Legal Service in the 1980s.
He later wrote the report He Whaipaanga Hou: Māori in the Criminal Justice System, which was published in 1988 and caused an immediate stir.
It was based off consultation with 4000 Māori, detailing their experiences of the justice system, describing discrimination and structural racism in state institutions.
"What happens in New Zealand, I believe, is there's not so much one law for all in the sense of one justice, but rather one process for all," Jackson told Morning Report on its release in 1988.
"And what the report advocates is that it is possible to achieve justice for all by using different processes."
Despite a political backlash and death threats, Jackson never wavered.
Again and again he described the effects of colonisation, and called for constitutional change - for adherence to Te Tiriti.
"What needs to be addressed is the fundamental injustice, and to address that we have to look at the past which created the injustice," he told RNZ's Kim Hill in 1995.
"Not to stay frozen there, not to wallow in guilt and recrimination but to find positive answers to address the problems which will confront us in the future.
"It's not going to be solved in a day, or a week, it possibly could take place in my lifetime but it will take place in the lifetime of my granddaughters, I have no doubt about that at all."
Three decades on He Whaipaanga Hau is still described as a watershed, and widely referenced. The concepts have gone from radical to orthodox.
Today, Jackson is being remembered as a stirring orator, powerful writer and tireless advocate. But also a gentle, humble and generous teacher, father and grandfather.
Tributes have been paid from all across Māoridom, and from Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who described his loss as devastating but also paid tribute to someone who inspired a generation of future leaders.
Victoria University political scientist Maria Bargh said matua Jackson had become an inspiration to many.
"His intellect and his softly-spoken manner I think encouraged people to have the courage to stand against racism," she said.
"His work in Matike Mai, looking at constitutional transformation has also encouraged some of this momentum that we've seen and inspiration for doing things differently."
Jackson's insight was sought internationally, too.
He helped draft the UN's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and was on indigenous tribunals in the US and Canada.
In the 1990s, he advised the interim Bougainville government during the peace process there.
He arrived in Arawa and stayed at the family home of Bougainville leader Martin Mirori, who remembered Jackson as a softly-spoken man, who pondered deeply before saying anything. But when those words did come, they were astute and profound.
Mirori told RNZ that Jackson spent many weeks on Bougainville, meeting with many leaders in the interim government and the revolutionary army.
Mirori said Jackson was able to bridge divides in the civil war, and would advise the interim government for years as it sought self-determination from Papua New Guinea through the UN and dealing with governments including those from New Zealand and Australia.
"He was one of the foundations on the issue of us getting proper advice as to how to go about pushing for self-determination for Bougainville," he said.
"He was quite instrumental and, of course, we understood because the Māori situation was kind of comparable to what we were fighting for."
Back in Aotearoa, Jackson was a tireless advocate for Māori rights; Pākaitore, the Foreshore and Seabed, and the Tuhoe Raids, where he quit as a police advisor in protest.
He worked as a mentor, too, offering his time to many up-and-coming students, lawyers, and basically anyone else who sought him out.
Laywer Julia Whaipooti worked closely with him for more than a decade.
"He has been driven by unwavering aroha for our people," Whaipooti said.
"Even though everyone talks about the gentle giant, of which he is, he has not wavered from his commitment for us to exist in the dreams of our tīpuna and reflected in the faces and lives of our mokopuna."
Jackson had been ill with cancer for a while, but he continued right until the end.
He wrote prolifically, never tiring of the goal of a greater Aotearoa,
"Every apparent reality has its own possibilities for something better," he wrote in one of his last columns in December.
"And even darkness and despair can be followed by the light of a better dawn where no one should be seen as less worthy."
