Draft:Mike Smith (activist)

Michael Smith is a New Zealand Māori activist, iwi (tribal) leader and film maker who, in February 2024, won a landmark New Zealand Supreme Court decision against seven New Zealand fossil fuel and dairy companies, including Fonterra, Genesis Energy and Z Energy. Smith is suing the businesses for public nuisance and negligence for their contributions to climate change. He is also notorious in New Zealand for trying to cut down a pine tree on the top of Maungakiekie / One Tree Hill in Auckland to highlight the treatment of Māori. The chainsaw used in the attack is now part of the collection of the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa.

Biography
Mike Smith is of Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Kahu descent. He was born in 1957 or 1958, in Northland to a Māori father and pākeha (New Zealand European) mother.

Smith has long been involved in Māori rights activism, is also considered one of New Zealand's best known environmental campaigners: he sees the two issues as linked. The beginning of his work in Indigenous climate activism can be dated to 1992, when he attended the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED).

A film maker, Smith taught himself how to make and edit short films for public education campaigns, with an outside broadcast unit set up in a campervan.

For many years, Smith worked with Greenpeace. By 2022 he co-chaired the Pou Take Āhuarangi, the climate directorate of the National Iwi Chairs Forum. He is usually described in the media as the forum's climate spokesperson.

Smith has urged for the repatriation and return to iwi of Māori remains from museums. After a painting by the New Zealand painter Colin McCahon was stolen from a public building, he said, "Human remains being treated as artwork far outweighs a painting in a DOC centre. There is an absolute hysteria when a pākehā painting goes missing but a deafening silence when Māori human remains get sold as art by foreigners."

In July 1997 some 80 protestors led by Smith and Annette Sykes urged the sacking of the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission chaired by Sir Tipene O'Regan. Smith said that plans to return Maori commercial fisheries assets to tribal hands ignored Māori tradition and would result in huge inequalities.

Sykes, a politician and lawyer, is Smith's former partner. His current partner is activist and artist Hinekaa Mako (Taranaki Whānui, Whanganui nui tonu).

Smith is a father of nine – seven boys and two girls. They include son Hoby and daughters Te Aatarangi Rangimarie Smith and Bianca Ranson. Ranson is kaiwhakahaere (organiser) of Piritahi Marae on Waiheke Island, and a Waiheke Local Board member.

Maungakiekie / One Tree Hill attack
In 1994 Smith was convicted of trying to cut down a lone Monterey pine tree on the top of Maungakiekie / One Tree Hill. He attacked the tree on 28 October 1994, the anniversary of the 1835 Declaration of Independence. The pine was originally part of a shelter belt planted to protect native trees, not the tree which gave One Tree Hill its name. It didn't die until September 1999, when it was ring-barked with a chainsaw by four people related to Smith. He told The Dominion newspaper he did not know why his relatives attacked the tree. He did not assume their motivation was the same as his.

Smith said that the tree was a symbol of colonisation and the mono-cultural nature of New Zealand society.

"The attention that came on me didn't come onto the issues. I would do something like that again if it was absolutely necessary. But I would want to be sure the outcome would focus on the issue... The amount of words and coverage expended on that motley bloody tree. And the hundreds of thousands of dollars that went into preserving its life ... I felt quite guilty about that. I felt guilty that money that could have been better spent on other things was spent on that tree."

The chainsaw used in the attack is now part of the collection of the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa.

Climate change court cases
On 7 February 2024, Mike Smith won the right to sue some of New Zealand's biggest companies for their role in causing climate change, in a New Zealand Supreme Court ruling. The deciding justices were Susan Glazebrook, Ellen France, Helen Winkelmann, Joe Williams and Stephen Kós. The court reinstated Smith's case after it was thrown out by the Court of Appeal in 2021. Lawyers for Climate Action NZ, Te Hunga Roia Maori o Aotearoa/The Māori Law Society and the Human Rights Commission made submissions.

Smith says the seven companies, diary giant Fonterra (responsible for around 30% of the world’s dairy exports, Fonterra burns coal to process milk), Genesis Energy, Dairy Holdings, NZ Steel, Z Energy, Channel Infrastructure and BT Mining together are responsible for a third of New Zealand's carbon emissions.

Smith says these businesses have a legal duty to him and others in communities who are being damaged by planet-heating gases. He wants them to agree to reach peak emissions by 2025 and net zero emissions by 2050.

“One of the horns of inertia [towards acting to ward off climate change] is the power of lobbyists and the political process, the other horn is the politician’s fear of a public backlash to transformative change... If the government can’t [act], we need to seek a court compliance and enforcement decision that compels the companies to take action and doesn’t give them any choice."

Legal experts say the case has widespread legal ramifications for the role of Indigenous custom, law and practice (in this case, tikanga Māori), and the use of tort law, not previously considered available for claims like Smith's.

Smith is also suing the New Zealand Government for failing to take effective action on climate change. “We are in a global war against those responsible for the climate emergency and we are seeing the courts play an increasingly important role in enforcing the rights of those directly affected by it."