Visitors will be urged to reconsider spending time in picturesque but impoverished communities at great risk from Covid-19

The East Cape of New Zealand’s North Island is a remote and picture-postcard idyll – boasting a historic lighthouse, wild beaches and mist-cloaked mountains. But as the country prepares to lockdown for four weeks of national self-isolation to fight the spread of Covid-19, indigenous groups in the region say the measures will not go far enough to keep them safe and plan checkpoints on highways into their towns to turn away anyone who doesn’t live or work there.

“Our people are scared,” says Tina Ngata, one of the organisers of the checkpoint to be set up outside the town of Te Araroa; another will spring up outside Ruatoria with more planned further up the coast. “We want to minimise people coming to the region.”

New Zealand has 102 cases of the virus, with no reported deaths. But Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister, announced on Monday that she would raise the country’s alert level to four, the highest possible, from Wednesday night in a preemptive effort to prevent thousands from dying.

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But Ngata and others worry that people of Ngāti Porou – her Māori iwi, or tribe – will fare much worse than the general population, even with the new restrictions.

After more than a century of colonisation, Māori in New Zealand suffer much worse health outcomes than Pākehā –New Zealanders of European descent – and for Ngāti Porou, the figures are even worse.

“We are far more prone to chronic illnesses like diabetes, renal disease and heart disease, and we have more people with cancer than the rest of the population, we have more people with chronic respiratory illnesses,” Ngata says. “Basically all the illnesses that feature in the chronic Covid-19 descriptors feature really highly in our population.”

The impoverished region, where forestry jobs are suddenly under threat from Covid-19’s spread and unemployment sits at 5.2%, the country’s second-highest rate, also lacks proper healthcare infrastructure.

“We can often go two to three weeks before we will see a doctor come to our region for one day, and usually they’re booked solid for that one day,” she says, adding that even in the nearest city, Gisborne – three hours’ drive away – there are only six intensive care beds, which could easily be filled as the virus spreads.

“It’s about our extreme vulnerability, the fact that we have a worse health profile than the average New Zealand citizen here, and making the people who come here understand that they’re not safe because we don’t have adequate health services,” says Ngata.

From Wednesday, those approaching the towns of Te Araroa and Ruatoria will be waved off the road – organisers say they will not block the road or make physical contact with people or vehicles – when arriving between 8am and 6pm. Travellers will be asked to show identification, including passports for tourists, and register their details at the checkpoints.

Visitors or holidaymakers who refuse to turn back will not be forcibly barred from entering the towns but will likely face short shrift when they do. Those volunteering on the checkpoints will spread the details of the non-compliant visitors throughout the town, and they will not be served at businesses or engaged with by locals.

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Other tribes have expressed interest in barring entry to their lands too. Half an hour’s drive north, the iwi Te Whānau ā Apanui said on Saturday that it would operate a round-the-clock checkpoint with travel restrictions for visitors to its lands between Hāwai and Pōtaka; in an unusual step, the council and police published a press release supporting the move.

“No one has set out to establish illegal roadblocks,” said Wally Haumaha, New Zealand’s deputy police commissioner. “This is about community police and iwi taking the lead to ensure rural communities that don’t have immediate access to support services are well protected.”

“This is not a time for egos,” Rawiri Waititi, an iwi leader, said in a Facebook video announcing the checkpoints on Saturday. “The cost of death for our iwi will be catastrophic.”

Other iwi have expressed interest in similar action –Anahera Herbert-Graves from the Far North iwi Ngāti Kahu told Radio New Zealand it was considering closing its tribal borders too.

While plans for the checkpoints were made before Ardern raised the alert level for the country on Monday – meaning that from Wednesday, people are urged to stay at home, only traveling for essential reasons – Ngata said they would still go ahead. Locals are not confident that recently-arrived tourists are complying with directives that they self-isolate for 14 days, she said, and the visitors keep arriving.

“They’re coming for the beaches and the scenery and the laid-back paradise vibe,” she says. “But it’s not as laid-back, it’s very tense in our communities. So it’s not a good time to be visiting.”



