Tim Howard

Tim Howard

Tim Howard is a New Zealand activist. He is married to Carol and they live with their extended family on an avocado and beef farm on the outskirts of Whangarei in Northland.

Tim Howard is employed as a community development worker with Northland Urban Rural Mission, where he works on a range of community development, social justice and environmental issues within a framework of Tiriti justice. Tim is a member of local and national Treaty educators’ networks.

He is chair of Kotare Trust which, through participatory education and research, supports individuals, activist groups and broader coalitions in their work for Tiriti, environmental and social justice.

Previously, Howard worked as a Catholic priest in New Zealand and the Pacific with particular involvement in community and youth work.

Tim Howard is active in a number of international solidarity movements supporting liberation struggles particularly in East Timor, Philippines, West Papua and Palestine.

Marxist Structural Analysis

Howard was influenced by Marxist Structural Analysis in the 1980s;

A life-changing point for me was in the early 1980s, when I participated in the training carried out by Filip Fanchette in Structural Analysis—a methodology based on Paulo Freire’s ideas, on liberation theology and on Marxist understandings, analysis and action.

I’d like to name one specific way Structural Analysis has informed my sense of being an ally. This methodology is based on a class analysis. I know such analysis has the potential to blur discussion of being allies with indigenous peoples, but within it there is the useful concept of the role of the auxiliary class. What is the role of people who by life choice, experience, education, or whatever, are auxiliary or helper class, ‘middle-class’? Is it a role to benefit the elite—because that is what we are geared for—or is it to work alongside conscientised groups within the working class struggle? That concept of there being a role we can choose to take going against the stream, informs my sense of choosing to be an ally with Maori.

It’s about realising there are options that can be taken; there are particular contributions I can make. But who’s going to dictate those contributions? Who’s going to frame them? As Pakeha in this country there is a choice, but our natural tendency might be to go with the majority, to work with the existing system, a deeply colonial system that doesn’t benefit indigenous people.

That is the default setting. Will we choose to go in the opposite direction and be with Maori in their struggles?

Allies

Howard says: "I’ve learnt much from Pakeha who have walked these relationships with Maori over the years, mentors and companions like Joan Cook, Mitzi Nairn, Don Ross, Terry Dibble and others".

ARENA

2001 - ARENA Advisory Board members were Jon Barnett ,Aziz Choudry, Luke Coxon, Radha D’Souza, Tim Howard, Cybele Locke, Garrick Martin, Bill Rosenberg, David Small, Desigin Thulkanam.

Network Waitangi, Whangarei

In 2003 Moea Armstrong, Tim Howard, Joan Cook and Russ Cook, Kathryn McKenzie, Don Ross,

Pat Gray and Les Gray, Carol Peters, Ange Jones, Cheree Corban, were leaders of Network Waitangi, Whangarei.

Kotare Trust

Early Trustees

Kotare Trust early trustees: Tim Howard, Claire-Louise McCurdy, Katherine Peet, Karen Davis, Bill Bradford, John Benseman, Josie Lander, Cybele Locke, Noelene Landrigan, Sue Bradford, Quentin Jukes.

2005 - Kotare current Trustees are: Tim Howard (Whangarei) Chair, Sue Bradford (Wellsford) deputy Chair, Quentin Jukes, Noelene Landrigan (Wellsford), Kate Abel (Opotiki), Gordon Jackman (Gisborne) Kay Robin, Ngai Tamanuhiri (Manutuke), Tali Williams (Wellington) and Sue Berman (Waitakere).

Kotare Trustees, 2013:

• Ilai Amir, Tamaki Makaurau - Auckland

• Sue Berman, Tamaki Makaurau - Auckland

• Karen Davis, Tamaki Makaurau - Auckland

• Catherine Delahunty, Kauaeranga Valley (near Thames)

• Tim Howard, Whangarei

• Quentin Jukes, Hoteo North (Kotare Centre caretaker)

• Garrick Martin, Tamaki Makaurau - Auckland

• Hannie Treadwell, Whangarei

Contact for Philippines communist tour

Luis Jalandoni is the International Representative of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, a coalition of several underground groups, led by the Communist Party of the Philippines and its terrorist New People’s Army.

On a 2010 tour of New Zealand Luis Jalandoni was accompanied by his wife Coni Ledesma, International Spokesperson of MAKIBAKA, a revolutionary women’s group which belongs to the NDF.

Luis and Coni are both veteran leading figures in the Philippine revolutionary Left.

When Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972, both went underground. They were both arrested and spent time as political prisoners.

Contact for their November 5 – Whangarei Public Meeting, was Tim Howard.

East Timor

1999 - Alistair Shaw and Tim Howard went to East Timor as observers.

References

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