I think we should dump Guy Fawkes Day, keep the fireworks and remember Parihaka instead.
It makes no sense to me why a historical act of religious terrorism from Britain should eclipse an historical event far more deeply wedded to us in terms of identity and values.
On November 5th, 1881, the racist and violent colonial forces led by Native Minister John Bryce, raided the pacifist and peaceful protest at Parihaka, destroying houses, pillaging anything worth stealing, raping women, separating children from their families, mass arrests and confiscation of land.
Not to mention the abuse of power after the ransacking that saw Māori held for two years without trial.
Parihaka, and the spirit of peaceful resistance is an essential value to who we are as New Zealander’s and November the 5th should become a day where we all gather to remember that moment in NZ history and celebrate the spirit of pacifist resistance and peaceful social justice activism.
We should replace Guy Fawkes, but keep the bonfires and the fireworks to celebrate the spark of hope Parihaka ignites throughout the darkness of history. Let’s culturally appropriate a British cultural tradition, make it ours, teach our own history to ourselves and celebrate our uniquely blended identities as a nation all in one move.
Willie Jackson is the Minister for Employment
I agree with you re ditching Guy Fawkes & remembering Parihaka instead.
However, I also wish fireworks to be ditched as well. I have known horses to be so terrified by neighbouring fireworks that the animals have been killed by galloping into wire fences in their terror. Pleas to neighbours to cease the fireworks went unheeded. I kept my cat inside all last night but thankfully, fireworks were set off at a minimum that surprised me. I’ve a friend with 2 beautiful dogs & she has to override the sounds of fireworks with her TV & music till the small hours of the morning.
I think that only public displays of fireworks should be permitted – on a public park or similar – & the products should not be permitted to be sold to other than local authorities. I am way past tired of animals being maltreated – as too many are in this country!
It just makes sense! If only that counted for anything these days…
Agree 100% especially when people stock pile and let them of late at night. We can have council or community displays instead as how much money and resources is this costings us all because of some peoples stupid and irresponsible behaviour and this group seem to spoil it for others.
“We should replace Guy Fawkes, but keep the bonfires and the fireworks to celebrate the spark of hope Parihaka ignites throughout the darkness of history. ” Hope ? Parihaka was a fearsome tragedy.
More appropriate may be a public holiday celebration of Matariki as a symbol of new beginnings, an a new year, right up there in the stars for all to see.
Community-organised firework displays could send stars from earth to join them and to marry with them. The spiritual imagery is simple, and beautiful.
Celebrating Parihaka is akin to celebrating the Great Famine, or the Highland Clearances, or the Partition of India, or the Balfour Declaration, all of which inflicted terrible enduring tragedies upon undeserving people, some of which continue to this day.
Parihaka Day has the potential to rub salt in wounds, and to wound afresh.
It also has the potential to give rise to racial tensions with more undeserving people cast as wicked colonial oppressors. Kiwis don’t need that.There are enough shadows out there now.
Matariki is already seen as a time of hope, and it brims with positivity.
It has a uniquely Maori dimension which everyone can embrace.
I agree Willie, a much more appropriate remembrance for NZ.
As far as others wanting to ban fireworks: I think freedoms and pleasures (and working rights and speed limits) are much easier to take away than to give.
Our current society seems to want more work less freedom. Can you think of any new freedoms you have acquired in the last 20 years?
As long as the story of the dog peeing on the cannon is included.
Also I’d like to add we need to have a national holiday on the day, a day of remembrance and a day of reflection.
Personal I’d like a national service at Parihaka televised on all networks. Coupled with many, many events promoting, peace, resistance and the need to respect animals.
Yes I like your idea Wille and support Adam’s addition
of a televised service at Parihaka.
It is certainly time to have Aotearoa appropriate events
promoting peace and justice and remembering our history.
Yes, let’s ditch Guy Fawkes and have people’s pets killed, lost and terrorised, plus properties torched in the name of Parihaka
Good old Willie Jackson is hijacking Guy Fawkes Day to be replaced by Parihaka Day as a political deal, and he assumes that we’re all dumb in the way that politicians invariably do.
A leaked Green Party email proposed that the Greens support the Waka Jumping Bill in return for Labour supporting good old Maramar Davidson’s Parihaka Day wantings.
This is round one. The fireworks are irrelevant as we the people are – or the injured animals- are.
Jackson should tread very carefully in tinkering with other people’s history. He has a bloody nerve reducing the tragic complex history of Scotland to “religious terrorism from Britain”.
Guy Fawkes wanted to blast the Scots back to their own mountains, and having married into a Scots Presbyterian family I sometimes agree with him, but NZ Maori are not the only New Zealanders with tragic histories, and Willie Jackson wasn’t put into Parliament to decide that someone’s history is more important than another’s.
If he sat down and read the horrific history of Scotland – or Ireland -or India – or Poland, or anywhere else people here come from, he might think differently about prioritising human histories.
Snow White: “Jackson should tread very carefully in tinkering with other people’s history. He has a bloody nerve reducing the tragic complex history of Scotland to “religious terrorism from Britain”.”
I agree. What he says bespeaks ignorance of that history, in my book.
In common with many other NZers, this is my heritage. That complex history fed into the governing arrangements we have in contemporary NZ, and for that reason, should not be set aside in such a fashion.
By all means commemorate (not celebrate) Parihaka. But let’s not lose Guy Fawkes day.
I’m intensely irritated by Wgtn City Council’s having decided – on the basis of faux consultation – to ditch the Guy Fawkes fireworks display in favour of Matariki. These two events are in no way commensurate. And there is no reason why we cannot have both. This was pointed out by a councillor; but of course the mayor ignored her, in favour of the deputy mayor’s wishes. Grrr ..
“By all means commemorate (not celebrate) Parihaka. But let’s not lose Guy Fawkes day.” Oui, D’Esterre.
Hopefully Willie Jackson may back-track. He back-tracked over his disgraceful response to the rotten little Akld Roast Busters boasting about getting our lovely young NZ girls drunk and then shagging them. I think Willie Jackson said that he was being Devil’s Advocate. You can say that again.
Parihaka deserves the same dignity as Anzac Day.It needs to be carefully thought through lest it become – like Waitangi Day sometimes does- a day of discord and protest.Someone here suggested a day of peace, and that was good.
WCC cancelling the city’s fireworks was typical wet pc’ness. I didn’t vote for Justin Lester, I just pretended to vote for him.I really voted for Helene Ritchie because she had a good record on Town Belt issues, and I liked her spirit.
And this is where the WCC have to be watched. The proposed
hyper development of the beautiful tranquil haven of Shelley Bay, if it goes ahead, should cost Lester and his cronies the next election – it epitomises every single worst aspect (well, many of them) of today’s society and is environmental sacrilege.
The WCC and Willie Jackson need to know that cultural sensitivity is a two-way street.
We with European roots are a long way from them, which makes it even more imperative that we be allowed to retain traditions and practices which are part of our histories, and our collective memories, however absurd they seem to others.
When Jackson said Parihaka was more embedded to us, or had more meaning, he was making a value judgement, and he was setting up a sneaky ‘either’ ‘or’ situation, and this is once again a paternalistic (softer word than totalitarian) govt trying to manipulate the people into doing what it wants (or what it promised the Greens), when its job is to represent all the people, and to do what we want. For a change.
It is totally weird, not to say meaningless, that we celebrate GF in NZ. It is creepy we burn a guy on a bonfire. Ditch the whole thing completely. Ditch private use of fireworks. Create a day to celebrate Parihaka, the inspiration for Ghandhi. It is not only historically and politically significant for NZ but also the world and the pacifist movement worldwide, being the first recognized use of it as a protest movement to try and effect change.
I rather think Gandhi’s development of satyagraha may have had its origins contributed to by Lao Tzu’s “Tao Te Ching”, which advances a philosophy of meekness as the surest path to survival.
The precept in Lao Tzu,’hold fast to the submissive’ was first published in China in about the fourth century BC. Over the following centuries ideas spread between China and India, initially via traders, and later by sages and gurus seeking to learn each others’ wisdom, which they did.
As far as I know, the development of the Tao – which like the bible, likely had many authors – was as a survival technique during the Warring States period in China.
The day-to-day people of India were often expected to be appallingly subservient to the plundering British well into the twentieth century, it was learned behaviour, and it didn’t always work.The good nature of Indian Indians I know towards the Brits is impressive.
Snow White: “I rather think Gandhi’s development of satyagraha may have had its origins contributed to by Lao Tzu’s “Tao Te Ching”, which advances a philosophy of meekness as the surest path to survival.”
Exactly. Assertions that Parihaka was an inspiration for Ghandi are just revisionism and further illustrate lack of knowledge about another area of deep and complex history.
The lack of knowledge which you identify D’Esterre, is a shame, because none of us know what we don’t know !
India and China have vast, rich histories, and given that most significant movements evolve over time, any suggestion that Gandhi was culturally appropriating from Maori, may do a disservice to both about how they developed their respective protest practices.
Historically there has been other documented passive resistance, but the ancient cultures visited each other specifically to seek out and learn wisdom, and maybe our politicians could do the same.
(Think of John Key seeking wisdom… or English… Bennett…
Gerry Brownlie…Collins… Simon B. How about that ?)
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