It’s another year, it’s another Waitangi Day, it’s another round of cultural denial.
It’s not just the refusal to acknowledge historic injustices that are so depressing, it’s that the promise of the Treaty has been denied EVERYONE living in NZ.
Take the following…
The Queen of England agrees to protect the chiefs, the subtribes and all the people of New Zealand in the unqualified exercise of their chieftainship over their lands, villages and all their treasures.
The Queen of England will protect all the ordinary people of New Zealand and will give them the same rights and duties of citizenship as the people of England.
We now have 25,000 people waiting for emergency housing, 210,500 children living in poverty, 50,000 households living in poverty, suicide rates that are some of the worst in the world, entire generations locked out of homeownership and inequality that only grows with every passing year.
The Treaty, which set up the obligations of the State to ensure the sovereignty and agency of ALL people in NZ has been betrayed.
Honouring the Treaty isn’t just about ensuring historic crimes against Måori are rightfully and meaningfully settled, it demands that the State ensures everyone has the self-agency and Tino rangatiratanga promised to us by the Treaty.
We need to repair the past, rebuild the future AND heal the present.
182 years and we are still waiting for the blooming of our hopes.
First published on Waatea News.
I don’t recall reading an article of the Treaty dealing with a guaranteed supply of government housing.
The vast majority of us live in houses, even the vast majority of Maori do. So one wonders what the homeless have done wrong.
As your bestie mate said Andrew “They made poor choices”. sarc.
How morally bankrupt are you Andrew?
To ask “So one wonders what the homeless have done wrong” shows a utter contempt for human beings which is all to common after 40 odd years a rabid individualism. It also shows your not a Christian. Or if you are, that utterance makes you close to being a heretic. I’d suggest you should talk to a priest or a nun about what you don’t understand in the Gospels.
This shitting on the poor shows how morally bereft our country has become. Casual, brutal, blaming the weak and defenseless to make yourselves feel better. Or worse, to absolve yourselves of taking any responsibility in the mission to up lift the poor. Is where we are at. And Andrew you like so many others like you are quick to blame and slow to know grace. But you can, you don’t have to be a Christian to do it, but at least act like a moral human being, and stop beating up on those weaker than you with your indifference and scorn.
Andrew is a wayne kerr
well said iggy
Quote:
The Queen of England will protect all the ordinary people of New Zealand and will give them the same rights and duties of citizenship as the people of England.
We now have 25,000 people waiting for emergency housing, 210,500 children living in poverty, 50,000 households living in poverty, suicide rates that are some of the worst in the world, entire generations locked out of homeownership and inequality that only grows with every passing year.
Response:
Seems to me that the people of New Zealand do indeed have all the rights and duties as the people of England and pretty much every other western country in the neo liberal hegemony.
The problem is not know the problem. The problem is getting from where we are now to where we want to be in the future without being manipulated, attacked or liberated. It seems to me that if large international corporations is where the power lies than we all need to become part of large, democratic, constitutionally based, international co-operations. Sovereign nations are a fallacy. We need sovereign co-operatives ‘run by the people for the people’.
we need a good clear out, my worry is that that clear out will be repressive religious(or that’ll be what they hide behind) and right wing.
…not all revolution is left wing.
Agreed
Maori were poorly treated from the time they were invaded to the present time . All people of colour around the World are poorly treated by white people some with more hatred than others . Some white people are looked at as being inferior to others simply due to where they were born or the religion they choose but this applies to coloured races as well . This has been the way of life since mankind moved into caves and as resources get scarcer and we all scrabble to keep our heads above water I cannot see great improvement in our living in harmony . This is a sad state of affairs and all you can do is try and think before you act is this ok and fair to others End of sermon !
“Maori were poorly treated from the time they were invaded to the present time”: Yes and before the white man came Maori tribes invaded and enslaved one another . The problem is not ethnicity but the heart of man
you’re not wrong trev but everything you say is is applicable to the proletariat in general, as always it’s class not race, if we fall for it and make it about race, they win.
Damn… you are on fire today G.
And that list of ‘achievements’ in regards to housing, poverty, suicide rates etc is the same in pretty much all the ‘first world’ nation countries. And the people the world over are voting for people who don’t give a flying fuck about the unhoused, the kids that get one feed a day in school if school is open, the old who live either eat or pay rent on their pension and so on. Because frankly we the people have for hte longest time elevated shit flingers rather then public servants. And the educated class of NZ is nothing more then a bunch of shit flingers hoping that something will stick, lest they lose their tax payer funded jobs and actually had to work for their Money and in that I include Jacinda, Chloe, Marama, James, Grant, Andrew, Phil, Megan, and all the other useless eaters in Parliament.
Who is the State? Aren’t we all? We have what we voted and have voted for.
The Treaty is a piece of shite. From day one it was ignored. Settlers kept arriving on false promises of a parcel of land that were never purchased from the whanau and hapu to who the land belonged because as we know, the concept of private ownership was not what Maori understood or practiced.
And then the court system too was weaponised to assist the land thieves to furthermore progress the theft of whenua.
This entire concept still happens today by the enabling of the ToW settlement process which isn’t a fair playing field for Maori nor is it equitably.
Tell me this; name me one pakeha who would accept a payment of 1% of the total value of a claim for their land as a fair and reasonable price with no comeback or right to negotiate a better price?
I’m gonna take a stab in the dark and answer for you. None! Nahdah! Fuck All.
It’s a wrought! Another colonial scam.
When you start out in a ToW claim. You get a 54-page pamphlet and a 2-week introduction course and then you’re up again the machine, the Crown who have Crown Law, All access to all the Governments apparatus and putea and they make the rules up and whether they tell you or not is entirely up to them and their officials. PS, officials make careers from this so they’re not helping the Maori unless the wind is blowing in the Crowns favour.
If the officials fuck-up, you still have to wear it without any compensation creating another claim/grievance.
The Treaty is only fit for purpose to use in a wharepaku.
“If I had to sign the treaty I’d use it to wipe my arse on ” https://soundcloud.com/pete-dnanz/truth
The treaty was used by the British as it achieved the same ends as war and was much cheaper.
“Underground evacuation only for the elite ” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8uQOCW05Vo
https://theprint.in/economy/rich-americans-escaped-to-bunkers-in-new-zealand-as-coronavirus-struck/405019/
one point denny even though the Maori had no concept of ‘ownership’ they did subscribe to ‘right of conquest’ just as the settlers did.
I really don’t know how we fix all the injustices, I really don’t but I do know that if we descend to racial squabbling all will lose…well except those that rule us, they of course will be quids in.
‘right of conquest’ Not so. Not in the pakeha context.
You’re probably getting confused with ‘Utu?’
And that in itself is more complex than the common understanding of it. Revenge as its commonly known is just one understanding of the word in the European context.
Utu also means reciprocity and an equal response in a positive context too.
I don’t have much of a grasp I must admit, but didn’t Maori take land and resources by war?
I’ve only seen the film Utu so can’t claim to understand the nuances.
The one good thing to come out of the disaster we are in, “with 25,000 people waiting for emergency housing, 210,500 children living in poverty, 50,000 households living in poverty, suicide rates that are some of the worst in the world, entire generations locked out of homeownership and inequality growing with every passing year with every passing year,” is that it shows us what Maori have been putting up with forever.
We have become Maori, Tangata Whenua, and if we’re smart we will acknowledge it, make common cause with Maori, and together, force land reforms, because, as Maori have been saying forever, its all about land.
It was for want of land reforms that our forbears fled here from the UK and then they promptly imposed the same rotten system they’d fled from, on Maori.
Avoiding the example of Japan, Singapore or Taiwan, for instance, where the state ownership of land stabilises its value, thus freeing up billions for Capitalist investment, our rotten system is returning us to the feudalism our ancestors fled.
Te hei Mauri ora.
seconded
Thank you for your insight, and I agree with you. I believe we are watching NZ become a Oligarchy {much like a large umbers of other western democracies), in slow motion. By the time we actually realise that has actually happened, it’ll be to late to do anything, except ask, “How the fuck did this happen?”
“The Treaty has failed us all”
Isn’t it really that we’ve failed the treaty? In particular, foolish white liberals like Geoffrey Palmer, who read into the treaty a “partnership” that was never written there.
A partnership has never existed in Te Tiriti o Waitangi. If Maori never ceded their sovereignty then all people of New Zealand are Maori (the heriditary rank), and nobody has ceded their sovereignty by any means.
All tribes have evidence of the fraudulent immoral activities of the colonial invaders of Aotearoa. The biggest crook was george grey and his MO of confiscation/raupatu. His invasion of the Waikato was the lowest of lows with grey after telling Maori he was amassing troops at the Mangatawhiri river but did not intend to invade them (Russia-Ukraine). 2 weeks later he invaded Waikato to give the productive lands to his business friends in Tamaki. Rangiowhia near Te Awamutu was a village that Grey set as a model for Maori with 3 churches and 2 flour mills. 2 years later his troops invaded the village run by women, children and old men because they were supplying the rebel Maori (who were fighting to protect their lands). That is why Maori only own 5% of their original ancestral lands.