When Elizabeth Rata coined the phrase ‘Ethno-Nationalist State‘ to describe attempts to share power with Māori as promised by the Treaty, every right winger wanting to be racist found glee in the shielding of their bigotry by the pretence of intellectualism.
What is most hilarious about Rata’s claims of Ethno-Nationalist State is that she is 100% right, it’s just that she’s right in a way she doesn’t want to admit to, which is NZ is an Ethno-Nationalist State, it’s just a White Ethno-Nationalist State.
Our systems of power and control are all white, our dominant culture is white, our benefitting from colonialism is white, our purposeful laws aimed at taking more Māori land were white, our confiscations are white, our dominant narrative is white.
So sure, NZ is an Ethno-Nationalist State, but for white people.
Any attempt to rebalance the damage caused by taking 90% of Māori land in less than a century and any attempt to live up to the promise of the Treaty must be denigrated and appallingly decried as apartheid.
The backbone of the economic success story that is NZ, is in stealing Māori land and NEVER paying the full price back!
NEVER! NEVER! NEVER!
We are a shallow juvenile settler country with all the cultural maturity of a can of day old coke, we are a low horizon people who lash out at others who see stars. Our imaginations are glued to cow udders, rugby and cars. To attempt a debate about identity when so many micro aggression trigger snowflakes are screaming is a feat beneath our collective dignity.
Co-Governance is the EXACT model that National and ACT developed, to now decry it because post covid stress has exacerbated economic anxieties isn’t leadership, it’s gutless capitulation to the lesser angels of our nature. What I find most hilarious is those screaming that Māori are taking over can’t name 3 councillors on their own local council.
3 Waters was an attempt to serve two maters, the Waitangi Tribunal ruling into water ownership triggered by Key selling 49% of the hydro assets and the need to find a way for Local Councils to fund water infrastructure. The way it has been manufactured into a racial smear on Nanaia Mahuta and her family DESPITE DECLARING ALL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST is proof positive that the angry and confused trump any attempt at rational debate.
What its most egregious is how these small attempts at creating basic consultation between the dominant culture and the indigenous culture they signed a Treaty with is now portrayed as a giant attack on the values of Democracy!
We are too brittle a people for the challenges in front of us.
The issue of 27 000 on emergency housing wait lists, 200 000 kids in poverty and a million being spent daily to kettle beneficiaries into unsafe motels are still here begging to be solved. Our inequality, our damaging mental illness crisis, the underfunded health system and education systems – all these things are demanding attention from Labour and if the price to advance those is to cut off 3 Waters and co-governance progress, then cut them off!
A National ACT Government will be the most extreme right wing Government this country has seen since Roger Douglas, Labour can not afford to lose if those policy platforms have become welded to a toxic race debate that the Ethno-Nationalist Right are winning.
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You arguments might have merit if indeed the bottom 40% of Maori would benefit from 3 waters/co-governance. Sadly history tells us this is cargo cultist in its likelihood.
Why would the top 20% of Maoridom give up it’s new found wealth for the bottom 40%. Human nature suggests this isn’t going to happen.
It’s odd then that this awful white ethnostate has people who aren’t white very happy to move and live here. We have a system to stop them coming as so many want to. How puzzling.
“Time waits for no one–and it won’t wait for meeeee”…or fraidy–cat Tauiwi & Pākehā.
Each boomer funeral changes the NZ population in one way, and with the birth rate down to 1.6 or near below replacement level, stagnant population growth does too. Migrant labour is seen as the way to keep things ticking over, as born here NZers piss off overseas in numbers.
NZ may take longer for whites to be totally swamped than in the USA, where 2044 approx is seen by some as the point where brown/black will outnumber whites. Me–don’t mind at all as long as Māori improve their position, migrant workers are well treated and integrated, and Rogernomics is booted!
I think this sentence sizes up our situation.
We are too brittle a people for the challenges in front of us.
What would have happened if the Russian or Chinese had settled in NZ before the British. Not sure a Treaty would have been drawn up.
I am not sure that is much of a consolation.
Or the French or the Dutch or even worst the Belgians. This nation was going to go to one of the main powers that were looking for colonies to dump unwanted prisoners or restless peasants . I may be prejudice but if it had to be anyone the ritish were kinder to those colonized than the others .This is born out by the creation of the Commonwealth of Nations.
Marco+Battler. I think the Chinese may have, if you accept the Taiwanese being of a Chinese ethnicity. Pretty sure that Winston Peters himself has acknowledged New Zealand Maori as descendants of Taiwan. But either could have been nice. Both are ancient diverse civilisations, Russia with a wonderful rich culture, and traditional Chinese philosophy still stands the test of time with Confucianism and Taoism both impacting positively throughout much of Asia.
I think you make an important point Martyn.
Yes our system of Govt is Western democracy. Our education systerm is based on Western learning. Our medical system is absolutely one in which almost without exception Westerm medicine is offered.
But also, dont forget that in NZ it is a natural result of the dominant population as it is in every part of the world where there is a democracy. Giving it an ‘ethno nationalist’ tag does not of itself deny it’s relative legitimacy.
From what I have read of Rata’s writings, where she mentions ethno nationalism, she remarks on it as being illegitimate for reasons of equal representation. She doesnt say “Ethno Nationalism is bad because its Maori’, she says its undesirable because its tribal (ie” Akin” to a monarchy and therefore less desirable than democracy even if it is for Maori, by Maori) and not representative of 84% of the others who also live in NZ which to me sounds a perfectly reasonable position to argue.
Actually she’s not 100 percent right. Many pakeha New Zealand citizens over the decades have gone to great lengths to ingratiate themselves with the Maori traditions and culture, and it is continuing to this day.
Daniel I agree with that.
And there is a reverse thing happening where Maori seek to insert their culture into European learnings, Maturama Maori into science and the science curriculum for example. We need to remember that it is an activist group pushing this agenda. For all sorts of reasons Mason Durie didn’t want MM to be seen as science.
In my own profession, during a training, the evidence base I was applying was called colonisation and I had to sit through what I consider material that was of low quality with no evidence. I must say I felt and was utterly patronised by the speaker. No big deal to me, I kept doing what I was doing and just considered it a waste of a days training. Btw I had attended in good faith as I had found a previous training on the tow excellent
You know, if that were the case, I guess the ‘Free Speech Union’ would be volunteering to host Action Zealandia’s website. Somehow I don’t think David Cumin is down for that.
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