The manufacturing of a race war over at Democracy Project highlights how frightened many in the Settler movement are at the sudden galvanisation of Māori anger against this hard right racist Government.
All eyes are now on the Māori King this Saturday to gauge how serious the backlash against this Government will be.
A fuse could be lit on January 20th that erupts Waitangi Day.
The sudden spasm of anti-Māori policy rammed through by the new Government has ignited the Māori King’s unprecedented call for a national hui while setting the stage for an explosive Waitangi Day as well as once again raising voices demanding an honest accounting of New Zealand history.
One such voice is Auckland lawyer and educator, Roimata Small, whose recent column in The Post demands more education of the treaty and the manner in which Colonisation caused intergenerational social damage that has never been healed or remedied.
She outlines the basic historical facts of what colonial Governments with no interest in living up to the promise of the Treaty have generated…
The Tohunga Suppression Act criminalised Māori healthcare and science. Education laws suppressed te reo Māori as children were hit for speaking it in schools. “Child Protection” laws facilitated the removal of Māori children from their homes, and crime laws empowered the police and courts to arrest and imprison Māori.
The Crown’s land acquisition practices of getting agreement from only some owners and paying Māori a fiftieth of the resale fuelled discontent. The Crown waged war against “rebel” Māori then confiscated vast areas as punishment, often including land of “loyal” Māori. The Crown used the Native Land Court to remove most Māori owners’ rights so it could easily buy up land from the others.
Māori lost 97% of nearly 66 million acres that had been owned at 1840. The Crown promised land sale profits would fund schools and hospitals. Māori land funded the infrastructure of Aotearoa, but often infrastructure didn’t reach Māori communities.
Fast-forward to recent decades, Treaty settlements returned a small amount of land and money. While positive, settlements do not address the laws affecting Māori lives. This is why Māori consistently push back against these laws, asserting tino rangatiratanga.
…this new Government’s intention to push for a redefinition of the Treaty Principles will be injury to insult and the enormous pushback on such an attack on the fundamental obligations of the State to uphold the promise of the Treaty will spark a level of protest unseen previously.
Protest becomes unquenchable when the issue is so righteous.
Allowing ACT, NZ First and National push such incendiary issues is a failure of political leadership by Christopher Luxon and his weakness will set back race relations in 2024.
Our history is being ignored to cement into place 19th Century White Settler Privilege and pretend Māori will simply accept that.
I don’t think Māori will accept that, and nor will any decent fellow New Zealander.
A Treaty is to be honoured, not settled and this fundamental difference in approach demands a political response far more engaged than implementing petty bigotry against Māori to appease the right wings’ reactionary vote.
The shockwave of naked racism that emboldened so much race baiting this election highlights how the Right wil always use Māori as a political punching bag for votes.
As New Zealand faces the absurdity of a referendum to redefine the principles of the Treaty and is about to have the Māori Health Authority disbanded, the question for the Left is how to work together strategically and tactically to stop the Right from winning by race baiting.
I believe the answer lies in our existing MMP system and requires a new Rātana alliance.
The Rātana movement into politics in 1923 helped seal gains for Māori and Pakeha with Michael Savage in 1936.
Savage was gifted a potato, a broken gold watch, a pounamu hei-tiki, and a huia feather as symbols of the new alliance.
The potato represented loss of Māori land and means of sustenance, the broken watch represented the broken promises of the Treaty of Waitangi, and the pounamu represented the mana of the Māori people, if Savage was able to restore those 3, he would earn the right to wear the huia feather.
It is time for Labour to earn the right to wear that feather.
What was fascinating about the Māori electorates this election was how tactical Māori voters were, once again proving why they are one of the smartest tactical voters each and every election.
Overwhelmingly Māori in the Māori electorates voted Labour Party vote and Māori Patry candidate vote and this has generated the focus on the power of the MMP Overhang the Māori Electorates generate.
If there was a Rātana 2, the Labour Party and Māori Party could strategically work together and push a tactical voting plan that calls for voters in the Māori electorate to all give their candidate vote to the Māori Party candidate and their Party vote to Labour.
This would end up creating up to 7 overhang seats in the Parliament which would cement an enormous block that could (with support from the Greens) become an unbeatable tactic that would ensure victory.
If this new alliance could demand better material conditions for those on the socio-economic bottom, working class aspirations and Māori aspirations could combine to finally deliver the promise to Rātana made in 1936.
If Labour want to wear that huia feather, they must rethink their MMP tactics and strategy.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media.
Halfwits voting for halfwits get halfwitted governance.
Since 1984 Natzo and Labour? Same fucking thing man.
I see Baldrick has deemed himself as being too busy to attend the hui. Now with Goldsmith trying to walk back the seriousness of the leaked proposed Treaty Principles Bill it is clear that the coalition have no idea what they are doing when it comes to race relations. Continuation of the shambles we have seen since they came into power. Tear it all down and replace it with nothing that adds up and use PR to make out that they have it all under control. Pathetic.
Let’s hope the fuse gives Seemore the kick up the arse this little self-righteous I know best needs.
Seymour is just a smarmy little tosser. He stands there with a straight face and says they don’t believe in treating NZrs differently from one another. Pretty f’ing convenient point of view when the Crown ,for the most part, was only stealing from one group ( who happened to be here first).
By the way Seymour does treat NZrs differently. The privileged minority who send him cash are those he represents.
This seems a sensible and thoughtful consideration which provides a chance for balance. It seems to me that there is so many grievances and unhappiness in the world as ordinary people keep having their noses rubbed in unpleasant and unsatisfactory conditions; this when we were expecting improvements in life.
But some wealthy or ambitious people’s venal children have swept up all the goodies that our advanced systems have produced. The resulting grievances grow especially now that women
have gained advancement and education which has fuelled a large vein of crusading passion just waiting to be stimulated, and are rising up as Joan of Arcs. Which they will persist in until they resemble Tolkien’s *Orcs or ancient revengeful monsters. **
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien%27s_moral_dilemma
** https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/meet-female-monsters-greek-mythology-medusa-sphinx-180977364/
Our very own tv show Xena apparently dealt with such a situation. (Xena: Warrior Princess is an American fantasy television series filmed on location in New Zealand, which aired in first-run syndication from September 4, 1995, to June 18, 2001.)
Glory in this lush footage example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=566zXbLNuxA
https://www.youtube.com/@nostalgianztvarchive2436/search?query=Xena
https://www.whoosh.org/issue35/waite1.html
Gabrielle: Now Callisto will do anything for revenge. … Hate is making [Melas] an obsessed killer. Somebody has to say no to this lust for revenge.
Xena: … If something happened to mother or Hercules or you, I might do just the same.
Gabrielle: “No. No look–you promise me. If something happens to me, you will not become a monster. There’s only one way to end this cycle of hatred, and it’s through love and forgiveness.”
[02] Throughout the four seasons of Xena: Warrior Princess, reference has been made to the fact that a person can become a Monster, and that Xena was a Monster during most of the ten years prior to her life with Gabrielle…
Timing
Leaked document shows Government’s “intentions to erase Te Tiriti” – Te Pāti Māori’s co-leader Rawiri Waititi
Why is David Seymour not the government’s representative at the hui and at Waitangi?
This is his ‘baby’, let him look after it. Why is he being allowed to palm it off onto others?
The coalition are just bunch of wankers, that have barely started and are showing they are already worse than the last lot. Look at the bullshit over the clean car discount. It will cost the country more for their bullshit decision but they ditched the assessment because they don’t care. Better managers my arse.
MMP MUST be replaced by STV otherwise the current electoral failures allowing the racist right to be elected will only get worse
That would only go a small way towards fixing the crisis of democracy in this country. Instead we need to go the whole hog – continuous election, self-chosen constituencies of variable size and the open ballot. In other words rangatiratanga, or democracy as it was before it was transformed into the dictatorship of political and financial elites.
Sounds a plan
I agree CR. MMP as currently structured gives disproportionate power to minor parties. Unless the major parties are made by law to have a coalition MMP will lead us no where. Democracy is supposed to be ‘majority rule’ – we certainly do not have that at present.
I think this is what’s happening, and remember, National and Labour are the same thing so if you’re looking to Labour for guidance and direction at this point then you’ll get that alright, you’ll get driven straight into the pockets of our new owners.
What’s happening is that the bizarre charade that we think of as [our] politics isn’t that. Our ‘politics’ hasn’t been ours since roger douglas dropped fascist neo-liberalism on us back in 1984. And now, today, it’s a cynical play to fractionate then disperse us into a state of hopelessness while our new owners make plans for colonisation.
The only thing that’ll prove to be a speed bump to the private foreign ownership of our AO/NZ will be the Treaty and the fact that we’re still a member of the British commonwealth. I fucking bet you, luxon and chipkins will be collaborating behind their all bought and paid for MSM on how to divide us into waring factions.
The harder they try to prise us apart the more we should cling to each other. luxon not going to the national hui is an insult to Maori and he fucking knows that and he also knows there will be antagonists firing up anti-Maori/Anti Pakeha sentiment. Divide then conquer. That’s fucking Sun Tzu’s Art of War 101 right there.
Jesus! I just had a thought. Sky rocketing house prices is a logical fallacy. The banks have leveraged up mortgage dependancy by making it easy to borrow money to invest in the myth that’s the ‘ housing market’. A housing market the banks themselves inflated which was, and is, surely a trap. Is it a means to gain control of our work force and to divide us into partitions of those who can barely afford and those who must desperately endure?
In my opinion we’re under an abstract attack! We’re about to be colonised! Fuck!
Seemore is a fucken idiot race baiting piece of shit he only found out he was paaaart maaari when he was a young baldhead he wasn’t brought up around Maori and because he’s also a pakeha and looks like one hasn’t been subjected to racism or typical white supremacist stereotype on a daily basis
Luxon is playing with fire by saying he’ll only allow this nonsense to go so far, then he’ll stop it.
Once the fuse is lit, it will take more than a non-entity like him saying, ‘Ok that’s it, nothing to see here. Time to go home.’
He will have made a lot of enemies that he didn’t have to make and lost a lot of trust.
He thinks it’s politically expedient but I wouldn’t be too sure.
Seymour should be fronting up at Ngāruawāhia, to explain himself. He shouldn’t be allowed to back off from the possible trouble he’s causing. He’s hiding behind Luxon’s skirts and those of his very junior ministers who will be there. What a man!
Yet again we have a pakeha telling Maori what their hui is and isn’t about.
Luxon arrogantly announcing on TV that he won’t be attending because its not for politicians (but he’s sending some). How about going and listening – he may just learn what he has unleashed in bending to ACTs policies.
Luxon as reported sounds patronising – willing to be respectful and let the nice brown people sort out their malcontented agenda.
Comments are closed.