UNDRIP – Let’s Get On With It – Green Party
The Green Party welcomes the next steps towards implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in Aotearoa, and calls on the Government to get on with the mahi of upholding Tangata Whenua rights.
“Implementing UNDRIP has been a long time coming, especially as Aotearoa was one of the last countries to support it, even though Māori helped write it, so let’s just get on with the mahi and do what Māori have consistently said for decades,” says Dr Elizabeth Kerekere, spokesperson for Māori Development.
“Thousands were involved in the consultations for Matike Mai; these voices form the foundations of the whare that we need to build together here in Aotearoa.
“These practical steps to uphold Tangata Whenua rights through the implementation of UNDRIP are important, and the feedback clearly shows this requires a restoration of tino rangatiratanga. This should form the basis of our journey towards constitutional transformation.
“Iwi and hapū have been shut out of decision making for too long, and this has prevented us all from realising the benefits that come from honouring mātauranga Māori,” says Dr Elizabeth Kerekere.
Jan Logie, spokesperson for Te Tiriti o Waitangi, says: “Embracing tino rangatiratanga and indigenous rights brings positive benefits to all who live in Aotearoa. The Crown has a legal and moral obligation to uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi and that also provides a model of Government that moves away from the failed one-size-fits-all way of doing things.
“We have the opportunity to build solidarity through the health of our communities and ecosystems, and to meet the needs of everyone in Aotearoa through co-governance with tangata whenua and honouring Te Tiriti.”
I’ve had a gutsful of Elizabeth Kerekere. Yes, I know that wicked colonialists curtailed the free- wheeling sex lives of her ancestors so much that it’s amazing Elizabeth even got to be born, but Maori are not shut out of the democratic processes in New Zealand, and nor did the UNDRIP evolve from the New Zealand experience. It evolved from terribly worse and much longer ongoing tragic indigenous dynamics in the Nth America which bedazzles glazed-eyes Kiwi politicians so much that they’ll sell their souls to them . But UNDRIP cannot be applied wholesale to this country, and I suggest that Kerekere and Jan Logie’s word salads are sloppy and ill thought out.
I agree with you SW . There is a danger we finish up a very divided country and the Greens are leading this divide not only between races but also between men and women and rich and poor workers and benefituries. They must be kept from power.
Trevor, Well as far as I’m concerned, this is all John Key’s fault. Yes, the Greens have been astonishingly and deliberately divisive with their various identity politics mantra, and I’m not entirely sure why. But, if I remember correctly, it was Key who snuck Pita Sharples off to the US Indigenous conference in a clandestine way, and probably without any great forethought, but simply to buy the Maori / Maori Party vote.
The Treaty issues, as you know are ongoing and exercise finer legal minds, and more trained minds, than anybody in the Green Party has, and trying to sloppily juxtapose UNDRIP on top of this, is a recipe for social disaster. What’s happening globally elsewhere utilising UNDRIP, is unfortunately a very mixed bag; it could lead to a break-up of the Commonwealth, which would be shame, as the Commonwealth is a unifying factor in an increasingly fragmented world. As far as I know, the Labour Party reacted with caution to the findings/ recommendations of UNDRIP, but the Greens’ virtue signalling on anything that tickles their fancy, and then accusing their opponents of racism, homophobia, colonialism etc etc, is politically immature and doesn’t necessarily address or ameliorate the realities here, but lots of pollies still function at uni cafe level – and that’s not meant to sound as bad as it does either.