Waitangi Day reminder as to why Māori have every right to be pissed off

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1. I presume that the map shows land under Maori title, rather than land owned by Maori, which would be almost impossible to assess. Many of those of Maori descent, those of the Maori race, and those who identify as Maori would own substantial areas of land which are classified as General land. That is certainly the case in the area where I live.
   So we come back to the fact that there is a diminishing area of land classified as Maori land with the title held in common by multiple owners. Even though the loss of land in Maori title does not necessarily mean that Maori as a people have less access to the land than Pakeha, those of us who believe in the system of common or communal landholding regret will that loss. Likewise we may also regret that large areas of formerly family owned farms and homes have been moving into corporate ownership.
   So what can we do to halt or reverse that process? Don’t sell land. Follow the kaitiaki principle. Treat any land that you may own as communal land, and use it for the benefit of your local community as a whole. Do all that and the shrinking area of blue need not be such a great cause for concern.

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2. I don’t see our local marae and associated areas of Maori land marked in blue on the map. Perhaps because the areas are too small to register on that scale.
   Conclusion?
   The situation may not be as bad as it looks here.
   And the broken contract (the Treaty of Waitangi) was with the British Crown (now the Realm of New Zealand) and not with “pakeha”.
   So the British Crown has broken the contract which it never intended to honour?
   No problem. As we were in 1862, so today we are free to renounce the Crown’s self-claimed but illegitimate authority and take our fate as a people into our own hands.
   Follow Ihoa o nga mano, defy the colonialist regime and it will fall before our eyes.
   Kia kaha!

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