WHY DO WE DO THE THINGS WE DO?

I’ve been percolating for months on why Maori, as a nation, can’t crack the hard nut issues. Why can’t we stop the murder and abuse of our kids by their whanau? Why are we letting the Crown pimp Papatuanuku to Rio Tinto? Why aren’t we preparing sensibly for peak oil? I think the answers lie in the fact that too often we equate big with powerful, collective with good and individual with bad.

At one extreme our Runanga attract criticism for being flash and powerful, while hapu and whanau are cast as overlooked minnows in the face of runanga clout. Yet at the same time and at another extreme those same whanau are judged to be more important than the individuals inside them. Try telling that to Nia Glassie.

Any way, as one who's engaged in all these structures I say that's so unbalanced as a perspective, it’s useless. Runanga are useful for some things. But the only structure I'll give my blood for is my whanau. How powerless or powerful is that for an individual? In fact I firmly believe Maori strength and health and capacity to deal with the big kaupapa all starts with me as an individual.

It will be the seed planted in every spare piece of ground that’ll secure Maori once peak oil hits. That's why we're going to teach the whanau on this street to do exactly that. That way we'll all get to grow some kai while at the same time sharing some key skills in horticulture, enterprise, literacy, numeracy, parenting and plain social cohesion. I know it's gonna work and when it does we'll take it on to the next street and the next. This mahi has power in it for our whanau simply because it is at the whanau level.When it comes to Rio Tinto sniffing around Taitokerau for gold and anything else it can make a buck off, it will the individuals who convince their whanau and mates to join them and lay their bodies on the land who will stop it being mined.As for the horror of child abuse amongst us, it will be the individuals who are taught and supported to value themselves who will bring it to an end.

I believe the different structures we are using are but stepping stones on the way back to something we already have to go forward under. They are the whanau and marae. Yet we're overlooking them for other structures and mechanisms that will never wrap around our hearts and carry us forward as Maori the way our whanau and marae do.

And I just can't figure out yet why we're doing that.

Kanui tena mo tenei wa.