A POLITICAL PARABLE

My mokopuna brought me a fistful of freesia plants this morning from his mum’s garden. No. Not freesia flowers. Whole plants, with bunches of flowers attached.

I didn’t have the heart to growl him, but I showed him how, in future, he must use two hands to pick these particular flowers – one to anchor their stem at the bottom, the other to break it. Then we went home and planted the sweet-smelling remains in pots.

If ever there was an object lesson in how hope works, it’s a child planting spring bulbs when they should have been in the ground months before. Hei aha. My mokopuna had no time for that, or any other, inconvenient fact – like, those bulbs had already well and truly sprung. Unlike the fragile freesias he’d so easily uprooted, his hope sprang deep and tough – just like him.

I think there’s more than a little of that same strong feeling in the hearts of most people who allow their name to go forward for elections to public office.

Even allowing for whakahihi (overweening pride) and muru (vengeance), is it not hope that motivates the candidate who, having spent yonks trashing a Council or Board, now wants to lead or be part of it?

And what stronger urge than hope impels the incumbent who, all but invisible for their entire time in office, now comes courting our votes again?

Consider the candidate who has crashed and burned in past elections. While ego or eccentricity might be the vehicle, hope is the fuel that allows them to throw their hat in the ring again.

And what induces the candidate with no experience, or the single issue candidate, to stand? Sure, passion and self-belief are probably a large part of their motivational mix. But hope gives them the guts to take the chance.

Hika! Even the solid performing shoo-in, who couldn’t lose if they tried, has hopes for things like less friction, more gratitude, or higher voter turnout.

I’ve made hopeful investments in what turned out to be hopeless causes, and I’ve seen success stories that started as little more than jokers in the pack. I’ve planted seeds in stony ground and even stood for public office. So to all those hopefuls in this year’s local body elections – ratbag or radical, saint or sinner – I salute the lot, and point them to the parable of the freesia.

The scent of this flower, planted as a hope and harbinger of spring, is fantastic. But, sadly, like a lot of exotics, it’s too, too easy to pull out.

Perhaps I should have written about thistles or ragwort instead.

Maybe there’s more to be learnt from a manuka stump. Hei konei. Hei kona.

HE WERO (A CHALLENGE)

Amber Lundy, Britney Abbott, Alice Perkins, Maria Perkins, Cherie Perkins, Cameron Fielding, Krystal Fielding, Coral Burrows.

In this week’s NZ Listener there’s a challenge from well-known New Zealand children’s author, Jenny Hessell. “Try naming,” she writes, “some Pakeha children who have died as a result of child abuse”. Can you think of one? I couldn’t. Yet, of the 88 children killed in New Zealand between 2001 and 2006 by their whanau or caregivers, 48 were Pakeha, 28 were Maori and 12 were some other ethnicity.

Even when I very deliberately went looking for the dead Pakeha children’s names in the New Zealand Herald’s online search engine, all I could find were these eight – Amber, Britney, Alice, Maria, Cherie, Cameron, Krystal and Coral. And after I found their names, I still could not readily recall the faces or the circumstances behind the deaths of these Pakeha children.

Yet I’ll bet, like me, you could chant the names and case histories of many of the Maori dead at the drop of a hat. Try it.

The reason for this is simple. We have all been very deliberately exposed over and over again by the media in this country to a mantra of Maori names while Pakeha names have just as deliberately been ignored.

I’m not excusing or minimising the deaths of Maori children. I am challenging the inherent, unhelpful and unacknowledged racism of those who choose to portray child abuse as a “failure of ethnicity” rather than a “failure of humanity”. And I am joining Ms Hessell’s call for a radical media experiment over the next 12 months, starting with the writers and contributors to this publication, and comprising four simple actions:

1. Every time you publish an article, write an opinion or letter, or broadcast an item on child abuse, remind the public that about twice as many Pakeha as Maori children die each year at the hands of those who are meant to care for them.
2. If you must recite a list of names, take them only from the larger, Pakeha group of victims.
3. Let’s have investigative journalism that asks what it is about European culture that results in them killing their children.
4. Let’s have panels of Pakeha leaders interviewed about what they are doing to address this problem within their own cultural community.

Amber, Britney, Alice, Maria, Cherie, Cameron, Krystal, Coral and at least 40 other Pakeha children deserve that much at least.

Kanui tena i tenei take!

A reminder: this Friday is the last day for candidate nominations to all local bodies and I am hoping like mad that Maori candidates won’t repeat the mistake of standing against each other in the Far North District Council Wards. Hei konei. Hei kona.

KAUA E WAHANGU (DON'T BE SILENT)

Just one week ago Hone Harawira roundly criticized the “cycle of violence” that is brutalizing Maori whanau. "Never mind pointing the bone at anyone else, and never mind the platitudes,” he said, “We have the power to make a difference, we have the numbers.” He then went on to propose all 21 Maori MPs work together, across party lines, to come up with some solid solutions. The response of Labour’s Maori MPs has been faint.

This week Toby Curtis, spokesperson for the whanau of three of those accused of abusing the toddler Nia Glassie, announced that his whanau are going to openly approach and deal with and to other members of their very large whanau whanui who they believe may also be abusers.

Did you know and do you care that both these men had put these ideas out there? Or do you prefer to believe that the whanau of abusers are uncaring and that Hone is using the racist injustices against aboriginals as a red herring to distract from the terrible injustices against our Tamariki?

You know, it’s a largely hard and thankless task being an activist for the under-dog, especially in the face of the prevailing social climate that would prefer everyone sat down and shut up. I dedicate this poem to all those men and women who stand up and speak out.

He Wahine Toa –
Body carved cleanly and curved like a Crown,

Nursery of new life in its cyclical round.

Bold and bodacious,

Groovy and gracious –
Woman
He Tane Toa –
Body braced strongly for the sneaky blow
Sent special D by those you know
Laughing and loud,

Pukana proud –
Man

History's high waves sweep your shores like a song

Smashing rivers of right over rocks of wrong

Shattering spray lifts and drifts away.

Arced through the shimmer hangs a shining hope

God’s promised token like Maui’s strong rope

Sign of a future both sunlit and sure,

Lightening on faces of foes set in frowns

Who flit through the fight in the cloak of the Crown

Greedy and rotten their people forgotten.

Fight those behind them with God-given skill.

Wielding the Word whose power can kill

Sharp as a knife yet offering life

Laughing and loud
Pukana proud
Man
Fight hard and strong and persevere

Fight for a future free of fear

Lovely loquacious
Bold and bodacious
Woman

COME ON

As the oldest child in my whanau I hated hearing, “You must set the example.” I’d sit there thinking rebelliously, “Oh – come on!” But the higher expectations my parents had of me were always offset by the often unearned goodies that came with being first on the scene – like never having to wear older siblings’ hand-me-downs. No matter how hoha I found it, being the matamua both elevated and obligated me.

And the spotlight has gone on Maori leadership again this week for the same reason. Sure, they get to go, do and be things that many of them would not otherwise go, do and be. But, when all else fails, they also get to carry the can. And there’s no more obvious failure than children killed by their own whanau. So yes, right now our leaders are feeling the heat and there’s a lot more at stake than mere hoha. Aroha au ki a ratou, but the mana we vest in them also elevates and obligates them. .

Good on Hone Harawira for putting forward a plan to stop the killing. The Pawarenga aunties say it like this, “Do something! Even if it’s the wrong thing, it’s better than nothing.” But Hone, mate, even if the other twenty Maori MPs agreed to be locked in a room with you – I think the best thing that could happen for the entire country, let alone our babies, would be if only six of you came back out.

You see, I have no time for the majority of Maori MPs who refuse to stand alongside you and say, “There is a connection between stripping Maori of the bulk of our resources and the hopelessness of many of our whanau.” I specially have no time for those who are too lazy or loyal to their party to point out the dotted line between crappy government policies and fractured hapu and iwi.

Come on you Labour party Maori members. Sure, Maori success stories are real and rising. But the gaps between the haves and have nots are frighteningly wider than ever before. And even amongst those who are making it, the edge of the cliff is only as far away as the cuzzie, sis or bro who’s having a tough time. By all means, use your departmental newsletters to celebrate the successes. But don’t take credit for our successes and ignore your failures. For our babies’ sakes, do something. You are not sled dogs. There’s no need to travel in packs following behind your leader. Come to us one at a time and at our behest. Don’t call your own hui and expect us to come to you to be told what your bosses are going to do. Come to our hui and hear what we need you to do.

Come on you National party Maori members. If your first name is not Georgina, then you have not done anything noticeable for your people in parliament.

Come on we who lead our whanau, hapu, iwi and waka alliances, come on. Don’t centralise the power and resources when our whanau can set up their own Komiti, pool and leverage off their own resources and tap directly into whatever resources are out there for them. Don’t just talk about it. Make it happen.

Oh yes. We might hate hearing it. We might get hoha with it. But the fact is we who lead can only remain elevated when we lift those to whom we are obligated. Hei konei. Hei kona.