OUR GREATNESS

In 2013 I took part in an exercise in which a group of us were given around 400 laminated cards and told not to read anything on them except the date at the top of each.  Instead we were directed to simply lay them out in chronologically ordered lines.  About 30cm long and 5cm deep, each one represented a specific event that had occurred in or affected Aotearoa between the late 1690s and this decade.  

Although they didn’t cover everything that had happened in that 300 year period,  those lines of cards still looked like a nest of centipedes when we’d finished laying them out, and I thought somewhat wryly to myself, “That’s the Crown for you; just when you think you’ve found its heart, it turns out to be another leg.”  

Anyway we were invited to walk through the centipede lines, find a date closest to the year in which one of our tūpuna lived, and to then read and consider some of the events that had occurred during their lifetime.

My great-great grandfather was born in 1816 and died in the 1890s.  In that span of around 80 years, the Crown passed and enforced legislation that dictated almost every conceivable aspect of his life and that of his descendants. E.g. how we got married, died and were buried; what we were taught, where we were taught it, and the language in which it was delivered and received. As a result, our tikanga, matauranga, reo, hauora and ritenga (laws, sciences, language, health and religious practices) were effectively outlawed and almost annihilated. 

Henare Tuauru PUKEROA

Additionally the land held by Mana Whenua Māori was reduced during those years from 66,400,000 acres in 1816 to less than 10,000,000 by 1910.  I note that that has since reduced even more, and in 2006 Mana Whenua held no more than an estimated 3,700,000 acres of the original land mass.

When I consider these events and their impact, I better understand why different ones of us do the things we do.  I also see anew how amazing we are as a people to still be here, bowed but unbroken, fighting back and forging our recovery.  We are truly great. 

Nelson Mandela has said of human beings in general that, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? ... As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Our tūpuna had already said a similar thing much earlier in the whakataukī “Ka warea te ware.  Ka area te Rangatira.  Hongihongi te whewheia.  Hongihongi te manehurangi.  Kei au te Rangatiratanga.    Ignorance is the oppressor.  Vigilance is the liberator.  Know the enemy.  Know the destiny.  Determine our own Destiny.” [Translation by Tamati Kruger] 

As part of realising that destiny, the movie ‘Māori Boy Genius’ was released a week after ANZAC Day 2013, a very auspicious timing. Because, even more than it did during the years in which the ANZAC tradition was being formed, the rest of the world needs our greatness now.

Ka area te Rangatira.