Earlier this month two separate
and very different incidents took place in Kaitaia that portrayed the best and
the worst of our rangatahi. They also
brought out and reflected the best and worst amongst the adults of our town.
On Thursday
7th a video was posted to facebook showing a female student in Kaitaia
College uniform assaulting a smaller girl who was clearly special needs. Just as bad as the assault, if not worse, were
some of the comments made by a very few local adults judging and threatening
violence against the violator.
Most of us chose not to share
that video or to comment on it. Instead
we contacted the Board of Trustees, the Principal and the Police and left them
to do their jobs. Then we did our jobs
to promote changing the narrative from one of fear and hatred to one of tika
pono and aroha.
On the same day that assault happened, I was in a
local shop when an older woman came in just before it was due to close. Very unsteady on her feet and smelling
strongly of alcohol, she struggled to enter her eftpos PIN and pay for her
purchases.
Two young men behind her in school uniform asked,
"Are you OK whaea?" She reckoned she was and kept trying but was
getting flustered. The lady behind the
counter said, "It's alright whaea, no hurry." Then another young couple said, "Whaea
we can pay for it." She insisted, "No, no, I got the
money." And sure enough the
payment went through. We all smiled.
I offered to take her to her next destination, but she
said no she was OK and off she went, unsteady but dignified by what had just
happened. We all were. And it started with those two rangatahi.
The next day someone started a
thread on facebook of “praise and aroha for our tamariki … to focus our attention on all those
cool kids out there [who] far outnumber those children that have temporarily
lost their way.”
People posted with love and pride
about their students and their children, including the youth who was recently
honoured for saving someone from drowning, the many rangatahi who attended
recent ANZAC Day commemorations around the district, and the Kaitaia College
students who are organising a pink shirt mufti day with an anti-bullying theme
for the upcoming Youth Week.
Since then, the new College Principal
has communicated his thanks to a community that has responded with our best to the
assault. In return I record our thanks
to a Principal who has shown he is open to our tikanga support.
Our society is made worse by the kino narrative that
is too often whipped up on social media, or between different peoples. It is made better by the higher narrative of
faith, hope and love in thought, word and action.
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