PEACE WITHIN OURSELVES

Under the current constitutional arrangements in this country, sovereign Maori cannot work for the government and be at peace within ourselves, because inevitably we will be forced to do things that uphold and apply racist policies designed to do our people over. 

There has to be an internal conflict for Maori enforcing such laws and policies against their own whanaunga who are tūturu Rangatira Maori (real about being sovereign). 

If they are tūturu, Far North District Council’s rating department employees are conflicted when they see another block of Maori-owned land go up for rating sale.  They know that more often than not these are blocks of land which have been rendered unusable or unused by past racist policies and laws on rating. 

If they are tūturu, Maori Land Court staff are conflicted when they must process the FNDC’s applications for charging orders against Maori land.  They know that, regardless of its own culpability in forcing Maori off their lands in the past, these charging orders enable the FNDC to forcibly sell those same lands to the highest or any other tenderer in the future. 

If they are tūturu, Maori who work for the New Zealand Police are conflicted when they are required to forcibly remove their own people from their own lands and charge us with trespass.  The same goes for Maori who work in Corrections and have to process, transport, deliver and store their own people who refuse to comply with these racist laws?

If they are tūturu, Maori teachers at mainstream schools are conflicted when they see Maori children marginalised for being tūturu within a system that in their hearts they know is not teaching the truth about our history let alone about our present and future.

So what are Maori who work for government agencies to do? 

They could do ‘plausible deniability’ as in, I didn’t know the truth about what was happening, so I can’t be blamed for it.  They could do justification as in, at least I am a familiar face doing this to my whanaunga.  They could do cession of sovereignty altogether as in, I accept the Magna Carta over-rides He Wakaputanga and the Crown is sovereign in this country.  Or they could do repentance and quit, as in Ross Meurant.

Conflict happens when our talk does not match our walk, as in when our government agency boss declares that what is being done to our whanaunga within the agency we work for is not actually ‘racism’, it’s just ‘unconscious bias’.

Peace happens when our external rules and actions match our internal sense of right and wrong.  

In the case of a nation, these rules are codified within a written constitution which outlaws racism, stops governments from watering down those laws that protect all human rights, and supports us all to be at peace within ourselves.

FINDING OURSELVES

Mokopuna Rapaere Karu Kamira spent 45 years finding and helping our people in Australia move from a state of ngoikore (weakness) to one of toiora (wellbeing).

In 1995 he came home to ask advice from his kuia and kaumātua, and deliver a warning: the number of Māori turning up in Australian prisons, he said, was rising.  What could the whānau, hapū and iwi at home do to help change the emerging pattern?  Implicit in his question was the knowledge that Māori were losing their identity in Australia. 

This pattern was first seen during the so-called urban drift of Maori from our rural kāinga (settlements) after World War II.  Its warp was woven when Maori who migrated with hope ended up becoming just another minority lost in transit. 

But at the same time a matching weft pattern was woven by those Rangatira Maori who saw the holes appearing in our social fabric, and worked hard to stitch and mend it. 

Although written from the perspective of one such kāinga, Melissa Matutina Williams’ recently published book, Panguru and the City: Kainga Tahi, Kainga Rua: An Urban Migration History, captures the warp and weft of that migration pattern with clarity and compassion.

By 1995, Moko’s kuia and kaumatua had seen and lived through several such migrations.  So their advice to him was simple: teach te reo me ona tikanga to our people in Australia so that they may remember who they are and where they come from.

Although still relatively young at the time, Moko was like a living Ark filled with the mita o te reo me ona tikanga (the rhythm, intonation, pronunciation and sound of our language, and the customary system of values and practices developed over time and deeply embedded in our social context). 

As a former film stuntman he also had a showman’s charm and cheek, but tempered with morals and mana.  In short, he had what it takes to do what his kuia and kaumātua advised him to do. 

Although he worked fulltime as a Funeral Director, Moko never stopped helping Māori who had become lost in Australia to find their identity.  He was not the only one. 

To this day, others like him are teaching and strengthening Māori identities within the social fabric of Australia.  But as recent developments have revealed, since 2001 they have been really up against it.   

This facebook post captures some of that:  “Australians are more upset that their cricket players didn't shake some Black Caps hand than they are that their government is shaking down thousands of kiwi taxpayers.  Advance Australia Fair?  Yeah right.”

Twenty years after he first put his question to them, Moko and most of his kuia and kaumātua are dead.  Yet the question he asked in 1995 remains the same:  What can we do to help?  So too does the answer: te reo me ona tikanga.

Without them, we are likely to become or remain ngoikore.  With them, we can achieve toiora.  And it all begins and ends with finding ourselves.