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.