Paul Holmes' column in Saturday's
Weekend Herald was a nasty article from somebody who must have known it would hurt a lot of people. It was mean and mean-spirited. It was deliberately offensive and uncaring, and though he might claim that it was written to spark debate, at the end of the day it was just mean and nasty.
The way he writes it, Maori have no right to protest on Waitangi Day. We should be full of happy, happy, joy, joy.
"You know what I mean Hori - like back in the 60s when you Maoris were all so happy! Remember? When you could all play the guitar, and you all sang in such beautiful harmony, and smiled a lot, and drove trucks and bulldozers, and nobody talked about the Treaty, and none of you ever complained about anything. Why can't you be like that again?"
Well ... the world has moved on quite a bit since those days, but one thing that hasn't changed that much is protest, and in case you didn't know it Mr Holmes, Maori have been protesting at Waitangi for quite some time.Yes, there were protests at Waitangi this year, but did you know Mr Holmes, that there were protests at Waitangi in 1840 ... before they even signed the Treaty!
What? What on earth could they have had to protest about back then, I hear you say?
Well, a lot of our tupuna seriously doubted that the Governor and his cronies could be trusted, that's why. Ring a bell, Mr Holmes?
And quite a lot of them thought that Pakeha just wanted to steal our land.
And they didn't think a treaty would stop untrustworthy Pakeha traders from pushing gut-rot alcohol into Maori communities.
And they didn't think a treaty could make dirty, stinking, Pakeha whalers, sailors, thieves and brigands wash more than three times a year.
And some of my tupuna didn't like the nasty way that early Europeans treated Maori kids - you know, telling them to get out of the way, telling them to shut up, hitting them ...
And some of them were protesting because they thought that Pakeha only wanted a treaty to stall for time while they brought their military in to steal what they couldn't get honestly. Ring a bell Mr Holmes?
You see Mr Holmes, back in 1840, Maori owned the whole of Aotearoa, and although life wasn't exactly a bunch of roses, we had strong and vibrant societies dotted all round the country, until you guys introduced the gun, the Bible and the pox of course, and wreaked havoc and devastation like we'd never seen before.
So perhaps you can understand, Mr Holmes, that 172 years ago Maori weren't exactly jumping for joy at the prospect of signing a deal with an empire that had already signed and broken treaties all around the world.
But we did, and the record suggests that our tupuna did so for all the right reasons - to protect their lands and their forests and their rivers and their resources, and to provide a solid future for their mokopuna.
But things didn't quite work out that way did they? That's why we have a Treaty settlement process, with all its flaws and its failings and expectations, on both sides.
But Mr Holmes, did you know that iwi must accept that their Treaty settlements are full and final even though they're not even allowed to claim land that was actually stolen?
And can you explain why the Government is okay bailing out a failed (Pakeha) finance company down south to the tune of $1.7 billion, but doesn't want to pay Maori more than $1.4 billion for 63 million acres of dubiously acquired land and resources worth tens of billions of dollars?
When you stack the facts up like that, it's not hard to see that there's not a lot to make Maori want to smile and clap is there Mr Holmes?
And yes, life isn't just about the Treaty (even though your article was all about Waitangi Day).
Maori are also part of the broader fabric of our society. But did you know Mr Holmes, that in terms of health, welfare, education, employment, housing and justice, Maori statistics are still worse than everyone else in the country?
Not exactly something to wave pom-poms at is it? Those are just the facts Mr Holmes, but Waitangi Day is more than just facts.
So I'd also like you to know that along with a whole lot of other people (Maori and Pakeha), I enjoy going to Waitangi every year.
I enjoy the company, I enjoy the politics (both the Maori stuff and the Pakeha stuff), I enjoy the banter, I enjoy the people (both Maori and Pakeha), I enjoy having the kuia tell me they love me even when they're telling me off, I enjoy watching the kids playing sport, I enjoy the kapa haka groups, I enjoy the kai, I enjoy the march up to the top marae, I enjoy the church service, I enjoy seeing people I haven't seen in a while, I enjoy the occasion ... and yes Mr Holmes, I even enjoy the protest, because protest is every bit a part of Waitangi as anything else.
Waitangi Day is our National Day Mr Holmes. It is rightly commemorated in many different ways in many different parts of the country, but it was at Waitangi that a group of people chose to sign a Treaty that was to be the foundation of our nation, and it is to Waitangi that we rightly return every year to see how well we're doing.
It's not always going to be strawberries and cream, but it will always be a part of who we are.
Maybe I'll see you up there next year, Mr Holmes.
* MP Hone Harawira is the leader of the Mana Party.
Comments
The Paul Holmes article
Waitangi Day a complete waste
It's time to cancel our repugnant national holiday
Waitangi Day produced its usual hatred, rudeness, and violence against a clearly elected Prime Minister from a group of hateful, hate-fuelled weirdos who seem to exist in a perfect world of benefit provision. This enables them to blissfully continue to believe that New Zealand is the centre of the world, no one has to have a job and the Treaty is all that matters.
I'm over Waitangi Day. It is repugnant. It's a ghastly affair. As I lie in bed on Waitangi morning, I know that later that evening, the news will show us irrational Maori ghastliness with spitting, smugness, self-righteousness and the usual neurotic Maori politics, in which some bizarre new wrong we've never thought about will be lying on the table.
This, we will have to address and somehow apply these never-defined principles of the Treaty of Waitangi because it is, apparently, the next big resentment. There'll be lengthy discussion, we'll end up paying the usual millions into the hands of the Maori aristocracy and God knows where it'll go from there.
Well, it's a bullshit day, Waitangi. It's a day of lies. It is loony Maori fringe self-denial day. It's a day when everything is addressed, except the real stuff.
Never mind the child stats, never mind the national truancy stats, never mind the hopeless failure of Maori to educate their children and stop them bashing their babies. No, it's all the Pakeha's fault. It's all about hating whitey. Believe me, that's what it looked like the other day.
John Key speaks bravely about going there again. He should not go there again. It's over. Forget it. It is too awful and nasty and common. It is no more New Zealand day than Halloween.
Our national day is now Anzac Day. Anzac Day is a day of honour, and struggle, bravery and sacrifice. A day on which we celebrate the periods when our country embraced great efforts for international freedom and on which we weep for those who served and for those who died.
I wouldn't take my three great uncles who died at Gallipoli and in France - Reuben, Mathew and Leonard - to Waitangi Day and expect them to believe this was our national day. I wouldn't take my father, veteran of El Alamein and Cassino, there. Nor would I take my Uncle Ken who died in a Wellington bomber, then try and tell him Waitangi Day was anything but filth.
No, if Maori want Waitangi Day for themselves, let them have it. Let them go and raid a bit more kai moana than they need for the big, and feed themselves silly, speak of the injustices heaped upon them by the greedy Pakeha and work out new ways of bamboozling the Pakeha to come up with a few more millions.
When you start doing talkback or any kind of opinion broadcasting in New Zealand you learn that certain groups are loony, highly vocal, highly organised and they never rest. The second looniest are the anti-fluoride crowd. But leave them aside for today.
The looniest crowd in this country, the most irrational and bullying are La Leche, the breast feeding fascists who've become involved in the most bizarre controversy I can remember. Breast feeding is all they think about.
The row actually started with Piri Weepu filming a public health commercial in which he's seen bottle-feeding his daughter who has an allergy to dairy and the message is that she will grow up in a non-smoking house. That was the message, for God's sake. And it's a nice image. Dad, an All Black hero, Maori of the Year, bottle-feeding his little girl.
Many mothers would have appreciated seeing a baby being bottle-fed. Others appreciated that it showed a man involved in an intense part of nurturing baby. One or two mothers came forward this week and spoke about how they've been monstered by bullying women in supermarkets who berated them for buying formula.
Most mothers want to breast feed, I'm sure. No one disputes this. Some simply can't. And in the case of Piri's little girl, she can't handle dairy. But the hysterics saw a man, a bottle and a baby and were about to erupt. Never mind the positives, the non-smoking household, the All Black tenderly feeding his little girl. There was man and a baby and a bottle and it was the crime of the century.
Take it off, screamed La Leche, obviously. And suddenly the segment disappeared. The chief executive of the Health Sponsorship Council, which made the ad, is Iain Potter. Mr Potter says the council received overwhelming opposition to the bottle-feeding clip.
I bet it did. And I bet I know who from. Iain Potter should show some common sense, grow some balls, and learn to stand up to a highly organised band of intolerant people.
Overseas, just to change the subject and keep an elegant internationalism in the column, can you believe Russia's and China's intransigence at the United Nations Security Council on the matter of Syria?
So now Syria will grind on in broken, abject misery for the rest of the year until they shoot the despot.
I can't figure old rat-face Bashir. He must know that he's going the way of Gaddafi, with a refuge in a filthy sewer pipe for a while before the bullet in the head, being towed backwards through the streets to public display in a meat locker.
He's married to a very beautiful British woman, Bashir, a real English rose. One report suggested she and her family had tried to leave Syria last week but the convoy had been seen and turned back.
She must know what's coming. Armageddon is what's coming. One dreads to imagine what they'll do to her pretty face.
Comments
Barry Eastwood (New Zealand)
We have decided as a family that this Waitangi Day was the last we would try to celebrate as a special day. The goodwill our family has tried to extend to Maori and the conscious effort to understand their place in our society has also come to an end. Until there is a change in behaviour and a willingness to take responsibility for their own behaviour / problems we are not interested in their history or way of life.