a wave of emotion

I like this homecoming, this connecting of the past, present and the future. The emotion, the tears, the joy, the sorrow. Welcome home Hine Muka.

NZH

Tears of joy and jubilation were shed at the welcoming of a historic Maori cloak back home to Wairarapa yesterday afternoon.The 19th century woven cloak, or korowai, originally belonged to Wairarapa iwi and had been stored in the Rochester Historical Society collection in the United States for more than 100 years.

To have waited for the people for so long and now together again!!!

"It's absolutely overwhelming and almost indescribable the value that this has to our people," Wairarapa List MP Ms Fox said."The greatest thing we have is the reconnection with our ancestors who are definitely here in spirit and here today to see her come home."

I can feel the emotion from here - the tears fall, the tears of joy and time and space tear and we are here together again.

Ms Fox said the korowai, which was shaped to the shoulder with darting, was a priceless example of expert weaving which is not seen today.She said korowai made today are usually square and that this korowai was "a bit wider in the hips so it must be made for me"."The effort and the time and the amount of harakeke that is involved in making her will be a beacon and example for the future," she said."It will connect us with our whenua and it will connect us with our ancestors and be an example for our young people to restore and revive these traditions."Wairarapa iwi representatives, who collected the korowai from the Nelson Provincial Museum where it was being cared for before its return, lovingly named the cloak Hine Muka.

The Mana that this brings and the impetus for knowledge and even more connection.

Aratoi Museum of Art and History director Alice Hutchison said when Wairarapa iwi were reunited with the korowai in Nelson earlier this week, the feeling in the room, was "so intense and so strong for everybody"."It was like a wave of incredible love and I've never felt anything like it."

When you feel it, you know. It is the most unbelievable feeling, so intense - a different dimension.

And so I want EVERYTHING returned so that all Māori can experience these feelings, these gifts. And I want other cultures to feel the same - so museums send it all back to where it came from, send it back to the people, their people. Stop this hoarding - stop this paternalistic attitude that people cannot look after their own.

I have been and seen some of the taonga under Te Papa - they cry out for return, their voices deafening. This is a poem I wrote after visiting Te Papa

Longing for a breeze

the floor was polished

and clacked

with footfall and they lay

quietly disemboweled,

and were viewed.

a card explained: revered once, then dis

repair, now look

their mauri is strong. so they

say breezelessly.

A whare tūpuna

will say what to that?

Pita Sharple's taiaha watches

through glass.

They are alone at night.

No, no, and no again

Sorry but this is a difficult story - a story of loss, of disrespect, of money and of our current state of affairs. It does finish on a slightly positive note though

NZH

A protest campaign has erupted against a Fletchers proposal to build up to 480 homes near Auckland Airport on land that includes lava caves that were used as Maori burial sites for generations.
The 32ha site valued at $11.85 million has been designated a special housing area, which means the project is likely to be notified only to adjacent landowners.

Now we know that this government and especially nick smith and paula bennett are in trouble because of their inaction to our homeless and their uncaring attitude to those trying to help. So smith has made special housing areas.

About 100 people attended a protest meeting on Wednesday night called by a group of young cousins at the nearby Makaurau Marae, the ancestral home of the Te Waiohua people who gave Auckland its original name of Tamaki Makaurau.
But their tribal leader, Te Warena Taua, who chairs the marae committee, says he accepts the development because he could not stop it.
He led a tribal challenge in the Environment Court against extending the metropolitan urban limit outwards to include the property in 2012, but lost.

yep they lost, but that does not mean the fight is over.

Fletchers' application to the Overseas Investment Office, which was required to approve the deal because 56 per cent of the company's shares are foreign-owned, shows that it plans to vest almost half the land (16.2ha) in Auckland Council for "roads, reserves, walkways and other public amenities", including an area to be added to the historic reserve.
It says the other 16.6ha will be used to build 350-480 homes over the next eight years, including terrace, duplex and stand-alone houses.

Get that? fletchers are 56% foreign owned and this development is for one reason - to make money! Don't be fooled into thinking it is for parks or reserves or even housing NO it is to make money!

The land was confiscated by the Crown in 1863 and has been owned by the Wallace family since 1866.

Illegal and immoral - confiscated for what? because they wanted it that is why.

A Wallace descendant who grew up on the land and still lives there at age 87, Ailsa Blackwell, said she helped a friend gather "a sugar-bag full" of human bones from a cave on the farm for a school talk at Mangere Central School in about 1940.
"It was my job to hold them up at the school for the talk," she said. "The headmistress was shocked. She took them straight up to Pukaki Pa."

yep desecration of those sites over the years too

Another member of the protest group, journalist Qiane Matata-Sipu, said the group would not be satisfied even if Fletchers protected the caves.
"Look at it," she said, surveying the farmland stretching downhill from the caves. "This is all that's left. We don't want to be left with this little box [a small protected area]."

Give it back, all of it. 

And to end on a positive note

Heritage NZ Maori manager Te Kenehi Teira said the development would need an archaeological authority. "It will end up on my desk at some stage. I will take it straight to the Maori Heritage Council for a decision because of the magnitude of the place," he said.

Perhaps that will protect the sites but more is needed - the area must be given back and that will protect the site and the ancestors. 

hikoi for peace

Hundreds join a march for peace, reconciliation, building better relationships, and racial inclusion - and this all happened in Taranaki. This hikoi will arrive at Parihaka on Friday.

This is the way to do it, this is the way of the past and the way of the future and THIS is the country I want my kids to grow up in - not the dismal, emotionally dried up, uncaring society loved by john key and paula bennett.

Stuff

Some in the crowd for the first leg of the walk had come from outside of the region to support the peace project.Wellington law student Indiana Shewen, 21, said the debate around Judd's stance on a Maori ward in New Plymouth and the subsequent abuse he copped, led her and other Maori law students to set up a committee that now makes submissions to Parliament on issues affecting tangata whenua.She said she had been upset by her home town of New Plymouth being called by some the "racist capital of New Zealand" and wanted to be part of attempts to turn that negative reputation around."It's important for people to understand it's not just New Plymouth, it's everywhere," Shewen said.

Brilliant - so great that they have not just felt it but done something about it - this will help so many people. And yep it IS everywhere and we will fight it EVERYWHERE!!!

Alistair Preese, who travelled from the Bay of Plenty for the hikoi, said he was a fan of Judd and the peace walk's goal.
"I look at reconciliation as a giant jigsaw puzzle and this is a lovely little piece of that," he said.
Preese, who has strong ties to Parihaka, said while Judd's "depth of conviction" struck a chord with him, it was the support he had seen from schoolchildren, some of whom walked or otherwise watched from the sidelines, which he took most heart from.
"Those are the seeds aren't they. We're ploughing the ground here," Preese said.

Yes the seeds that will grow and it is so important that all ages are involved - young, old and in between - this is how you build relationships, this is how we walk to the future together!

Peace Movement Aotearoa's Edwina Hughes said the organisation backed any initiative designed to promote a better understanding of issues related to Maori and Pakeha relationships and the Treaty of Waitangi.
"The injustices against Maori, against hapu and iwi goes on everyday, it is not a historical issue," she said
She said the community forums, which are a key part of the peace walk, were a perfect place for people to come together and share their stories.

Yep - not historical (as in the past so we don't have to worry about it) but real today, in people's lives today. And community forums are awesome - this gives the community the ability to have input, to feel heard and to listen.

So many positives from this - thank you to the organisers and participants - I am proud to support this hikoi.

time for radical change

Sleeping rough - there is no glamour in this, it isn't cool or street - it is difficult, lonely, cold, wet, dangerous, intimidating, isolating, destructive and for many a final destination after choices are gone.

Waatea News

As winter bites, the Auckland City Mission says it has identified a record 200-plus rough sleepers around the central city, more than half of them Maori.

Yep HALF of them are Māori!!! Homeless in their own land. Discarded by many. Literally hand to mouth survival.

The new Auckland city missioner, Chris Farelly says the figure stands as further evidence that not only is Auckland experiencing a housing crisis, but that those living at the furthest extremes of poverty are suffering the most. 

He says the longer someone sleeps rough, the harder it can be to transition into living a normal life.

Yep the normal ain't normal anymore. And we have also had the news that

New statistics reveal Māori home ownership has plummeted in the past 27 years, with the rate in some parts of the North Island dropping by as much as 40 percent.
The report from Statistics New Zealand said, since 1986, the average drop in the ownership rate was 20 percent for Māori, compared with 15 percent for the total population.
"In the worst hit areas for Māori, declines in home ownership were close to 40 percent and that was in the Whangarei, southern Auckland, Tauranga, Rotorua and Hastings urban areas."
The number of Māori having to rent privately had risen dramatically, she said.
"It's increased by 88.3 percent since 1986, so we know that there's been that large increase in Māori living in private rentals as well as a fall in people living in owner-occupied dwellings and that compares with a fall for the total population of 42.7 percent."

The minister nick smith says

"The fact that our Maori and Pacific people have lower rates of home ownership is just a broader reflection of the fact that they tend to have lower educational achievement, that they have lower incomes, and that translates itself into housing."

Yep cos uz Maaori r dum eh - what an dickhead smith is - a person who is pretending there are no housing issues, a minister so out of touch that every time he comes on the telly he reminds us of how inadequate, out of his league, and useless he is. He isn't helping to solve any housing problems - he is just trying to protect his very exposed arse, and it is exposed because he is ineffectual.

We DO NOT deserve this useless government with its apathetic ministers, we deserve better.

true bennett

So Paula Bennett the minister just made up the 'Flying squads' going around tapping on car windows to try and help the many homeless people living in their cars. She told the useless john key, he repeated it to show how useless the homeless were - didn't even bloody WANT help. Now the truth has come out that it was all bullshit. What an absolute disgrace of a person and if you want to see her real side watch this video - nasty, nasty, nasty!!!

The truth is many people are really struggling with the situation of no place to live - only very desperate people live in cars or vans. Māori are over-represented and everyone is suffering. Listen to this interview to hear the resilience and strength of some of our people.

People are helping as best they can but this is a structural issue that has to be fixed from top to bottom.

Does this government and its ministers care and are they going to do something? Nah better to have some more guns ($20b - yep that is billions) to shoot the desperate climate refugees soon to show up on our coastline...

time to call time?

Who knows? Is it the calling, the incessant voices saying, "go forward, move", is it some feeling of service, or just ego, a feeling like no one else could do it. Whatever the reason, the maneuvering before these decisions of who will be the representative, and who will be elected Kaiwhakahaere - whew too much for me.

I just wish they would accept that if it is meant to be, it will be - and that the new always comes after the old, and that it is okay to rest after mahi and that others will do what they will do and that is what they will do. In other words - let it go, let others have a go - it IS time for a change.

Stuff

One letter of support came from Riverton-based runanga Oraka-Aparima, whose representative is Ann Wakefield. She will have to stand down to give Solomon a run at the position.The chair of the Oraka runanga is Sandra Cook, who is regarded as one of Solomon's chief allies within the Ngai Tahu governance administration.She holds the position of principal adviser and leaked documents show her at loggerheads with Arihia Bennett, Tront's chief executive.The documents showed Solomon fought Bennett over committee structures and a management restructure that saw many of his loyal cronies go.

 The danger in not going is this is where the mana gets unraveled and this is where the dirty washing gets used and this is where hurts are revisited and slights are remembered - from all sides and positions get entrenched and hearts gets hardened and pity goes out the window and mercy is forgotten. This is what happens - it has happened before and it will happen again. Be prepared.

can you handle the truth?

It is very hard to face up to this - people commit suicide in this country at alarming rates. The numbers do not tell the full story - how could they. They record successful attempts and not the other multiple attempts. They must fit a certain criteria before they are recorded as suicide and this ensures - what? half are recorded as suicide? a third?

Stuff

Former Chief Coroner Neil MacLean said the number of recorded suicides in New Zealand should be taken "with a large grain of salt".
"Some people could fall through the gaps because just relying on raw suicide numbers isn't giving us the true number," he said.
Judge MacLean said each case was judged on whether the evidence proved the person deliberately intended to take their life.

"That would include making a determination that it wasn't just an accident or indulging in risky behaviour without thinking of the consequences," he said.

We want to blame - their fault, his or her fault, or this issue or that issue. None of that is really helping because it isn't getting to the heart of the issue.

I'm going to talk about that and some ideas for solutions over the next couple of posts.

fishy smell

So a group of teens did this and got this

A sentence of home detention for four Northland teenagers for a burglary spree totalling nearly $80,000 in stolen property has been met with outrage...
Former Maori Affairs Minister Dover Samuels told media the penalty was "inadequate", and thousands of social media posts claimed the teens escaped a custody sentence because they were white.Comments left on the Northern Advocate website were similar in theme with most questioning the justice system and making the observation that if the offenders had been Maori or Pacific Islanders the most likely outcome would have been jail.

It is not really rocket science to come to that conclusion especially when we also have this

A trout poacher has been jailed for four months - about 18 months after he was found guilty of the original charges. Leef was also disqualified from driving for six months as he used a car to get to the stream. Leef was caught with 10 rainbow trout strung onto a length of rope by Fish & Game rangers at a spawning stream at Lake Rotoiti in 2014. He claimed he was taking trout to eat and for his whanau.There were six hatchery bred trout and four wild trout.

Yep so there we have it

$80,000 + priviledge = not much

10 trout + Māori = Jail

Justice? No! 

The way it is? yes.

Please note this post is NOT about sending more people to Jail - it is about the injustice of systemic and unrelenting institutional racism. Trout are an introduced species and they don't need special protection so that sport fishers can get a thrill. This poacher was in the wrong - and he was trying to feed his family. But he didn't steal $80,000 worth of fish and he should not have been sent to Jail.

Good post on The Standard on this topic.

not broken just reflective

The Standard is broken says the voice of reason (trp).

I've had my issues with some authors on The Standard - namely voice himself and I have visited a lot less over the last 3 months because of those issues. I have had time to reflect on The Standard and myself as a commenter, a contributer, an activist and a person.

I've come to some conclusions. These are 2 to consider.

time online is just a little bit better than watching tv - the map is not the territory

the world continues to spin even when we don't contribute - a painful realisation for sure

So to voice's assertion - No The Standard is not broken in the sense that that means because it actually does reflect a wider society - slanting left and progressive. The Standard is not broken, our society is broken, our values are broken, our communities are broken. Yes The Standard is not safe for women, neither is society - ffs women still get blamed for being abused, women still earn less for the same role - the Patriarchy is alive and well - in society and at The Standard.

voice says

My suggestion is that we need to look again at the structures of the Standard, from the ‘owners’, through the moderators and onto the authors. The undemocratic, male dominated and authoritarian ownership structure of the Standard is fundamentally wrong for a left blog. There are moderators who do little or no blog writing, don’t contribute much in the comments, but hang on grimly to their tools of power and control. There are authors who are bigots, authors who hate the left, authors who hate women. One author is all of the above. Why are they here on a left wing blog?

I think voice needs to be more honest here - this is a power play by him to take over The Standard and wrestle it towards his vision of what he thinks it should or maybe could be. That in itself is not necessarily a bad thing but dressing it up as some sort of defense of women is disingenuous and insulting imo.

Please understand I cannot stand and in fact oppose the gender politics and sad defenses offered by the likes of cv or redlogix and over the years I've commented many times about what I, as a man, think about other men who have these ideas.

So what to do?

nothing

What?

Yep - do nothing, change nothing, get rid of no one - anything that is done is just hiding the issues and not dealing with them.

But what about offensive and horrible comments?

delete and ban them

But what about making The Standard safer for women?

It won't be, not without changing attitudes and that won't happen anytime soon - especially with fundamentalist views and attitudes.

But The Standard might whither and die?

So does everything. If you want to change that then contribute, be an author, be a commenter, be involved.

use tikanga not leaks

It is time to talk a bit about Ngāi Tahu and the situation at the top.

Sir Mark Solomon is stepping down after 19 years as Kaiwhakahaere, leader of the Iwi. This is a big thing, especially as there are now 'issues' in the media. 

I am of the mind that Mark has been a good leader that has helped the Iwi and that it is a good time for a change.

In recent times I have been especially impressed by Mark. The historical sexual abuse case has shown his leadership. He has said

Sir Mark said he had been campaigning for some time to stamp out all forms of violence and abuse within Ngāi Tahu communities.
On the runanga website, Sir Mark said the descendants of Kurī, the hapū in Kaikoura, were facing a challenging time.
Sir Mark, who is from Kaikoura, said his whanau had found it difficult living within the community, knowing some of their whanau had been perpetrators - or victims - of sexual abuse.
It has been reported a kaumatua has been convicted on sexual abuse charges.
Sir Mark said the hapū was addressing the issue as a community, rather than ignoring the issue and sweeping it under the carpet
the complainants are some of the bravest people he knows.

I also read the letter he sent to all members of the Iwi and within it he was accurate - all communities have sexual abuse victims and perpetrators, this is a community issue and the victims especially need support, they need to know they are supported and loved by the community, the community that includes relatives and friends of the perpetrator and that individual too. This issue within that community is the visible side of sexual abuse and it is within all of our communities. Don't be fooled into thinking it is rare - it isn't.

Mark resigned as chair of Takahanga, he said he will not seek re-election as the Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu Representative for Kaikoura and thus his time as Kaiwhakahaere is completed.

and now we have leaked confidential letters showing a real conflict - perhaps personal, perhaps ideological but definitely public now.

A confidential memorandum has been leaked containing a raft of allegations by chairman Sir Mark Solomon that the perception of nepotism and corruption were creeping into the way the iwi conducted itself.

I think the tense is wrong in that statement - "were creeping" nah it creeped a long time ago and guess what? I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing at all.

This bullshit of the "best person" for the job is imposed rubbish that just creates roles for non-iwi members - those roles could and can be filled with Iwi members - and that is what I would like.

I know nepotism has a bad name - and it is a pain when you are not in the inside running - and I know about that from bitter experience but the fundamentals are correct - use people you know, trust and can rely on.

The response from Chief Executive Officer of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu Arihia Bennett was very good

asking him to show restraint in his statements, or have the integrity to state them openly and with supporting evidence.

It is interesting to note that in her Iwi profile she writes

“Ko te whānau te mea tuatahi – Family comes first; everything I touch and do must be about the whānau way.”

So we get to the same spot as we have been in the past - and the media will lap it up because they love controversy.

What do I think about it all, whose side am I on?

I wish they'd just get their shit together and use tikanga to sort out their differences not leaked documents like some slimey politician. And at another level I just don't care - when you are in the mode you think you are a big fish, you think you matter, you think you are important - you aren't, you are just another cog, another descendant - our mana is your mana - sort your shit out top table!!!

bennett has head in the sand and the tide is coming in

Quite a good interview by Jack Tame with Paula Bennett the Climate Change Minister on Q & A this morning. He kept the hard questions going and she didn't like it very much - as shown by the forced smiles.

Will we ratify this year now that we have signed - Bennett says, "I could do it... but I haven't made up my mind"

No hurry, whatever, when I get round to it - is what she means I think. Funny she seemed so genuinely excited to be signing with all the Presidents and Heads of State - just a photo op then.

Tame raises the Morgan report

A new report by the Morgan Foundation, released today, says foreign carbon credits which New Zealand bought to reach its climate targets were fraudulent. 

It says that New Zealand was the world's biggest buyer of Russian and Ukrainian credits which did not represent any reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. 

That meant New Zealand, despite achieving its target on paper, had done little in reality to reduce global emissions. 

"We are, without doubt, cheats", the organisation's founder Gareth Morgan said. 

New Zealand's main tool for reducing atmosphere-warming emissions is the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

Bennett says the report is "nothing new" and "half of it is kinda right and the rest is factually incorrect"

Tame - but we did continue trading in those credits for a long time when other countries had banned them" 

Bennett - yes...

and then onto excuses and what nots

but the Greens are not going to let it lie, thank goodness

Climate Minister Paula Bennett acknowledged this morning on TVNZ’s Q&A that the National Government had knowingly allowed business to buy carbon credits in the Ukraine and Russia that did not result in actual cuts in emissions, the Green Party said today. 

This acknowledgement comes in the wake of a report by the Morgan Foundation which showed these false cuts in pollution equated to a quarter of the emissions the Government claimed to have reduced between 2008 and 2012. 

“Minister Bennett cannot just say we should all just move on,” said Green Party Co-leader James Shaw. 

"If the Minister cancels New Zealand's fraudulent units, a move she says she is considering, she would have the Green Party's full support. The Greens have been calling attention to these dodgy credits for several years and last week called upon the Minister to cancel them.

 just read that line again

false cuts in pollution equated to a quarter of the emissions the Government claimed to have reduced between 2008 and 2012.

shocking so, so shocking

Tame - it wasn't in the spirit of the talks 

Bennett - it was in the rules okay...

Bennett uses many of the old key tricks in this interview - redirection, "Well I think the question is.. " when she doesn't want to answer the actual question given. "Focus on the future not the past" when she doesn't like the question or "What I would say is..." as an alternative and then into, "Keep it in perspective" to downplay it all. Pretty typical politicalspeak and she does it as well as only the truly committed can.

Apparently bennett has "other countries asking to learn both from what you did well and the mistakes you made" Pity Tame didn't ask which countries because all the telltale fib-markers were out when she was saying that and I really think she made it up.

She did speak the truth when she said she is "not sure" if our target is more within the range of a 3 - 4 degree Celsius rise in temperature. This minister is underdone and not up to debating even what the hell she has signed imo. Tame asks, "Do you accept that a global temperature rise of 3 -4 degree could potentially be catastrophic? Bennett - "yes, absolutely". And then we get the platitudes of "playing our part" "Hugely significant changes" - eh what? Tame asks, "What significant changes?" Bennett - "...a range of things and not one answer". Even Tame is getting over it at this point.

Tame - what does this government value more agriculture (which makes up 33% of our emissions) or climate change? 

Bennett - we're just not going to pick one. 

Tame - why not?

Bennett - cos we don't have to

and that is all she wrote. The rest is bullshit and dopey "I think" stuff from bennett - this minister is just not up to it and she represents this government well - they should all just resign.

Do not rely on the government to help - start now before it is too late, build community, build resilience, build networks and connections, reduce everything - do it now.

a canary with a fever

Sometimes the canary in the coalmine dies quickly and at other times it slowly expires. The 93% coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef this year is a bit of both and shows how these extinction events really happen - they are not linear - they don't happen all ordered and knowable - they happen in bursts, in slides and then plateaus and then cliffs and so on. The Great Barrier Reef is a coughing canary and baring aliens and superheroes is likely to be gone within a decade or 4. This bleaching is caused by sea temperature rises and this is contributed to by fossil fuel burning and that is not even close to stopping or even slowing down. Environmental activists know that even as governments sign a global climate change deal in New York to limit global warming by at least two degrees that this is just a minimum response practically worth nothing other than the ability to skite about it, just like our idiot Minister, back in their home countries.

news.com.au

But environmental activists want greater action from the government at home. 

“Australians can see right through the hypocrisy of the government talking about the reef’s health while allowing the mining and burning of coal to go on at unprecedented levels,” Greenpeace Campaigner Nikola Casule said. 

“Our reef is dying before our eyes. We need a credible plan to mitigate climate change and move to a coal-free economy,” he said on Friday. 

This month the Queensland Government gave the go-ahead for Australia’s biggest coal mine, Adani’s Carmichael mine in the Galilee basin. It has been hugely controversial because its potential impacts on the reef due to dredging and increased port movements.

Yep the BIGGEST coal mine - but these same 'people' will weep and gnash when the reef is dead - "Why didn't someone tell us, oh why didn't someone do something". Scum is too good a word for these greedy exploitative bastards.

Reading about the demise of the Great Barrier Reef often, as in nearly every time, leads to the value of the reef and oh how the MONETARY value is placed above and beyond everything. This just makes me sick.

Be in the moment and enjoy the today you are in for the diversity of your experience and the myriad interactions with other living entities that you enjoy. The times are changing and changing fast...

key dirties water

John Key says no one owns water yet the corporates and farmers can take it for free and the corporates can bottle it and sell it for a profit. No one owns the water? Wrong. Water is taonga and protected under the Treaty of Waitangi. Water is protected but is not protected because the governments, this and that one, have disregarded the rights of Māori to have taonga protected. The governments have pretended that there was no Treaty. The governments have sold rights to water they didn't own, they have allowed pollution for dairy profit and unspeakable shit dumped into rivers and waterways. They have allowed rivers and streams to be dug up, diverted, dammed and degraded just so they and their mates can earn some profit. They have allowed species within water ecosystems to die and deteriorate. 

These governments have taken water, and the land near it, off Māori and they have polluted this water and when Māori have gotten some of their rights back to protect these waterways and rivers and streams they get blamed for not looking after it in the first place. They get no money to help, they get no support unless a boating club or something is on the waterway. NZ Society - you don't deserve to look after water, you have shown a dismal inclination to protect waterways unless it is in some personal interest. NO!!!!!

It is time to manifest water as taonga and Māori as kaitiaki. It is time to give voice to the Treaty and the protection of taonga, all taonga but especially water - water is life, access to water is a human right, a right for everyone not just a right for the moneybag corporates or farmers or politicians like the disgraceful dirtkey or collins.

ht Micky @ The Standard

indigenous suicide rates and wtf can we do about it. Part 2 - solutions

While researching solutions to the high Indigenous suicide rates I came across an excellent article on Intercontinental Cry that really cuts to the chase.

Yet, perhaps the most compelling evidence to date connecting cultural continuity – and specifically, language retention – with reductions in First Nation suicide rates came in 2007, from research team, Hallett, Chandler and Lalonde. Their analyses demonstrated that rates of language retention among First Nations had the strongest predictive power over youth suicide rates, even when held amongst other influential constructs of cultural continuity. Their conclusions hold shocking implications about the dire importance of native language preservation and retention efforts and interventions.

“The data reported above indicate that, at least in the case of BC, those bands in which a majority of members reported a conversational knowledge of an Aboriginal language also experienced low to absent youth suicide rates. By contrast, those bands in which less than half of the members reported conversational knowledge suicide rates were six times greater.”

It is important to drive this point home. In the First Nation communities where native language retention was above 50 per cent (with at least half of the community retaining or acquiring conversational fluency) suicide rates were virtually null, zero. Yet in the bands where less than half of community members demonstrated conversational fluency in their native tongue, suicide rates spiked upwards of 6 times the rates of surrounding settler communities.

Indigenous activists and supporters will call out the effects of colonisation and the great losses suffered by indigenous people as significant to the hopelessness that many indigenous people feel and which is externalised in suicide and self harming. And language and community and connection and knowledge are integral parts of the indigenous experience missing for many. The research detailed above suggests a strong connection between language use and suicide rates. We must do more research here to confirm what many of us have suspected - the cutting of cultural ties and the systemic belittling and isolating of indigenous people from their culture, especially youth, is a major factor in the very high rate of suicide among indigenous people.

The article also linked to this article

Explaining the source these crises is relatively straightforward. But communities know the solutions, too: authentic opportunities for the full reclamation of our identities – our languages, our cultures, our traditions and our relationship with the land and waters. This would require restored jurisdiction, honoured treaties, health care and education. This would bring an end to being forced to live in conditions of poverty.

We believe, and are supported by the Indigenous academic and policy research on suicide in First Nation and Inuit communities, that colonization is the problem. The obvious solution, then, is to end the colonization.

 This answer is not the one the majority in society want to hear, this answer gets in the face of those who would deny indigenous people their rightful place, that would deny tangata whenua the equal partnership via the Treaty. Listen to what we are saying - listen to those affected - listen to the solutions and then help put them in place. If not, then the horror thought that society just doesn't care about the suicide of so many indigenous people, will be proven.

indigenous suicide rates and wtf can we do about it

Indigenous suicide rates are well above other groups. What do we do about this?

I work with DBT to help people with high suicidal ideation, high self harm urges and high emotion dysregulation. It is just a small drop in a large bucket but it is all I can do within the resources available.

There are lots of statistics about the terrible crisis this is, for instance in this country

from 2010

The Māori youth suicide rate was 35.3 per 100,000 Māori youth population: more than 2.5 times higher than that of non-Māori youth (13.4 per 100,000).There were 104 Māori suicide deaths in 2010. This represents an age-standardised rate of 16.0 per 100,000 Māori population.There were 10.4 non-Māori deaths per 100,000 population (age-standardised) in 2010.The age-standardised rate for Māori self-harm hospitalisations in 2010 was the highest since 2001 (83.6 per 100,000 Māori in 2010).The age-standardised rate for non-Māori self-harm hospitalisations dropped markedly (by 28.7%) between 1996 and 2010.

and 2011

In 2011 the total Māori suicide rate was 1.8 times higher than the non-Māori suicide rate. There were 108 Māori suicide deaths. This represents an age-standardised rate of 16.8 per 100,000 Māori population (compared with 9.1 non-Māori deaths per 100,000 population).
The Māori youth suicide rate for 2011 was 36.4 per 100,000 Māori youth population (compared with 15.1 per 100,000 non-Māori population). This means the Māori youth suicide rate was 2.4 times higher than the equivalent rate for non-Māori youth.
In summary, the subgroups of the New Zealand population with the highest suicide mortality rates in 2011 were males, Māori (compared with non-Māori), male youth (those aged 15–24 years) and those residing in the most deprived (quintile 5) areas. Māori males and Māori youth showed particularly high suicide mortality rates.

and 2012

The Māori youth suicide rate was 2.8 times the non-Māori youth rate (48.0 per 100,000 Māori youths compared with 17.3 per 100,000 non-Māori youths).Over the 10 years from 2003 to 2012, Māori youth suicide rates have been at least 1.7 times the non-Māori youth suicide rates.Māori had an age-standardised suicide rate of 17.8 per 100,000 Māori, compared with the non-Māori rate of 10.6 per 100,000 non-Māori.In 2012, Māori accounted for nearly 20% (563) of all intentional self-harm hospitalisations.The age-standardised rate for Māori was 85.0 per 100,000 Māori compared with 68.0 per 100,000 non-Māori.

Those statistics should make us all feel sick. And indigenous communities around the world suffer the same disproportionate suicide rates, for instance in Canada we have this horrible scenario

Canada's Parliament held an emergency debate Tuesday on the suicide crisis in a remote aboriginal community after 11 people, nine of them minors, attempted suicide over the weekend and more than a dozen youths were overheard making a suicide pact. 

Lawmaker Charlie Angus, who represents the northern Ontario community of Attawapiskat, said in Parliament that the crisis has shocked the world and people are asking how Canada can leave so many people behind. Attawapiskat, population 2,000, declared a state of emergency Saturday. There have been about 100 suicide attempts since September and at least one death.

When minors start trying to kill themselves we are really in the end times and we really have to act to help them.

There is a conference coming up that I am going to attend - the World Indigenous Suicide Prevention Conference 2016.

Somehow, someway we must create hope and choices for indigenous people thinking suicide is the answer. Somehow we have to do this and creating cultural connection is part of it, creating connections of all types. See you at the conference.

the illusion of consultation

So arrogant and so wrong - Te Ururoa Flavell you have let us down and now your legacy has been set and it is a sad, paltry legacy.

Māori Development Minister Te Ururoa Flavell is pushing ahead with his controversial proposals to change the way Māori land is handled.

He has introduced the Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill into Parliament, one month after the Waitangi Tribunal criticised the extent of consultation and recommended more engagement with Māori before changing the law.

Oh no he doesn't care what the Waitangi Tribunal says and what do they say?

The Tribunal report upheld several concerns claimants had about the bill, the key one being that consultation wasn't up to scratch. 

It warned that the Minister needed to go out and get enough support from Māori or risk breaching the Treaty of Waitangi.

the minister responds

But Mr Flavell said since that hearing, he has held 22 public hui and 14 wānanga, the bill has been tweaked, and he has that vote of confidence.

This minister is not trusted, his assurances are meaningless, his word is false.

What is this Bill all about?

The new bill aims to give landowners more say and ultimately make it easier for them to use their Māori land.

by 'use' think 'sell' and thus the whittling away of Māori land continues - by overt and covert means the greedy will try to get it all and the greedy will try to sell it all and stopping this will be the people, tangata whenua. And the greedy will be stopped.

the games they want us to play

JMG has written an outstanding essay again. This essay has really made me think about the contrived, approved narratives used to discuss issues. We have the same approved narratives here in this country. In this essay JMG uses racism as an example.

There’s a school of psychology called transactional analysis, which focuses on interactions between people rather than the vagaries of the individual psyche. Transactional analysis covers a lot of ground, but I want to focus on just one of its themes here: the theory of interpersonal games...

There’s plenty more that could be said here about the details of the Rescue Game and the narrative of race derived from it, but at this point I’d like to consider three broader issues. The first is the relation between the game and the narrative, on the one hand, and the realities of racism in today’s America. I don’t doubt that some readers of this essay will insist that by questioning the narrative, I’m trying to erase the reality.  Not so. Racial privilege, racial prejudice, and racial injustice are pervasive factors in American life today.  The fact that the approved narrative of race in today’s America is deceptive and dysfunctional doesn’t make racism any less real; on the other hand, the fact that American racism is a stark reality doesn’t make the narrative any less deceptive and dysfunctional...

...Step back and look at the whole picture, and it’s not hard to see why this should be so. At any given time, after all, there are many different Rescue Games in play, with affluent white people always in the role of Rescuers and an assortment of less privileged groups alternating in the roles of Victims and Persecutors. Perhaps, dear reader, you find it hard to imagine why affluent white people would want to keep everyone else so busy fighting one another that they never notice who benefits most from that state of affairs. Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to you that giving the underprivileged the chance to air their grievances and engage in a little socially sanctioned bullying is a great deal less inconvenient for the affluent than actually taking action to improve the lives of the underprivileged would be. Such thoughts seemingly never enter the minds of most Americans; I’ll leave it to you to figure out why.

 It is interesting to consider how narratives get forced back into the approved variety and how unconscious the whole process of 'narratives' is. What narratives are you buying into? As JMG says,

"Every society has a set of acceptable narratives that frame public discourse on any controversial subject, and trying to get past the narrow confines of any such narrative inevitably brings some form of pushback."

Reading the whole essay will provide so much information. One of the great things about JMG's writing is that each essay is self contained - in that you can understand and follow the points he is making from within the essay and it flows from previous to future essays.

Poem - Maruia

Maruia

I've

seen these

hills before and I

see them again, they are

free cloaked, fully wrapped

in beech, a layering upon and their

uplifted moko grooved heads are gazing.

We've wandered upon their attired slopes, spongy steps

sank us, we balanced in our hands and slid

under the mottled trees in fragmented  light,. Our walk out, the uncomfortable

stream a silence, as still as a star and as

distantly afraid.

I'm

looking

at my familiar face

facing me again reflective

and free, fully cloaked, wrapped,

a reach to uncover tangata whenua

for sure, though my fingers trace ancestry.

The nesting curve of your undulating hip, and an

ankle lightly lengthened, I suggest upon them

love phases invisibly chiselled. You absent-mindedly entwine my feet as I sleep,

dreaming a moment too small to sigh as

distances sway

I am

the growing

tip, life extended

I live on the distant hills

free, fully cloaked, wrapped

incessant pushing propels upward,

my feet knead the ground so slowly

Our sons collide quietly, a flood full of limb,

branching elbow unlocking a leg like a log,

the entanglement of us revealed unadorned and complete. We replay the scenes

of the past, the future as is now so

distinctly displayed

pretend caring and the erosion of indigenous rights

Some observations of the Kermadec Sanctuary proposal.

The opposition is based on the non consultation with Māori and the list of Māori opposed because of that is long, wide and varied. The days of riding rough-shot over tangata whenua are OVER. Māori WILL NOT sit while our rights get trampled and discarded.

The government can bleat on as much as it likes about 'saving the oceans' and 'what the people want' and in the same breath do NOTHING about the biggest most serious issue facing every single human and associated species - Climate Change is here and 'ocean sanctuaries' are a nothing response from a nothing government who sit alongside the other nothing governments around the world - while they all weep bullshit tears about the wee fishes - and continue to eat them no doubt. This is the bullshit hypocrisy of these politicians and other assorted names. They say one thing and do another. They are window dressing without any real care about this world or the people in it - let alone the ecosystems within the ocean. It is fake - believe me, it is fake concern from them.

This is one fight for Māori alongside other fights for the rights relating to water and land. Think about that. Rights agreed to over food, water and land are the big battles Māori are fighting at the moment - and Māori are fighting for these rights to be upheld for EVERYONE - so they don't get sold to corporates for profit, so they are available for all.

We will fight for as long as we need to, we will not stop fighting - not while the greedy, exploitative, corporate capitalists are there working with their mates in Parliament to take everything of value from all of us. No, the fight will continue.

Disclaimer - personally I'd stop a lot of fishing and other corporate food making and concentrate energies into sustainability and community. So I like sanctuaries everywhere and all over the place. But this is not about a sanctuary it is about indigenous rights and the ability of governments to disregard them whenever they want - no more will this happen - the lines are drawn and the lines are set.

understand and you will be free

I've been an avid follower of John Michael Greer for a few years now - he has really helped me see the truth and reality of today and our tomorrows. His latest post is no exception

...May I please be frank? The reason that millions of Americans have had their standard of living hammered for forty years, while the most affluent twenty per cent have become even more affluent, is no mystery. What happened was that corporate interests in this country, aided and abetted by a bipartisan consensus in government and cheered on by the great majority of the salary class, stripped the US economy of living wage jobs by offshoring most of America’s industrial economy, on the one hand, and flooding the domestic job market with millions of legal and illegal immigrants on the other. 

That’s why a family living on one average full-time wage in 1966 could afford a home, a car, three square meals a day, and the other necessities and comforts of an ordinary American lifestyle, while a family with one average full time wage in most US cities today is living on the street. None of that happened by accident; no acts of God were responsible; no inexplicable moral collapse swept over the American wage class and made them incapable of embracing all those imaginary opportunities that salary class pundits like to babble about. That change was brought about, rather, by specific, easily identifiable policies. As a result, all things considered, blaming the American poor for the poverty that has been imposed on them by policies promoted by the affluent is the precise economic equivalent of blaming rape victims for the actions of rapists. 

In both cases, please note, blaming the victim makes a convenient substitute for talking about who’s actually responsible, who benefits from the current state of affairs, and what the real issues are. When that conversation is one that people who have a privileged role in shaping public discourse desperately don’t want to have, blaming the victim is an effective diversionary tactic, and accordingly it gets much use in the US media these days. There are, after all, plenty of things that the people who shape public discourse in today’s America don’t want to talk about. The fact that the policies pushed by those same shapers of opinion have driven millions of American families into poverty and misery isn’t the most unmentionable of these things, as it happens. The most unmentionable of the things that don’t get discussed is the fact that those policies have failed. 

It really is as simple as that. The policies we’re talking about—lavish handouts for corporations and the rich, punitive austerity schemes for the poor, endless wars in the Middle East and elsewhere, malign neglect of domestic infrastructure, and deer-in-the-headlights blank looks or vacuous sound bites in response to climate change and the other consequences of our frankly moronic maltreatment of the biosphere that keeps us all alive—were supposed to bring prosperity to the United States and its allies and stability to the world. They haven’t done that, they won’t do that, and with whatever respect is due to the supporters of Hillary Clinton, four more years of those same policies won’t change that fact. The difficulty here is simply that no one in the political establishment, and precious few in the salary class in general, are willing to recognize that failure, much less learn its obvious lessons or notice the ghastly burdens that those policies have imposed on the majorities who have been forced to carry the costs...

If you want to know what is really going on - read JMG, if you want an idea of how everything is likely to go over the next few years and decades - read JMG. If you are worried about your children's and their children's and their children's future - read JMG. Knowledge is power - the power to make it as good as it can be, the power to protect and nurture, the power to live simply in community sustainable and free. The power to fulfill our destinies. Don't give up your power because you are afraid of the knowledge. Embrace the knowing and the uncertainties, embrace the 'now' and let's work together for the future.