Followers

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Now we know, now we can tell

Who'd have thought it would be this easy?!

At least the Edgelands have been defined. 'Honey' Hone Harawira in the red/black/white corner, Don 'The Bash' Brash in the, um, white corner.




I can't really get into the debate, not until some meat's put on the table. But plenty of comments on the Maori blogsphere...

Maui Street

mars 2 earth

Monday, April 25, 2011

New Zealand Planning Conference, 2011

I attended this years NZ Planning Institute conference in Poneke/Wellington, March 29th to April 1st. There was a pre-conference hui for Maori planners, as well as a Maori session on the Wednesday afternoon. These two events were held in the Whare Waka, pictured below, a fairly nice new building with a few nods to historical design. (There's a korero around this building and its intended occupant that is a drama in its own right). The whare is on reclaimed land, by which I'm sure they went pounded solid alongside the sea...



In the pre-conf hui I was struck by how tired our planners have become. For them, 20 years of banging against the brick wall off local authorities intransigence and racism has taken a personal toll. They've seen little improvement and even some declines following the 2005 amendments to remove the requirement to consult, although that amendment was supported my many Maori who saw 'consultation' itself as a sterile and pointless process.


Maori Planners pre-conference hui, Te Whare Waka, Poneke.

Shadrach Rolleston presented a paper on some work LandCare is doing on incorporating Maori positions and implementing better responses, from Joint Management arrangements over important resources, project management of cultural engagement, to service delivery of cultural advice. As Shad pointed out, these models are not without their challenges.

Andrew Henderson presented a follow up to his Masters research titled “Nursing a Colonial hangover”. Like the song says, 'running over the same old ground/and how we found/the same old fears...'

I think the Otautahi 'quakes have left exposed the void in our collective philosophies, reflected in our planning, that is there to be filled. Having argued Maori and other Indigenous Peoples can provide aspects of what we need as planetary citizens, it is still down to the descendants of colonisers to actually figure out what they want. Tick tick tick tick...

Friday, April 15, 2011

Government position on Maori language support: missionary, 69, or doggie?


Love this from a spokesperson for Dr Sharples (okay, the article refers to 'spokesman', so we assume it is a tane...) reminded us all (Maori and Pakeha) what Standard Operating Procedure is for the State, namely the co-ordination of, quote, "an overarching Government response. " Endquote.

Exactly.

It wasn't always so, bro.

No, our ancestors once were bourgeoisie, that is owners of capital, proud of it, and as holistic as we needed to be.

Now, with rangatahi unemployment still running at about 30% (twice what it was in the midst of the neoliberal reforms of the early 90s), support services stretched to breaking point in Otautahi and around the motu, the opposition parties unable to reach a consensus on what to do (the paucity of the left in Aotearoa/NZ is quite remarkable, given what we once were, Maori and Pakeha), we go into yet another winter of discontent.

Love how The Man finds new ways to fuck us over, like an endlessly creative lover ;)

If I have one hope its that such crap brings us one day closer to the revolution.

[Footnote ... The picture is a reproduction poster for the movie "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie," starring Milena Vukotic, Fernando Rey, Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Bulle Ogier, and Michel Piccoli. Check this collection of essays, edited by Marsha Kinder]

Saturday, April 09, 2011

Maori slavers?

Several years ago, Maori (rightly) proclaimed a report from the UN Rapporteur on Racism about the perfidious Pakeha.

Now we have to face the music on our own complicity in slave labour with the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking fingering Maori fishing quota as using slave labour in the joint venture fishing industry who are vulnerable to sinkings, drownings, industrial accidents, reports of violence and abuse, health and safety violations, ship jumpings, appalling work conditions and failures to honour employment and wage agreements.

Labour MP Shane Jones (a former chair of the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission), thinks some iwi are working through shady agents.

“I don’t think anyone, when we conceived and executed the Sealord fisheries settlement, ever imagined that Maori quota would be swooped upon and used by unscrupulous agents as a basis for enriching themselves but treating Ukranians and Asians as a form of slave labour and unless the iwi quota owners can hop on top of their days of flicking the quota on for a quick buck may be very well coming to an end.”

With relevant National Ministers (Kate Wilkinson, Minister of Labour, and Phil Heatley, Minister of Fisheries) denying any issues, it is a challenge to Maori leaders to accept there's an issue and act to remedy it as a matter of priority for the industry.
Simon Lambert

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