#Treaty of Waitangi

[sapphia]

So for anyone who doesn’t keep up with nz politics, which i’m assuming is most of you, our new radical right government have decided one of their main aims of their term will be to re-interpret the Treaty of Waitangi.

The Treaty is an agreement between Maori and the Crown, now the NZ government. It is the founding document of new zealand and is recognised as a constitutional document today; it is the only treaty of its kind/time still honoured, and it is the steps we’ve taken through the Treaty to provide restitution and build an ongoing relationship with Maori and their iwi (tribes) that has allowed the relationship between Maori and the government to thrive where other indigenous groups have struggled to achieve recognition of their rights.

This is going to be entirely undone. Not only is this issue inflammatory and a threat to race relations in Aotearoa, leaked documents show the proposed “reinterpretation” wants to negate pretty much the entirety of the legal rights provided to Maori under the treaty. For example, the treaty article that guarantees land rights for Maori will be reinterpreted to guarantee land rights for “all New Zealanders”. Which means this article would be essentially meaningless for Maori.

By removing Maori from the context they are trying to put Maori on an “equal footing” with all New Zealanders; they are riding the idea that Maori have special rights and privileges above that of the average New Zealander. Obviously this is bullshit but it’s effective rhetoric and there’s a grain of truth to in that the extent of Maori rights hadn’t been clearly defined due to the ongoing nature of the process. So this has got a lot of people with a poor grasp of the issues very upset and baying for change.

There is a hui (meeting) being held today for all the iwi to begin discussions of how Maori will respond to this. New Zealand politics isn’t very interesting usually, but our progress on indigenous rights, until now, has been absolutely ahead of the field. If you care about indigenous rights globally, you should care about this, because in the same way Australia’s referendum loss has spurred on this action, the loss of rights here will spur other right wing governments to be similarly bold to their own indigenous groups.

Indigenous rights in New Zealand are under attack. They are meeting today to discuss it, and New Zealand will be listening, but I want the world to be listening. Because our government needs the shame of being called out by more than just the people who they’ve already decided don’t vote for them.

Maori have a long and proud history of fighting for their rights, and they’ll do it again here. And I’ll be on the pickets beside them, but there’ll be plenty of my own pickets to attend, because this government is radical in every sense of the word.

So please, even if you’re very far away, stand behind them in this. Keep your eyes on us. Amplify their voices. Don’t let the racism drown them out.

[tciddaemina]

Toitū Te Tiriti protest in Ōtepoti, Te Wai Pounamu today, on Waitangi Day the 6th February. The new coalition government is threatening to make major revisions to the interpretation of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (The Treaty of Waitangi, Aotearoa New Zealand's founding document) in order to erode the rights and protections promised to Māori during the accord that founded the nation. Unsurprisingly, its blowing up in David Seymour's slimy face, with Waitangi Day kicking off nationwide protests.

Honestly, ACT, NZ First, and National can all go get fucked. First they want to reverse the offshore oil drilling ban, then they want to neuter climate legislation and downgrade sex education in schools, and now they're coming after Te Tiriti as well. Lets see how well that goes for them.

[mucking-faori]

There's a nationwide protest/activation for Toitū the Tiriti scheduled for this Thursday! I haven't got any more details (unsurprisingly lol) for now, but will try to share once I do!

[paradigmquest]

So… I’m thinking we need to rewind to the latest election and vote again… this government is insane.

Turning against the indigenous people in this day and age? Seriously?

Deciding to turn away from the Maori version of the Treaty of Waitangi is CRAZY, and could literally get us removed from the UN (which is a ridiculous risk to take in the current global climate), AND could even technically get all non-Maori kicked out of NZ (seriously, look it up, it’s terrifying)

Dammit. I guess we have to hope that Australia’s offer to let us be part of them still stands. Probably a couple of centuries too late though.

[vox-anglosphere]

A Happy Waitangi Day to all our Kiwi friends in New Zealand!

[indizombie]

Thirty-three per cent of Māori are disabled but by the time they reach the age of 40, 69 per cent of Māori have a disability. Most of that comes from poverty, living low-wage jobs where the labouring work wears your body out earlier … that's 69 per cent higher than any other demographic in the country. The Treaty of Waitangi actually gives me my rights as a Māori woman to be able to exercise and live in my cultural world as much as being a part of Aotearoa in a larger sense. I should be an equal citizen in this country and that's what that's supposed to guarantee.

Dr Huhana Hickey, lawyer, on how the health system has failed Māori people living with a disability

[fuchsiaswingsong]

[sojourneronearth]

After the Tiriti training I've had more appreciation to the hurts&wrongs that need to be restored&reconciled. Many lives were taken, many many injustices conducted, many trusts betrayed.

Maori language is really quite precious. It nearly became extinct..

The spirituality of the Maori can be respected, but to enforce the same on others to embrace. It is a different matter

The legal personhood of Whanganui river..in 2017. Te Urewera park in 2014. Mt Taranaki in 2018. Essentially it's still another human speaking entity behind the rivers..It is odd. How do they know what the river/thing wants?

[samjstephens]

It's nice to see the idea that Act are attacking the Treaty because it stands in opposition to privatisation and deregulation put into words so well.

[christianvoicenewzealand]

Church Leaders Guilty of Overstepping

The intricate balance between Church and State in European culture is being examined. Christian commentator Mike Bain posits that by advising New Zealand's Parliament members on voting for legislation aligned with religious teachings, over four hundred New Zealand Church leaders may have crossed this boundary. Such actions imply a potential blurring of the lines between religious influence and government affairs. Christian Voice New Zealand is known for its direct and steadfast approach, underpinned by thorough research, delivering assertive commentary on current news. Our declarations are unambiguous and resolute, addressing the heart of the issues and providing insights rooted in faith from a biblical viewpoint. Your feedback is highly valued, and your subscription and sharing of our content are appreciated. For further details about Mike Bain or Christian Voice New Zealand, please visit our website. www.christianvoicenewzealand.com

[multimediacreative]

In the face of racism

What do you do to confront racism?

In light of the latest developments at our local council I thought it might be timely to publish the following story. No matter what your stances are, they will never be an excuse for violence in any way. While this story typically relates to a New Zealand situation, it applies to other indigenous cultures just as much. To achieve peace it needs to be worked on from our inside, out. Reading…

[casuallyodd]

I know it's easy to doomscroll and we are drawn to negative stories, but it feels like there is no good news right now.

This story starts out with how this affects lefty Americans, but it does move on to actually discuss the situation without that framing.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/07/02/new-zealand-america-moving-trump/

New Zealand, once a utopia for Trump-weary exiles, turns to the right

Rachel Pannett

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — After the debate between President Biden and Donald Trump turned disastrous for the incumbent Thursday, comedian Jon Stewart quipped on “The Daily Show” that he needed to “call a real estate agent in New Zealand.”

Stewart was riffing on some American liberals’ fantasy when Trump was last in power. Many talked of moving to New Zealand, a faraway place they viewed as utopian, with a progressive leader in Jacinda Ardern and natural beauty that was second to none. A significant number actually did: Data from the 2018 Census shows a jump in American-born residents in New Zealand of nearly 30 percent, or more than 6,000 people, compared with five years earlier.

Americans, like Stewart, looking for an escape hatch will find New Zealand a very different place this time around. Ardern is gone, and so too are her policies. This country is now led by a coalition of center-right, libertarian and populist lawmakers who have formed its most conservative government in decades.

“This is the sharpest political swing in a generation, the coalition is the most conservative I have seen in 30-odd years,” said Janet Wilson, a political commentator who previously worked for the mainstream conservative National Party, which leads the coalition government, and is now sharply critical of it.

The sudden shift has caught out some American expats. Jamie Pomeroy and her husband, both in their mid-30s, moved to Queenstown from Boulder, Colo., in September, the month before the election.

They were motivated in part by Ardern’s move to ban semiautomatic weapons following the 2019 Christchurch mosque massacre. A 2021 shooting at a Boulder supermarket with a similar weapon left 10 people dead.

“New Zealand actually did something about it,” Pomeroy said.

The country appeared to be “trending the right way” on the things they cared about, she said, including the environment and gun laws.

Less than a year later, they’re returning to North America — maybe to Canada this time. “Since the election, it seems like all the values we admired New Zealand for are going the other way,” Pomeroy said. “It doesn’t feel like the forever home we hoped it would be.”

The Ardern era is well and truly over. The National-led coalition that took office in November has set about undoing many of her government’s initiatives. It is following a playbook not unlike “Project 25,” the second-term “battle plan” promoted by pro-Trump think tanks designed to concentrate power in the executive branch and unravel efforts to slow global warming.

It is reversing a ban on oil and gas drilling, and is proposing a “fast-track” for big projects, including mines, that bypasses environmental checks. It has cut climate programs and jobs, scrapped electric vehicle subsidies, abandoned plans for one of the world’s largest marine sanctuaries and set aside a world-leading cow “burp” tax as it questions the science on methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

For years, mainstream politicians on both sides of the aisle have attempted to preserve New Zealand’s unusual fauna. The marine sanctuary was a vision of a former conservative government, which also funded climate studies and vowed to eradicate nonnative pests by 2050.

When she was prime minister, Ardern argued that her policies would help New Zealand preserve its green image globally. The new resources minister dismisses that as “green unicorn thinking.”

New Zealand’s pivot to the right was driven by the political fallout from the Ardern government’s coronavirus pandemic response. Although hailed internationally for saving lives, the lockdowns and vaccine mandates led to protests about freedoms being trampled.

The leaders of the two junior partners in the coalition government capitalized on that sentiment. They are David Seymour, the 41-year-old leader of the libertarian ACT party, and Winston Peters, who has been in Parliament since before Seymour was born and leads the populist New Zealand First party.

The two of them are pressuring Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his National Party to veer sharp right, Wilson said, pushing through changes that were never part of National’s campaign plan, like reversing a world-leading plan to ban smoking for future generations.

“Luxon hasn’t put his imprimatur on the coalition, so you’ve got three leaders of a country trying to battle it out to see who really is the alpha dog,” she said.

ACT has boasted that it “punches above its weight” in the coalition, saying that even though it has only 11 lawmakers in the 123-seat Parliament, it is responsible for half of the government’s actions. But Seymour wants more. Asked if ACT has an outsize influence over the government, he said: “We have some but not as many as I would like of our policies being advanced.”

During coalition talks, Seymour won concessions for American-style charter schools; a “three strikes” law extending prison terms for repeat offenders; and a deal to rewrite the country’s Arms Act, revisiting a ban on military-style rifles after a 2019 mass shooting. He is pushing for a referendum on New Zealand’s founding document with Indigenous Maori that opponents warn will be divisive.

Some researchers also attribute Seymour’s rise and the recent political shift to aggressive campaigning by right-leaning interest groups with ties to the United States, where think tanks backed by conservative donors have been a brain trust for GOP administrations since the Reagan era.

They point to one neoliberal nonprofit in particular: the Atlas Network.

The Atlas Network has nearly 600 global partners — including the Heritage Foundation, which leads Project 25, and climate deniers. Its stated goal is helping “freedom-oriented idea entrepreneurs” lobby for lower taxes, smaller government and less regulation. Behind the scenes, neoliberalism scholars say Atlas Network alumni campaign against climate policies around the globe from Argentina to Australia.

“It’s like a permanent soft coup. They’re ready to go at any moment in any country as soon as the opportunity arises,” said Jeremy Walker, a political historian at the University of Technology in Sydney who studied the links between neoliberal lobbyists and fossil fuel companies in Australia. Others have charted the activities of Atlas Network partners in South America and Europe.

Atlas Network’s chairperson, Debbi Gibbs, is a New Zealander whose wealthy businessman father helped found ACT. Her mother is one of ACT’s biggest donors. Gibbs says Atlas Network is nonpolitical, and “the idea that there could be a centrally-controlled cabal” overseeing hundreds of groups in 120 countries “is just mind-blowing.”

The most prominent Atlas affiliate in New Zealand is Seymour, who will become deputy prime minister next year.

His relationship with Atlas dates back nearly two decades. He was awarded a two-week “Atlas MBA” in 2008. At the time, he worked for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, an Atlas Network partner in Canada that has disparaged climate science.

Upon his return to New Zealand, he went into politics, entering Parliament in 2014 as ACT’s sole representative. But it wasn’t until 2020 that he gained prominence, successfully campaigning for assisted dying laws. Gibbs, who has been on the Atlas Network board for a decade, got to know Seymour during this end of life campaign. She said she wasn’t officially involved, but shared research and ideas from her American advocacy with Seymour.

Then when New Zealanders bristled at pandemic-era restrictions, Seymour seized upon the mood and accused Ardern of using the coronavirus to “justify more state control.”

In a speech in February 2021, Seymour cited an Atlas survey to bolster his claim that “our commitment to freedom is being lost.”

Asked about his links with Atlas, Seymour dismissed as “conspiracy” the idea that “somehow the world is organized by the Atlas Network,” saying he has been subject to a lot of theories about secretive influence efforts.

But even commentators on the right are alarmed. “Now he’s got power. We are absolutely seeing the whites of his eyes,” Wilson said. “We’re now seeing the radicalism of some of his policies.”

[chaithetics]

THE TREATY PRINCIPLES BILL IS BEING PRESENTED TO THE HOUSE TOMORROW!!!!!!!

EDIT: Here's a link with more info on the Bill and it's contents and breaches!

This matters to EVERYONE in our country! If you're Māori this is about our LITERAL existence, if you're Pākehā, tauiwi, tangata Tiriti this concerns you because Tiriti is what gives you the privilege of existing on this whenua! The Waitangi Tribunal has already said this Bill will be the biggest Waitangi breach ever. YOU have a responsibility to do something.

ACT, our coalition government, and the Ministry of Justice have been intentionally keeping this bill under the wraps. Mad mihi to the MoJ analyst who leaked that draft though (I'm sure they got sacked if not massive repercussions).

What we know so far is that Te Pāti Māori, Green Party, and Labour WILL NOT be voting for this and that ACT, NZ First, and National WILL be voting for this tomorrow. NZ First and National have said that they WILL NOT support this Bill after its first reading so it will go to Select Committee and then die at first reading.

National and NZ First have said they'll only support this Bill to first reading (thankfully) but there is always the chance of closed door promises & favours and we still need to advocate for this disgusting bill to die.

I'll post more about submissions when they open for Select Committee but I'm happy to help answer questions or help with that and the process.

But the racist idiots to email and drill in that you DO NOT want this Bill are...

ACT MPs

1. David Seymour (Email: David.Seymour@parliament.govt.nz ) (the one bigoted brain cell behind this bill)

2. Brooke Van Velden (Brooke.Vanvelden@parliament.govt.nz)

3. Nicole McKee (Nicole.McKee@parliament.govt.z)

4. Todd Stephenson (Todd.Stephenson@parliament.govt.nz)

5. Andrew Hoggard (Andrew.Hoggard@parliament.govt.nz)

6. Karen Chhour (Karen.Chhour@parliament.govt.nz)

7. Mark Cameron (Mark.Cameron@parliament.govt.nz)

8. Simon Court (Simon.Court@parliament.govt.nz)

9. Parmjeet Parmat (Parmjeet.Parmat@parliament.govt.nz)

10. Laura Trask (Laura.Trask@parliament.govt.nz)

11. Cameron Luxton (Cameron.Luxton@parliament.govt.nz)

AND

- Prime Minister Christopher Luxon (Christopher.Luxon@parliament.govt.nz)

- Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters (Winston.Peters@parliament.govt.nz)

If you're able to participate with any part of the hīkoi please do and please be safe!!!!

Toitū te Tiriti! Ake ake ake!

[gretavdr]

Off to the Bay of Islands

Off to the Bay of Islands

We left Auckland on Sunday morning, heading north to the Bay of Islands. We drove through rolling green hills which had been cleared of the native vegetation years ago. It must have been a huge job. Just how huge was on display at our first stop, the Parry Kauri museum at Warkworth, dedicated to the kauri, an enormous, magnificent NZ tree. It’s the second largest species in the world after the…

[affableanthropologist]

Ōtepoti's hīkoi starts at 10am at the Queen's Gardens, and proceeds from there to the Octagon.

(I think it'd be really cool if others reblogged this to add their local Waitangi Day hīkoi!)

Do you know of any Waitangi Day protests this year? Because the government sucks shit right now and especially with te tiriti reforms they're trying to push- I want to oppose them Loudly

https://www.eventfinda.co.nz/2024/waitangi-solidarity-hikoi/wellington

Only this one. I know Waitangi itself will be preceeded by a hikoi, but I’m not sure about any other city-based protests or solidarity marches.