#i am literally a descendant of a mutineer from the bounty and a tahitian woman

[haechanhues]

this is going to sound hefty and a bit chunky but i saw this video about māori studying at oxford and some of the comments ‘oh this anti-british tokenism is getting old’ ‘this is clearly racism from ignorant people that don’t deserve it’ ‘they have european genes’ blah blah blah shut the fuck up. don’t put in your two cents if you don’t know what the fuck we’re talking about. 

oxford is a great fucking school, we know. we fucking know that. what this is isn’t an anti-british flag bearing protest, it’s an acknowledgement. it’s acknowledging that our colonisers came mostly from britain and our pain stemmed from there. that’s all it is. it’s an umbrella term and generational pain. what our ancestors went through, what our people went through is the pain that we want to right. our culture was ripped apart and taken from us. our ancestors lost their lives trying to retain our identity. now we’re getting it back. 

‘nā tō rourou, nā taku rourouka ora ai te iwi’ meaning  [with your food basket and my food basket the people will thrive’. metaphorically it means the knowledge that i obtain and that others obtain will strengthen our people. that is our shared goal as māori. that is what’s happening here. first it is acknowledgement and then it is revitalisation.