#maaori

[sapphia]

OPINION: The national hui at Tūrangawaewae Marae saw 10,000 people united in the face of actions by the coalition government, including its proposed Treaty Principles Bill. John Campbell was there.

History happens on single days.

Yesterday, at Tūrangawaewae, will be one of them.

“Why are you here?”, I asked Tame Iti.

“Vibrations”, he replied.

The rest of us will feel them over the days and months and years ahead.

Initial estimates of how many people would come had begun at 3000. Then 4000 registered, so estimates grew to 5000. Then 7000. By lunchtime, organisers were saying 10,000 had arrived. There wasn't room inside for them all. A large marquee across the road was full, all day. Every seat, everywhere, was taken. There was hardly standing room.

This special place, which has held tangi for royalty, which is where the Tainui treaty settlement was signed, which was visited by Nelson Mandela, and Queen Elizabeth II, and many of our greatest rangatira, has seldom seen so many people.

But no one objected. To standing. To the steaming heat. To the fact that sometimes people were too far away from the speakers, or the screens relaying them, to hear.

New Zealand First’s deputy leader, Shane Jones, told RNZ the hui could turn into a “monumental moan session”.

But it didn’t. Somehow, the word I keep coming back to is joyful.

The National Hui for Unity it was called. And it felt like exactly that.

On the way to Ngāruawāhia early yesterday morning, I pulled into a truck-stop near Bombay, at the southernmost end of the Auckland motorway system, to meet the Ngāpuhi convoy travelling down from the far north.

Some had begun their journey way up, in Kaikohe, at 3am. They spilled out into the half light of an overcast morning and inhaled the beginning of what would be an extraordinary day.

It’s easy for the significance of this delegation to be lost amid all the other arrivals. The people who’d come from even further away. Iwi after iwi. Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou, Tainui, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Tahu, Te Arawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Maniapoto – the big ten, all there, in declaratory numbers.

Just a few members of the Ngati Porou contingent who drove over on Friday from Tairāwhiti to attend the hui.

Ngāi Tahu representatives had taken a huge journey by road, then Cook Strait ferry, then road.

A friend’s father flew up from Invercargill.

But the size and standing of Ngāpuhi’s delegation provides some insight into how very significant this hui was.

Ngāpuhi aren’t a Kīngitanga iwi. They don’t see Kīngi Tūheitia as their king. And they contain Waitangi within their broad, northern boundaries – home, of course, to the Waitangi commemorations, our most famous form of national hui.

And yet they came, hundreds of Ngāpuhi. Some wearing korowai made especially for the occasion. Some the direct descendants of Treaty signatories. A waiata, composed for the hui, rehearsed beyond newness into a heartfelt and singular voice.

“Why are you going?” I asked Mane Tahere, the chair of Te Runanga-Ā-Iwi-Ō-Ngāpuhi. “It feels significant that Ngāpuhi are attending in such numbers.”

“Because”, he answered, “the challenges we face do not discriminate amongst iwi. We held three hui to discuss whether we should come, and who would come, and what our message would be. The final hui was only last Saturday. I wouldn’t have put our rūnanga resources into something we didn’t collectively support. This was hapū rangatiratanga. Hapū after hapū spoke and said we should go.”

Why?

“Because the question we have to ask as Māori is how we activate ourselves, re-activate ourselves, for 2024? How do we say to the coalition government, ‘hang on, what do you mean, and what are you doing?’ And the best way to do that is to do it together. Now is the time for Māori unity.”

The National Hui for Unity was only called by Kīngi Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII (Kīngi Tuheitia) at the beginning of December. That so very many people would arrive here, only six weeks later, in the holiday-season slowness of the third week of January, speaks not only to how resoundingly those present reject the coalition government’s Treaty Principles Bill, but also to a strength of unity already existing.

That is to say, a unified rejection of what Kīngitanga Chief of Staff, Archdeacon Ngira Simmonds, described as the “unhelpful and divisive rhetoric” of the election campaign.

“Maaori can lead for all”, said Ngira Simmonds, at the beginning of this month, “and we are prepared to do that.�� *

This is part of a growing sense, as Ngāpuhi’s Mane Tahere told me, that “we’ve turned a corner”.

The corner is that u word – unity. The increasingly urgent sense of the need for a collective response to the coalition government.

And, without great external fanfare, these relationships have already been building.

The Kīngitanga movement has begun sending some of its most senior figures north for Waitangi Day commemorations – into the heart of Ngāpuhi country. And again, like Ngāpuhi coming to Ngāruawāhia, this reflects a belief that by Māori for Māori, all Māori, is the strongest possible response to a government they fear is intent on division.

This year, for the first time since 2009, Kīngi Tūheitia himself (who has Ngāpuhi whakapapa on his father’s side) will be attending Waitangi.

Symbolic? Yes.

Significant? Yes.

Unity.

Mana motuhake (self-government).

“Look at all these people,” Tame Iti said to me. “They’re here to listen. To learn. The first layer of mana motuhake is yourself.”

All protest is a form of risk.

Risk that it goes awry – and costs support, rather than galvanises it.

Risk that it arms your most cynical critics with the material for derision or contempt.

Risk that no one notices. Or that the turnout is so small that those who have the luxury of being able to not protest can turn away.

Some politicians may tell you that 10,000 people is not very many. I would say otherwise. In 30 years of covering politics, I have never attended a New Zealand party-political rally that attracted anywhere near that many. Or even half that number.

What happened at Tūrangawaewae yesterday was a triumph for all those involved.

In the striking heart of the mid-afternoon, I passed Tukoroirangi Morgan, the chair of the Waikato-Tainui executive board. We were going in opposite directions over the sunburnt road.

Chair of the Waikato-Tainui executive board Tukoroirangi Morgan.

Chair of the Waikato-Tainui executive board Tukoroirangi Morgan. (Source: 1News)

“How’s it going, Tuku?”, I asked him.

“It’s amazing”, he replied. “All these people.” And then he stopped, looked out over the everyone, everywhere, and repeated himself. “Amazing.”

Tūrangawaewae is located just outside Ngāruawāhia, directly across the Waikato River from the shops in that little township. Somewhere, just to its east, the new Waikato Expressway has stolen many of the estimated 17,000 cars a day that once passed through here. For decades, Ngāruawāhia was a pie and petrol stop on the main road between Hamilton and Auckland.

Not so much, any longer.

The challenge of history is to survive it.

And Kīngitanga itself was a kind of survival strategy.

It wasn’t this simple, of course, but a famous saying of the second Māori King, Tāwhiao, broadly speaks to the hopes of the Kīngitanga movement: “Ki te kotahi te kākaho ka whati ki te kāpuia e kore e whati.” The Māori Dictionary translates it prosaically: “If there is but one reed it will break, but if it is bunched together it will not.”

Yesterday, the reeds felt tight and strong.

“Why are you here?” I asked people, over and over.

The answer was almost always a variation of what Christina Te Namu told me. Christina, too, is Ngāpuhi. “I just wanted to support our people”, she said. “Now is the time for us to stand together as one.”

A group of women from Ngati Porou stopped to say kia ora.

It seems almost inadequate to state it like this, but they were there to be there. They had driven from Tairawhiti because being there mattered. Every person I spoke to had come to be part of this declaration of solidarity.

'An attempt to abolish the Treaty'

On Friday morning, something happened that gave this already significant day a vivid, extra weight.

My 1News colleague, Te Aniwa Hurihanganui, obtained details of the coalition Government’s Treaty Principles Bill. In its initial form it is not so much a re-evaluation of the role of the Treaty as an abandonment of it. Professor Margaret Mutu, speaking on 1News on Friday night, called it “an attempt to abolish the Treaty of Waitangi.”

This has arisen out of National’s coalition agreement with ACT.

I wrote about this at the end of last year, and also in the weeks after the election. I looked at the coalition agreements between National and ACT, and National and New Zealand First. And I noted their pointed focus on Māori. Some of it felt mean. What I called a strange, circling sense of a new colonialism.

I wrote about what I saw as ACT and New Zealand First's experiments with a kind of "resentment populism".

Who are we?, I asked. And where are we heading?

We’re heading to National reaching 41 percent in the first political poll of the year, “a massive jump”, as Thomas Coughlan described it in the NZ Herald, earlier this week. And we’re heading here, to Tūrangawaewae, and to thousands of people who travelled from throughout the country to collectively say, “no”.

In other words, we’re heading towards, or have already arrived in the vicinity of what PBS called the “divide and conquer populist agenda”.

And we’re heading to politics that purport to speak out against division, whilst arguably fomenting it.

In an opinion piece by David Seymour, published in the NZ Herald on Friday, the ACT leader begins with the sentence, “If there’s one undercurrent beneath so much of our politics, it’s division”.

Is David Seymour responding to division, or causing it?

The Treaty, he said, in December, “divides rather than unites people, as most treaties are supposed to do.”

But whose endgame is division? Really?

I've written before about the kind of populist politics that drive people to division, then throw up their hands and yell, “LOOK! DIVISION”, having wished for exactly that.

This, as Australian Academic Carol Johson wrote in The Conversation after the “no” vote in Australia’s Voice referendum, speaks to “a conception of equality controversially based on treating everyone the same, regardless of the different circumstances or particular disadvantages they face.”

That's equality as David Seymour consistently claims to define it.

But do as they say, not as they do. There was a time when ACT received some handy support from National. Remember that famous cup of tea? Surely Seymour's idea of equality would have insisted that Act get trounced than receive a leg-up?

The fascinating thing is that populism is typically structured around “the claim to speak for the underdog and the critique of privileged 'elites' and their disregard for the needs of ’ordinary people’".

But it’s hard for National to occupy that space when the party has historically been supported by the “elite”, and when your leader is a former CEO who owns seven properties, and who received total remuneration of $4.2 million in his last full year at Air New Zealand.

So, you can do two things. You can outsource populism to your coalition partners. (And sit there with a face of injured innocence, like someone insisting it was really the dog who farted.) And you can allow coalition partners to redefine the definition of “elite”.

No-one does this more enthusiastically than Winston Peters.

During the months prior to the election, the New Zealand First leader said “elite” more often than Kylie Minogue has said “lucky”.

“Elite Māori”, “elite power-hungry Māori”, “an elite cabal of social and ideological engineers.”

The idea, as I wrote after the election, is to somehow persuade us that Māori are getting something the rest of us are not. And they are: a seven-years-shorter life expectancy, lower household income, persistent inequities in health, the greatest likelihood of leaving school with low or no qualifications, and an over-representation in the criminal justice system to such a great extent that Māori make up 52 percent of the prison population.

Elite as.

So, had this hui erupted into a kind of rage, would that have been a victory for populism? Would the divisions have become entrenched? Would Māori have been blamed for reacting to provocation, rather than the provocation itself being examined?

None of this is new. Which is why Māori recognise it.

In July 1863, the Crown issued a proclamation demanding: “All persons of the native race living in the Manukau district and the Waikato frontier are hereby required immediately to take the oath of allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen”.

And those who wouldn’t?

“Natives refusing to do so are hereby warned forthwith to leave the district aforesaid, and retire to Waikato beyond Mangatawhiri.”

And anyone “not complying with this Order… will be ejected.”

Vincent O’Malley, in his remarkable book The Great War for New Zealand describes what happened next.

“On the same date some 1500 troops marched from Auckland for Drury.”

The troops didn’t stop. There are few more egregious and cynical predations in our history. South they went. Without just cause or provocation. Into Waikato.

Ngāruawāhia, Vincent O’Malley tells us, was “strategically important during the war because of its location at the confluence of the Waikato and Waipā rivers.”

“By 6 December 1863, Ngāruawāhia (‘the late head quarters of Māori sovereignty’ as one reporter dubbed it) had been deserted.”

At four o’clock that afternoon, a British flag was hoisted there.

And why does this story matter, still? 160 years later.

Because the Crown used the requirement for “allegiance”, the demand that Māori be loyal to it, so disingenuously. The language of colonisation purported to be about governance, about the role and rule of a single law, but it was a violation of law and a betrayal of the principles of government.

By the end of this rule of law, roughly 1.2 million acres of Waikato land had been “confiscated”.

And any opposition to it was defined, in law, as “rebellion”. And rebellion was justification for seizing more land.

This is our history. And part of it happened here, where the 10,000 people met yesterday.

It was so hot by late morning that people were swimming in the Waikato River.

I wandered down from the crowds at the hui to talk to the people swimming. They were mostly young, although not all.

I met a ten year old who told me her parents had brought her so she could “find out where I’m from”.

She was from Waitara, in Taranaki, so this wasn’t a literal homecoming.

I wondered how many people had travelled big distances to have a new or reinvigorated sense of what it means to be Māori.

Heading back inside, I saw Professor Margaret Mutu.

There are few who have more rigorously applied their formidable intellect to making sense of the intersection of Māori and colonisation.

Professor Margaret Motu: "You have two parties to a treaty, and one of them can’t unilaterally redefine it."

She is of Ngāti Kahu, Te Rarawa, Ngāti Whātua and Scottish descent. She is Professor of Māori Studies at the University of Auckland. And, her university profile tells us, she holds a BSc in mathematics, an MPhil in Māori Studies, a PhD in Māori Studies specialising in linguistics and a DipTchg.

There was nowhere quiet for us to sit. But people kindly made space at the back of a kitchen prep area. And I asked her about the significance of the Treaty, for Māori, for the Crown, and for us all.

“Te Tiriti is where you go," she said. “When things look as if they’re not working for you, you have a protection, and that’s where you go. It will always look after you. It will always protect you.”

“And while it seems clear that this government wants to abolish the Treaty," Margaret Mutu continued, “that can never happen. For one thing, you have two parties to a treaty, and one of them can’t unilaterally redefine it. But also, our tūpuna were very, very wise. In the Treaty they invited Pākehā, the British, to come and live with us. But they had to live with us in peace. In peace and friendship. And that’s what the Treaty is. It’s a treaty of peace and friendship. You can’t redefine that. You can’t rewrite that. It was very wise and it was very clear.”

And here’s where Margaret Mutu helped me understand why the mood at Tūrangawaewae was so – and I wish I could find better words – hopeful, positive, constructive.

Manaaki manuhiri: to support and care for your guests.

“We invited Pākehā to live amongst us,”, she said. “And what a lot of our Pākehā friends don’t understand, I think, is that our tikanga requires us to manaaki manuhiri. And that’s about looking after everybody. Everybody. So even when we have hate thrown at us, we have to assert aroha. That’s what manaaki manuhiri requires, even when people are very badly behaved.” Margaret Mutu laughs at this. “So, people have come here today to find that strength. It’s not about fighting people. It’s to find that strength and unity to be able to rise above the hatred. And now we will just get on and do exactly that.”

After lunch, I was invited to meet the King.

I’ve never been inside Tūrongo before, the royal residence. Or Māhinaarangi, which is both a famous meeting house and a unique kind of museum.

It looks out over the marae. And it gently contains, as if nestled in the palm of a large, open hand, photos and remembrances of those who’ve come before. The people who built Kīngitanga. Tāwhiao is there, his photo looking down from the wall. He died 130 years ago. How he would have marvelled, with great pride, at such a gathering, and perhaps, also, despaired at it still being necessary, in 2024.

Ngira Simmonds took me in. And I found myself, shy for once, able to stand and look out, viewing the unfolding of this new history from a place that is so central to the story of the history of us.

Kīngi Tuheitia was beaming.

“I didn’t sleep last night”, he told me. “But I knew this was the time for us to come together. And we have. We have.”

It occurred to me, as I walked back to stand amongst the thousands Kīngi Tuheitia was looking out to, with such delight, that the hui was the actualisation of Tāwhiao’s hope for the unbreakable strength of reeds tied together.

What was was happening felt transformative in the very fact it was happening. The mana motuhake of 10,000 people.

The vibrations.

Will the government feel them?

Will they survive the divisions of populism? Of politics that echo our repeated capacity to claim we are governing to unite people whilst governing against Māori?

Or maybe, this is how it all begins. In an historically large display of unity.

Rātana follows. Then Waitangi.

Yesterday ended with Kiingi Tuheitia speaking.

“The best protest we can do right now is be Maaori. Be who we are, live our values, speak our reo, care for our mokopuna, our awa, our maunga, just be Maaori. Maaori all day, every day. We are here, we are strong.”

The reeds tightening.

*Macrons haven't been used when quoting Tainui, who choose not to use them.

fantastic article on the national hui in response to aotearoa’s assault on indigenous rights. click through for pictures and video.

[unwhitewashthebadbatch]

Hello, really appreciate the work you're doing to bring awareness! I was wondering if you have thoughts/resources/suggestions etc. for fic writers who want to portray the clones well. I'm genuinely thinking that adding an author's note might be a good idea, but I'd love to have thoughts on respectfully mentioning the clones' appearance within fic itself. Thank you so much for all you do!

Hi, and thanks!

When it comes to writing, it's sometimes easier to come up with a list of "Dont's" than "Dos". This guide from NaNoWriMo is pretty straight forward!

Of course, there are some caveats: unless this is a modern AU, you can't directly say the clones are Māori because that term doesn't exist in Star Wars. However, this doesn't mean that their features don't! From another character's PoV, you could say they have even brown skin, dark eyes, and dark curly (not coily) hair with broad noses. You can tweak these for your level of prose, such as saying "warm" brown skin or coal-dark eyes/hair--but do NOT use food descriptions, as this is objectifying and dehumanizing. So no "chocolatey" (I have seen this) or anything like that.

Some authors like to code their characters as being from a certain culture, race, or ethnic background. Think of how Temuera Morrison portrayed Boba in The Book of Boba Fett and the Mandalorian, where he proudly put his Māori culture at the forefront of his fight in the latter show. I'm much less versed on the basics of Māori culture and ways of life than I am other cultures, so I personally don't know how to code the clones in the GAR as such. This is where research is important, both in terms of doing your own reading and reaching out to Māori cultural experts if they are willing to explain something.

One thing that I've seen that's quite popular in fics/art is Tā moko, which are the tattoos you may see some Māori with, like this:

However, Tā moko is sacred and, from what I understand, relates specifically to one's ancestors, whakapapa (genealogy, loosely), and rank within society. Non-Māori can use kirituhi. @/tu_edmonds on TikTok/Instagram is a Māori bassist for Alien Weaponry who has Tā moko and also has a video explaining the difference between that and kirituhi. He's also got loads of other good explainers for Māori culture and language.

Physically, don't be scared to make the clones short! Temuera Morrison himself is only 5'7". I don't know why they made the clones six feet. Morrison also has a stockier build, the way a lot of Māori do, so don't be afraid to describe them being bigger and less cut/lean than the 180 lbs they supposedly are in canon (although I refuse to believe that's true because that is incredibly thin).

This might be more than you bargained for, whoops! But these are the basic things I could come up with for describing clones in fics!

There are other ways to support #UnwhitewashTBB, if you like. I've been looking at and supporting @end-otw-racism (highly recommend you support them too!) and people will change the title of their fics or tag there works with #EndOTWRacism, as well as bookmark them/add them to collections? I'm not sure how exactly it works.

But if you or anyone else understands how this works, and your work is explicitly non-racist in nature (and focuses on the clones) I don't see why you can't also tag your work or write an AN that says #UnwhitewashTBB.

Hope this helps!

~ Mod CH

[blackberryjambaby]

i actually can't believe this. david seymour is having a meltdown because 400+ christian leaders said the government shouldn't be racist . this has got to be a joke

[james-silenthill]

Just got jumpscared by the whitest Cody I've ever fucking seen Jesus christ

[natjennie]

gray is called fucking kiwikiwi. kiwikiwi. how are you not all learning this language they have words like kiwikiwi.

[thebeths]

Feeling so depressed about our politics... Why is labour shitting the bed so hard right now 😭 pull it together

[independent-variables]

Pulling this out of the tags of this post and making my own post because turns out I have More To Say:

As much as Lucas and his successors took from many real world cultures to mix-and-match their space cultures, it's really... disingenuous? not helpful? to analyze and discuss any space culture as a one-to-one with any real world culture. There are parallels. There are racist tropes. There is straight up appropriation! But saying the Mandos were meant to be space Maaori? 1) not the intent of any of their creators, and 2) ties any analysis of Mando culture to a discussion of Maaori culture. Which makes it a lot harder to just like. Discuss Mando culture, to say “hey this element of their culture is kinda fucked up” or “hey this element of their culture is really interesting and I want to expand on that with my own experiences and opinions via meta and/or fic.”

And it's like, ok. This equating and entwining of a space culture with a real culture is kinda the same thing as a fan projecting onto their particular favorite character and kinda erasing their canon characterization in favor of using them more or less as a self-insert. On it’s own there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. We are all, to some degree, writing about ourselves when we write anything: writing about what we believe, and what intrigues us, and what we love, which for many people includes their own culture. But this makes it really easy to take it personal when another fan dislikes something about the character. Or about the space culture, or whatever. This makes it really hard to have an actual discussion about intent vs. outcome, and the history of racism in SFF, and the particular space culture as it’s own thing.

And yeah, it is personal. Star Wars is straight up racist. Lucas used racist stereotypes of minority cultures as visual and narrative shorthand for a lot of his characters and cultures, and so did the creators who worked with him and came after him. It’s all there. But I think it’s important to make that distinction between “the depiction of this character/culture incorporates racist stereotypes of --- real world culture” and “this character/culture was intended to be the space equivalent of --- real world culture.” One allows the stereotypes and the way they were developed and have been used to be discussed separate from the actual culture.

I will always remember that one blog series about GRRM and his Dothraki worldbuilding, and some of the conclusions reached there encapsulate my feelings on this topic. What damned GRRM to criticism was not the holes in his worldbuilding, but his assertion that the Dothraki were based on/intended to stand in for specific historic peoples, because that assertion gave anybody actually familiar with those peoples free reign to tear his novels to shreds for the lack of research and respect. Incorporating elements of Maaori culture into Mando culture in the context of fic and meta and headcanons can be really interesting and meaningful. Analyzing Mando culture and its development with an eye for stereotypes of indigenous peoples can be educational and infuriating. Insisting these cultures are meant to be one-to-one and should be approached as such in analysis of canon and in fandom creation is low key racist, and also very limiting.

[bucketofdeltav]

This is a picture from Stuff New Zealand (one of two major national newspapers), taken an hour ago. This is a kilometer from Parliament. At this point the Parliament grounds were already full. Can you see the front of the hikoi NO, can you see the back of the hikoi NO.

Current estimates range from 15,000 to 50,000 people. Our total population is 6 million and a lot of those are offshore (some of them are protesting in Sydney and London because a lot of us are there). This is potentially 1% of our ENTIRE in-country population. On a weekday. Turning out to protest David Seymour's stupid, divisive, ugly bill.

Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke just showed up with the Maaori Queen, Te Arikinui Kuini Nga wai hono i te po.

Fuck I wish I was there

[haveyoureadthispoll]

For fans of Schitt’s Creek and Sally Rooney’s Normal People, an irresistible and bighearted international bestseller that follows a brother and sister as they navigate queerness, multiracial identity, and the dramas big and small of their entangled, unconventional family, all while flailing their way to love. It’s been a year since his ex-boyfriend dumped him and moved from Auckland to Buenos Aires, and Valdin is doing fine. He has a good flat with his sister Greta, a good career where his colleagues only occasionally remind him that he is the sole Māori person in the office, and a good friend who he only sleeps with when he’s sad. But when work sends him to Argentina and he’s thrown back in his former lover’s orbit, Valdin is forced to confront the feelings he’s been trying to ignore—and the future he wants. Greta is not letting her painfully unrequited crush (or her possibly pointless master’s thesis, or her pathetic academic salary...) get her down. She would love to focus on the charming fellow grad student she meets at a party and her friendships with a circle of similarly floundering twenty-somethings, but her chaotic family life won’t stop her mother is keeping secrets, her nephew is having a gay crisis, and her brother has suddenly flown to South America without a word. Sharp, hilarious, and with an undeniable emotional momentum that builds to an exuberant conclusion, Greta & Valdin careens us through the siblings’ misadventures and the messy dramas of their sprawling, eccentric Maaori-Russian-Catalonian family. An acclaimed bestseller in New Zealand, Greta & Valdin is fresh, joyful, and alive with the possibility of love in its many mystifying forms.

[queeruscant]

Name: Sister Pronouns: she/her Era: Galactic Republic Appears in: Queen's Hope, Brotherhood

Sister was a clone trooper who served under Obi-Wan Kenobi in the 7th Sky Corps. She was transgender, and was given the name "Sister" by her fellow clones as a sign of support for her and her gender identity. She made a point to honour all of her fellow troops that fell in battle.

Learn more about Sister, and some criticisms on how she was written, in her profile video.

Full profile under the cut:

Sister was a transgender clone trooper in the Galactic Army of the Republic. She was part of the 7th Sky Corps, and worked with Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi on a few missions. She carried a DC 15-A blaster rifle and had pink and blue armour paint. 

Sister was loyal to her brothers, and made a point to honour her fellow clones that fell in battle. Her brothers were just as loyal right back to her. Sister said that her name was “how her brothers tell everyone she belongs,” and that they “never let her doubt” herself when they left Kamino. Anakin Skywalker was also supportive and accepting of Sister, and assured her that the Jedi would also be accepting of her gender identity. 

Sister has appeared in two novels: Queen’s Hope by EK Johnston in 2021, and Brotherhood by Mike Chen in 2022.

Johnston commissioned artwork of Sister for the book’s release. Made by Uzuri Art, Sister was originally depicted with pink and blue armour paint, and black cornrow-style braids. 

As with all the clones, Sister is based on Temuera Morrison, who is Polynesian. In the original commission, Sister has cornrows, which is a culturally Black hairstyle. EK Johnston was criticized for this decision as both erasure of Maaori and Polynesian representation, and as cultural appropriation for using cornrows on a non-Black character. After this criticism, EK Johnston commissioned the artist to change Sister’s hairstyle to look more like French braids.

Johnston has also been criticized for Sister's poor inclusion in the novel. Sister appears for less than one page, and her few lines are about being trans.

This is a descriptive profile. Commentary on the character will be discussed in a separate post.

[papytonpropaganda]

8 18 25 34 for da ask Game

8. Post an out-of-context spoiler from a wip.

bro I haven't worked on any of my actual wips in ages 🙈 but uhhhhhhhh I can get something from those out of context scenes from the Walls rewrite/sequels lol.

so I picked something from a scene I wrote a while back, involving my cowriter's OC who's being worked into Walls and MY new OC. this will most likely not show up anywhere in the final story, I think it was just an exercise in how those two characters would interact if they were to meet.

“Listen. I don’t have much time.” The man stumbled forward, and automatically, Minerva reached out to catch him. About three inches shorter than she was, he looked pleadingly up into her eyes. “Time for what?” Minerva held her breath. She didn’t know this guy at all, but something about him seemed… important. “Mettaton is about to make a huge mistake. You have to…” Minerva realized with horror that the man could barely breathe. “What’s wrong? Is there a way I can help you…?” The man took a great gasping breath, and, as though he were annoyed with himself, shook his head roughly. “No. There’s nothing anyone can do for me anymore. But listen. I’ve--I’ve been watching Mettaton. And if he makes the decision I’m afraid he’s going to, terrible things are going to happen to him, I just know it. I need you to do everything in your power to make him choose otherwise. And--and if he chooses it anyway, I need you to just… be there. To help him.” “I don’t--w… why me?” Minerva whispered. The man grasped her upper arms. “There are few people he loves quite like you,” he said. “Of course he loves all his family, but you’re gentle with him in a way that’s stuck with him. He respects you differently, I think he’s more likely to listen. Please, Minerva. Protect him. Do what I couldn’t.”

that was longer than I thought but oh well lol.

18. Do you enjoy research? Which fic of yours required the most research?

Depends on what I'm researching but overall I'd say yeah! Walls definitely has required the most, due to needing to research Aotearoa and Maaori culture, as well as all the mental health and trauma-related topics.

25. What’s your favorite part of the writing process (worldbuilding, brainstorming/outlining, writing, editing, etc)?

writing. so writing. I don't consider myself very good at worldbuilding, and while brainstorming and outlining is fun, it doesn't compare to actually getting my imagination onto paper. as for editing... I don't edit very much 😭 I think I'm going to try more in the future though, I make wayyyy too many typos.

but yeah. writing. finally seeing the characters come to life in a tangible way. that feeling I get when I come up with a killer line. I love that.

34. How much of your personal life/experience do you include in your fics?

depends on the fic, but I think Walls has the most of Me in it, even if the traumas don't entirely line up--I still relate to Papyrus and Mettaton more than I probably should, lol.

[arctic-hands]

How do you get special characters on an American QWERTY keyboard? In order to properly spell "Mācuīl Ehēcat" in that last image description I had to go to Wikipedia and type in Maaori, which I knew would redirect me to Māori, and I then proceeded to copy and paste the ā into the search bar which took me to the article for Ā (which I just had to copy and paste from to get the capital in this post), which said in the header that it was a macron so I clicked the link to the Macron article and then copy and pasted the macronic (?) letters from there. There's got to be an easier way, right?

[bucketofdeltav]

Given the number of Ngati Toa in the public gallery, and how fast the rest of Te Pati Maaori were on the floor, and how fast the rest of the Opposition were on their feet, part of me wonders if the delay was just enough to make it clear that Hana-Rawhiti was starting the haka, so that only one TPM vote got kicked out of the chamber for the rest of the day. Because that was definitely foreseeable.

To me (small but non zero experience in getting people to do countercultural things in public) it looks planned but not over-choreographed. In any case it was amazing and she did great.

Edit because people keep reblogging this and Maipi-Clarke has since spoken about it:

I think there's something very frustrating about how so many activist events, like the haka in the New Zealand parliament, are brushed off as spontaneous acts of passion instead of carefully planned and coordinated efforts. I see it a lot of with indigenous activists especially, and it feels like a lot of people lean on that idea because they like the romantic idea of activism being spontaneous passion but it's incredibly infantalizing to ignore the efforts that these activists and protestors and politicians put into making these things happen, making their voices heard and preparing their communities and allies to stand as a united front when it's time.

[natjennie]

I had a dream last night that I was talking to someone and they said something tangentially related to my interests so I started explaining all about like taika's works and maaori culture and the hongi and in the middle of talking I felt so hugely embarrassed like "wow I'm an idiot you don't want to hear about this sorry I'll shut the fuck up" and now I'm processing how fucking sad that is. even in my dreams I'm ashamed of my interests and feel bad about talking too much.

[bucketofdeltav]

This is a picture from Stuff New Zealand (one of two major national newspapers), taken an hour ago. This is a kilometer from Parliament. At this point the Parliament grounds were already full. Can you see the front of the hikoi NO, can you see the back of the hikoi NO.

Current estimates range from 15,000 to 50,000 people. Our total population is 6 million and a lot of those are offshore (some of them are protesting in Sydney and London because a lot of us are there). This is potentially 1% of our ENTIRE in-country population. On a weekday. Turning out to protest David Seymour's stupid, divisive, ugly bill.

Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke just showed up with the Maaori Queen, Te Arikinui Kuini Nga wai hono i te po.

Fuck I wish I was there

[thegameofyourlifeblog]

The Game of YOUR Life Podcasy

Hi Team, Raymond Bishop here. I have conducted 3 interviews with three different people about the history of Te Reo Maaori. Here is my third guest, Oliver Tocker-Lock and I hope you enjoy our interview.