#tangata tiriti

[lady-wildflower]

Kia ora, me again.

So I thought I'd add something on.

Two days ago, a march began against the Treaty Principles Bill. Interesting use of the word began, some of you from the rest of the world might think. Well, I don't mean a march down a city street.

I mean a march from Pōtahi Marae, all the way to Parliament. For reference, Pōtahi Marae is only 30km southeast of Cape Reinga, the northernmost point of Aotearoa, and Parliament in Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington) is about as south as you can get in Aotearoa without having to take a ferry or plane to Te Waipounamu (the south island). That's a more than 1000 kilometre route, and yes, some of it will be done by car but large chunks of it won't be.

This march, or hīkoi, follows in the footsteps of the 1975 Māori Land March, another such hīkoi made in response to continuing theft of Māori land by Pākehā who deemed it "unproductive" and passed laws allowing it to be compulsorily turned into public land and used by Pākehā against Māori objections. That march took 29 days. This hīkoi will be nine.

ACT are attempting to declaw and destroy every victory Māori have ever won against the encroach of colonial oppression, and prevent any further victories. They even suddenly brought forward the introduction of the Bill to before the hīkoi and, more importantly, before the Waitangi Tribunal could make their analysis of it. That means the Tribunal, and any official voice that can point out how flagrantly this Bill violates te Tiriti, is being explicitly cut out, they're not allowed to step in on Bills already before Parliament as I understand it.

I'm brain disabled (autism), not in very good shape, and don't already own walking shoes. By all rights I should not even be thinking about going to a march this long. I'm still going. It's going to be a hell of a distressing disruption to my routines to sort out shoes before I go, and breaking in new shoes with a fifteen kilometre walk in the hot sun probably isn't the best idea, but I'm going to join it. The hīkoi passes through Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), where I live, tomorrow, and will march across the Harbour Bridge from Onepoto Domain (departing at 10am), splitting into two to go to Takaparawhau (Bastion Point) and Ihumātao. My only lament is that I know that I'm not going to be able to continue with them south. I can't make that journey, and I can only imagine the dedication and strength, mental and physical, of those doing it.

It should not be in any way notable that I'm going. But Pākehā, like me, need to be taking part in these things far more. And it's to other Pākehā in particular I'm talking to when I say that.

We have a duty to support the fight against this Bill, against normalising it even if it fails. All these evils, all these attacks upon Māori, they were done in my name. In our name. They weren't my ancestors, I'm a first generation kiwi, but that doesn't matter. It was done in my name, so that I and every other Pākehā after them could have a miniature England to live in in the Pacific. As (I would like to think) tangata Tiriti, we have a duty to spit on that and say no. No, you do not do that in my name. To stand in kotahitanga with tangata whenua and uphold our Treaty. To any Pākehā who've reblogged my little explanation above after @takataapui reblogged it, get off your keyboard and join the hīkoi if you in any way can. Even if it's just one leg of it.

Not in my name. Toitū te Tiriti.

I know most of tumblr is thinking about the USA right now. but fuck the nz government right now too. tomorrow, the treaty principles bill, the 'worst, most comprehensive breach of Te Tiriti in modern times' is being introduced to parliament early, because there were activations planned country wide and the cowards decided to pull it forwards. fuck this government. a friend of mine had to go home early, crying. I've been in shock all day since it came out.

check on your Māori friends, e hoa mā. see what they need. see how you can help. everyday, we see and experience racism. from people around us, up to our government. community care will save us.

[merricat-3]

I stand with Palestine, and all Indigenous and oppressed peoples.

🍉❤️

Collective liberation; that is justice, and healing for all.

From a neuroqueer enby, Aotearoa ⚧

[tetohe]

This was incredible to be part of! To see so many people from every sort of background walking in unity, not just against the bill, but in support of moving forwards as a country centered around Te Tiriti.

One for the literal history books...

50,000 people ��🥝

[bluewatersfairy]

Hīkoi te Tiriti arrives in Pōneke today to reach Parliment and I just wanted to take a second here to say our current government is racist and full of the worst kinds of people. Fuck David Seymour and the entire ACT party, the treaty bill they proposed is purely about taking the little Māori are promised (because Te Tiriti is barely honoured) and uses the term "equality for all" and talk of the youth of Aotearoa to disguise the pure hatred that it represents.

Aotearoas reaction and protest to this bill is peaceful opposed to this violent-natured bill. We are watching our tangata whenua be stripped our their rights (AGAIN) and be told that they have no right to the whenua that has and always will be theres.

I have a lot to say on this but it is not my voice that matters. I wanted to share this monumental day with you all, and make it clear that I stand with Tanagata Whenua (Māori peoples) the same way they have stood with my Pasifika brothers and sisters in the past. I stand on their whenua, they are Aotearoas past, present and future.

Today, and every day, I will be yelling as loud as I can, Toitū Te Tiriti, honour te Tiriti.

[moonprincess92]

As pākeha, we have a duty to honour te tiriti. Māori are tangata whenua, they had their sovereignty and rights taken away from them and amending te tiriti like ACT is suggesting will be detrimental and only do harm to Māori who already face discrimination and racism in our country. this te rā o Waitangi, I want to e tū, stand up and boost some Māori voices that I enjoy

@geooojones on tiktok @stanwalker on insta @uncletics on tiktok, also has a podcast @lisaperese_ on tiktok @quackpirihi on tiktok

This is honestly only a tiny handful, please feel free to reblog and add more Māori creators that you enjoy ❤️🤍🖤 ngā mihi me te kia kaha!

[heavenbarnes]

i tenei wa e whakaaro ana ki nga tangata katoa o te hikoi ki toitū te tiriti 🫶🏼

[roboticutie]

Anyone heard of the complete strike the Māori Party are encouraging tomorrow (Thursday, May 30 2024) in NZ? Any and all Māori and Tangata Tiriti are asked to strike from any and all economic activities. Take leave from work, do not purchase anything aside from necessities, etc. and attend their nearest rally/hīkoi in their rohe.

Click here to find a rally near you, Aotearoa/NZ folks! There is also a rally scheduled in Gold Coast, Australia!

[dykethang]

i think i speak more te reo māori than i give myself credit for to be fair i just... struggle with the confidence to engage with others? if someone has a kōrero with me in māori i will just respond in english even though i fully understand everything they're saying. super embarrassing. something i would love to Not Do in fact!

some of my pākehā friends are waaaaaay more confident speaking the language than i am and i think it's just cause there's no baggage for pākehā and tangata tiriti like there is for tangata whenua. which feels unfair. but the only real way to get past it is to just keep pushing myself i guess and uni WILL push me esp. in the reo classes lol

[the-quiet-fire-of-defiance]

[Video description:

A video taken in the NZ Parliament debate chamber. It starts zoomed in on MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, a young Māori woman. She holds up a piece of paper (the bill being debated) and rips it in two. She chants a haka, a fierce look on her face, as she makes her way down from her seat to stand in front of the opposing MPs and chant directly at them. Two members of her party join her. Several other people are standing to join the haka. The camera pans up to show the public gallery, where most of the members of the public have also joined in on the haka. The words of the haka, which is repeated three times, are:

Ka mate, ka mate! Ka ora, ka ora!

Ka mate, ka mate! Ka ora, ka ora!

Tēnei te tangata pūhuruhuru

Nāna nei i tiki mai whakawhiti te rā

Ā, upane! ka upane!

Ā, upane, ka upane, whiti te rā!

After the haka ends there is some intelligible shouting and the sound of the Speaker of the House saying "The House is to be suspended, that is what the ringing of the bells means, and the gallery is to be cleared-"]

Translation of the haka:

I will die, I will die! I will live, I will live! (x2)

This is the woman who fetched the sun and caused it to shine again

A step forward, another step forward (×2)

The sun shines!

You can read more about the ka mate haka here.

If you want to support our fight to defeat the anti-Māori policies and rhetoric being espoused by this government, donate to the Hīkoi mo Te Tiriti (March for the Treaty). We were trying to move tens of thousands of people across the country as well as housing and feeding them, every donation counts

Hana-Rawhiti Kareariki Maipi-Clarke, the youngest MP in Aotearoa, starts a haka to protest the first vote on a bill reinterpreting the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi

[takataapui]

hi there, i'm sorry if you're not interested in answering these kinds of questions, but i'm having a lot of difficulty understanding the treaty principles bill that's being brought to parliament. all the sources ive read seem to be using big words to confuse people who don't know any better, and sadly i am one of those people. i have no idea what impact this would have if it passes. could you give any clarification?

copypasting from @sandumilfshou, thanks for this explanation e hoa, my little vent post blew up way more than I was expecting:

the treaty principles bill is essentially "redefining" the articles of te tiriti under david seymour's dumbass belief that acknowledging and putting into effect any policy or legislation that does this means that te tiriti is giving māori "special privileges" that no other people in aotearoa have and therefore is racist. so it basically seeks to redefine the two parties within te tiriti from māori and the crown to "all new zealanders" and the crown. effectively this destroys the whole point of te tiriti and would remove any/all protections for māori as tangata whenua* and undermine rangatiratanga** completely. its insidious and disgusting ✊🖤❤️🤍✊ *broadly this can be understood as the recognised acknowledged indigenous people of the land **sovereignty and self determination of māori. this particular word has a lot of meaning that the original te tiriti signing fucked over due to eng/te reo translation bullshit

I'll also add that there are heaps of iwi (loosely translated as tribes) that haven't been able to/had the resources to file a treaty claim with the Waitangi Tribunal (a system created to 'reconcile' the ways Te Tiriti was breached), so Principle 2 fucks over a lot of smaller iwi and hapū.

As well as my mention of the hīkoi being a reason why the bill was introduced earlier, it's also highly likely that the date change was due at least in part to the Waitangi Tribunal not being able to publish material related to government bills once they've been introduced.

[hamishberryaut]

Developing my 1st poster again using a different message, making it more relevant to the other poster, where it is talking about how we need to respect he tangata, our people, where our Māori population isn't respected properly with our new government and which links to the other poster of being Honour our tiriti. This leads to the idea of where we need to respect our people and honour our Tiriti; the idea isn't that complicated but is not properly valued in the eyes of our government as people like David Seymour look te Tiriti of Waitangi looking into the treaty of Waitangi instead which leads to our people not being respected properly.

I first started with a san serif for respect, which I didn't think worked properly because I think that the serif font used in the last posters works a lot better for the message as it represents the Pakeha and colonial views from our current government. I used this on the English words on purpose, as it hasn't nothing to do with the English language being fought for. Instead, the Māori text is in a handwritten font showing the idea of a political protest poster as we are protesting for the respect that we deserve.

The use of the kowhaiwhai patterns on the top and bottom of the page is to boost the Māori culture within the poster itself, letting the viewer be drawn into the middle of the page where it also connects to 2 posters to each other

[ashleysingermfablog]

Wk 16, 23rd of May, 2024 Artist Reference

Hiraeth by Holly Walker and Sylvan Spring

Sylvan Spring and Holly Walker, Hiraeth, 2024. Image courtesy of Cheska Brown.

From the text: Hiraeth on Enjoy Gallery exhibitions page….

Hiraeth is a Welsh word describing a spiritual longing for a place that we have never been. It is the lost ancient places we imagine our ancestors would stomp their feet into their lands and the grief we struggle to locate in our bodies—a dislocated homesickness for a motherland we have never belonged to. The offerings of this exhibition illustrate the artists’ intimate and awkward rituals of becoming truly Pākehā—tangata Tiriti on their haerenga towards becoming familiar with the layers of their cultural identities and realities on this whenua and in relation to its people.

Spring and Walker’s haerenga towards reconciling the layers of their cultural identities on this whenua and in relation to its people is informed by wisdom from te ao Māori and the Māori in their lives, while acknowledging that the only way to be accountable as Pākehā is “to be clear in our identity – to embrace it, not escape it.” A common refrain in Imagining Decolonisation is that colonisation is bad for everyone and while the voices of Māori should always be placed at the centre, Pākehā also need to put in effort as “decolonisation is the work of us all.” 

Sylvan Spring and Holly Walker, Hiraeth, 2024. Image courtesy of Cheska Brown.

Decolonial author, Amanda Thomas:

                One of the really exciting aspects of decolonisation is that it can help Pākehā better understand who we are. In doing the work of decolonisation—developing a better understanding of the history of this place and creating a more equitable society rooted in Māoriness—Pākehā will find out more about our own histories, our own families and our own culture. 

Sylvan Spring and Holly Walker, Hiraeth, 2024. Image courtesy of Cheska Brown.

Spring and Walker are concerned with actively questioning their relationships with their ancestors and how this shapes their reality in Aotearoa, an issue more and more commonly raised by Pākehā artists of late. This exhibition presents the findings of their decolonial and familial embodied research in the form of documentary photographs, performance and audio works.

Sylvan Spring and Holly Walker, Hiraeth, 2024. Image courtesy of Cheska Brown.

From Hiraeth exhibition unpacked in previous post...

"The work embraces the paradox of belonging to both a fragmented lineage with its own cultures that have been negatively impacted by colonisation and capitalism in their own right and a monolithic sense of settler-colonial whiteness that has brought so much harm to Indigenous peoples".

Though photographed alone by her partner Nayte, she understands her work to always be in relationship with Papatūānuku, therefore a Te Tiriti based practice. At times the 'I' brings moments of irony, in addition to the ritualistic representations performed by the body and the mauri of the landscapes. 

Further, linked below.

[alwaystochocolate]

This is a powerful performance of the Ka Mate haka, a traditional Māori dance composed by Ngāti Toa rangatira Te Rauparaha - it's internationally known because the All Blacks (national Aotearoa rugby team) perform it before games.

When you watch this, please also understand its context.

The ramification of Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke leading this haka was censure and a temporary suspension.

Expressing her outrage and challenging the injustice of the Treaty Principles Bill being presented and moving into its first reading - in a traditional Māori way - was deemed a "disgusting" disruption by the Speaker of the House.

This is about a Bill that, alongside other steps that the government has taken over the last year, seeks to undermine Maipi-Clarke's culture, and her language, and her right for self-determination and sovereignty in Aotearoa, and her ancestors' involvement in fighting for these rights.

The Treaty Principles Bill dishonours the decades of hard-won progress that has been made in Aotearoa, and Seymour's talk of "equality" in Aotearoa fails to take into account the multi-generational harms that colonisation has wrought on Māori, the colonial systems which continue to disadvantage Māori, and the institutionalised racism that they have to overcome every day.

I'm pretty darn sure I know what the disgusting thing is here, you know?

If you can, please turn up to the nationwide hīkoi to demonstrate your support for te Tiriti and itks principles.

Pākehā, tauiwi - we are tangata Tiriti. We are here because of te Tiriti. We need to be marching alongside Māori at this hīkoi. This is about all of us.

https://toitutetiriti.co.nz/

Please sign the petition opposing the Treaty Principles Bill. You can do this from anywhere.

https://our.actionstation.org.nz/petitions/kati-stop-the-introduction-of-the-treaty-principles-bill

Please share and amplify the hīkoi organisers' and other Māori voices about what NZ govt's actions mean for our future.

And please keep an eye for the next activations.

te pāti māori haka in response to the first vote on the racist anti māori treaty principles bill introduced to parliament today by david seymour and the act party. toitū te tiriti

[katescomsformakers]

Week Seven: Mana Wahine (Te Tiriti)

The way Maori viewed gender in the 1800s was vasty different of that of the British. European culture at the time has a deeply sexist nature. All positions of power were automatically given to men without any hesitation, women reduced to looking after children, cooking, cleaning and staying in the house. Maori culture was different all together. In Maori history, women were just as powerful - leading in men into battle and trusted with decision making and strategising. These were rangatira women, strong willed, independent and comprehensive thinkers. The failure to uphold Te Tiriti has left wahine Maori in low paying jobs, poverty and led them to face discrimination at work and school. These women facing such hardships are the descendants of the female signatories who came before them, the great grandchildren of the "the founding mothers". The arrival of Pakeha settlers in the 1830s disrupted the balance between Maori men and women, before colonisation they saw each other as equals. When the Pakeha came, their ideologies and practices came with them - they brought in the idea that women are lesser, and it is still being practiced today. “We are not saying we don’t have mana... we are saying we have 200 years of evidence of an intentional, deliberate, degrading marginalisation and denial of mana because we are wāhine." Stuff. https://www.stuff.co.nz/pou-tiaki/300223598/the-founding-mothers-how-maori-women-are-reclaiming-their-birthright-this-waitangi. Accessed 23 Apr. 2024. Institutionalised racism and sexism has left Maori women oppressed from all angles. Their mana has been stripped away by the state over the course of history and still now today. Wahine Maori still pushing for change at The Waitangi Tribunal, fighting for the principle of Tino rangatiratanga, or self - governance to be implemented across all aspects of their lives including health, education, welfare, justice etc.

Do the marks on Te Tiriti hold the same mana, authority and meaning across all cultures involved?

I don't think so. Maori and Pakeha both had different motives for the treaty - Maori wished for peace, the protection of the Crown and acknowledgement that they were here first - rights to land etc. Settlers were more interested in making agreements only if it benefitted themselves - to have sovereignty and control. This is evident in the mistranslation of The Treaty of Waitingi and Te Tiriti - both having different meanings.

Is the relatively small number of female signatures on the Treaty a reflection of the esteem that Māori women held in their own society? 

Cook first arrived in 1869, and Te Tiriti was not created until 1840. There were over ten years for the settlers to influence tangata whenua with their sexist ideologies. I believe this a possible reason only 13 out of 500 signatories of Te Tiriti are female.

[xoxoofeeeliaxoxo]

Rationale - Draft

This poster is inspired by Te Pati Maori MP Hana Rahwiti Maipi-Clarke’s maiden speech in Parliament. I wanted to incorporate conventions of a protest placard to express feelings of anger and frustration. I’ve used this type face (Battery Park) to resemble an analogue type. The red highlights certain words in this statement which emphasises Clarke's anger and frustration towards the government, and its policies regarding Te Tiriti o Waitangi and tangata whenua [people of the land].

I overlapped some text over each other - creating a sort of visual pun - to highlight key words like ‘tampering.’

I created a halftone using an image of a government house. This resembles the place Clarke had to leave the māra [garden] for – parliament.