What can they do to you? Whatever they want*

You don't need to have been following the trial, or even have heard the verdict, to be able to guess which of the people in this picture were sentenced to two years six months in jail and which were sentenced to 9 months home detention.  Pakeha fears about Maori have been projected onto accused throughout the whole case. I've no reason to disbelieve that Andre, who commented on Public Address, is not who he says he is:

I was excluded from the jury for the trial along with two other jurors after being empanelled. I gave them all a rant prior to departing and am relieved they didn’t find them guilty on the main charge. They were overwhelmingly middle class white women that I left on the panel, some of whom had already told us that Tame Iti scared them etc. One of the jurors asked to be excluded because she was convinced he was guilty by how he looked. She was refused her request to leave and heard the case. Another guy asked to be excluded because he thought the whole exercise was a waste of taxpayer money and resources and he was excluded. How does that work? 

*******

One way of communicating my range and anger over the sentences is to talk about how manifestly unjust they are on the court's own terms.  This man who beat and pretended to hang his children, received a sentence of two years 8 months.

As others have pointed out Rodney Hansen, the judge sentenced them as if the charge of being part of an organised criminal group (which the jury could not decide upon) had been proved.  He included the defendant's political views as aggravating factors stating: "Some of the participants held extreme anarchist views."  He blamed the defendants for the actions of the police - stating that they had done harm by creating divisions within Tuhoe.

The logic of the judge's sentencing was grotesque.  Justice was far from blind - it saw and was terrified of who these people were and sentenced them accordingly.

*******

The sentence is unjust when understood inside the system of justice that colonisation brought.  But to focus on that is to ignore the larger injustice.

From here

Justice Hansen is not the first judge to exert his authority over Tuhoe people as a way of trying maintain the crown's sovereignty over Tuhoe land, unfortunately it's unlikely that he'll be the last.  He was very willing to describe the actions he'd decided people had undertaken as 'a frightening prospect undermining our democratic institutions and anathema to society'.  He talked of 'we' and 'our' and 'society' singular.  He ignored the many actions of the crown that had undermined Maori democratic institutions and that were an anathema to Maori societies.What right do Pakeha from Auckland have to talk of 'we' and 'our' when it comes to Tuhoe land?  They can't even claim the right of Kawanatanga.

*******

Protests have been organised around the country over the next couple of days.  Come along if you can - thinking that this is wrong is meaningless without action.

PALMERSTON NORTHFriday, 25th May 2012, 1pm, Palmerston North District Court. Bring placards, banners, chants and friends.

WELLINGTON
Friday, 25th May 2012, 12pm, Wellington High Court. Bring placards, banners, chants and friends.

AUCKLAND Saturday, 26th May 2012, 2pm, Mt Eden Prison.

DUNEDIN Saturday 26th May 2012, 2pm, Dunedin District Court House.

CHRISTCHURCH Saturday 26th May 2012, 4pm, Christchurch Police Station.

* I found some comfort in Marge Piercy's The Low Road tonight - not for the first time.

** I've seen a lot of people express this idea in a way that implies that Rangi and Tame are more Maori than Emily. Sometimes this is because of lack of knowledge, but it is wrong.

Aotearoa is not for Sale: Demo report

4,000 people marched in the hīkoi 'Aotearoa is not for sale'  Friday (this is some of them).

I joined from a feeder march from the university.  We were worried we weren't going to meet up properly.  The first thing I saw was flashing police lights - which said the hīkoi wasn't far away.  Then I saw people two blocks away turning into Willis St and there were just more and more of them - by the time we reached the    hīkoi the front was already in Lambton Quay.  There were just so many people.

I wanted to see how long it went back from there so I started walked backwards against the demo. I said hello to friends, my sister, acquaintances, more friends, people who I thought were overseas; I went past a brass band, many lots of chanting, and still people kept coming.  This was the biggest march I'd been on since the Foreshore and Seabed  Hīkoi in 2004.

I was on Wakefield St before I could see the end.  I hadn't been planning to count it, even though I'm a wee bit obsessed with counting demos - it was too big.  But having seen so many people I wanted to be able to put a number on it.  So cutting corners and walking fast, I got all the way to the front again (by this time the front was half-way down Lambton Quay.  I counted out a hundred in groups of ten, and got a good sense of what 100 people looked like - then I counted people in groups.  About 37 groups of 100 people walked past me - and by the time we got to parliament it was more - as some could only come for their lunch break.

Watching everyone walk past I realised just how huge a group of 4,000 people is.  The different bits of the demo had a very different feel.  The very front was singing, and chanting faded in and out as people passed.   There were groups behind different signs - focusing on issues in specific communities - the meatworkers were well represented.  There were also some very cute kids (with and without signs).

The hīkoi was led by Maori, and Tino Rangatiratanga flags made a really clear statement about the issues being fought for.  I've been on Maori led protests with only a smattering of tau iwi.  I've also been on plenty of protests that were organised and dominated by Pakeha and made no effort to acknowledge tangata whenua (including many, many that I've been part of organising).  This was something slightly different than either of those things.  Maori led the  hīkoi, and framed the issues around Tino Rangatiratanga, and tau iwi accepted that leadership and framing - because we believe that our interests are best represented by being part of that fight.

******

I spent much of the time once we'd actually got to parliament trying to find out was speaking.  This was quite a difficult mission.  The sound system they had didn't work and people were trying to speak to a crowd of 4,000 through a mega-phone.  Earlier on, at the Vic feeder march - you could barely hear the speeches that were given through a megaphone when there were 100 of us.  It's a fine experience for those giving the speeches, organising the speeches and the first few rows - but a rally without a proper sound system just breaks up the protest for everyone else.  It is no longer a collective experience.  Either acknowledge that your sound system isn't good enough and focus on a very few chants - or get a sound system that'll allow everyone to hear speakers.  Anything else is actually disrespectful to the vast majority of people who came - by not having a good sound system and still giving speeches you're telling them they don't matter (and I should say I've been part of organising protests that made this mistake on many occasions - and it is only the few times that we've got it right that I've realised how important it is)

In this particular case, it was probably good.  The list I managed to build up was:

Someone who had been part of organising the hīkoi
Grant Robertson (apparently David Shearer was giving a speech to the Wellington Chamber of Commerce)
Russel Norman (obviously this filled me with joy)
Hone Harawira
Winston Peters (!!!!!!)
Someone from the Meatworkers Union (I was sad to miss this)
I heard one woman's voice, but I couldn't figure out who she was
Te Ururoa Flavell

I'll talk about the politics of this in a second, but at the time (no-one was giving two minute speeches - so the talking - which I couldn't hear - went on and on and on) I began to believe that the plan was to keep talking until everyone had left.

******

The political nature of the  hīkoi is a little harder to analyse.  Demonstrations are inherently incoherent events - and the larger a demo is the the larger standard deviation is.  On this demo one guy had two flags on his flag pool - the first was a tingo rangatiratanga flag.  The second was not a flag I'd seen before.  It was white and had the union jack in one corner, there were crossed shotguns on it, with a crown on top of it - and it had 'union power' written on.  I can't make those symbols make a coherent message - but it must have meant something to him.

There has already been quite a lot of radical political analysis of the hīkoi. Valerie Morse argued for the importance of anti-capitalist politics. Kim at He Hōaka responded with the importance.  And since Friday, Shomi Yoon has a post on ISO's blog has a demo report.

'Aotearoa is not for sale' (a name I hate incidentally - currently Aotearoa is for sale - saying something that is patently false has never seemed like a good strategy for me) is centred around resisting current attacks. It opposed: "privatisation of public services, sale of public assets to private investors (local AND overseas), casualisation of labour, privatisation and pillage of our country's resources."  I really appreciate the the posts I mentioned above each are focused on linking the current attacks with critical understandings of society.  In order to successfully fight - we need to understand how the world works and that means naming colonialism and capitalism.

I want to highlight a point of Shomi's "The xenophobia that’s represented by NZ First leader Winston Peters will be absolutely damaging to the campaign. It is a problem that an openly reactionary party like NZ First felt comfortable endorsing the hikoi." While the fact that no-one heard him takes a little of the sting out of the fact that he could talk .  Some of the campaigning material has been xenophobic - emphasising 'foreign ownership' as if that was particularly.   The false 'we' is a real danger -  supposedly left-wing people have suggested there's something progressive about a consortium led by Michael Fay buying farms.   The right have been emphasising the idea of "Mum and Dad" investors.  If those who oppose privation use xenophobia - then it is easy for the right to brush off those criticism with examples of New Zealand investors.  If we attack privatisation in its our totality our criticisms are much harder to refute.
My contribution is more prosaic. The protest was amazing - getting 4,000 people together is an amazing achievement.  However, it is not enough.  As John Key has already made clear - he can ignore it.  One massive protest isn't enough.  Organising is about growing and maintaining pressure.  If we want to effectively fight the current attacks - and push for a better world - we need more than one massive protest.

******

Last thought:

All the best protests enlist Seddon in their cause.

To learn more...

In October of last year, The Hand Mirror was part of a debate about Te Papa and the tikanga they used for some taonga.

As a follow-up to that I wanted to draw attention to Kim's post The tapu of taonga and wāhine in a colonised land.

Her post discusses lots of different aspects of the collection itself, the tikanga, and the debate about it in the media and on blogs:

And this is the real issue, while Māori must understand a European worldview and law to survive in this land, colonisation has meant that very few people have any understanding of mātauranga Māori, or, in fact, of colonisation. Whenever an issue requires some understanding, whether it be the significance of te reo Māori, or kaitiakitanga, or whatever, the ignorance of most New Zealanders makes dialogue impossible. And thanks again to colonisation, this creates a problem not for those who are ignorant, but for Māori. Māori must repeatedly start from the beginning and attempt to explain their whole culture—this occurs in conversations, the media, court hearings, tribunal hearings. At some point, tauiwi need to take some responsibility for understanding the indigenous culture, and for understanding how their ignorance contributes to cultural imperialism, to Māori perspectives being marginalised and foreign in their own land.

I recommend reading the whole post.

Contrast

The following advertisement aired on Israeli TV:

The following clip was filmed in Palestine:

Fantasy is a strange thing. (via Lenin's Tomb)

Choosing Conflict and Discord

I understand finding something to get excited about in the idea of Barack Obama being president (I don't share it, but I can see where it comes from). I cannot understand anyone with any progressive tendancies not being appalled by his speech. The first commentary I read on the speech which made sense was Louis Proyect's:

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

[Yes, they wrote books about that. They are called Horatio Alger stories and they are bullshit. Bill Gates got where he is by being born into one of Seattle's richest families and by exploiting technology that had hitherto been common property.]

The Daily Show also did pretty well

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Changefest '09 - Obama's Inaugural Speech

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

I don't have time (or interest) to pick apart the whole speech, but there was one section that really stuck out to me*:

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West, endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died in places Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life.

I'm going to ignore the reference to Vietnam because that's a whole nother rant, which I'm going to assume that the reader can supply themselves. I will quickly draw attention to the fact that this narrative of US history ignores anyone who was living there before European colonisation.

But my point is something quite different. People did toil in sweatshops, endure the lash of the whip and plow the hard earth. But they didn't do these things because they wanted to create the world that exists now, they did it because the alternative was starvation or death.

Millions of people worked in sweatshops, were held as slave and farmed in difficult conditions. They did so with varying degrees of control and consent. To say they did these things to bring about the world that currently exists is obscene. Millions of people have millions of different dreams, struggles and views of the purposes of their lives. Maybe some people were aiming to create the world that currently exists. But I know that some slaves, workers and farmers had a different idea of the worlds that they wanted to create. I know, because I've read about them, that some dreamed of worlds much like the world I fight for.

To claim generations of people were struggled and were exploited because so they could help create the world that we live in now is both ignorant and arrogant

* Although can I just say his view of the unselfish worker who gives up his hours so his friend will keep his job made was despicable boss pandering. How about both those workers go on strike to keep everyone's job and reclaim some profits from the bosses. I'm not saying I expect anything else from the president of the united states. I'm just saying that I don't see how anyone could have seen Barack Obama's inauguration address as doing anything but choosing sides with the rich and powerful

Trade Me

I have found the recent reports on my friend's disclosure amusing and distressing. Amusing, because the fears trotted out in the media are so far from reality. I've met most of the defendants; I know some of them well. I can guarantee that none of them are racing through the 25,000 pages of disclosure hoping to find trade me details. Even if they had that much spare time, I don't think any of them urgently need My Little Pony books.

Distressing, because the media have such a distorted image of the investigation. The Trade Me search was clearly a fishing expedition, given the number of accounts they got. The breach of privacy was the police's fishing expedition, rather than the release of this information to defendants.

The trade me accounts are the least of it. Even the leaked affadavit has names, phone numbers, addresses and text messages of dozens of people. The investigation went much further than the affadavit. The police invaded hundreds of people's privacy as they read their text messages and listened to their conversations. The warrants for all this were obtained under the Terrorism Suppression Act, to support charges that were thrown out as soon as they were tested. But the media don't worry about those people's privacy. Most of the people investigated as part of Operation 8 (the police's name for their giant fishing expedition) were Maori; all the trade me users on TV3 last night were white. Notions of who is an innocent victim, and who deserves to have their personal life dredged up by the police are pretty revealing.

Te Wiki O Te Reo Maori

Maori language week was a while back now. While it was on I wanted to write a post about it. But I struggled with writing anything, since I don't speak Maori and I was worried about tokenism. But I really liked hearing more Te Reo, and had learned stuff through other people's tokenism. I even thought about giving my blog a Maori name, but didn't.*

But I've just realised what I was wanting to say. There was an air of self-congratulation. TV3 had a piece in Maori about Air NZ using more Maori words in their flights, and they might as well had a sign flashing "aren't we awesome" down the bottom, instead of the subtitles.

If you imagine back forty years ago, what happened last Maori language week, would have seemed incredible. But it's not the companies, and media outlets who deserve the back slapping that they're giving themselves. They didn't do this randomly, out of the goodness of their heart, but because of the unbelievably hard work that activists had put into fighting for Te Reo.

It is the work of those activists that should be remembered and celebrated, not just one week a year, but all the time. And the way you remember and celebrate the work of activists, is to carry it on.**

*I couldn't find a word for 'capitalism' in any of the on-line Maori dictionaries. I considered substituting Raupatu, as the necessary precursor for capitalism. But my blog is named after a random Joss Whedon quote, it doesn't make any sense in English (except for the extremely geeky), translating it would be useless. Plus there was the tokenism thing.

** On a complete tangent, which isn't big enough to get a blog post of it's own, but was annoying enough to write about. I went to see the documentary about Tigi Ness in the film festival. It was interesting, and included the famous footage from Dominion Road at the third test in 1981 where everyone stands up and starts throwing stuff at the police. Anyway this younger guy who was talking "they stood up, they fought back so we didn't have to." Which I found immensely frustrating, and completely the wrong way of looking at the history of activism. They stood up, they fought back, and so we have to honour them by continuing the fight.

Irony much?

From Winston Peters:

"If you want commitment and drive and ambition to work in a greater collegial or community sense, then you must place your faith in the women of this part of the world, rather than the men who ... spend most of their time parading around like peacocks and do no work when it matters."

Mr Peters said it was not his intention to lecture Pacific Island countries, but New Zealand was entitled to ask "some pretty simple questions like how come all these useless males are running the show".

Tiny, tiny babies

I want to be really clear that I was relieved when I heard that Chris Kahui was found not guilty.* I've no idea who killed the Kahui twins,** it may have been Chris. But iff someone had gone to jail for their murder that wouldn't have made that person any less likely to be violent towards children in the future, and it won't stop another caregiver of a small child doing violence under stress. It might have served as punishment, but whoever killed two babies of their own family is punishing themselves already. All that's left is vengeance, and no-one has a right to claim vengeance in those babies names.

I do have a point I want to make, now that I've made it clear that I am not calling for a different verdict. From the very beginning, the defence painted Macsyna King as guilty, and they emphasised again and again what a bad mother she was. They talked of her going out with her sister, leaving Chris Kahui alone with the twins. This is from the summing up:

The twins were not victims of a one-off assault but had historic injuries, and it was "suspicious" their mother was not aware of these.

The Crown had accused Kahui's defence of blackening Ms King's reputation, but Mrs Smith said Ms King, through abandoning her other children and her drug use, had done that all by herself.

I don't think this defence would have been used or useful if the genders had been reversed. If hypothetical-Macsyna had been standing trial for their murder, then she would have not been able to use the fact that hypothetical-Chris had gone out partying all night, abandoned previous chidren and not noticed previous injuries to portray him as guilty. What is almost unforgivable in a mother, is almost acceptable in a father.

Note on Comments: I got linked to by a couple of obnoxious right-wing blogs so I've turned off the comments on this post.

* I want to remind people that Chris Kahui spent several months in jail, while he was unable to get bail. During this time he was in physical danger, and so was kept in segregation, which would have meant 23 hour lock-down. The prominence, and swiftness, of the 'not guilty' verdict, doesn't seem to have led to a discussion about how he has already been punished.

** That is, which person inflicted the injuries. Because capitalism and colonialism played a large part in those babies deaths.

Zoom out

Josie Bullock was working as a probation officer in a Maori-focused anti-violence programme. During the poroporoaki, she was asked to follow tikanga and sit behind the men. She refused to do so, and was given a formal warning for unprofessional conduct. She spoke about the incident to the media and was then dismissed.

Her case has come up for another round of media commentary, because the human rights tribunal has just found that she was discriminated against, and the warning was invalid, but offered no compensation.*

The media have quite loved this case, it's got many airings on Nine to Noon. Media and legal commentators get excited as discussing this as a case of conflicting rights, and attempting to cast the rights of Maori (who are invariably men) with the rights of women (who are equally invariably white).

There are other ways we could look at what happened. We could start with the prison system, where the programme was being run. A system that imprisons Maori at a rate far higher than Pakeha. Maori make up an even higher percentage of remand prisoners than they do sentenced prisoners, which shows that Maori are refused bail at a higher rate than Pakeha.

We could look at the women who support the men inside the prison system. We could look at how their work is rendered impossible and invisible. We could look at the effect that imprisonment has on those left outside.

We could look at the ways in which society condones and supports men's power over women, and men's violence against women.

For me, that means my starting point is that I'm fighting for a world without prisons, and without abusive men.

The effect of the media's narrow focus in cases like this, is to imply that there's a scarcity of rights and that if you want your rights you may need to trample over other people's.

It's vital that those of us who want more, those who are fighting for liberation rather than rights, reject this idea. Colonialism and misogyny are interlocking systems. We won't be able to dismantle one while the other remains in tact (and won't be able to dismantle either while capitalism is sitting there).

* This was a cowardly piece of shit ruling from the human rights commission. To state that an unfair warning wasn't the reason for dismissal, but the way someone dealt with the unfair warning was, is bosses nonsense, and shows the limits of legal redress.

Te Reo

I've already written about the Operation 8 Court appearance on March 5th. In that account I left off one astonishing fact about the way the police had pursued this investigation.

During Operation 8 the police bugged cars, houses and phones. They then transcribed these bugged conversations as part of the effort to prove that those arrested were dangerous terrorists (you may have seen snippets of these conversations on the front page of the Dominion Post). The police have to provide everything they collected as part of the investigation to the defence (this is called disclosure, and in this particular case it is ginormous).

During the lawyerly discussions on the 5th of March Annette Sykes described the transcripts the police provided. Apparently, people start talking in Maori the transcript says "conversation in Maori."

The police, despite the millions of dollars they had floating around, didn't bother transcribing, let alone translating, any Maori conversations.

It seems like a silly thing to be upset about, when the police have spent so long bugging, and basically stalking so many activists. In terms of those people's lives I think it's really awesome that those conversations weren't captured by the police. But the sheer arrogance, on the police's part, of making explicit their belief that nothing in Te Reo matters, astounds me.

Flying the Flag

I had such good intentions. Te Ata Tino Toa called for 5 days of Tino and invited people to fly flags from 1-5 February. I was going to fly the flag on this blog, by writing a post for each day. I even knew what some of those posts were going to be about. Well, obviously I failed.

So I'm just going to talk about the Tino Rangatiratanga flags I saw flying today. None of them were this big, but I saw flags on flagpoles, flying out of cars, and down in Waitangi park.

A group of us walked from Waitangi Park to the Mt Cook Police Barracks and we were carrying flags. What surprised me, and it shouldn't have, was how much tooting there was. Buckle st is busy (thanks to the by-pass), and heaps of the cars going past were tooting - supporting the flags we were flying.

To be surprised, I must have bought into the media's idea about the level of hostility to Tino Rangatiratanga. But, by standing by that flag I realised I was wrong.

It was a small action, and not much more would have come of it than the fact that people saw our flags and tooted. To me, that shows the importance of what Te Ata Tino Toa were calling for. By rallying to the standard of the Tino Rangatiratanga, we discover that there were more with us than we thought.

It is not known if any of the defendents were from Jupiter

I've decided to publish some of the drafts, even though I didn't have the energy to finish them at the time. I'll be catching up for a while I think

One of the things that astonished me about the media coverage was the utter banality of it, and the inability for the media to have any information not handed to them in a press release. One of the government's lines was that most of those arrested on October 15 weren't even Maori. The minister of Maori affairs claimed that just four were Maori, and two were Ngai Tūhoe.

This is ridiculous nonsense. There were 17 people arrested on 15 October; 12 of them are Maori.

At the end of the first week, newspaper articles on the government's claims would still say, 'the ethnicity of those arrested is not known'. By that stage everyone had appeared in court. While that might not have informed journalists of the whakapapa of each of the defendants, it'd give them a fair idea of the possibility that more than four of the defendants were Maori.

This was supposed to be the biggest story of the year, and they couldn't even be bothered doing the most basic research.

An introduction

I'm cross posting an update I wrote for Alas, a blog I write for with a largely American audience. I thought I'd post it here for people who read this blog from elsewhere

On October 15 the police raided over 60 houses throughout New Zealand. They arrested 16 people on jointly possessing a number of firearms, and one person on drugs charges. From the very first day the police were talking about charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act.

The raids were brutal, a 12 year old girl had a gun pointed at her head, and when her grandmother tried to comfort her (you can view the 12 year old's comments here. In Ruatoki, a they put a roadblock on the line where the land had been confiscated so many years ago, and anyone who went in and out had to have their photo taken by their car. When one house was raided, the children were locked in a shed for hours by the police while the search was being carried.

Four people were arrested in Wellington; three of those were friends of mine - people I loved. They didn't get bail; they went into the prison industrial complex. Suddenly prisons stopped being an abstract concept to me, and became a reality that I attempted to navigate while trying to visit the prisoners and get them books and money.

But we didn't, couldn't, just do prisoner support, we also needed to stand in solidarity of people who had been attacked, particularly Tūhoe, the iwi that had been targeted in these raids. The four weeks that followed was prisons and driving and meetings and court and protests and meetings and supporting each other and meetings and prisons and court and driving and hugs and tears and and anger and love.

At 4pm, Thursday 8 November almost four weeks after people had been arrested, the Solicitor General announced that no-one would be charged under the terrorism suppression act (these were the first charges ever attempted by the police under the Terrorism Suppression Act). The following day all my friends got bail, and all 16 defendents are now free

I don't think I could describe the sustained joy that started at 4.01 and continued for a week. They were released eleven days ago and I'm smiling right now, because they're out and I can see them whenever I want.

It's joy and a respite, but we've got so much work to do. All 16 are still facing charges under the Arms Act. The Terrorism Suppression Act - which allowed extensive bugging, has just been strengthened. While our friends are out of prisons, those vile instituations still stand, with far too many trapped inside. I still live in a colonised country, where demands for Tino Rangatiratanga and Mana Motuhake are ignored.

I couldn't write much. I was in too much of a whirlwind to know what to say. I'm looking forward to writing more regularly, but what's happened over the last 6 weeks has affected me, and will affect what I write.

I've been promising to write more about feminism in prisons for a while now. While my analysis hasn't changed much, your understanding changes as issues stop being abstract and distanced and become part of your reality, and the reality of those you love. So I imagine those posts will take a slightly different form than they might have two months ago, but will probably be stronger because of it. Most importantly, in the next few days (or weeks) I hope to write an introductory post that'll cover some of the very basic history of colonialism in NZ, and Maori resistance, that I can use a reference point if I want to write more on Alas. I've generally avoided cross-posting what little I do write on Alas, but I think writing about colonialism where I live has resonances beyond, so that I should do the background work to make what I write intelligible.

I can answer questions if people have any, it can be hard to write about what's going on here for another audience, but I think it's worth doing.

Media that don't suck (or suck less than normal)

There was a very good interview with Tuhoe Lambert on 60 Minutes tonight. You can see at least part of that interview here. He was incredibly staunch - particularly when talking about Te Mana Motuhake ō Tūhoe.

The other poweful part of the segment is that detailed the reality of the way people were treated during the raids. What happened to Tuhoe Lambert's whanua is not the worst story I have heard, but it disgusts me and fills me with rage. In a time of small mercies, one of the things that I am incredibly greatful for is that none of the people who were arrested by the armed offenders squad in Wellington were living with children. But in Maori dominated communites the police spread the net much further, so many many children were caught and had guns placed at their heads.

I also can't recommend Radio New Zealand's Te Ahi Kaa enough - although I've only just started to listen to them. There are so many Pakeha voices out there about this, and what Pakeha (including, or especially, me) need to is listen. Te Ahi Kaa is a great place to start

No Bail

I sent the two words in the title in so many different text messages.

I really want to write about what's happened this week. But right now my friends are locked up and I miss and love them so much.

We sang Nga Iwi E as we waited for the prisoners to be taken out of court. Until I find my own words, this song is more than strong enough to stand in their place:

Nga iwi e, Nga iwi e
Kia Kotahi ra, Te Moana-nui-a-kiwa

E Tama Ma, E Tama Ma
Tama Tu, Tama Toa, Tama Ora

Wahine Ma, Wahine Ma
Maranga Mai, Maranga Mai, Kia Kaha

Kia mau ra, kia mau ra
Ki te mana motuhake me te aroha

Kia Kaha

It's been a long day.

I have every reason to believe that the police have mis-represented the people arrested and their actions.

But my support of their resistance is not conditional on dividing good activists and bad activists, legitimate and illigetimate protest.

I'm very limited by what I can say, by suppression orders and exhaustions. All I wanted to say was in the title anyway.

Start them young, confuse them muchly

Thomas, a 7 year old child I look after, is holding my inflatable globe. "I'm going to find England, where J K Rowling lives."

A few minutes later he's back, he can't find England. "There it is," I point to the pink splodge and get back to getting afternoon tea together.

"But it doesn't say England." The inflatable globe isn't proving as distracting as I'd like.

"They've called it the UK, rather than England."

"Why?"

"The UK is made up of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales"

"Why?"

"Well - " I put afternoon tea on the table. "A long time ago England and Wales had a war and England beat Wales. Then England and Scotland had a war and England beat Scotland. Then England and Ireland had a war and England beat Ireland. Ireland fought back, so part of Ireland got to be free from England, but not all of it." I have relatives who would not appreciate the implication that Wales didn't fight back - but I don't want to complicate things.

"England also beat Samoa" Where did he learn that from?

"Yes England beat Samoa, but that wasn't till much later. Before England could go around beating countries on the other side of the world, it had to take over the countries closer to home." It's never to young to start on some basic education about colonialism. "England beat lots of places and took their land, like New Zealand, Australia and Zimbabwe."

"South Africa beat England." Oh.

"Yes, South Africa did beat England in the Rugby World Cup. We use lots of the same words to describe war as we do to describe sport." Not quite where I expected to end up, but I guess it's a start.

A post on Rugby!

Apparently one of the in flight entertainment options for AirNZ is replays of famous rugby matches gone by. Sky has an entire channel dedicated to Rugby matches.

I usually respond to these pieces of information by stating the only match I'm interested in watching is Springboks vs Waikato 1981. Although now I think about it I'd also be quite keen to watch the third test between the Springboks and All Blacks that year (bombs away).

So I haven't really been following the rugby world cup. But Tonga are going to play England tonight. I believe that whoever wins gets through to the quarter finals. England have been playing shit, and Tonga have been playing well. I followed the last soccer world cup but one, because one night I turned on the television and Senegal was beating France. Colonised beating colonisers on the sporting field may not mean much, but it's bloody fun to watch.

So I thought I'd declare that if Tonga beat England then I will follow the rugby world cup.*

As long as I don't have to watch any games.

* Although Tonga was never actually colonised by England - I feel the general principle still applies.

That's twice I've agreed with the Prime Minister this year

I was delighted to see that Dick Scott was given the Prime Minister's award for non-fiction writing. New Zealand is rather short of radical historians. If we had more there'd be more then someone would have written a book about 1951 more recently than 1952. But in 1952 Dick Scott, who was working as a union journalist, recorded those 151 days.

Dick Scott found out about Parihaka when he was reading about a libel trial - the history was that obliterated from Pakeha (and some Maori) conciousness. Resistance to colonisation has been a constant thread of this country's history. The best way to weaken that resistance is to try and wipe the memory of that history. If we see ourselves as alone, as doing something no one has tried before, then we are tiny and insignificant and the task seems impossible. If we see ourselves as part of a chain that goes back through the generations, than anything seems possible.

Dick Scott has kept the links in those chains strong, that's a worthwhile life.