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Category: Maori whanau

  • Facing up to anti-mandate protesters at Parliament – the brutal reality

    National Māori Authority chair Matthew Tukaki has seen plenty of protests and received his fair share of abuse, but what’s been happening in Wellington this week is like nothing he has encountered before. Justin Latif reports for Local Democracy Reporting.

    If there’s one thing Matthew Tukaki thought he and the protesters at Parliament might agree on, it’s the right to free speech. But after starting a campaign to end the occupation, he discovered that wasn’t quite the case.

    “I started a campaign on Sunday, which kind of went viral, called #endtheprotest, via social media,” the Wellington-based chair of the National Māori Authority said.

    The hashtag is now one of the top trending topics for New Zealand Twitter users and has been shared by close to 60,0000 people on Facebook, hitting a reach of 2.3 million accounts.

    Local Democracy Reporting
    LOCAL DEMOCRACY REPORTING

    Tutaki said the backlash, which had included physical threats and racial abuse, was initially just online but it quickly escalated once protesters realised he was behind the campaign.

    “I came out of a hotel on Sunday and someone recognised me, they grabbed me by the arm, and the force was so great, they ripped the sleeve off my anorak and left a bruise,” he said.

    Never one to let a single incident perturb him, Tukaki passed the protests on his way to lunch a few days later.

    “I was down there on my way to get some sushi and a group of about eight of them piled in, shouting verbal abuse and trying to physically intimidate me. One of them was about to lunge and if it wasn’t for the police, it could have turned into something much more brutal.”

    No self-respect
    He said the protesters seemed to have no self-respect, either for their own space or the environment they were occupying, given the amount of human waste that was swirling around Parliament grounds.

    “It’s like someone has turned up at your house, put a tent in your lounge, and then shat in your sink. It’s another level of disrespect out there and these people have no respect for the whenua.”

    National Māori Authority chair Matthew Tukaki
    National Māori Authority chair Matthew Tukaki … accosted twice this week by abusive protesters in Wellington. Image: Justin Latif/LDR

    Having attended many protests over his life as well as having many friends and family involved in different types of activism, he said the difference in how a Māori-led campaign operated was stark.

    “Ihumātao was totally different, hīkoi to parliament are different,” he said. “With Māori, when we have a protest, our people will go down to Wellington, we prosecute our kaupapa, present our petition and members of parliament will often come out to greet you.

    “It’s always well-organised, and it’s safe and then we clean up after ourselves and we continue to prosecute the kaupapa back home from our marae.

    “This is completely different. It’s violent, it’s aggressive and they have no respect for the whenua.”

    He noted that even after protesters sent out a press release welcoming visitors, “a reporter from Wellington Live went down there, and was beaten up”.

    Māori culture appropriated
    He said it was particularly concerning to see both Māori culture and New Zealand’s wartime history being appropriated.

    “Unfortunately our Māori whānau are being used as clickbait by those in the alternative right, who are pushing messages from the United States,” he said.

    “We’re being used, our symbols are being appropriated. Our tino rangatiraranga flag is flying next to the Trump flag, next to where a Nazi swastika symbol was painted on a war memorial.”

    He said the prime minister had made the right call not engaging and he felt some blame could be laid at the feet of politicians who had helped stoke racist conspiracies.

    “Many politicians have used Māori issues as a political football over the last 12 months,” he said.

    “What they have done is they have set free the sorts of racist attitudes that have been hiding in dark corners, and look at what those same politicians have done now — blame the government for it all.”

    Peddling of racist ideas ‘normalised’
    This wasn’t the first time Tukaki had received abuse, given his role with the National Māori Authority, which advocated for iwi and Māori business and community service organisations around New Zealand, but he was concerned by how normalised the peddling of racist ideas was becoming.

    “I was getting racist and threatening messages before the protest, but what this has taught me is the issue of racism is out there more, because people are now emboldened to show their names and faces.

    “And to be frank, people like [David] Seymour and [Judith] Collins, [Winston] Peters and Matt King all need to take responsibility for the beast in the cave they have conveniently let loose.”

    Justin Latif is a Local Democracy Reporting project journalist. Read more of his stories here. Asia Pacific Report is a community partner.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Iwi clinic egged as anti-vaxxers force caution in vaccine rollout for tamariki

    By Moana Ellis, Local Democracy Reporting

    Māori health providers in Aotearoa New Zealand are holding back on covid-19 vaccinations for children in the face of growing anti-vaxxer protest in the wider Whanganui region.

    That is despite the area recording the second-lowest rate in the country of vaccinations for children aged 5 to 11 years.

    Iwi collective Te Ranga Tupua says one of its mobile vaccination clinics was egged in the Whanganui suburb of Aramoho on Wednesday and anti-vaxxer activity has been ramping up since children became eligible for vaccination.

    Local Democracy Reporting
    LOCAL DEMOCRACY REPORTING

    According to the Ministry of Health, as of Wednesday only 1600 (24 percent) of 6600 eligible children in the Whanganui District Health Board area have had their first shot.

    The rate for tamariki Māori is even worse, with only 400 (15 percent) of Māori aged between 5 and 11 years getting their first vaccination.

    The Whanganui District Health Board area includes parts of Rangitīkei and the Waimarino/Ruapehu district.

    Te Ranga Tupua rapid response vaccination co-lead Elijah Pue said anti-vaxxers are now targeting the iwi collective’s mobile teams daily with the message “hands off our tamariki”.

    Ramped up the rhetoric
    “The anti-vax community have ramped up the rhetoric. It is a health and safety issue for our staff and our frontline teams.”

    The iwi collective did not want to bring in security, preferring instead to encourage kōrero, he said.

    Te Ranga Tupua is midway through a 15-week effort to lift Māori vaccination rates in Whanganui, Rangitīkei, South Taranaki and the Waimarino.

    Pue said the iwi collective was taking the time to engage with parents who had questions or were hesitant before it launched a region-wide child vaccination rollout on 14 February.

    About 120 parents participated in an online information session with Covid-19 experts last week. Pue said Te Ranga Tupua would continue to take a cautious approach and had more information sessions for parents planned next week.

    Te Ranga Tupua vaccination co-lead Elijah Pue
    Iwi collective vaccination teams are engaging with parents who have questions before Te Ranga Tupua launches a region-wide child vaccination rollout, says vaccination co-lead Elijah Pue. Image: Moana Ellis/LDR

    The Whanganui DHB vaccination uptake for both Māori and non-Māori children is the second lowest in the country, with only Northland recording lower numbers.

    Spokesperson Louise Allsopp said the DHB was encouraging whānau to talk with their trusted healthcare providers to work through any concerns about vaccinating their 5 to 11-year-olds.

    “We are also ensuring existing providers are supported to start vaccinating children when they are ready,” Allsopp said.

    Right information for whānau
    “The key things are that people have the right information to make their decision for their whānau, then [that] vaccinations are available from the right people at the right time. There has been a focus from Māori providers on getting accurate information out there before they start vaccinating.”

    The public health team was providing support to local school principals around Covid-19 protection measures, including wearing masks at school. The DHB was also supporting additional providers to start delivering covid-19 vaccinations for both adults and children, Allsopp said.

    Covid-19 Māori health analyst Rāwiri Taonui said tamariki Māori vaccination numbers throughout the country were concerning and had to be lifted urgently before the omicron variant took hold.

    “There’s an impression that omicron causes milder disease and that’s true but the scale of cases is so large that even a small percentage of severe illnesses is quite a serious situation.”

    Taonui said MOH data showed 18 percent of tamariki Māori (5-11s) nationwide had their first vaccination compared to 33 percent for all ethnicities. But the gap was much wider due to an undercount of more than 12,000 in the index the MOH used to count vaccinations and the estimated number of tamariki Māori, he said.

    “That gap is closer to 25 or 26 percent. A more accurate calculation of the tamariki vaccination is 16.1 percent for Māori compared to 40.9 percent for non-Māori/Pacific.”

    Taonui was calling on the government to cut the wait time between first and second child vaccinations from eight weeks to three, and to prioritise the tamariki Māori vaccination rollout to avoid repeating the inequities of the national vaccination programme to date.

    Targeting low-decile schools
    “This includes targeting low-decile schools with large Māori enrolments,” Taonui said.

    “At the moment Māori cases are very low. But at some point there’s going to be a vector by which Omicron begins to make its way into our community and that is likely to come when our children go back to school and begin mixing with kids from other communities and take the virus home.”

    The MOH had to release tamariki Māori data to the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency and other Māori health providers to help them quickly locate children who had yet to be vaccinated, he said.

    Delays in child vaccinations now would carry through to second vaccinations. With the current eight-week wait time between vaccinations, a child vaccinated today would not be fully protected until April – well after Omicron has taken hold in the country.

    “That’s a real concern. We could get caught out really quite badly,” Taonui said.

    “We are starting to see numbers overseas, for instance in the United States and amongst other indigenous groups, where there’s a lot of children getting ill and child hospitalisations are increasing.

    “We’re already in a situation where by mid-January tamariki Māori were 53 percent of all under-12 infection and 63 percent of all hospitalisation. If we don’t get the tamariki vaccination rollout right, those numbers could become even worse.”

    Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air. Published by Asia Pacific Report in collaboration.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Māori Party calls for indigenous debate to address NZ racism, white privilege

    Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

    The co-leader of New Zealand’s minority Māori Party has launched a blistering attack on white privilege and the opposition National Party which it accuses of “igniting racism” in the framing of a debate about radical political change.

    In a provocative introduction to her weekly column in The New Zealand Herald today, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer asks: “Hey coloniser, so let me get this right, you want to lead a debate about indigenous rights that you helped to destroy?”

    She writes in her media message to Pākehā colonisers: “You dishonour Te Tiriti [1840 Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand’s founding political partnership document] and promote continuing to do so.

    “You stole our land and our language. You denounce our history, preferring to educate on anything but us. And you have done nothing to reverse this, instead preferring to ignore the problems.

    “We are in an inherently white system that you designed, yet you feel oppressed that Māori want to stop the pain of inequities. Your systemic racism continues to perpetuate intergenerational trauma, which you refuse to accept.”

    While acknowledging that National Party leader Judith Collins claimed that New Zealanders “find racism abhorrent”, she added that “in my opinion she is igniting racism through a carefully deployed campaign — apparently with the help of former leader Don Brash”.

    Ngarewa-Packer says New Zealanders are entitled to a conversation about radical change, but they are not “counteracting with alternative solutions”, preferring to focus on what she saw as the “misery of struggling Māori whānau”.

    ‘White hypocrisy’
    Criticising what she describes as “white hypocrisy”, Ngarewa-Packer called instead for a “debate about the coloniser’s entitlements”.

    “And rather than start on a timeline plucked out to help lift right-wing leaders’ dying polls, let’s start at the beginning: 181 years ago, and discuss the rights of tangata whenua and the radical change needed in Aotearoa to see those rights fulfilled,” she said.

    “And yes, I hear you. Why should you pay for your ancestors’ mistakes? But why should we, either?

    “No one can give our language, lives, and land (actually this is possible) back. There is no true price for our tāonga. But we must at least stop the lying and stop making a mockery of tangata whenua with this pathetic dog-whistling.”

    Ngarewa-Packer says a debate was needed on how New Zealand economy had been built off the “displacement of tangata whenua”.

    “How tangata whenua are the largest benefactors to this nation, having accepted settlements worth 1 per cent loss of whenua stolen, in a process determined by the Crown!”

    Disparity in the economy
    Among examples Ngarewa-Packer gave of the disparity between the Pākehā and Māori share of the economy, were the NZ$1.9m funding for Te Matatini, the “largest kapa haka event on the planet, versus $16.9m for the NZ Symphony Orchestra”.

    She also cited the $250m spent on the America’s Cup this year.

    Ngarewa-Packer has also called for less hypocrisy about “crackdowns needed to stop crime”

    “Let’s turn our gaze to white-collar crime, which has seen an estimated $2 billion to $4 billion loss to Aotearoa, through tax avoidance and evasion.”

    She added that Māori sought to “drive our own tino rangatiratanga [self-determination]”.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Māori Party calls for indigenous debate to address NZ racism, white privilege

    Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

    The co-leader of New Zealand’s minority Māori Party has launched a blistering attack on white privilege and the opposition National Party which it accuses of “igniting racism” in the framing of a debate about radical political change.

    In a provocative introduction to her weekly column in The New Zealand Herald today, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer asks: “Hey coloniser, so let me get this right, you want to lead a debate about indigenous rights that you helped to destroy?”

    She writes in her media message to Pākehā colonisers: “You dishonour Te Tiriti [1840 Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand’s founding political partnership document] and promote continuing to do so.

    “You stole our land and our language. You denounce our history, preferring to educate on anything but us. And you have done nothing to reverse this, instead preferring to ignore the problems.

    “We are in an inherently white system that you designed, yet you feel oppressed that Māori want to stop the pain of inequities. Your systemic racism continues to perpetuate intergenerational trauma, which you refuse to accept.”

    While acknowledging that National Party leader Judith Collins claimed that New Zealanders “find racism abhorrent”, she added that “in my opinion she is igniting racism through a carefully deployed campaign — apparently with the help of former leader Don Brash”.

    Ngarewa-Packer says New Zealanders are entitled to a conversation about radical change, but they are not “counteracting with alternative solutions”, preferring to focus on what she saw as the “misery of struggling Māori whānau”.

    ‘White hypocrisy’
    Criticising what she describes as “white hypocrisy”, Ngarewa-Packer called instead for a “debate about the coloniser’s entitlements”.

    “And rather than start on a timeline plucked out to help lift right-wing leaders’ dying polls, let’s start at the beginning: 181 years ago, and discuss the rights of tangata whenua and the radical change needed in Aotearoa to see those rights fulfilled,” she said.

    “And yes, I hear you. Why should you pay for your ancestors’ mistakes? But why should we, either?

    “No one can give our language, lives, and land (actually this is possible) back. There is no true price for our tāonga. But we must at least stop the lying and stop making a mockery of tangata whenua with this pathetic dog-whistling.”

    Ngarewa-Packer says a debate was needed on how New Zealand economy had been built off the “displacement of tangata whenua”.

    “How tangata whenua are the largest benefactors to this nation, having accepted settlements worth 1 per cent loss of whenua stolen, in a process determined by the Crown!”

    Disparity in the economy
    Among examples Ngarewa-Packer gave of the disparity between the Pākehā and Māori share of the economy, were the NZ$1.9m funding for Te Matatini, the “largest kapa haka event on the planet, versus $16.9m for the NZ Symphony Orchestra”.

    She also cited the $250m spent on the America’s Cup this year.

    Ngarewa-Packer has also called for less hypocrisy about “crackdowns needed to stop crime”

    “Let’s turn our gaze to white-collar crime, which has seen an estimated $2 billion to $4 billion loss to Aotearoa, through tax avoidance and evasion.”

    She added that Māori sought to “drive our own tino rangatiratanga [self-determination]”.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.