So the peace march has occurred. This is a walk between New Plymouth and Parihaka marae in Taranaki
It’s a walk I totally support and applaud. I am impressed with the outpouring of support and sharing. On both sides. I truly hope that bit by tiny bit we can overturn the racism in this country. But. Of course there is a but.
We can all get emotional in these times. And it is emotional. The realisation of your own racism and the horror of understanding what has happened in the past to our fellow citizens is a shock and a horror that we want to put right. It’s even more shocking to realise that racism is alive and well in good ol’ Aotearoa. And that we may, inadvertently, be the carriers of the racist disease.
I hope for two things:
- that the goodwill for change continues and that, Pākehā don’t appropriate the whole damned thing. Because we will give it a go, you know, even if we don’t mean to. We just can’t help it.
While few people read this, I know that this may disturb anyone who chances upon it. It’s just in our blood – the need to be in charge, to claim relationships that may or may not exists and with our few words of te reo Māori take over. We really try not to, but we will. I don’t think all of us will but many will. Which I think is why those kuia I used to know were so scary. They’d seen it all before and by god it wasn’t going to happen again.
- the continuation. It is really hard to make changes to institutions, which of course is the problem because they weren’t set up to accommodate Māori ways. And so many of the ways we try to make change becomes tokenistic.
We have ‘bicultural policies’ and names of groups/institutions and teams but. It’s just, at the moment for me a big but.
We have, in our times, all attempted to make changes. Let’s hope the recent attempt works. I really truly do hope it does.
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/06/16/our-racist-justice-system-and-teina-pora/
thebiculturalist 