Ahead of Waitangi Day, UK schools and education companies tried to engage with Māori culture. But a string of examples, ranging from ignorant cultural appropriation to harmful and inaccurate depictions of history, show colonial attitudes remain entrenched. After 200 years, Aotearoa is finally incorporating what’s hoped to be a more accurate and nuanced teaching of … Read more
This week, the National MP said the proposed compulsory history curriculum for New Zealand schools lacked ‘balance’. Historian Lydia Whiting believes his concerns hint at a deeper anxiety. On Wednesday, speaking from the site of the battle of Ruapekapeka, prime minister Jacinda Ardern announced the rollout of the Aotearoa New Zealand histories curriculum. The curriculum … Read more
Most of them commemorate early Pākehā arrival. Some are based on obsolete provincial borders. One celebrates an A&P show. But most importantly, none of them have any meaning to the vast majority of us, writes historian André Brett. Last Monday, January 25, was the Wellington Anniversary Day public holiday. Today, residents of Auckland, Buller, Nelson, … Read more
The Marae TV journalist tells the origin story of her debut novel, a young adult book releasing this week. Patricia Grace wrote a story called “It used to be green once” and every year my Pākehā teacher would pull it out in English class and everyone would laugh at the poor Mowri family with 10 … Read more
Like hundreds of thousands of others, Nadine Anne Hura’s brother couldn’t see the point in participating in a system that didn’t make space for him, much less represent him. Content warning: This piece includes discussion of suicide I used to think that the most important things we say to the people we love are wordless. I … Read more
The force that underpins the oppression of African Americans is the same force that underpins the oppression of Māori and Pasifika, writes Laura O’Connell Rapira. In honour of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and every other Black and brown life that has been taken from us by racism and racist institutions, hundreds of thousands of people … Read more
The Auckland that Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman found herself in as a nine-year-old was starkly Pākehā – to the point that she assumed Māori must be refugees, too. Ghahraman’s memoir, Know Your Place, is out this week and opens with a tense recounting of her family’s flight from Iran in 1990. Parts of this … Read more
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Billions needed to fix poor state of hospital infrastructure, colonial era statues in the spotlight, and major problems emerge in modem rollout to students. Dozens of hospital buildings are in a poor condition, a new stocktake has found.Radio NZ’s Phil Pennington has a detailed report on … Read more
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate, $50) Toby Manhire: If someone’s self-isolating, what’s your recommendation, as … Read more
A surge of Māori internet memes have appeared on Instagram in the past year tackling topics from land theft to a shared love of fry bread. They’ve been around since the dawn of the internet, but in the last few years memes have become intrinsic to popular culture. They’ve also become increasingly political. Indigenous groups … Read more
Let’s disentangle the prized day of casual clothing from its colonial connotations, writes historian Katie Pickles. As another school year starts up around the country, getting into uniforms is compulsory for most pupils. It’s only the occasional mufti day that brings the chance to ditch the conformity. But little do most mufti day organisers and … Read more
Histories of colonisation ought to be remembered, including the horrors and atrocities, but also the endurance and empowerment found in trenchant resistance and the fight for sovereignty, writes Radhika Reddy. India and Aotearoa are both grappling with decolonisation. In this ongoing struggle to wrest free from the legacies of colonialism, each society can learn from … Read more
As both negotiate the complexities of being part memorial, part protest and part celebration, an empathetic allegiance between Waitangi Day and the Auckland Pride Festival has the potential of collective empowerment, writes Richard Orjis. Waitangi Day falls in the middle of this year’s Auckland Pride Festival. Rather than being strange bedfellows in the summer cultural … Read more
Is there something to be learned from TVNZ’s Wild West-meets-WWE-meets-19th-century-New Zealand web series? After all, writes Sharon Mazer, colonisation, like professional wrestling, is a fixed match. The premise underlying TVNZ’s new web series Colonial Combat is anachronistic and preposterous, even by WWE standards. It’s also fascinating. Transported from American popular culture to New Zealand as … Read more
US justice reform activists Deborah Small and asha bandele say white supremacy and colonialism are at the heart of punitive drug laws. They spoke to Teuila Fuatai about how drug reform can reverse their effects on minority communities. Deborah Small sees Donald Trump as the US Dorian Gray. “He’s the physical manifestation of what America … Read more
Tongan New Zealand performance artist Kaisolaite Uhila is the current visiting artist in residence at Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Whether he’s living homeless around the boundary of Auckland Art Gallery for the Walters Prize, or sleeping with pigs in Aotea Square, Uhila uses his body and its labour to start uneasy conversations that break down … Read more
The first encounter between Māori and Captain Cook and his crew ended in the murder and brutalising of nine Tūranaga-nui-a-kiwa ancestors. The Ministry of Culture and Heritage’s intention to include Māori history and voyaging traditions in the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of that tragedy has prompted a mixed reception. This feature is made possible … Read more
On the 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook arriving in Aotearoa, Tina Ngata looks at the whakapapa of colonisation in Aotearoa – the 15th and 16th century laws issued by the Catholic church that gave British and European monarchies permission to oppress and enslave indigenous people. This year’s TUIA250 Cook commemorations are New Zealand’s response … Read more
TVNZ’s new online-only series Colonial Combat pits the the inhabitants of Kauri Bay – Māori, settlers, men, women, and many more besides – against each other in the ring. Dan Taipua reviews. The place is Kauri Bay, kind of. The year is 1836, sort of. The people are Māori, and All Other Comers. The stakes … Read more
Here: Kupe to Cook is an exhibition that challenges the discovery narrative that’s the cornerstone of Pākehā national history. Reuben Friend, director of Pātaka Art+Museum in Porirua, discusses the ethical framework for a show that serves up the skeletons in our collective closet. I had reservations about using Greg Semu’s photograph The Arrival as the … Read more
A movement to boycott this year’s Tuia – Encounters 250 commemorations of the 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook’s landing at Tūranganui-a-Kiwa is gaining strength, writes RNZ’s Leigh-Marama McLachlan. More than $20 million is being spent on events and resources to mark the anniversary of Cook’s landing in Tūranganui-a-Kiwa, later named Gisborne, in 1769. Indigenous … Read more
Yesterday it emerged that 10 years of public documents from NZ spy agencies contained zero mentions of rightwing extremism. Yet narratives invoking racialised fears and myths of Pakeha superiority run deep, writes criminologist Elizabeth Stanley We have officially experienced two acts of terrorism in New Zealand. The first was the bombing of the Greenpeace Rainbow … Read more
Summer reissue: There was a lot of confusion from media and commentators earlier in the year about the cultural identity of then-newly minted National Party leader Simon Bridges and deputy Paula Bennett. Here’s a handy guide to tell if you, or someone you know, might have a touch of the Māori. This post was first … Read more
British Caribbean documentary maker Jay Hall — who sat down with the owner of Dutch Delights and convinced him to do away with the blackface tradition — talks about Zwarte Piet, or Black Pete, and its racist history. In November 2016, I was out in Birkenhead where I was living at the time when a vintage … Read more