a wave of emotion

I like this homecoming, this connecting of the past, present and the future. The emotion, the tears, the joy, the sorrow. Welcome home Hine Muka.

NZH

Tears of joy and jubilation were shed at the welcoming of a historic Maori cloak back home to Wairarapa yesterday afternoon.The 19th century woven cloak, or korowai, originally belonged to Wairarapa iwi and had been stored in the Rochester Historical Society collection in the United States for more than 100 years.

To have waited for the people for so long and now together again!!!

"It's absolutely overwhelming and almost indescribable the value that this has to our people," Wairarapa List MP Ms Fox said."The greatest thing we have is the reconnection with our ancestors who are definitely here in spirit and here today to see her come home."

I can feel the emotion from here - the tears fall, the tears of joy and time and space tear and we are here together again.

Ms Fox said the korowai, which was shaped to the shoulder with darting, was a priceless example of expert weaving which is not seen today.She said korowai made today are usually square and that this korowai was "a bit wider in the hips so it must be made for me"."The effort and the time and the amount of harakeke that is involved in making her will be a beacon and example for the future," she said."It will connect us with our whenua and it will connect us with our ancestors and be an example for our young people to restore and revive these traditions."Wairarapa iwi representatives, who collected the korowai from the Nelson Provincial Museum where it was being cared for before its return, lovingly named the cloak Hine Muka.

The Mana that this brings and the impetus for knowledge and even more connection.

Aratoi Museum of Art and History director Alice Hutchison said when Wairarapa iwi were reunited with the korowai in Nelson earlier this week, the feeling in the room, was "so intense and so strong for everybody"."It was like a wave of incredible love and I've never felt anything like it."

When you feel it, you know. It is the most unbelievable feeling, so intense - a different dimension.

And so I want EVERYTHING returned so that all Māori can experience these feelings, these gifts. And I want other cultures to feel the same - so museums send it all back to where it came from, send it back to the people, their people. Stop this hoarding - stop this paternalistic attitude that people cannot look after their own.

I have been and seen some of the taonga under Te Papa - they cry out for return, their voices deafening. This is a poem I wrote after visiting Te Papa

Longing for a breeze

the floor was polished

and clacked

with footfall and they lay

quietly disemboweled,

and were viewed.

a card explained: revered once, then dis

repair, now look

their mauri is strong. so they

say breezelessly.

A whare tūpuna

will say what to that?

Pita Sharple's taiaha watches

through glass.

They are alone at night.

No, no, and no again

Sorry but this is a difficult story - a story of loss, of disrespect, of money and of our current state of affairs. It does finish on a slightly positive note though

NZH

A protest campaign has erupted against a Fletchers proposal to build up to 480 homes near Auckland Airport on land that includes lava caves that were used as Maori burial sites for generations.
The 32ha site valued at $11.85 million has been designated a special housing area, which means the project is likely to be notified only to adjacent landowners.

Now we know that this government and especially nick smith and paula bennett are in trouble because of their inaction to our homeless and their uncaring attitude to those trying to help. So smith has made special housing areas.

About 100 people attended a protest meeting on Wednesday night called by a group of young cousins at the nearby Makaurau Marae, the ancestral home of the Te Waiohua people who gave Auckland its original name of Tamaki Makaurau.
But their tribal leader, Te Warena Taua, who chairs the marae committee, says he accepts the development because he could not stop it.
He led a tribal challenge in the Environment Court against extending the metropolitan urban limit outwards to include the property in 2012, but lost.

yep they lost, but that does not mean the fight is over.

Fletchers' application to the Overseas Investment Office, which was required to approve the deal because 56 per cent of the company's shares are foreign-owned, shows that it plans to vest almost half the land (16.2ha) in Auckland Council for "roads, reserves, walkways and other public amenities", including an area to be added to the historic reserve.
It says the other 16.6ha will be used to build 350-480 homes over the next eight years, including terrace, duplex and stand-alone houses.

Get that? fletchers are 56% foreign owned and this development is for one reason - to make money! Don't be fooled into thinking it is for parks or reserves or even housing NO it is to make money!

The land was confiscated by the Crown in 1863 and has been owned by the Wallace family since 1866.

Illegal and immoral - confiscated for what? because they wanted it that is why.

A Wallace descendant who grew up on the land and still lives there at age 87, Ailsa Blackwell, said she helped a friend gather "a sugar-bag full" of human bones from a cave on the farm for a school talk at Mangere Central School in about 1940.
"It was my job to hold them up at the school for the talk," she said. "The headmistress was shocked. She took them straight up to Pukaki Pa."

yep desecration of those sites over the years too

Another member of the protest group, journalist Qiane Matata-Sipu, said the group would not be satisfied even if Fletchers protected the caves.
"Look at it," she said, surveying the farmland stretching downhill from the caves. "This is all that's left. We don't want to be left with this little box [a small protected area]."

Give it back, all of it. 

And to end on a positive note

Heritage NZ Maori manager Te Kenehi Teira said the development would need an archaeological authority. "It will end up on my desk at some stage. I will take it straight to the Maori Heritage Council for a decision because of the magnitude of the place," he said.

Perhaps that will protect the sites but more is needed - the area must be given back and that will protect the site and the ancestors. 

hikoi for peace

Hundreds join a march for peace, reconciliation, building better relationships, and racial inclusion - and this all happened in Taranaki. This hikoi will arrive at Parihaka on Friday.

This is the way to do it, this is the way of the past and the way of the future and THIS is the country I want my kids to grow up in - not the dismal, emotionally dried up, uncaring society loved by john key and paula bennett.

Stuff

Some in the crowd for the first leg of the walk had come from outside of the region to support the peace project.Wellington law student Indiana Shewen, 21, said the debate around Judd's stance on a Maori ward in New Plymouth and the subsequent abuse he copped, led her and other Maori law students to set up a committee that now makes submissions to Parliament on issues affecting tangata whenua.She said she had been upset by her home town of New Plymouth being called by some the "racist capital of New Zealand" and wanted to be part of attempts to turn that negative reputation around."It's important for people to understand it's not just New Plymouth, it's everywhere," Shewen said.

Brilliant - so great that they have not just felt it but done something about it - this will help so many people. And yep it IS everywhere and we will fight it EVERYWHERE!!!

Alistair Preese, who travelled from the Bay of Plenty for the hikoi, said he was a fan of Judd and the peace walk's goal.
"I look at reconciliation as a giant jigsaw puzzle and this is a lovely little piece of that," he said.
Preese, who has strong ties to Parihaka, said while Judd's "depth of conviction" struck a chord with him, it was the support he had seen from schoolchildren, some of whom walked or otherwise watched from the sidelines, which he took most heart from.
"Those are the seeds aren't they. We're ploughing the ground here," Preese said.

Yes the seeds that will grow and it is so important that all ages are involved - young, old and in between - this is how you build relationships, this is how we walk to the future together!

Peace Movement Aotearoa's Edwina Hughes said the organisation backed any initiative designed to promote a better understanding of issues related to Maori and Pakeha relationships and the Treaty of Waitangi.
"The injustices against Maori, against hapu and iwi goes on everyday, it is not a historical issue," she said
She said the community forums, which are a key part of the peace walk, were a perfect place for people to come together and share their stories.

Yep - not historical (as in the past so we don't have to worry about it) but real today, in people's lives today. And community forums are awesome - this gives the community the ability to have input, to feel heard and to listen.

So many positives from this - thank you to the organisers and participants - I am proud to support this hikoi.

time for radical change

Sleeping rough - there is no glamour in this, it isn't cool or street - it is difficult, lonely, cold, wet, dangerous, intimidating, isolating, destructive and for many a final destination after choices are gone.

Waatea News

As winter bites, the Auckland City Mission says it has identified a record 200-plus rough sleepers around the central city, more than half of them Maori.

Yep HALF of them are Māori!!! Homeless in their own land. Discarded by many. Literally hand to mouth survival.

The new Auckland city missioner, Chris Farelly says the figure stands as further evidence that not only is Auckland experiencing a housing crisis, but that those living at the furthest extremes of poverty are suffering the most. 

He says the longer someone sleeps rough, the harder it can be to transition into living a normal life.

Yep the normal ain't normal anymore. And we have also had the news that

New statistics reveal Māori home ownership has plummeted in the past 27 years, with the rate in some parts of the North Island dropping by as much as 40 percent.
The report from Statistics New Zealand said, since 1986, the average drop in the ownership rate was 20 percent for Māori, compared with 15 percent for the total population.
"In the worst hit areas for Māori, declines in home ownership were close to 40 percent and that was in the Whangarei, southern Auckland, Tauranga, Rotorua and Hastings urban areas."
The number of Māori having to rent privately had risen dramatically, she said.
"It's increased by 88.3 percent since 1986, so we know that there's been that large increase in Māori living in private rentals as well as a fall in people living in owner-occupied dwellings and that compares with a fall for the total population of 42.7 percent."

The minister nick smith says

"The fact that our Maori and Pacific people have lower rates of home ownership is just a broader reflection of the fact that they tend to have lower educational achievement, that they have lower incomes, and that translates itself into housing."

Yep cos uz Maaori r dum eh - what an dickhead smith is - a person who is pretending there are no housing issues, a minister so out of touch that every time he comes on the telly he reminds us of how inadequate, out of his league, and useless he is. He isn't helping to solve any housing problems - he is just trying to protect his very exposed arse, and it is exposed because he is ineffectual.

We DO NOT deserve this useless government with its apathetic ministers, we deserve better.

true bennett

So Paula Bennett the minister just made up the 'Flying squads' going around tapping on car windows to try and help the many homeless people living in their cars. She told the useless john key, he repeated it to show how useless the homeless were - didn't even bloody WANT help. Now the truth has come out that it was all bullshit. What an absolute disgrace of a person and if you want to see her real side watch this video - nasty, nasty, nasty!!!

The truth is many people are really struggling with the situation of no place to live - only very desperate people live in cars or vans. Māori are over-represented and everyone is suffering. Listen to this interview to hear the resilience and strength of some of our people.

People are helping as best they can but this is a structural issue that has to be fixed from top to bottom.

Does this government and its ministers care and are they going to do something? Nah better to have some more guns ($20b - yep that is billions) to shoot the desperate climate refugees soon to show up on our coastline...

time to call time?

Who knows? Is it the calling, the incessant voices saying, "go forward, move", is it some feeling of service, or just ego, a feeling like no one else could do it. Whatever the reason, the maneuvering before these decisions of who will be the representative, and who will be elected Kaiwhakahaere - whew too much for me.

I just wish they would accept that if it is meant to be, it will be - and that the new always comes after the old, and that it is okay to rest after mahi and that others will do what they will do and that is what they will do. In other words - let it go, let others have a go - it IS time for a change.

Stuff

One letter of support came from Riverton-based runanga Oraka-Aparima, whose representative is Ann Wakefield. She will have to stand down to give Solomon a run at the position.The chair of the Oraka runanga is Sandra Cook, who is regarded as one of Solomon's chief allies within the Ngai Tahu governance administration.She holds the position of principal adviser and leaked documents show her at loggerheads with Arihia Bennett, Tront's chief executive.The documents showed Solomon fought Bennett over committee structures and a management restructure that saw many of his loyal cronies go.

 The danger in not going is this is where the mana gets unraveled and this is where the dirty washing gets used and this is where hurts are revisited and slights are remembered - from all sides and positions get entrenched and hearts gets hardened and pity goes out the window and mercy is forgotten. This is what happens - it has happened before and it will happen again. Be prepared.