out of sight

Local body elections - all over with some close calls still coming - did you notice the invisibility of Maori? I noticed it and the results will tell the story, once they are analysed we will see how few maori have been elected - does this seem right to you?

I've been reading a good book, “The politics of Indigeneity by Roger Maaka and Augie Fleras. As they say, "Failure to move beyond a mono-constitutional discourse has had the unintended yet controlling effect of reinforcing a colonial social contract." And isn't that what the local body elections have produced - they have reinforced a colonial social contract but, “Indigenous peoples claim a state as culturally distinct and territorial-based nations whose rights were suppressed because of forced incorporation into society.” The colonial social contract just doesn't cut it anymore, the change hasn't come yet but it will come, it is coming.

The key is that the indigenous peoples had societies before colonisation and the process of colonisation systematically stripped those societies. To right this wrong requires a reinstatement of that society, obviously modified for today, and that reinstatement is really vesting the decisions with the people; tino rangatiratanga and mana motuhake. We cannot escape this conclusion and we need to consider why some feel so threatened by this. What would be lost if we vest authority to maori and the maori world view? How much of our answer to that question is based on falsehoods and racism and how much is based upon the advantage we receive from our current society?

It is good that the left have taken something out of these elections but there is something or someone missing...