Joe Harawira: Healing the world through story
“All of our stories hold wisdom and knowledge. They have determined our behaviours as Māori people. So there’s lots and lots of learning in those stories.”
Kōrero
Reflections
Koro Wetere: A paramount influencer
Remembering Koro Wetere — a dour, street-smart fighter for Māori rights.
Richard Faull: Giving back to the people
“We ended up leading the world on this — and it’s all because whānau supported our research, and said: ‘Do this research for us.’”
Tihi Puanaki: Kapa haka has been my life
“People have come in for the haka boogie, and when they stay for a while, we can see them becoming empowered to take on fulfilling roles.”
Tipene O’Regan: We must remember to remember
My mother used to say: “Forgive thine enemies, my son, but write down their names.” You forgive and remember what you've got to do because you can't keep carrying those things forever.
Leonie Pihama: Let’s start by returning the Waitara land
“If I could do anything today, it would be to have the Waitara lands returned to the hapū. For me, it's about self-determination, and seeing hapū rangatiratanga that was guaranteed in Te Tiriti o Waitangi becoming embedded in this country.”
Comment & Analysis
Racism and White Defensiveness in Aotearoa: A Pākehā Perspective
"I think for those of us who identify as Pākehā, or who grew up in Pākehā dominant spaces, there's a special responsibility to strive to be aware of our own advantages in Aotearoa New Zealand."
Respecting what we’re prepared to share and not share
“All that has come out of the moko kauae debate is that, as Māori, we’re still having to justify ourselves in order to appease those who think that what is ours should also be theirs.”
Heke Tangata: The ebbing tide
For a decade or more, there have been no marked gains in economic progress for Māori. Instead, there’s been stagnation and even some setbacks.
Moana Jackson: No one’s exercise of free speech should make another feel less free
"The bliss of freedom enjoyed by those who have power should never mean the right to cause pain to those who are comparatively powerless."
Reflections
My story, my shame, is tragically common
“The #MeToo movement hasn’t flowed through our Pacific communities as publicly as it has elsewhere. I think a big part of that is that the ones who’ve hurt us are our family. So outing our assaulter hurts us in new ways, and brings back the old pain.”
‘You’re still my baby and I love you’
“I lived to make my mum happy . . . And hiding my truth was one way I tried to do that. I wanted to protect the both of us.”
The day our daughter told us she wasn’t straight
My daughter’s “coming out” momentarily knocked the life out of her mother and me.
Of your moko you cannot be deprived
The concept of wearing allegiances on the face, of using the skin as a canvas to tell a personal story . . . was a distinctly Māori expression.
Identity
I’ve tried to learn Tongan, and I’ve tried to be Tongan
"Being an outsider because of my personality quirks was an identity I could embrace. Better than being defined purely by my lack of culture and language. Give me Crazy Pālangi over plain Pālangi any day."
My mother is Pākehā — and I love her
When I hear a child saying she hates Pākehā, it doesn’t sit right with me. It’s the same when I hear people referring to the “bloody Pākehās”.
Old certainties, old prejudices, old fears are losing their grip
The good news is that the country seems to be in a process of recovery — and for Pākehā, discovery — of the Māori conceptual world.
Why I didn’t sit with the other Māori girls at school
I grew up in a predominantly Pākehā town in the South Island. My mother is Pākehā. My father, who...
Reo
Rediscovering our mother tongues
Four plays in four languages staged over four weeks — a theatre experiment which aims to challenge the idea of English as the “mainstream” language and all other languages as exotic.
Holding on to all our ancestral languages
"Our ancestral languages and concepts, in their purest forms, are largely untouched by colonisation and Christianity."
Stacey Morrison: What I’d do if I was the boss of education
Parents who want their children to learn in te reo Māori are always compromising — whether it’s discovering your local school isn’t that supportive of te reo or whether you need to be able to afford an hour-long commute to get to your pēpi’s puna reo.
The Great Silence — the heartbreak of losing te reo
In the opening sequence of the cult classic, The Great Silence, the cowboy — a lone figure on a...
Media
Heartened and humbled
To all of you who warmed our hearts and boosted our bank account, a big, big thank you.
We need your help
If we’re to develop E-Tangata into an operation that can give Māori and Pasifika communities a strong, articulate media voice, we urgently need to find more funding.
‘I was joking’: the all-purpose humour defence
Bob Jones’s column on Māori was “mean, malicious and infantile”, but it gets a Press Council pass under the humour defence.
Keith Ikin: Steering Māori Television along new paths
Keith Ikin, the new man at the helm of the Māori Television Service, is bringing a fresh...
Arts
The wharenui of New Zealand literature remains a gated community
"It’s not enough for Pākehā readers and publishers to 'love' Pasifika or Māori or 'other' writers, while barely giving them space in print."
Neil Ieremia: Telling our stories through dance
Being original and unique is an enormous reason that Black Grace is still here. We don't copy what happens in Europe or anywhere else.
Goretti Chadwick: Smiles, star power, and soap
“We were constantly finding ourselves among the firsts. It was scary because there wasn't enough work for us — and we had such a little voice in the industry.”
Parris Goebel: This is what I was born to do
“When I was at school, I already knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to dance. But people would laugh under their breath when I told them because, in their opinion, it wasn’t a ‘realistic career’.”
History
Great South Road: The Road of Refugees
The Great South Road was built in 1862 to carry a British army into the Waikato kingdom. When the British invaded the Waikato in 1863, soldiers shared the road with Māori refugees from Auckland. Scott Hamilton revisits that history in this excerpt from his book 'Ghost South Road'.
Bastion Point: A desperate struggle and a dream fulfilled
“As the arrests began, I was overwhelmed with emotion. Tears streamed down my face, not because I was scared or angry, but because, at that moment, there was nowhere in the world I’d rather have been than right there with those people.”
Brian Easton: Māori have been trapped in a poverty cycle
“The truth is that the Treaty settlements aren't that big. Initially, when the $1 billion fiscal cap for the settlements was announced, I calculated that what was needed was in fact around $100 billion. So Māori are getting a very small contribution.”
One tough mother
Remembering the mother of the nation, Whina Cooper — a tough, uncompromising mother who understood the power of protest and the political fray.
RADIO WAATEA
E-Tangata and Radio Waatea are longtime friends, and support each other's kaupapa.
