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A day to recognize

Indigenous peoples have been heavily impacted by COVID-19. Nevertheless, their response to the global pandemic has shown their resilience in overcoming challenges. Indigenous peoples continue to use unique solutions to tackle the pandemic – as they have for centuries. They are taking action, drawing on their traditional knowledge and practices, such as voluntary isolation, and sealing off their territories.For example, the Karen people of Thailand have revive...

'Still killing us':

Melvina Musket stared at her dying father through the cellphone screen. His mouth hung open, his eyes were clamped shut and a beard covered his chin. She heard nurses crying in the background. “Jesus is waiting for you,” she told him.Musket, 52, had never seen her father with facial hair. Benjamin Musket, 80, was a former Marine, a retired machinery mechanic, a basketball coach and a board member at their church. He didn’t do beardThe family had been cautious when ...

Calls for Oranga Tamariki resources

The National Urban Māori Authority is calling for Oranga Tamariki to make way for a "Mokopuna Authority".They say the Government needs to relinquish power and allow Māori to do what it knows works for its own.National Urban Māori Authority chairwoman Lady Tureiti Moxon will be giving evidence today at a Waitangi Tribunal hearing, under way in Auckland, into the practices of Oranga Tamariki and why there is a disproportionate number of Māori children in state care.Link to article: https:...

The structural whiteness of academia

OPINION: Evidence of institutional racism in Aotearoa is overwhelming. Rhys Jones recently described the health sector by saying “inequity is not a bug in the system – it’s a feature” and we argue the university is no exception.This collective form of racism is embedded as normal practice within society and is systematic, long-term and often grounded in inertia.A recent report into Waikato University acknowledged there was structural, systemic and casual discrimi...

Now we know who the new US Supreme Court judge could be,

OPINION: By the time you read this, US President Donald Trump will have named his nominee for the US Supreme Court to replace US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg following her death on September 18.Trump’s said it’ll “most likely be a woman”, but I’m putting my money on Justice Amul Thapar, a sixth circuit judge who once put an 84-year-old nun in prison for a peace protest. I mean, if 2020’s got a guy, it’s the one who’ll throw elderly peace protesters in jail,...

Problems in te reo pronunciation

COLUMN: The primary aim in these columns is to provide clear explanation of the ways in which the structures of phrases and sentences in te reo Māori differs from those of English.From time to time, however, other points of interest arise.Over Te Wiki o te Reo Māori, there appeared in print a number of attempts to represent correct pronunciation of Māori words by offering alternative spelling.This is understandable because the vowel-sounds in Māori words are often quite different to tho...

Waiata 'spark the fire'

Performing music is a key to happiness for singer, songwriter, presenter and all round talented Kiwi Pere Wihongi. He spoke to Music 101's Charlotte Ryan about coping strategies, and the positive impact music can have on mental health.On Thursday night Pere hosted a one-hour livestream showcasing Māori musical talent.The Facebook special was organised by Hāpai te Hauora - Māori Public Health with the aim of celebrating wellbeing through waiata and kōrero.  Pere told Music 101 ...

How learning te reo Māori

Jacinta Gulasekharam is a socially driven entrepreneur and co-founder of period poverty start-up Dignity. We spoke to her about how that work feeds her drive to learn and honour te reo.Growing up in Feilding, Jacinta Gulasekharam felt both safe and strange. She was the only person of South Asian descent at her primary school (Jacinta’s mother is Pākehā and her father Sri Lankan), and most kids couldn’t pronounce her surname. In some cases, the racism she experienced was blatant, ...

Te reo Māori more than just flavour of the week

It was with much pride on a mid-September Monday morning that I opened our very own The Southland Times and saw the usual masthead – the name of the paper – replaced with Te Karere o Murihiku.To me it looked perfect. I would be happy seeing that on every copy of The Southland Times, not just for one week of the year.Murihiku is the steering part of the waka that fished up the North Island. We could be frontrunners in the country and lead mainstream media by having our pap...

Māori school to deliver ultimatum

Te Rūnanga nui o ngā kura kaupapa says institutional racism is the cause of total immersion Māori schools being dropped down the list for repairs and rebuilds and they are fed up and calling on the Education Ministry to act.Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o te Whānau Tahi, based in Christchurch, has been waiting more than a decade for their dilapidated mouldy and leaky school to be rebuilt.The school was told by the Ministry of Education a rebuild would happen. But in June ministry officials then tol...

Te reo dream still alive for activists

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When our excellence

The University of Otago, which has been considering a controversial proposal to cap its intake of Māori and Pacific medical students, admitted last week that it’s facing a legal challenge to its medical school admissions programme. Dr Papaarangi Reid, Professor of Māori Health at the University of Auckland, looks at what’s at stake.What if my son wanted to be an All Black? Really, really, really wanted to be an All Black? Let’s say it was a passionate lifelong dream. That ...

Racism and White Defensiveness in Aotearoa:

Written in 2018 but worthy of a read:At a recent talk I attended, Claudia Rankine, a Jamaican-born American poet and academic, spoke about how, in many places, “white life is a standard for normal life”. Whiteness is seen as “neutral, nonpartisan, and normal,” she said, and we’re encouraged to think that “white people are The People”.In contrast, people who aren’t white are either “invisible — or hyper-visible.”Rankine called on those in the audience, includin...

TOP keen to work with Māori Party

The Opportunities Party (TOP) has thrown its support behind the Māori Party, talking up a possible joining of forces after this year's election.On Thursday, Māori Party co-leader surprised many when he said TOP would be his preferred coalition partner, should his party be in a place to pick the next Government. "In terms of policy settings, we're closest with TOP," he told The AM Show. "They've got some outstanding ideas."His former party Labour was Tamihere's second choice, followed...

Prospective Māori students question if uni is a safe space

The fear and intimidation Waikato University professors have experienced when calling out racism has been putting prospective students off from going to university, the Māori Tertiary Student's Association has said.Te Mana Ākonga, the Māori Tertiary Students' Association, are the latest group to send an open letter to the Minister of Education Chris Hipkins calling for a nationwide review into racism at all universities.An open letter was also sent to Hipkins on 14 September calling for a nat...

AMB-FUBINACA,

A synthetic cannabinoid drug said to be up to 100 times stronger than the real thing is back in New Zealand, just weeks after apparently being wiped out. AMB-FUBINACA has been linked to dozens of deaths, providing a massive hit that can leave users acting like "zombies". "The synthetic cannabinoid AMB-FUBINACA has been detected in a number of locations across New Zealand," an update on the Department of Internal Affairs' (DIA) High Alert website said on Tuesday."This is particular...

Pandemic Highlights Importance of Indigenous Self-Determination:

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need to ensure the world’s indigenous people have control over their own communities, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has affirmed. Michelle Bachelet described the pandemic as “a critical threat” to indigenous communities everywhere, at a time when many are also struggling against man-made environmental damage and economic depredation.“Overall, the pandemic hammers home the importance of ensuring that indigenous peoples can ex...

Māori Party promises

The Māori Party is promising to establish an independent Māori Health Funding Authority, overseeing the distribution of $5 billion - if it makes up part of the new government.It would also create a Māori Health Card, which would see health funding follow the patient and not the DHB, PHO or GP. This would be used like a credit card to purchase health services needed by the patient. The party would also transfer the already $500 million in the mental health budget to Kaupapa Māori mental healt...

Te reo Māori digital technology

Alice Dimond (Kāi Tahu, Ngāti Kahungunu) was inspired to create her app, Hapori, to help te reo Māori speakers who don't have people around them to kōrero with."My inspiration for creating Hapori was because of own journey in te reo Māori, so I learned te reo through high school and through university and I wasn't brought up in the language and I always felt a little bit isolated in my te reo journey - and the fact I didn't have any whānau or friends around me at that stage who could kōre...

OPEN LETTER TO

We, the undersigned, stand in support of Māori academics who have spoken out about long-term, unresolved systemic and casual racism they have experienced at the University of Waikato.We believe that the situation at the University of Waikato is serious and requires urgent attention. The employment and career prospects of Māori scholars who have made these disclosures should also be protected and their concerns addressed by the university leadership.Recent research shows that despite the prolif...

There is no shame

OPINION: The seven-day national spotlight on te reo Māori and Māoritanga has been a joy to behold. It made me feel good and I whimsically imagined every day could be this way in the future.Then a blustery south-west wind blew and the bitter cold reality set in.We will never be a bilingual nation when people caution against it because they don’t want to lose any of their privileges and would rather espouse the virtues of the superior English language instead.Link to article and...

Māori Language Week: Kiwi journalist Mereana Hond

They were raised in Qatar but the only words Kiwi journalist Mereana Hond's twins have heard out of their māmā's mouth have been in te reo Māori.Hond, of Taranaki iwi and Ngāti Ruanui, has worked at Al Jazeera for the past 10 years, living in Doha with husband Ben and their 5-year-old twins - a girl, Tapuwae, and a boy, Te Whetu Matarere.But despite being thousands of miles from their tūrangawaewae, Hond wanted to ensure her tamariki had as much te ao Māori in their lives as practicable."I...

A word of caution

OPINION: When my kids were starting secondary school and could choose some of their subjects, I suggested two proficiencies would be of great value in their future working life.One was an ability to speak Māori and the other was being able to play the guitar. It seemed to me those skills would help greatly in whatever field they chose.That was 15 years ago and it didn't take a crystal ball to see the direction the country was heading in. The advice I was dispensing was, of course, mainly c...

Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori:

Te reo Māori is a beautiful language - but if you're dropping those little lines from above the vowels it's possible you're butchering it -  and you could even be dropping a swear word accidentally.Some companies have been called out for leaving out their macrons - most recently Weta Workshop. The company is supposed to be named after Aotearoa's native insect -it should be Wētā - but because it is missing the macrons above 'e' and 'a' - it actually means 'shit'.Other examples of mis...

Māori Language Week: Mike Puru's te reo journey,

Growing up in Gore in the 1980s, the only time Mike Puru thought about the fact he was Māori was when someone pointed it out to him."I was one of only three Māori at my school, and my family were not really involved in any of the culture or the reo - it just wasn't a part of my life," the co-host of The Hits Drive radio show says.One of those times was when he was announced head boy at St Peter's College."A lady said to me, 'Oh, you've done so well for a young Māori boy, haven't you.'Link to ...