I actually started writing this five years ago, and just came across it in my drafts. It must have been waiting for a better moment! I’ve made some adjustments, added some friends voices, and here we have my electoral reflections:
Beware the sleight of colonial hands.
“The coloniser has become so sophisticated” said Tupac, and he was so right.
They will have you believing your kin is your ultimate enemy. They will redefine the parameters of justness. They will sell your confinement as freedom. And if you are confined long enough, you will believe them. If you are refused justice long enough, you’ll forget what your mokopuna are due. If you are denied self-determination long enough, it will become completely unfamiliar to you.
Which is exactly when the colonizer will step in and tell you: “But you are already there!”
“Look, here, we can convict you in your own language now!”
“Look, we have created this role/department/agency/committee for you!”
“What do you mean, self-determination? You are already there!”
“This, my friend, is justice!”
And if you accept their suggestion that you are already at the finish-line, you will stop reaching for it, you will stop your march to justice, and instead set yourself upon another pathway, where part-measures consume all of your time, and energy, and resource, and heartbeats. Every now and then you might wonder “but if we are free why are we still dying so young?”
“Hush” the coloniser will say “just give it more time ”.
While he jingles time in his pockets like money he forgot was there. Time is the last thing we have. We barely have enough time to meet our mokopuna, let alone be accountable to them. Because while there is always value in reducing harm, It could just as easily be a distraction from their tino rangatiratanga than a step towards it.
So we have to stop calling things what they are not. Settlements are not justice. Optional advice is not partnership. A seat at the colonial table is not mana motuhake. The oft overlooked truth is:
the removal of Maori political authority from this land is the parental injustice, from which all other injustices flow. Ki tō taiao. Ki tō kai. Ki tō rae. And the only redress to that injustice is Matike Mai.
That injustice that is maintained by each successive government. Red, (white) and blue (white). So addicted to its own privilege, and so sold on its own inherent superiority, that it cannot reconcile its righteousness with its own white supremacy.
And us, the perceived children of a so-called Common-wealth Empire (where, as Karlo reminds us, the wealth is not that common). Stolen from our parental embrace of tikanga, to be placed under the so-called “care” of a Westminster house.
We will never find justice or care while the Crown still assumes final authority. Without either of those we can never deem ourselves free. Any step forward will be at their ultimate discretion, and can be reversed by them at any time.
Only when we, Māori, hold the ultimate authority over our lands, our waters, our families, our futures. Only then are we free on our own land.
