Tina Ngata

I te tuatahi ka mihi ake ki te mana o te whenua, o ngā wai o Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Taranaki Whanui. Na koutou te tauira o te tu maungarongo, ki te kahu o te raukura kua whariki mai, kei te mihi. 

Mai i tenei mokopuna a Hikurangi maunga, a Waiapu awa, a Ngati Porou iwi, nei te mihi atu ki a koutou e tu mai nei i te mura o te ahi  – tenei ka mihi 

Thankyou so much to the organizers and attendees who are taking a stand today to protect our values as a society, who understand these concepts of tika and pono – justness and integrity – go hand in hand, and that at times, integrity calls upon us to declare what justness looks like, because as we have learnt so many times in the past – if you do not define your own parameters of justice, your oppressor will do it for you. 

Were it not, in fact, for the injustice of covid, I would be with you but my energy is needed here with our community in the East Cape, where generations of injustice has created huge covid risk factors, and requires disproportionate levels of work by our community to keep ourselves safe from it.

Over those generations, we have stood, though – in spite of threats of violence and repercussions, we have stood for the rights of wahine, for the rights of tamariki, for the protection of whanau, for the rights of our reo, for the rights of our whenua, of our moana, of Ranginui and Papatuanuku – for the rights of LGBTQI communities, for our Indigenous political rights and for racial justice. Our progression as a society and nation has always relied upon good people making a stand for what we believe in. It saddens me greatly that today, we see that great legacy of protest being abused by those who are ultimately seeking to undo all of that hard-won progression in order to wind back progress on the rights of women and children, on Indigenous rights, on racial justice, on climate justice, and the protection of our lands, waters, and whanau. Make no mistake, the forces that stand to benefit the most from the thinly disguised fascist front of today are bigoted, racist, imperialist, colonial, capitalist, elitist, neo-nazi exploiters of the poor, abusers of the land, waters and sky. They are so deeply rooted in self-interest that they have absolutely no qualms in exploiting and manipulating others to achieve their ends.

Therein lies the great irony of the stand being made today – that there are, actually, numerous conspiracies needing our time and energy to confront. The real conspiracy is not that masks or vaccines are causing broad harm, the conspiracy is that health science and data have become so politicized and capitalized by the far right that there is an *under* reporting of the harm that covid has done here in Aotearoa and overseas. The conspiracy is not that the UN has an explicit agenda to kill us all off – the conspiracy is that nation states made rich through the centuries of colonial plunder have hoarded vaccine access away from the poorest countries and communities, and their subsequent high death rates have also been invisibilised. The conspiracy is that racism is so deeply embedded in our government that Maori and Pasifika have been persecuted, hyper-surveilled and hyper-incarcerated for decades, while white supremacist groups can move to directly overthrow our democracy, with little apparent consequences. The truth is not that mainstream media are all being paid by government to report kindly on them – it’s actually that corporations like Media Works are captured by right-wing corporate interests and regularly abuse their platforms to pressure the government into reducing protective measures not just against covid but across the board. The important conspiracy is that those same corporate interests abuse their ill-gotten wealth in multiple ways within and around government to undermine democratic processes for the protection of their privilege, and have done this for a long time to block progression on womens rights, queer rights, Indigenous rights, and environmental rights. Most ironically, the important conspiracy is that the super-wealthy elite, whose wealth has rested upon exploited people and lands for generations now, are continuing their exploitation of the masses through QAnon disinformation and it culminates in mass hate, bigotry and ignorance.

As difficult a journey as we have walked, and still have to walk, in our pursuit of justness for Aotearoa and all of her peoples, I have great hope for us all, and it’s through the tikanga of aroha, through looking after the most vulnerable amongst us, through inclusion and kotahitanga that we will find the strength to surpass these challenges as well. 

From my heart, I thank you all. This is not just about rejecting fascism, it is about supporting wahine, it is about supporting LGBTQI, takatapui and ira whakawhiti whanau. It is about supporting racialized minorities. it is about supporting ALL of our whanau, it is about protecting our whenua, our waters, our skies, our futures.