Waitangi day work...

This Waitangi day am taking it easy and spending some time catching up on unfinished work and some projects that I'm currently working on hence the 'Google' image above in that I'll be spending some time on the laptop.

Waitangi day has had a checkered past and I remember not knowing very much at one time until I took the 'Mauri Ora' course at Te Wananga o Aotearoa which opened my eyes into the injustices that Maori people have had to overcome since signing the treaty at Waitangi.

I've been to Waitangi several times with family and work over the past years and if one hasn't been schooled in understanding the two treaties that were signed at the time i.e. one being in English and the other translated into Maori with worldviews that didn't match as there were a lot of differences in the two understandings.

Suffice to say that sovereignty and partnership is still being debated today but that once the Treaty was signed it opened up the door to full scale immigration of British subjects to Aotearoa, New Zealand where in 1840 when the treaty was signed Maori were probably 98% of the population owning the same amount of land to today where they are only around 10% of the population and owning around 25% of the land.

In Australia last week whilst we were celebrating our Auckland Anniversary, some indigenous Australians (named Aborigines by the colonials) expressed their distrust and disdain for successive governments and government departments that still continue to marginalise them, so much so, that they protested and called their anniversary day "Invasion Day".

This would have been a timely reminder to many non-indigenous Australians that the indigenous people of Australia want to voice their views on historical and current issues. Similarly, Maori voices are often heard during Waitangi day to air protests in areas that they are still attempting to redress.

So this Waitangi day, it's important to take stock to not only celebrated the partnership between Maori and the crown but also to be wary of the things that marginalise Maori from what they were entitled to upon signing the treaty...