It was neat to see that Google in its daily search engine graphic added its own illustration in celebration of this special day.
Last night, on a national news channel I watched as many converged onto Waitangi, a place that I had taken my children to on various occasions. It holds special significance to many but it is also a contentious place for some.
At present, in New Zealand, there is some controversial legislation that is being crafted by politicians, who are currently in power, that questions the principles of the founding document and look to rewrite them in some fashion, however, there are many who do not agree with any changes and this is being scrutinized at the moment.
The renaming of government departments in taking away their Māori name on signage etc. was also a contentious topic of this present government which seeks to do away with the indigenous language on government departmental signs and replace them with English only signs.
A movement that makes no sense when these signs have been already established for over a decade and disestablishing them would only mean wasting funds that could have been used elsewhere. However, the deeper contention is that it displays racist agendas and rhetoric of recognizing only 1:3 of NZ's official languages i.e. English and not Māori.
There's an even more deeper sinister understanding in having read the book "Caste The Origins of Our Discontents" by Isabel Wilkerson (2020) which concurs that such acts are really of a caste system wanting to ensure that their worldviews are entrenched in legislation that favours them and takes little account of the indigenous peoples of the nation.
It's going to be interesting, going forward, as there were many protests and debate by tanga whenua (indigenous peoples as Māori) at Waitangi even before the day had begun. It reminds me that we have come a long way but there's still a long way to go in our national race relations...
No comments:
Post a Comment