The Battle of Katikara, British soldiers of the 57th Regiment storming a Māori fortified position on the Katikara River in June 1863, one of many conflicts during the Taranaki Wars. Image: engraving – Te Papa
The Battle of Katikara, British soldiers of the 57th Regiment storming a Māori fortified position on the Katikara River in June 1863, one of many conflicts during the Taranaki Wars. Image: engraving – Te Papa

ĀteaOctober 17, 2019

Remembering the New Zealand Wars and the work yet to be done

Guest writer
The Battle of Katikara, British soldiers of the 57th Regiment storming a Māori fortified position on the Katikara River in June 1863, one of many conflicts during the Taranaki Wars. Image: engraving – Te Papa
The Battle of Katikara, British soldiers of the 57th Regiment storming a Māori fortified position on the Katikara River in June 1863, one of many conflicts during the Taranaki Wars. Image: engraving – Te Papa

Later this month, the national commemoration of the New Zealand Wars, known as Te Pūtake o Te Riri, is to be held in Taranaki. Local community activist Vivian Hutchinson looks at how a history of conflict has shaped our sense of citizenship and describes how some people in Taranaki are now turning up to a different conversation. 

For those of us who are inheritors and beneficiaries of communities based on the violence of colonial settlement, our sense of citizenship is inevitably linked to the troubles of this history. And it hasn’t been a pretty story.

It takes a much more mature nation to talk about this. It takes even more for us to collectively step up and act on the issues of justice and redress that are still causing trauma in our communities – so many years after the damage has been done.

And it takes another whole level of maturity for us as citizens to grow fair and connected communities that do not avoid the shared histories that we are still trying to reconcile.

This month will see the commemoration of Te Pūtake o Te Riri, a national time to remember the New Zealand wars and conflicts that stretched over a period from 1843 to 1916. The first official observance of these conflicts was held over three days in March 2018 in the Bay of Islands, Northland. This year on the 28-30 October, the commemorations and conversations will move to Taranaki.

These commemorations are an attempt to address the widespread amnesia in our majority culture about the wars and conflicts that came with the founding of our nation. The term Te Pūtake o Te Riri can be interpreted as “the cause or origin of the anger”, and during these commemorations, many New Zealanders will be hearing a very different origin story – one that may have been missing from their schooling.

The national organisers say that Te Pūtake o Te Riri is a messenger whose task is “to awaken the memory and conscience of a sleeping nation”. This is an awakening that will also transform our collective identity – our fundamental sense of citizenship – as we start to come to terms with who we think we are, and who we want to be.

There are many groups, institutions and individuals working to fundamentally change the national conversation taking place between Māori and Pākehā New Zealanders, and to keep addressing the unresolved questions of justice and reconciliation that are still on our national agenda.

We now have over 20 years of experience with formal apologies for breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, establishing co-governance arrangements, the return of some assets, and financial settlements to various iwi and tribal authorities. And our political leaders from all parties may be finally starting to get beyond their lip service to the Treaty, regarding it more as a living document and an aspirational statement of what collaboration between peoples can achieve.

These are still very much early days and just the initial signs of a shift that we might hope is genuinely taking place in our national conversation. But they are also signs that run the risk of becoming just hot air — unless they are met and matched by a change in the conversations taking place at every other level of our communities.

Our challenge is not just to face the facts and consequences of a difficult history. At the same time, we need to find the courage to actively shape the communities we want to live in together. This collaboration requires a different set of skills and attitudes than the ones that have been required of us while trying to address historical grievances and negotiating levels of settlement.

In Taranaki, almost all iwi have now seen the apologies of the Crown entered into legislation, and have taken whatever compensation they have been able to negotiate in order to repair and rebuild the foundations required for a different future.

On a national stage, the controversial Ihumātao dispute is not yet settled, but it is clearly showing us the sort of frustrations and complications that leave too many people behind. Beyond the wishful thinking of “full and final” settlements, the reality is that there are far too many New Zealanders who have gone through this process and have been left without peace in their hearts or reconciliation in their minds.

This is because peace and reconciliation cannot be the business-as-usual work of politicians, government contractors and tribal deal-makers. It is the work of healers. And it is the work that we, as citizens, still need to find a way of doing together.

If we really want our country to heal from the conflicts of the past, then everyday people need to make their own sense of what is happening in the present.  The citizens, family members, neighbours and friends of all our communities need to engage and begin inhabiting the different stories of what we might look like tomorrow.

Masterclass for Active Citizenship at Tū Tama Wahine o Taranaki in November 2018. Photo: Jane Dove Juneau

Over the past decade, there have been many initiatives in Taranaki which have explored how to change the nature of our communities by changing the nature of the conversations we are having with one another. Some of these activities have been led or supported by a network of active citizens called Community Taranaki.

This has been an informal and creative network of people who have been contributing in various ways to the social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being of our province. There is a general consensus that our community and citizenship-building activities need to acknowledge and address the inter-generational trauma that is still the legacy of the Taranaki wars and the legislative theft of lands.

Community Taranaki initiatives have included the hosting of community conversations during a three-day Peace Walk to Parihaka, supporting the Peace for Pekapeka activities surrounding the controversial Waitara Lands Bill, organising regular community circles of active citizens in the Council Chambers of the New Plymouth District Council, and convening a series of Masterclasses on active citizenship known as How Communities Awaken – Tū Tangata Whenua.

The Taranaki Masterclass was first established in 2011 and is run as a collaboration between the Community Taranaki Trust and Tū Tama Wahine o Taranaki, a tangata whenua development and liberation service.  The four-month learning journey brings together a diverse group of local people to awaken their involvement in civic life, or in hapū and iwi affairs, and to strengthen their skills and abilities to make things better in our communities.

Several hundred people have been participants so far, coming from church committees, marae committees, sports clubs, service clubs, kaumātua groups, local authorities and social service and economic development agencies. They have been encouraged to turn up not as representatives of these organisations, but as citizens, friends, neighbours and family members.

More Reading

For many people, just turning up for a conversation with people who see and think about the world differently can be an uncomfortable and challenging experience. Reaching out to strangers isn’t easy. And what may be less easy is paying attention and giving respect to what might seem to be a strange way of thinking.

But the possibilities that flow from a new conversation really do start with getting over ourselves. When we follow the questions and have the empathy to appreciate a different world-view, then we might also get to taste one of the “growing-up” moments of our collective character.

Over the last eight years, the Taranaki Masterclass has emerged as a social innovation that is having an impact on civic engagement, on race relations, and on adult education for the common good. This impact might be local and modest, yet it also seeks to play its part in informing and transforming the active sense of citizenship we need to reconcile our history and more deeply address the challenges of our time.

Keep going!
An anti-trans sticker spotted at the University of Auckland campus. Image: supplied
An anti-trans sticker spotted at the University of Auckland campus. Image: supplied

ĀteaOctober 15, 2019

How the ‘free speech’ excuse targets people of colour and trans people alike

An anti-trans sticker spotted at the University of Auckland campus. Image: supplied
An anti-trans sticker spotted at the University of Auckland campus. Image: supplied

The increased presence of anti-trans and white supremacist stickers around the University of Auckland campus is proof that inaction is enabling hate groups, write Anisha Sankar and Max Whitehurst.

Anisha Sankar is a Chennai-born, Te Awakairangi-raised, South Indian Tamil studying at the University of Auckland. Max Whitehurst is a transgender Pākehā student at the University of Auckland.

Last week the University of Auckland became a site of conflict in response to a wave of stickers plastered all over the campus. The stickers were aimed at recruiting followers to a white supremacist group and vice-chancellor Stuart McCutcheon initially failed to condemn or remove them, citing the group’s right to “free speech”. An open letter signed by more than 1,300 people (including senior staff) and an entire week of protest, led by mostly by Māori, Pasifika and students of colour, culminated in a takeover of the university clock tower lobby.

The very same week, another set of disturbing stickers started popping up around campus. These stickers espouse anti-trans rights views, masquerading as “feminist” rhetoric, so they get little attention from passers-by. Labelling anti-trans rhetoric as feminist obscures the intent of these stickers, which is to ridicule the identity, struggles, and existence of trans people – trans women in particular.

Both sets of stickers have been popping up in the same locations on campus, during the same time period, and it is unclear whether or not this is a coincidence. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence, however, that the anti-trans rights stickers coincide with the upcoming public tour of anti-trans groups that will be hosted by Massey University and various Auckland Council venues.

It is clear that in both cases the stickers target some of the most vulnerable groups in Aotearoa. It’s also clear that the institutions which should be responsible for dealing with these issues have instead chosen to protect the rights of hate groups, at the expense of the safety of those who they target.

When students at the University of Auckland demanded that the vice-chancellor be accountable for upholding the safety of students following the March 15 white supremacist attacks, he denied there was any problem. In April he dismissed the claims of white supremacy on campus as “utter nonsense”. Now that evidence of white supremacy on campus has resurfaced in more explicit ways, the vice-chancellor has changed his position, calling the presence of white supremacy on campus “unfortunate“. It was only after media attention and public pressure that he issued a revised statement which said that security would now take the stickers down.

Stickers on the University of Auckland campus promoting a group that claims “European identity is under threat within New Zealand”. Images: supplied/Craccum magazine

The revised statement, however, still manages to protect the rights of the hate groups. In it, the vice-chancellor was clear that the groups on campus were protected by free speech. In any case, his revised statement comes too late, with explicit white supremacist views quickly gaining momentum on campus.

When students turned to the university for support, it refused to take responsibility, putting the burden of action on those groups who are most vulnerable, forcing them to fight for their rights to live without fear.

Just this week, we have seen the same institutional cowardice from Studio One Toi Tū, a public art space in Ponsonby, after we appealed to them to de-platform an anti-trans rights hate group set to appear there under the banner of an event called Feminism 2020. The venue was approached by various members of the trans community who were concerned about the impact that hosting such an event could have on the community’s wellbeing. They know all too well the relationship between anti-trans rhetoric and the violence trans people encounter in their lives.

Studio One responded to the appeals by saying they did not support or endorse the views of the speakers at the event, yet still fell back on arguments about their right to free speech. The location of the event was moved to the Western Springs Community Hall, another Auckland Council venue. Council made this decision, they said, because they wanted a safer and more appropriate venue in case groups decided to protest against the anti-trans rights group.

The response from the vice-chancellor and the response from Studio One and Auckland Council are uncannily similar. In both instances, they have taken for granted the safety of the most vulnerable members of their communities, and instead prioritised the “free speech” rights of those who hate them.

Feeling unsafe is informed by the likelihood of experiencing violence. In the case of white supremacy, we know that there has been a steady series of events following the March 15 white supremacist attacks that have threatened the safety of Muslim and other racialised minority groups. For many migrants of colour, instances of abuse have become more frequent, not less, since March 15.

In the case of trans communities, discrimination also has very material consequences. The Counting Ourselves report reveals that trans people in Aotearoa experience extremely high rates of psychological distress compared to the rest of the population. Those who had faced discrimination for being trans or non-binary were twice as likely to have attempted suicide in the last year. In addition, trans and non-binary people face a much higher rate of sexual violence than cis women or men in the general population.

What the stats above show is that in a rising climate of anti-trans rhetoric there is a direct correlation between anti-trans ideas and the violence trans and non-binary people face. The spread of these ideas normalises the hatred and violence that these communities endure. Against a backdrop of violence, hiding behind the “free speech” claim to refuse to intervene is itself a form of action. Indifference has always been complicit in oppression. The “free speech” argument, then, allows the relationship between harmful ideas and the violence they incite to flourish. One example of this: the current wave of anti-trans rhetoric has resulted in the deferral of the amendment to the Births, Marriages, and Deaths Act, which, if passed, would give trans people the right to self identity their correct gender on their birth certificate. This would allow trans people to have dignity, privacy, and reduce the discrimination they can face.

The “free speech” argument in both contexts has centred the voices and experiences of those who are perpetuating harm, in turn defending their right to do so. Our institutions must learn to instead centre the voices and experiences of the people who have been, and will be, harmed by hate. When institutions invoke the right to free speech they derail the conversation from the real effects of white supremacy or anti-trans hate speech. For example, after the vice-chancellor’s response to the white supremacist stickers gained traction in the media, the University of Auckland’s Debate Society decided to host a debate on the role of free speech at universities. This mimics the institutional de-centring of those harmed. The debate should instead have been: ‘How harmful is white supremacy?’

The rise of these groups on the University of Auckland campus demonstrates that all struggles against hate speech are intimately connected. When people coming from marginalised communities try to speak up for the right to feel safe from rhetoric which helps normalises violence, institutional cowardice allows those perpetuating harm to operate as before.

It’s more important than ever to band together in solidarity to fight for the right to feel safe. We are, of course, stronger when we recognise that our fights are one and the same.

Ātea