Māori racism Letters to the Editor

In response to Billie Stevens of Katikati: We are walking a journey where the hurt and trauma of our past is being unveiled. People are beginning to recognize, understand and learn about the suffocation, killing and burning of our people, their stories, and our culture. It is not okay to dismiss our past through ignorance and lack of education today. The common European New Zealand mindset and ideology has racist undertones, sugar-coated and accepted as everyday attitude. For far too long, Māori have been brought down and oppressed due to an inaccurate social disorder that is normalized. But what happens when this underlying, but very real racism streak is being exposed, and the attitudes and opinions of those who have normalized it are made to be accountable? Let us not forget that Māori language was dissipated, our stories and our traditions were made illegal or banned. Our people were forced off generational land or killed for it. Our women were raped so that Māori bloodlines could be bred out. Who we were was watered down through generational trauma. Today we are now standing on the hurt, the pain, the remnants left, and we are making what was wrong, right! We are educating ourselves, listening, understanding the history and seeing for the first time what was never spoken of - hidden, buried and forgotten - is now being resurrected on so many platforms. Yes, our language is everywhere - our haka, karakia, Te Ao Māori and Tikanga is infiltrating a white European designed system that shunned and tried to decree it from existence. Before you decide to share your short-sighted opinions, educate yourself. Take the time to know the facts and be open-minded. It is not correct to say that we are all equal; when the very essence of your response is that you would prefer we are not – you would prefer not to hear our voices, our songs, our culture – even though, for over two hundred years, we have heard and been part of yours. Let’s not become the community that segregates itself because of past historic educational and cultural disillusion, that kind that may well have led you to believe a narrative that was incorrect, poisonous and oppressive. Let’s be the community that acknowledges our previous inaccurate mindsets, our clouded perspectives and judgements and take the responsibility to learn what’s correct. Māori culture is beautiful, all-encompassing and inclusive. It’s time for Māori in all its richness to be bought back to its original position in Aotearoa, and it is time for systemic racism to be called out for what it is – the failure of humanity.

■ Mihitaerea Procter, Ōmokoroa.