#nz

To anyone from Aotearoa reading this. Please, sign this petition. Share this cause with your followers, or anyone you know who may sign. Thank you.

A mining company, Bathurst, wants to turn Denniston Plateau into a giant open-cast mine. The nearby Stockton mine is pictured below.

Denniston is home to incredible ecology found nowhere else. Tiny plants. Fossils. Ancient sandstone landscapes. Odd-coloured geckos, flatworms, kiwi, fernbirds, peripatus, and the infamous Avatar Moth.

If this plan goes ahead, they are all lost forever. Along with any chance for study or scientific advancement.

It will also poison major waterways. Runoff from the nearby Stockton mine can, quite literally, dissolve a car.

The money is flowing into the pockets of overseas investors, and they are mainly employing overseas workers. This plan will not 'strengthen the nz economy'. It will weaken tourism, worsen our climate, and make the town of Westport even more dependent on Bathurst.

This mine will cost Aotearoa far, far more than what Bathurst pays us. The human cost, and the environmental cost, is even worse.

Denniston is on stewardship land. This mine will set a dangerous precedent for all protected spaces.

Bathurst proposed this plan a decade ago. (They are now appealing under the fast-track bill.) We beat them before, and we will beat them again!

Anyone in Aotearoa, please, sign this petition. Every signature helps.

It takes no time at all---you only have to input a name and email. An additonal comment is optional.

(and if anyone wants more details, hit me up. I have many more reasons that you should sign!)

tagging people I know are in aotearoa:

In formal situations, such as a pōwhiri (English might be something like a welcoming ceremony?), speakers always end with a haka or a waiata (song). This is exactly what she did. She spoke when it was her turn to speak, then started the Haka. It is also keeping with tradition that others joined in, including those in the public gallery. While it's the speaker's duty to lead the haka, or nominate someone to do it for them, it is then open for anyone else to join in and support it. The haka and the speech are attached, so supporting the haka is also supporting the speech.

Approaching Seymour is a little more unusual, but that's only because most formal situations like this are between peaceful groups. However, it also makes an important point. The speech and haka were not against the space, not against the mana of parliament. It was against Seymour and his supporters. So approaching him makes that clear where it's directed.

Given this, the speaker's response show utter ignorance and contempt for Maori ways. If he had any understanding of how any of this works, he could've simply waited for the Haka to conclude, then called on the next speaker. As the Māori Party were keeping with tradition, they would've had to respect that, and sit. Instead, he closed down parliament and cleared the public out. He made this contentious, and took what is traditional as in insult.

Seymour's response is no better, complaining about wanting a "reasonable debate" instead of a "dance", ignoring that the Māori party has been debating this, along with almost every other institution in the country, since the draft was released. This was the party's final word, their final push back against his racist bill.

This, in a nutshell, is what the government thinks of Māori. Ignorance and contempt. No attempt to blend traditions, or even basic understanding. Just constant demands to conform. It's hidden behind manners, but it's the same civilised vs savages racism that's justified colonialism for centuries.

The Treaty is an agreement between Maori and the Crown, now the NZ government. It is the founding document of new zealand and is recognised as a constitutional document today; it is the only treaty of its kind/time still honoured, and it is the steps we’ve taken through the Treaty to provide restitution and build an ongoing relationship with Maori and their iwi (tribes) that has allowed the relationship between Maori and the government to thrive where other indigenous groups have struggled to achieve recognition of their rights.

This is going to be entirely undone. Not only is this issue inflammatory and a threat to race relations in Aotearoa, leaked documents show the proposed “reinterpretation” wants to negate pretty much the entirety of the legal rights provided to Maori under the treaty. For example, the treaty article that guarantees land rights for Maori will be reinterpreted to guarantee land rights for “all New Zealanders”. Which means this article would be essentially meaningless for Maori.

By removing Maori from the context they are trying to put Maori on an “equal footing” with all New Zealanders; they are riding the idea that Maori have special rights and privileges above that of the average New Zealander. Obviously this is bullshit but it’s effective rhetoric and there’s a grain of truth to in that the extent of Maori rights hadn’t been clearly defined due to the ongoing nature of the process. So this has got a lot of people with a poor grasp of the issues very upset and baying for change.

There is a hui (meeting) being held today for all the iwi to begin discussions of how Maori will respond to this. New Zealand politics isn’t very interesting usually, but our progress on indigenous rights, until now, has been absolutely ahead of the field. If you care about indigenous rights globally, you should care about this, because in the same way Australia’s referendum loss has spurred on this action, the loss of rights here will spur other right wing governments to be similarly bold to their own indigenous groups.

Indigenous rights in New Zealand are under attack. They are meeting today to discuss it, and New Zealand will be listening, but I want the world to be listening. Because our government needs the shame of being called out by more than just the people who they’ve already decided don’t vote for them.

Maori have a long and proud history of fighting for their rights, and they’ll do it again here. And I’ll be on the pickets beside them, but there’ll be plenty of my own pickets to attend, because this government is radical in every sense of the word.