posts about Aotearoa NZ, te ao Māori, and the wider Pacific. Banner is a quote from AmneSIA by Teresia Teaiwa. [Icon: a map centering the Pacific Ocean] [Banner: "between asia and america / there's an ocean / and in this ocean / the stepping stones / are / getting real"]
Carmen Rupe was a whakawahine (trans woman) who was very influential in Pōneke Wellington in the 1970s and 1980s. She was a drag queen, activist, trailblazer of the queer community, owner of cafes and brothels, and one-time mayoral candidate. She ran in 1977 on a platform of legalizing abortion, prostitution, homosexuality and gay marriage. She compared herself to the other candidates as so;
"I am better looking than Sir Francis [Kitts], I am more charming than Michael Fowler and I could beat [Tony] Brunt in a brawl any day."
She was mostly active around Cuba Street in central Pōneke. If you walk down there today, you will cross four sets of pedestrian lights which have been changed in her honour.
[Image: a pedestrian "green man" shaped like a silhouette of Carmen.]
What a day. I can't put into words how much this meant and how much I'm feeling. I know I'll remember this for the rest of my life.
The crowd estimate has been increased to 40-50 000.
Some photos from other people:
Today was about so much more than just the Treaty Principles Bill. It was about the multigenerational fight that Māori have faced ever since James Cook landed. It was also a glimpse of the society we are striving for; a multicultural, joyful, beautiful place where we stand together to fight as one.
I know most of tumblr is thinking about the USA right now. but fuck the nz government right now too. tomorrow, the treaty principles bill, the 'worst, most comprehensive breach of Te Tiriti in modern times' is being introduced to parliament early, because there were activations planned country wide and the cowards decided to pull it forwards. fuck this government. a friend of mine had to go home early, crying. I've been in shock all day since it came out.
check on your Māori friends, e hoa mā. see what they need. see how you can help. everyday, we see and experience racism. from people around us, up to our government. community care will save us.
The Spinoff has a pretty good debunking of the supposed “rationale” behind the bill in this opinion piece by Carwyn Jones, the academic quoted in that Guardian article above:
Despite decades of legal clarity around the Treaty of Waitangi, some politicians continue to argue that its principles remain undefined and
There’s also this newsletter from this morning that explains the current situation pretty well:
The controversial proposed legislation has been introduced to parliament just a week out from its first reading.
Today someone said to me"not everything is about colonisation" and all I could think about was the irony that they were wearing a bikini swimsuit.
Bikini is a colonial misspelling of the indigenous name for the Pikinni atoll. It was one of the many places in the Pacific where Western countries tested atomic bombs. In order to carry out the nuclear testing at Bikini, the USA relocated the islanders to an atoll with no shelter, inadequate fresh water, and so little food that some islanders starved to death. They were exposed to radioactive fallout anyway. Castle Bravo, the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated by the USA, was tested at Bikini and sent radioactive particulate as far away as India, the USA and Europe. After detonating 24 atomic bombs on and around the atoll, the US told the islanders that it was safe to return despite knowing that radiation levels were (and still remain) dangerously high. Generations of islanders are still paying the price with their health and their lives.
The guy who created the bikini swimsuit named it after Bikini Atoll. He said that he wanted it to be "a bombshell" and "explosive" on the scale of a nuclear bomb. He said that "like the bomb, the bikini is small and devastating" and "atom bombs reduce everybody to primitive costume."
The point of this post isn't to suggest that we should stop saying bikini. It's a word in our language now, for better or for worse. My point is that colonialism and white supremacy are in everything. How do you heal, how do you move on, when the violence is embedded into our very vocabulary?
A settler organized in a militia killed a Kanak protesting for liberation from French colonialism in Kanaky.
They are trying to minimize it by saying (without proper investigation) that the settler was defending himself and calling him a “civilian” as well as by calling the Kanak man a “rioter”. The high commissioner also announced that if “calm” doesn’t come back he will organize a military intervention to bring back “peace” and “calm”. For the record there’s already a lot of military checkpoints (edit: I used the expression military checkpoint but it’s not the right one I’m talking about the control by the gendarmerie who are like cops except they are in the military) that Kanak people have to go through daily in certain area and a heavy military presence so when he is talking about military intervention he is talking about killing people.
Article (in French)
This is all happening because France wants to accelerate the colonization of Kanaky by allowing every single white French adult the right to vote locally. The Kanak resistance managed to negotiate so only settlers who had been in Kanaky for a decade or more in 1998 could vote locally. New settlers cannot do it. And France and its settlers want to go back on that accord saying that the 2021 referendum shows that people don’t want liberation so it’s racist (against settlers) to not let them vote (and take over Kanaky completely)
If any piece of shit brings up the 2021 referendum as a justification of French colonialism in Kanaky, know that it has zero value. The Kanak people and the resistance called for a report of the vote because of COVID. Mentioning that not only there was a health risk but that Kanak people have a long grieving period which meant that they wouldn’t be able to vote. That vote ended up being only a settler vote. If you compare it to the two previous votes with higher participation rate it’s almost certain that the Yes to independence would have won.
For those who don’t know it international law recognize Kanaky as a colony. The UN has Kanaky on the list of territories where indigenous people have no right to self determination and they recognize France as the occupying power (thanks to Palestine we’ve seen that international law doesn’t apply to Western backed colonialism but that’s an other topic)
How the West Made an Island Unhabitable (and Consumed its People's Bones)
Banaba, aka Ocean Island, is a small island in Micronesia. It's legally part of Kiribati [kih-rih-bas] but geographically, culturally, and politically very distinct. At three hundred kilometres from its nearest neighbour, Banaba is one of the most isolated places on earth.
It is also among one of the most ecologically devastated.
In the 1900's, a UK / Aotearoa / Australian owned mining company dug up and shipped away huge amounts of Banaba's phosphate-rich soil for use as fertilizer. They grew rich and created Aotearoa's massive agricultural industry from literal stolen land.
More than just the physical earth was taken. Phosphate mining stripped the layers where Banabans had buried their dead for thousands of years. The dust of their bones fed the lands of the West, creating rich green fields that Banabans would never see the profits of.
When I say 'huge amounts' of earth; 90% of the island's surface was stripped away.
[Left image: an aerial view of Banaba showing a roughly oval island with no vegetation in the centre. The outside is ringed by a thin strip of forest. Right image: a photo of the edge of a mining area. In the background is a forest, but then the ground drops off sharply into irregular rocky terrain.]
The ancient sacred caves were destroyed. The island's only source of fresh water was irreversibly polluted and left it unusable to this day. The interior of Banaba became one great hollow of uneven rock, so full of dips and pillars that it is now almost completely impassable on foot. It was left a barren land.
Banaba is not the only Pacific island devastated by phosphate mining; most notably, its neighbour Nauru had 80% of its surface stripped away. But nowhere has been exploited to quite the same extent as Banaba.
There were further indignities and horrors inflicted on the Banaban people, including indescribable atrocities carried out by Japanese occupiers during WWII, and tbe Britain-led forceful relocation of Banabans to Rabi Island in Fiji. Many still live there today. Others have migrated away.
[Image: Banaban girls performing a traditional dance on Rabi Island.]
The traumatic experiences of Banabans, the mass murders and the separation from their ancestral land have all caused significant cultural loss. This includes the loss of the Banaban language.
Approximately three hundred Banabans have returned to their home island, surviving due to supplies shipped in every few months. The only freshwater source remains unusable and severe droughts strike Banaba every three to four years. Although a desalination plant exists there, the vulnerability of the island became all too clear in 2021 when the plant broke down in the middle of a drought. It took three months for repair equipment to arrive. During that time the residents had no fresh water. Their only food was fish because all of their crops had died. They survived by sucking the liquid from fish eyeballs.
And an Australian mining company wants to do it all again.
Part of the reason that people returned to Banaba, despite the difficulties of life there, was to protect it from further mining. But in August last year, the Australian mining company Centrex announced a plan to restart phosphate mining on Banaba. The plan has been paused due to protests from the Banaban people, but it could be restarted again at any time.
We cannot leave it here. If you want to do one small thing to help, you can sign this petition from Banaban community leaders to stop the proposed new phosphate mine. But more than that, Banabans have been campaigning for Australia and Aotearoa to fund ecological restoration projects, especially for the sacred caves that were once the island's source of fresh water. As Katerina Teiawa says:
"We need to move away from this same continuous narrative of ‘the poor Banaban people, who have no water, help them’ and move towards an approach that is actually finding a solution.
This whole thing is a series of crises. We can’t just keep telling the story of devastation and vulnerability over and over again. Where does the crisis end, if not with justice?"
The last po’ouli died in an unusual nest. Too weak to perch, the brownish-greyish songbird rested in a small towel twisted into a ring. He was the last of his species, the last in fact of an entire group of finches, and occurred nowhere on Earth outside his native Hawaii. For weeks, as scientists tried to find him a mate, he had been getting sicker. The only remaining po’ouli had just one eye. Alone in the towel, alone in all the world, he closed it.
Extinction Obituary for the quiet and beautiful Hawaiian po’ouli
The po'ouli was one of ten "American" bird species declared officially extinct by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2023. Eight were from Hawai'i, one from Guåhan, and one from the mainland USA.
(A note: the drawing of the Maui 'ākepa is actually a Hawai'i 'ākepa, a separate and still living species. The Maui 'ākepa was green.)
Also declared extinct were the little Mariana fruit bat (of Guåhan), two species of mainland USA fish, and eight species of mussels.
From the Wikipedia article on the Kaua'i 'ō'ō:
It was the last surviving member of the Mohoidae, which had originated over 15-20 million years previously during the Miocene, with the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō's extinction marking the only extinction of an entire avian family in over 500 years.
Tēnā tātou katoa (greetings everyone) so I thought I'd give the tuāhine (sister) Lee's waiata (song) a bit of a crack. I know she sounds way better than me but hei aha (whatever)! Mai te awa ki te moana (from the river to the sea), free Palestine.
turnnoffyourmind
origamiaround
annaxmalina
stormborns
izzy806
baratheonpilled
pixelskylines
areudirty
