The Cook Islands Secretary of Culture Emile Kairua says people in his country are getting complacent about the use of Māori.

Cook Islands Māori Language Week started on Sunday in New Zealand and will run until Saturday.

Kairua said the language is at risk at the source.

“Here in the homeland, we’re complacent,” he told RNZ Pacific.

“People have stopped using it in their everyday lives. Even my children, I must admit, don’t speak Cook Islands Māori. They understand it, thankfully, but they can’t speak it.”

Kairua said he thinks Cook Islands Māori is stronger in Aotearoa because that is where a lot of the language teachers are living.

“We haven’t done a welfare audit of the language in Aotearoa [but] I would imagine that it’s a lot stronger, purely because a lot of our teachers, a lot of our orators, are living in Aotearoa.

“I guess being away from the source, being away from home, there is a feeling of homesickness, so that you do tend to grab onto to what you’re missing.”

Critical to ‘wake up’
He said it was “critical” that Cook Islanders “wake up and appreciate the importance of our language and make sure that it’s not a dying part of our identity”.

“A race without a language – they don’t have an identity. So as Cook Islanders, either first, second or third generation, we need to hold on to this.”

Ministry of Pacific Peoples Secretary Gerardine Clifford-Lidstone said there was power in the  language — it anchored identity and built belonging.

The theme of the week, ”Ātui’ia au ki te vaka o tōku matakeinanga”, translates to “connect me to the offerings of my people”.

The Cook Islands Māori community is the third-largest Pacific group in Aotearoa New Zealand.

UNESCO lists te reo Māori Kūki ‘Airani as one of the most endangered Pacific languages supported through the Pacific Language Week series.

News in Cook Islands Māori is broadcast and published on RNZ Pacific on weekdays.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka says that as far as Fiji is concerned, Fijians of Indian descent are Fijian.

While Fiji is part of the Pacific, Indo-Fijians are not classified as Pacific peoples in New Zealand; instead, they are listed under Indian and Asian on the Stats NZ website.

“The ‘Fijian Indian’ ethnic group is currently classified under ‘Asian,’ in the subcategory ‘Indian’, along with other diasporic Indian ethnic groups,” Stats NZ told RNZ Pacific.

“This has been the case since 2005 and is in line with an ethnographic profile that includes people with a common language, customs, and traditions.

“Stats NZ is aware of concerns some have about this classification, and it is an ongoing point of discussion with stakeholders.”

The Fijian Indian community in Aotearoa has long opposed this and raised the issue again at a community event Rabuka attended in Auckland’s Māngere ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Samoa last month.

“As far as Fiji is concerned, [Indo-Fijians] are Fijians,” he said.

‘A matter of sovereignty’
When asked what his message to New Zealand on the issue would be, he said: “I cannot; that is a matter of sovereignty, the sovereign decision by the government of New Zealand. What they call people is their sovereign right.

“As far as we are concerned, we hope that they will be treated as Fijians.”

More than 60,000 people were transferred from all parts of British India to work in Fiji between 1879 and 1916 as indentured labourers.

Today, they make up over 32 percent of the total population, according to Fiji Bureau of Statistics’ 2017 Population Census.

Now many, like Sangam community NZ leader and former Nadi Mayor Salesh Mudaliar, say they are more Fijian than Indian.

“If you do a DNA or do a blood test, we are more of Fijian than anything else. We are not Indian,” Mudaliar said.

The indentured labourers, who came to be known as the Girmitiyas, as they were bound by a girmit — a Hindi pronunciation of the English word “agreement”.

RNZ Pacific had approached the Viti Council e Aotearoa for their views on the issue. However, they refused to comment, saying that its chair “has opted out of this interview.”

“Topic itself is misleading bordering on disinformation [and] misinformation from an Indigenous Fijian perspective and overly sensitive plus short notice.”

‘Struggling for identity’
“We are Pacific Islanders. If you come from Tonga or Samoa, you are a Pacific Islander,” Mudaliar said.

“When [Indo-Fijians] come from Fiji, we are not. We are not a migrant to Fiji. We have been there for [over 140] years.”

“The community is still struggling for its identity here in New Zealand . . . we are still not [looked after].

He said they had tried to lobby the New Zealand government for their status but without success.

“Now it is the National government, and no one seems to be listening to us in understanding the situation.

“If we can have an open discussion on this, coming to the same table, and knowing what our problem is, then it would be really appreciated.”

“Public consultation in 2019 determined a need for an in-depth review of the Ethnicity Standard,” the data agency said.

In 2021, Stats NZ undertook a large scoping exercise with government agencies, researchers, iwi Māori, and community groups to help establish the scope of the review.

Stats NZ subsequently stood up an expert working group to progress the review.

“This review is still underway, and Stats NZ will be conducting further consultation, so we will have more to say in due course,” it said.

“Classifying ethnicity and ethnic identity is extremely complex, and it is important Stats NZ takes the time to consult extensively and ensure we get this right,” the agency added.

This week, Fijians celebrate the Hindu festival of lights, Diwali. The nation observes a public holiday to mark the day, and Fijians of all backgrounds get involved.

Prime Minister Rabuka’s message is for all Fijians to be kind to each other.

“Act in accordance with the spirit of Diwali and show kindness to those who are going through difficulties,” he told local reporters outside Parliament yesterday.

“It is a good time for us to abstain from using bad language against each other on social media.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

National politicians and pastors are fuelling the tribal fighting in Papua New Guinea by supplying guns and ammunition, says Enga’s Provincial Administrator Sandis Tsaka.

Tsaka’s brother was killed a fortnight ago when a tribe on a war raid passed through his clan.

“[My brother] was at home with his wife and kids and these people were trying to go to another village, and because he had crossed paths with them they just opened fire,” he said.

Enga has seen consistent tribal violence since the 2022 national elections in the Kompiam-Ambum district. In May last year — as well as deaths due to tribal conflict — homes, churches and business were burnt to the ground.

In February, dozens were killed in a gun battle.

Subsequently, PNG’s lawmakers discussed the issue of gun violence in Parliament with both sides of the House agreeing that the issue is serious.

“National politicians are involved; businessmen are involved; educated people, lawyers, accountants, pastors, well-to-do people, people that should be ambassadors for peace and change,” Tsaka said.

Military style weapons
Military style weapons are being used in the fighting.

Tsaka said an M16 or AR-15 rifle retails for a minimum of K$30,000 (US$7710) while a round costs about K$100 (US$25).

“The ordinary person cannot afford that,” he said.

“These conflicts and wars are financed by well-to-do people with the resources.

“We need to look at changing law and policy to go after those that finance and profit from this conflict, instead of just trying to arrest or hold responsible the small persons in the village with a rifle that is causing death and destruction.

“Until and unless we go after these big wigs, this unfortunate situation that we have in the province will continue to be what it is.”

Tsaka said addressing wrongs, in ways such as tribal fighting, was “ingrained in our DNA”.

Motivation for peace
After Tsaka’s brother died, he asked his clan not to retaliate and told his village to let the rule of law take its course instead.

He said the cultural expectation for retaliation was there but his clan respected him as a leader.

He hopes others in authority will use his brother’s death as motivation for peace.

“If the other leaders did the same to their villages in the communities, we wouldn’t have this violence; we wouldn’t have all these killings and destruction.

“We need to realise that law and order and peace is a necessary prerequisite to development.

“If we don’t have peace, we can’t have school kids going to school; you can’t have hospitals; you can’t have roads; you can’t have free movement of people and goods and services.”

Tsaka said education was needed to change perceptions around tribal fighting.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

National politicians and pastors are fuelling the tribal fighting in Papua New Guinea by supplying guns and ammunition, says Enga’s Provincial Administrator Sandis Tsaka.

Tsaka’s brother was killed a fortnight ago when a tribe on a war raid passed through his clan.

“[My brother] was at home with his wife and kids and these people were trying to go to another village, and because he had crossed paths with them they just opened fire,” he said.

Enga has seen consistent tribal violence since the 2022 national elections in the Kompiam-Ambum district. In May last year — as well as deaths due to tribal conflict — homes, churches and business were burnt to the ground.

In February, dozens were killed in a gun battle.

Subsequently, PNG’s lawmakers discussed the issue of gun violence in Parliament with both sides of the House agreeing that the issue is serious.

“National politicians are involved; businessmen are involved; educated people, lawyers, accountants, pastors, well-to-do people, people that should be ambassadors for peace and change,” Tsaka said.

Military style weapons
Military style weapons are being used in the fighting.

Tsaka said an M16 or AR-15 rifle retails for a minimum of K$30,000 (US$7710) while a round costs about K$100 (US$25).

“The ordinary person cannot afford that,” he said.

“These conflicts and wars are financed by well-to-do people with the resources.

“We need to look at changing law and policy to go after those that finance and profit from this conflict, instead of just trying to arrest or hold responsible the small persons in the village with a rifle that is causing death and destruction.

“Until and unless we go after these big wigs, this unfortunate situation that we have in the province will continue to be what it is.”

Tsaka said addressing wrongs, in ways such as tribal fighting, was “ingrained in our DNA”.

Motivation for peace
After Tsaka’s brother died, he asked his clan not to retaliate and told his village to let the rule of law take its course instead.

He said the cultural expectation for retaliation was there but his clan respected him as a leader.

He hopes others in authority will use his brother’s death as motivation for peace.

“If the other leaders did the same to their villages in the communities, we wouldn’t have this violence; we wouldn’t have all these killings and destruction.

“We need to realise that law and order and peace is a necessary prerequisite to development.

“If we don’t have peace, we can’t have school kids going to school; you can’t have hospitals; you can’t have roads; you can’t have free movement of people and goods and services.”

Tsaka said education was needed to change perceptions around tribal fighting.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Last year Joelle Holland invested all of the money she had saved for a home deposit and put it into a baby product business called Hawaiiki Pēpi.

The sole focus of Hawaiiki Pēpi is to teach Māori children to be proud of their culture and language.

Hawaiiki Pēpi has already reached more than $100,000 in sales, but most importantly for its owner, it has delivered on its promise to encourage and normalise all things Māori.

“I don’t have any experience in business at all. But what I do have is a passion for my culture and the revitalisation of our language,” she says.

“This venture was a way for me to express that and show people how beautiful Māori can be.”

Holland (Tainui, Tūhoe, Ngāti Whātua) came up with the idea after giving birth to her children Ivy-āio, three, and Ryda Hawaiiki, one.

The online business that Holland manages and runs from her home, creates Māori-designed products such as blankets for babies.

Proud to be Māori
“When my eldest child was in my puku, I was trying to find baby products that showed that we were proud to be Māori. There weren’t any at the time. That’s how the idea of Hawaiiki Pēpi came about,” she says.

With the support of her partner Tayllis, Holland decided to take a risk and enter the competitive baby industry.

To prepare for her very first start up, Holland took business courses, conducted her own research and did 18 months of development before launching Hawaiiki Pēpi at the end of last year.

“The aim is to enhance identity, te reo Māori and whakapapa. We are hoping to wrap our pēpi in their culture from birth so they can gain a sense of who they are, creating strong, confident and unapologetically proud Māori.”

Holland grew up in Auckland and went to kohanga reo and kura kaupapa before spending her high school years boarding at St Joseph’s Māori Girls College in Napier.

She says that language is the key connection to one’s culture. It was through learning te reo Māori from birth that instilled in her a strong sense of cultural identity. It has motivated her in all of the important life decisions that she has made.

‘Struggled through teenage years’
“I struggled throughout my teenage years. I was trying to find my purpose. I was searching for who I was, where I came from and where I belonged.

“I realised that the strong connection I had to my tupuna and my people was through the language. Everything has reverted back to te reo Māori and it has always been an anchor in my life.”

Holland went to Masey University to qualify to teach Māori in schools, juggling study, with taking care of two children under three, and starting a new business.

This year, she completed her degree in the Bachelor of Teaching and Learning Kura Kaupapa Māori programme. The qualification has allowed Holland to add another powerful tool in her life that nurtures Māoritanga in the younger generation and contributes to the revitalisation of te reo Māori.

“I loved my studies. Every aspect of the degree was immersed in te reo Māori, from our essays, presentations to our speeches. Although I grew up speaking Māori, I realised there is still so much more to learn,” she says.

For now, Holland will be focusing on growing her business and raising her children before embarking on a career as a teacher.

“My end goal is to encourage all tamariki to be proud of their Māoritanga, encourage them to speak their language and stand tall.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

​A new business initiative in Aotearoa New Zealand aims to open up conversations about the benefits of kava on mental health.

Tongan entrepreneur ‘Anau Mesui-Henry and her photographer husband Todd Henry own Four Shells Kava Lounge in Auckland, creating a space for the community to use the Pacific Island drink to maintain its value and cultural identity.

They have started talanoa on kava and mental health in Auckland, Wellington and Gisborne.

The couple say the KAVAX sessions bring in people from all walks of life, and they get to enjoy some authentic kava for the night.

Mesui-Henry says because it is talanoa, it is open for everyone to come together and speak.

“Not all people will open up and share, but it’s a safe space where they can come through, indulge in some kava and explore solutions on how we can heal using our Pasifika culture,” she says.

“It’s the mana in knowing your natural tāonga, a tool to help us as people to heal and the silent battles that we face.”

Pasifika tools to connect
Mesui-Henry says although organisations like the Mental Health Foundation are doing great work with the resources they have, a “white approach” will not work alone.

She says Pasifika people have the tools to connect through kava, and improve mental health.

Mesui-Henry says some of the misconceptions around kava they have to work on dispelling are that it is bad for you, it’s “muddy water”, or once it numbs you, you are drunk.

“We are a community grassroots kind of place, and knowing our cultural keystone, kava has a place in society.”

Kava is part of significant cultural practices in different Pacific Islands, is known internationally for its relaxing properties, and is used as a herbal remedy.

The website of the Alcohol and Drug Foundation NZ advises that if a large amount of kava is consumed the following effects may be experienced: drowsiness, nausea, loss of muscle control, mild fever and pupil dilation and red eyes.

It is legal to drink kava in New Zealand.

A Pacific Media Network News article under the Public Interest Journalism Fund. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Sex

Whoever would have predicted that the definition of ‘male’ and ‘female’ could ever become a matter of contention? My professional life has been in political economy, which includes social science and humanities: philosophy, economics, history, statistics, demography, and geography. Demography in particular, requires a biological definition.

The objective science of sex is simple, and genetic. Males have a Y-sex-chromosome as well as an X-sex-chromosome; females instead have two X-sex-chromosomes. To get around the fact that some people want to play-down this observation, commentators and politicians often refer to sex as ‘biological sex’ or ‘sex assigned at birth’. Some organisations refer to ‘gender’ when they mean ‘sex’. Statistics New Zealand doesn’t have any of these problems; for example, the first set of data in the New Zealand cohort life tables: March 2023 update is simply labelled ‘Estimated births, deaths, net migration by sex‘.

Confusion exists because there is a different concept, ‘gender’, which also uses male-female categorisation. When it is necessary to avoid confusion, a person’s sex may be characterised as their ‘genetic sex’ (or ‘reproductive sex’) rather than their biological sex; this is because ‘gender’ may also have a biological basis, and some people whose gender differs from their sex may gave gained this gender variation at conception, in the womb before birth, or even in the birth process itself.

Gender

Gender differs from sex in that it is subjective. A sense of divergent identity from within may arise from any mix of biological or cultural influences. On the biological side, possible influences include aspects of the species genome other than the Y-chromosome, environmental influences within the mother’s uterus, and the birth process itself (eg caesarean birth versus natural birth). Endocrinological and neurological variation can occur before, during, or after birth. One important driver of this gender variability is most likely the microbiome: the changing bacteria and other microbes which inhabit especially the gut, the brain, and the birth canal.

Unlike sex, a binary concept, gender is a spectral concept. And gender is not fixed for all time, it’s fluid. The microbiome is mutable; cultural memes amplify, deamplify and reamplify over time.

It seems to me that a good way for demographers to document gender is through a scale from one to nine. One through to three could be characterised as ‘female gender’, four-to-six as ‘non-binary gender’, and seven-to-nine as ‘male gender’. So a somewhat ‘macho’ male might be described as ‘male sex, male (9) gender. And some ‘trans’ women might be best described as ‘male sex, female (3) gender. For short, for data-coding purposes, these two example people could be listed as ‘m9’ and ‘m3’. F1 through to f3 would translate to ‘cis-female’ in the jargon now used by many as gender identifiers. The mere use of this new jargon is of itself a cultural self-identifier.

It is important to note that the prefixes ‘cis’ and ‘trans’ do indicate that the gender-diverse community does in fact make the distinction between sex and gender, and therefore does not fully deny the reality of genetic sex; the issue is deemphasis, not denial. The issue that impassions that community seems to be to render the concept of sex as unimportant, even unnecessary. But, in the sciences of biology, demography and epidemiology, sex can never be redundant.

Demography

The ‘bread and butter’ of demography is reproduction, migration and death. In this context, ‘age’ and ‘location’ are the most important statistical characteristics of people.

‘Sex’ is in the next tranche of important demographic variables, because genetic sex is an important determinant of the reproduction of populations. Sex should be an easy identifier, because sex is an objective attribute; a person’s genetic sex is a matter of observation, just as whether a person has died is a matter of observation.

Another second-tranche demographic variable is ‘ethnicity’, although to be objective it needs to be ‘ancestry’, and ancestry is often not fully-known. (Many people not know who both of their biological parents are, let-alone their great grand-parents; some people do not know that they do not know this information.) In early United States censuses, the description of a person as ‘black’ or ‘white’ was regarded as central to their demographic identity as whether they were male or female. There certainly is an argument, nowadays with most people having multiple ethnicities of different proportions, that ethnicity should be treated as a subjective ‘third-tranche’ demographic variable. Likewise, religion. (The counterargument is that people who are substantially of a single ethnicity, or who were born into particular religions, do have life outcomes – maybe health outcomes or culturally-determined food choices – which reflect in part the ethnic genetics or religious faiths of their parents.) The important thing is that persons’ designated ancestries or religions should never become the basis for differences in their democratic rights. Demographic attributes should be kept separate from democratic attributes (with the exception of the designation of a young person as a ‘minor’).

Gender, a subjective attribute, distinct from sex, may nevertheless be important in a number of social studies. From a demographic viewpoint, gender may be classed as a third-tranche variable. It may be an interesting scientific question to compare and contrast the life experiences of genetic females (ie people without a Y-chromosome) who are gender-female, gender male, or gender non-binary. Likewise, the gender-diverse life-outcomes of genetic males.

Demography is a very important, though underappreciated, social science; a sibling discipline to epidemiology, and also to human geography. Optimal public health outcomes depend on good-quality demographic research. (Demography provides the all-important denominators needed to make sense of public health data.) Further, like all social-science disciplines, demography is intrinsically historical. Demography is closely intertwined with the disciplines of economic history and economics.

Identity Documentation

Sex or gender are widely used in identity documents; too widely, perhaps. For important demographic purposes, sex is necessary in birth certificates, death certificates, and documents used for travelling between countries (especially passports, now the basis for statistics of international migration). Demographers need to know the age and sex distributions of countries’ populations to be able to make population projections. (I congratulate Statistics New Zealand for well-crafted questions on sex and gender in the recent 2023 New Zealand census.)

Additionally, some kind of reliable documentation should be available for persons using spaces which are reserved for specific demographic subgroups. (We should note that women should not be too precious about ‘their spaces’. Those of us old enough remember the racially segregated toilets that used to exist in South Africa and parts of the USA; many white women and white men did not like their spaces to be transgressed by black women and men. Nevertheless, there is no argument at present for the removal of remaining reserved spaces.)

Does a person need to declare their sex or gender if, say, buying a flight ticket, or enrolling at an educational establishment? (How do the recipients of this information use it? Do they use it?) Sex may be useful on a document used to determine entry into restricted spaces. It may be worthwhile to have a bespoke identity document – a voluntary document – that helps people who need to inform others of their sex, gender or age.

The gender-diverse community wishes to play down excessive gendering in our administrative lives, and, for the most part, prefers to have access to unisex toilets rather than have to use sex-exclusive facilities. (Ask any parent with a young child of the ‘opposite’ sex about gauntlets they have had to run re public toilets. Unisex toilets, much more common today than last century, represent commonsense progress.) If, when buying an airline ticket, does the airline really want to know a person’s sex or gender? Yes, maybe; knowledge of their passengers’ sexes (but not genders) could help an airline to estimate the take-off weight of an aircraft.

Finally, in this section on documentation, we probably should not be using birth documents as general identity documents. While a passport should refer to birth documentation (which should designate ‘sex’), I see no reason why other identification documents – eg documents used by banks – need such information. Thankfully, we do not require a person’s ‘race’ on a drivers’ licence or an airline ticket.

Cultural Wars I

In noting that ‘gender’ is very much a subjective attribute of people (and not only people), that is not saying  there are no biological aspects to gender. Nevertheless, to use modern parlance, the confrontations about sex and gender which we are seeing at present are taking place very much in the human ‘cultural space’.

I was intrigued to read Bryce Edwards’ The ugly stoking of a culture war in election year(Evening Report and others, 27 march 2023). It’s a good non-partisan piece of writing. I was intrigued to see that an academic source to whom Edwards referred was a lawyer called Thomas Cranmer.

Much of my time this year has been spent in reading about the historical origins of modernity. It turns out that the culture wars of the sixteenth century in Europe – otherwise known as the protestant Reformation and the catholic Counterreformation – represent central events that created the global modernity which (for worse and for better) we now take for granted today.

The first true battles of that culture war took place in Tudor England, in particular in the years 1547 and 1558, during the short reigns of the young King Edward VI and then his older sister Queen Mary. (In the kinds of dramas about the Tudor period seen on television and in the movies, this critical and difficult period is rarely touched on. Instead we see various reruns of the 1530s’ story about Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and, in the later Tudor period, about the contested lives of Queen Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots.)

A central figure of the mid-sixteenth century cultural war in England was the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer. In New Zealand, his role in that cultural war is commemorated through the name of Cranmer Square in Christchurch, alongside that of another protestant martyr, Hugh Latimer, who is commemorated in the same city through Latimer Square. This cultural conflict, ostensibly a war of religion but really about much more, lasted a very long time. (Port Chalmers in Otago is named after Thomas Chalmers, a central figure in the Scottish religious schism in the 1840s.) In my historical judgement, this particularly nasty war only ended in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement in Belfast, Northern Ireland. If we start with Martin Luther in 1517 and end in 1998, we may call this the 481-years-war.

(And a piece of historical trivia that does foreshadow the events in England from the 1530s to the 1550s. So many of the prominent people in England in those days had the given name ‘Thomas’. This is because it became fashionable from the 1470s and 1480s to undertake pilgrimages to the then magnificent shrine of Thomas Becket, archbishop and martyr, who was killed in 1170 at the behest of King Henry II. See the reference to this in Chris Trotter assesses what happened on Saturday at Auckland’s Albert Park and what it means, interest.co.nz, 27 March 2023. Becket won fame for standing up to his king, speaking for the separation of church and state as institutions of authority. Indeed, a number of the later Thomases also met their ends through displeasing their monarchs. It’s too late to visit the shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury; King Henry VIII looted it to destruction in 1538.)

It is also important to note that the culture war referred to here peaked in Europe in the period from the 1560s to the 1640s; the military component being the ‘Eighty Years War’ between the Spanish Empire and the ‘rebels’ of the Dutch United Provinces (the forerunner of the modern Netherlands), with the last part of the Eighty Years War also being the descent into near-perpetual violence in central Europe known as the Thirty Years War.

While the Reformation is correctly attributed, more than anyone else, to Marty Luther from 1517, the most important figure in the ensuing culture war was Jean Calvin (cis-male), in Geneva, whose principal publication was in 1539 (the second edition of Institutes of the Christian Religion). Calvin’s disciples became evangelists for his more direct and more strident protestant variant of Christianity, becoming a direct and immediate threat to the established (Catholic) Church as well as to the Lutheran reforms. Much of the British ‘intelligentsia’ quickly became attracted to Calvin’s message. But they had to bide their time as King Henry’s administration of the Church in England became very conservative in his last years.

The evangelicals got their chance when the nine-year-old King Edward ascended the throne. They ‘came out’ and basically ran the country. The rhetorical wars commenced and much of the language was inflammatory and belligerent. The Pope who had hitherto been the leader of the Church was now routinely lambasted as the Anti-Christ, the Devil if you will, and Catholics were rhetorically condemned as ‘papists’. (The result was the creation of a climate of rumour whereby the Devil could be anywhere and in any disguise.)

Much of the conservative Establishment bit their tongues and bid their time. Many clerics had been able to go along with King Henry’s sacrilege of the Church’s property (and many of its clergy) so long as the overall doctrine remained substantially unchanged. Others of the Henrician establishment – mainly the ones who would have been seen as ‘progressive’ but who did not naturally take to belligerence – merged into the world of the radicals after 1547. Thomas Cranmer was prominent among this decreasingly ‘moderate’ group. He wrote the new Church prayerbook to fit the new prevailing culture.

Everything changed again when Edward died, aged 15, in 1553. With no male contenders for the throne, the Edwardine radicals tried to install a cousin – Jane Grey – as Queen. But the peasants – the ordinary folk – would have none of that; and for the most part the people were unconcerned about the escalating culture war. They knew very well that the next in line for the throne was Edward’s older half-sister Mary; they wanted their country’s leaders to abide by the rules (of succession), even when those rules were inconvenient. Basically, 1553 was a case of coup and counter-coup. Jane Grey’s key supporters were dispatched by her opponents, and soon enough she was executed too.

Mary was what we might call a ‘cultural conservative’ and she surrounded herself with those former establishment conservatives who had been biding their time. With the ensuing reinstatement of the ‘Heresy Laws’, things heated up, literally. I will say no more, other than to note that Thomas Cranmer (Archbishop of Canterbury) became the most renowned victim of this Marian prelude to the Counterreformation. There were many other evangelicals, artisans as well as intellectuals, who chose to die; rather than rejoin the catholic Church, rather than breaking with what they understood as their direct relationship with God. Passions prevailed over pragmatism.

Queen Mary and the ensuing Archbishop of Canterbury (Reginal Pole) both died on 17 November 1558, victims of a pandemic that had all the hallmarks of a coronavirus much like the Covid19 virus. The culture war in England subsequently defused, under the new Elizabethan administration. That defusal in England was facilitated by the self-exile of culture radicals and counter-radicals to Europe, especially to the lands we now call Belgium. And it was there in the 1560s that the religious massacres in Europe really got underway.

Culture Wars 2

I tell the above story as a cautionary warning about how matters can escalate in a culture war when the participants are intentionally inflammatory, belligerent, provocative, and intolerant of people who see certain issues differently. And for too many of the people who could be debating the issues to be intimidated into silence instead. Inflammatory speech, which overlaps with the contemporary concept of ‘hate-speech’, is a form of violence that can have profound consequences. (In the Nazi context, an important consequence was the Holocaust.) Inflammatory speech includes comments – especially comments about groups of people – that are true, but which are said for the purposes of initiating or exacerbating a cultural conflict.

The principal issue in today’s culture war, as I see it, is the determination of a small group of people to eradicate the demographic concept of sex – of genetic sex, of XY sex – as an identity marker.

The most poignant moment that I saw in the television coverage of the events in Auckland on Saturday (refer to Bryce Edwards and Chris Trotter above) was of an older (though not elderly) woman – probably dismissed by the cultural radicals as a TERF – with a placard which simply read:

• XX = female
• XY = male

Completely and incontestably true. The foundation facts of reproductive biology. And not in any way inflammatory.

Yet this placard-holder was crowded out, disrespectfully, by others a generation-and-a-half younger than her. Few people with access to the news media that most people see or hear have spoken-up to support her message. “Bad things happen when good people remain silent.”

And to those who unknowingly or knowingly aggravate the problems which they claim to be addressing, remember the first law of holes: ‘Stop digging’. Like other wars, culture wars drag on because few protagonists of these conflicts have a vision for what success actually looks like. If you must instigate or perpetuate a culture war, then please at least lay out your vision of your utopia. In particular, how should your cultural enemies live and behave? Should your cultural enemies live?

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

In this, the 21st episode of A View from Afar for 2022 political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan and host Selwyn Manning analyse the notion, and perhaps the reality, of Trumpism beyond Trump.

In earlier episodes, Paul and Selwyn have examined how Trumpism, and even Bannonism, has been exported as a cult, a cultural political movement, around the world. And, we gave detailed examples of how it manifests itself in countries as untypical comparatively as New Zealand and Brazil.

And in this episode, Paul and Selwyn deep dive into this notion – that while Brazil’s out-going right-populist president Bolsonaro was narrowly defeated by his left-positioned rival Lula, there’s a risk that Brazil’s version of Trumpism will live on well after Bolsonaro’s electoral defeats at the ballot-box and enforce a formidable impediment to their successor’s policies.

And in addition, they examine what to expect from the United States’ mid-term elections. Will the GOP’s Trump endorsed candidates assist in removing a Democratic Party majority in the US Senate?

And finally, they explore the Israel elections and whether Benjamin Netanyahu will return to dominating Israel’s political sphere.

INTERACTION WHILE LIVE: Paul and Selwyn invite and encourage you to interact while they are live with questions and comments. They recommend you do so via EveningReport’s YouTube channel, as Facebook is undergoing significant changes. Here’s the link: Youtube (remember to subscribe to the channel).

You can also keep the conversation going on this debate by clicking on one of the social media channels below:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Youtube
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

RECOGNITION:

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

A View from Afar – In this podcast, political scientist Paul Buchanan and Selwyn Manning will deep-dive into how Aotearoa New Zealand is in the cross-hairs of two distinct political powers – one has been around for awhile and applies influence operations aimed at elites; and the other uses cultural and ideological diffusion that is aimed at civil society. One is a state power, and the other is a cultural ideological phenomenon.

The former wants to change the perspectives of elites in favour of the People’s Republic of China; whereas the latter originates from the United States of America and aims to change the character of democracy itself.

The latter is an under-defined, hardly hidden ideology that we will refer to as Bannonism-Trumpism.

So what is taking shape in New Zealand? Why is New Zealand a political lab-rat of sorts?

How is this battle taking place for the minds and political thinking of New Zealand voters?

What should you be aware of?

What political parties are most vulnerable to these two powerful external influences?

What is the end-game?

Is resistance achievable?

Join Paul and Selwyn for this LIVE recording of this podcast while they consider these big issues, and remember any comments you make while live can be included in this programme.

You can comment on this debate by clicking on one of these social media channels and interacting in the social media’s comment area. Here are the links:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Youtube
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

A Papuan woman politician has warned Indonesian security forces against restricting women from selling noken — traditional string bags — and other accessories displaying the banned Morning Star flag design at the Papuan National Games (PON XX) venue in Jayapura.

Orpa Nari, a Papuan People’s Assembly (MRP) member of the Women Workgroup, said the police should not be afraid of “a pattern”.

“It’s just a pattern,” she said. “None of these mamas [Papuan women] weave the pattern as a way to go against the state.

“If anything, it’s our identity as Papuans,” Nari told the Papuan newspaper Tabloid Jubi.

Previously, the security forces reportedly forbade Papuan women from selling any Morning Star-patterned accessories during the Games as they were considered a resistance symbol against the Indonesian state.

Nari said that Papuan women had been making noken with various patterns — including the Morning Star — for a long time, even before the National Games.

“It has nothing to do with the Games event. It’s common to find accessories with the Morning Star design made by Papuan women.

“It’s simply a part of their identity that cannot be forgotten and let go,” she said.

Supported their families
Nari added that these women had supported their families through knitting and making accessories.

“It’s their livelihood. We Papuans know it by heart,” she said.

MRP chair Timotius Murib said he had received information that residents and supporters wearing clothes and accessories with the Morning Star pattern were not allowed to enter the National Games venue

“Some people who wore bracelets or clothes with the Morning Star pattern were forbidden from watching the Games.

“These accessories are common and not just worn by native Papuans,” said Murib.

Murib hoped that the security forces would not overreact to the phenomenon.

“Don’t overdo it, it’s just an accessory. Let’s create a good atmosphere during the PON XX and make it a successful event,” he said.

The two-week-long Games end on Friday.

Yance Wenda is a Tabloid Jubi reporter. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Artist Dinar Candy has held a protest action over the extension of Indonesia’s Enforcement of Restrictions on Public Activities (PPKM) by wearing a bikini on the side of a road in Jakarta, reports CNN Indonesia.

During the action, Candy also brought a banner with the message, “I’m stressed out because the PPKM has been extended”.

Candy was arrested by police last Wednesday, August 3, about 9.30 pm near Jalan Fatmawati in South Jakarta. She was taken directly to the South Jakarta district police for questioning.

In addition to this, police also confiscated material evidence in the form of a mobile phone belonging to Candy, which is alleged to have been used to record the protest.

And it was not only Candy. Her younger sister and assistant were also questioned by police for recording the protest at Candy’s request.

After being questioned by police, who also sought advice from an expert witness on morality and culture, Candy was then declared a suspect.

“We have declared DC as a suspect for an alleged act of pornography,” South Jakarta district police chief Senior Commissioner Azis Andriansyah told journalists on Thursday.

Candy has been charged under Article 36 of Law Number 44/2008 on Pornography which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison or a fine of 5 billion rupiah (NZ$987,000).

Candy not detained
Despite being declared a suspect, police have not detained Candy who is only obliged to report daily. Andriansyah said that Candy’s protest wearing a bikini did not heed cultural norms.

This is because Candy’s action was held in Indonesia where there are cultural and religious norms which apply in society.

“Anything that is done in Indonesia [is subject to] existing norms, there are ethics, there are cultural norms, there are religious norms which apply in our society, now, the actions of the person concerned did not pay heed to cultural norms,” said Andriansyah.

A number of parties, however, believe that Candy’s bikini protest does not need to be prosecuted under law.

National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) Commissioner Theresia Iswarini believes that Candy did not commit a crime even though she wore a bikini during the protest. She suspects that Candy’s protest was related to mental health issues.

“It would indeed be best, it has to be thought about, [although] this [wearing a bikini in public] is indeed inappropriate, but it does not mean she committed a crime, remember,” Iswarini told CNN Indonesia.

The Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation (LBH), meanwhile, is worried that the state is going too far in regulating what people wear in public. LBH Jakarta lawyer Teo Reffelsen is of the view that in the future the state could enforce its own values on what the public wears.

“If so, then eventually our prisons will be full just because people wear bikinis,” Reffelsen said.

Translated by James Balowski for IndoLeft News. The original title of the article was “Protes Bikini Dinar Candy Berujung Jerat UU Pornografi”.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

We have this pretty fiction that the world is made up of approximately 200 politically autonomous nation-states. This in the entrenched ‘Wilsonian’ view of the political world that, in particular, was sort-of realised after World War One; a view that rendered the national empires (such as the British Empire) of the past obsolete.

In the liberal world order, the ideal structure of international polities would be 750 nation states each with between (say) three million and twenty million people. (OK, the Olympic Games and the United Nations would struggle to cope with 750 independent members; but that’s not a problem for a liberal order. In a true liberal order, each entity is too small to influence the order itself. In such a liberal order, the collective good is meant to happen through a kind of international marketplace; in marketplaces, properly understood, ‘competition’ and ‘cooperation’ are more like synonyms than antonyms.)

The twenty-first century is a quasi-liberal ‘rules-based’ order of nation states with populations ranging from about 1,000 to 1.5 billion, with a number of hegemon states. At present the major hegemons are: Washington, London, Berlin, Moscow, New Delhi, Beijing, Tehran, Riyadh. Minor hegemons include Paris, The Hague, Copenhagen, Addis Ababa, Ankara, and Wellington.

Nation States: Peoples or Territories?

Historically, a nation was a group of people – an uber-tribe – defined by ethnicity, language and culture. Thus, in the early days of nations, there were no formal territorial borders; though certain geographical features formed practical borders: seas, rivers, mountain chains, deserts. At some times in history, seas were the principal borders; at other times, seas became highway connectors leaving mountains and deserts as the main dividers.

Following World War One, and indeed through until the 1970s, the concept of nations as peoples (rather than as territories) remained dominant. Thus, while New Zealand became politically autonomous from Great Britain, New Zealanders continued to be British. (In my first passport, I was listed as a ‘New Zealand citizen’ and a ‘British subject’.) The practical extent of New Zealanders’ Britishness gradually diminished over the twentieth century; indeed when I sailed to the United Kingdom in 1974 – my ‘OE’ – my automatic right of permanent residence there depended on me having a British born grandparent. (I presume that would have included an Irish-born grandparent, given that Ireland was part of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1921.)

The main point is that Anglo-Celtic ethnicity, English language, and recent history of empire all contributed to my being a part of a British nation. I even got to vote, in 1975, in the first Brexit referendum (though it wasn’t framed as Brexit then.) And in April 1976, with my then partner and on my trusty Honda 175 motorbike, I embarked on an all-Ireland tour. In Belfast and especially Derry, I ventured into a Civil War zone; the hegemony of London in Derry was not the benign British hegemony I grew up with in Palmerston North. Yet, even the independent Republic of Ireland was in many ways still British; the pound sterling circulated as equivalent to the Irish punt, there was no passport requirement of entry, and it was only in County Donegal that I heard the Irish language spoken in a natural setting.

The change came mainly in the 1980s; nationalism can be fuelled by economic hard times, and modern ‘territorial’ nationalism reflects the growth of liberal identity politics in a decade in which fresh thinking about capitalism and economics just got too hard. Then in the early 1990s, the cold war ‘evil empire’ that was the Soviet Union collapsed into constituent territorial nation states, as did the satellite empire of Yugoslavia. Some said that this was the ‘end of history’; the world order by 2000 was made up of about 200 nation states defined, not by ethnicity, language, or culture, but by (often arbitrary) territorial boundaries.

The 2000s’ decade represented the pinnacle of ‘globalisation’, a word interpreted in a number of ways, but whose key theme was the subjection of nation states to an imperfectly competitive global marketplace, through a mixture of neoliberal ideology and internet-based technology. The remaining substantially incomplete part of the globalisation ‘project’ was to liberalise the flow of people.

In the 2010s’ decade, however – the post global-financial-crisis decade – this era of international ‘market cooperation’ came to an end; most clearly within the European Union, and more latterly with the reassertion of Chinese and Indian hegemony within their extended territories. Nevertheless, by regarding most people as ‘labour’, certain free international flows of people expanded in the 2010s.

Today, the western liberal view of a nation state is that it is a tightly-bordered territory in which all resident citizens are equal beneficiaries of that state (territorial insiders), and with seven broadly defined groups of other people having lesser rights with respect to that state. New Zealand in 2021 represents a particularly extreme version of a territorially fundamentalist state; where, on the inside, any ‘unkind’ expression of traditional identity differences is virtually outlawed, but where it is open season to be unkind towards defined outsiders by virtue of their status as outsiders. This 2020s’ extension of deglobalisation in New Zealand is the ‘immigration reset’, which is being implemented under the cover of the Covid19 pandemic.

The seven outsider groups are:

• People currently living in New Zealand, but without political rights and subject to temporary permissions (some undoubtedly already expired) with respect to their legal right to be in New Zealand, and to pursue an economic life while in New Zealand. They are denizens rather than citizens of New Zealand.
• People who have the legal status of citizens or permanent residents (‘New Zealand insiders’), but who are not currently inside New Zealand. (We may include ‘realm citizens’ in this group, such as Cook Island or Niuean citizens.)
• People not in the former categories, but who have a familial relationship with New Zealand insiders, or have current or prospective employers (or education providers) in New Zealand, or are Australian citizens.
• People not in the former categories but who are in a position to buy their way into some form of residential status.
• People not in the former categories but who are in a circumstance to plead their way, as refugees.
• People – especially younger men – in the RSE (recognised seasonal employment) countries: Tonga, Samoa, Vanuatu, Tuvalu and Kiribati. This is, formally, a labour relationship associated with New Zealand’s Pacific hegemony. Of these, Samoa has a further relationship with New Zealand; unlike the others, it was member of the ‘New Zealand empire’ in the mid-twentieth century. New Zealand continues to have a closer hegemonic relationship with Samoa than with the other RSE countries. Tonga is of particular significance, because most of the victims of the ‘dawn raids’ of 1975 and 1976 were Tongan citizens who had overstayed their temporary work permits.
• Everybody else in the world, including people from places such as Great Britain, South Africa and India who previously had favourable access to New Zealand through their empire links.

Thus, discrimination at present is based almost entirely on a person’s current location and their immigration status. That is the meaning of ‘territorial fundamentalism’; a nation state becomes simply an enforced piece of real estate, defined by its borders rather than by its people. That and nothing more.

We may note that Jacinda Ardern’s ‘Dawn Raids’ apology (1 August 2021) was carefully worded to emphasise the “discriminatory” nature of those raids (which mostly affected Tongan overstayers, people who had worked in New Zealand on RSE-like contracts), not their brutality. Essentially – and from today’s standpoint of territorial fundamentalism – that apology was for the failure to deport enough people whose passports were not of Pacific Island countries. We should have deported more Canadians, for example.

As noted (by the various bullet points above), New Zealand’s territorial fundamentalism has some exceptions, or at least gradations. One of these involves money; there is a suggestion that semi-billionaires will have privileged future access to New Zealand (although, within this group, the non-discrimination principle may be tested; will a Chinese semi-billionaire face more difficulties than an American semi-billionaire?). Another discrimination is that most citizens of most counties in close proximity to New Zealand will have less unfavourable future access to New Zealand than someone from, say, the United Kingdom; the most obvious example being Australian citizens.

Australia and United Kingdom

Australia and the United Kingdom are, like New Zealand, leaders in territorial fundamentalism, although I sense that both are more discriminatory than New Zealand on matters other than a person’s current location or immigration status. There is a sense that Māori in Australia are more likely to run foul of their ‘good character’ laws than are pakeha New Zealanders in Australia. Another difference in Australia is that most New Zealanders there form a whole category of denizens, essentially tenured guest workers.

For a few years now, especially after the 2015 refugee crisis (mainly characterised by boat-people – ‘refugees’ and ‘economic migrants’ – coming out of Turkey, headed for the European Union; also a year of accelerated boat-people arrivals from Africa), BBC-type television dramas have highlighted the cruel interactions between vulnerable people and government bureaucracies. (Examples of such dramas are Collateral, and the black comedy Years and Years; we also see patterns in which most TV lead-detectives seem to be women, and in which Britain is an overtly multiracial society to the extent that even ‘white’ historical figures are depicted by ‘black’ actors.) Being British is now solely about the legal right to occupy British real estate; a right that is getting ever more difficult to secure. Anyone presently in Britain who does not have a legal right to be there is vulnerable to deportation, preceded by police raids at dawn, dusk or any other time of any day. While I am not clear about the current status of Irish citizens living in the United Kingdom, I suspect that it is not unlike that of New Zealanders in Australia.

China and India

These are hegemonic powers with a very strong sense of what constitutes their own territory, with the only blurs being their borders with each other (either side of Nepal and Bhutan). India has recently asserted its sovereignty over Kashmir, and China over Hong Kong.

The rise of territorial fundamentalism in the west has enabled China to accentuate its own form of territorial fundamentalism, with the once blurred boundaries in China’s far west now being claimed as inextricably Chinese territory, and fully subject to the imposition of Han Chinese culture and bureaucracy.

Hegemonic boundaries

Modern hegemonies are territorial nation states with significant fringes-of-influence. China’s inclination is to absorb those fringes into its formal territory, when they become troublesome. In addition to its Indian borderlands, those remaining fringes include Hong Kong, Macau, Laos, Myanmar, Mongolia, Taiwan, North Korea, and islands in the South China Sea. And, one small step removed from these, is South Korea.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes before Hong Kong and Macau switch to driving on the right-hand side of the road; that will be a practical symbol of their full incorporation into China.

American hegemony was – in the Cold War period – the entire cultural west. Thus, the Chilean coup of 1973 was largely instigated in Washington, as was the bloodless Australian coup of 1975. New Zealand largely wriggled out of that hegemony in the 1980s, and now constitutes an independent hegemon (albeit a minor hegemon) in the southwest Pacific. While the United States of America does have a formal realm (including Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Marianas Islands – and noting that Hawaii was incorporated into its core territory much as Tibet was in China), its main ongoing hegemonic interest is informal and in the western Pacific (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines). Also, Israel.

In the 1990s, Berlin effectively freed itself from American hegemony, and extended a process of asserting hegemony over the rest of the European Peninsula. Thus, in the 1990s, Eastern Europe largely – and in accordance with its history – once again flipped between Russian and Prussian influence. Further, as the European Union became increasingly a Prussian hegemony, the United Kingdom – especially England – wanted out.

The United Kingdom

London remains a particularly interesting, and enigmatic territorial hegemon. The United Kingdom is itself a formal hegemony ruled from England. The United Kingdom has three further layers, all formally constituted. The first layer includes the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, both tax havens. (Indeed all aggregated financial data for the United Kingdom is severely compromised, mostly because of these Switzerlands of the Irish Sea and the ‘English’ Channel.) The next layer is Britain’s realm, which includes a number of Caribbean tax havens and mid-Atlantic islands, as well as Gibraltar and Pitcairn. The final layer is the Commonwealth, although this expanding club (which now includes Mozambique and Rwanda) is largely a symbolic community of nations, and no longer reflects any realpolitik.

While there has been much recent focus on the status of Scotland, and of the impracticalities of a hegemonic boundary through Irish farmland, the really interesting case here may well be the Republic of Ireland, caught between – though geographically to the west of – two rival hegemons: London and Berlin. Dublin was similarly caught, as an uneasy neutral, during World War Two.

The twentieth century in Irish history represented a struggle for the political independence of the Irish people (an ethnicity which did not include the Scottish ethnics in the north), and was for a while resolved by Dublin and London both being subject to the hegemony of a union (EU) whose real political centre had become Berlin. The present arrangement – with a ‘forward border’ in the Irish Sea is unsustainable.

Further, I’m not really clear that the people of Scotland will openly favour a switch to Berlin instead of London as its political bedmate. A geopolitical land border along the River Tweed could be even more problematic than one in Ireland.

What I can see is – in a few decades time – Ireland rejoining the United Kingdom, albeit on different terms to those of the 1801 to 1921 period. We have seen in covid times that Scotland is already substantially independent from England. What needs to happen is for Westminster to become a solely English parliament, and for somewhere like Peterborough or Swindon to become a kind of federal capital city, accommodating a British Council that coordinates fiscal and foreign policy throughout a British realm that would naturally include both parts of Ireland.

Russia and China

Within Russia there is a strong sense of ‘Greater Russia’ which incorporates, in particular, Slavic and Tatar ethnic territories. While there has never been a sense that Russia has sought world dominance – there was once a sense that a Marxist worldview (a view formerly associated with Russia) did seek such dominance. Likewise, an American interpretation of consumerist liberal democracy also reached out to the entire world, and that kind of cultural hegemony was often associated with the United States as a powerful territorial nation state. Neither view really holds today. (Nor does anyone seriously think that Han Chinese culture or Islamic culture will ever prevail much beyond their present hegemonic boundaries.)

Nevertheless, Russia’s strong hegemonic attachment to a Greater Russia (and China’s to a greater China) will continue to create geopolitical tension. Indeed, there is a sense of foreboding at present that George Orwell’s book 1984 is becoming an uncannily accurate projection of our human future this century. In that book, the world was a surveillance society of manipulated truth, and politically dominated by three hegemonic ’empires’: Oceania, Eurasia and East Asia. In Orwell’s story, Oceania would flip between cynical alliances with Eurasia or East Asia. (In the 2020s, we may see ‘Eurasia’ forging such an alliance with ‘East Asia’.)

We can expect that, as in the past, Moscow will resist any attempts for nations under its influence on its western fringe (Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova) to further distance themselves. And Moscow can be expected to be welcoming towards any Eastern European nations presently within the European Union who show signs of distancing themselves from Berlin (especially Poland and Hungary), and to develop political institutions more in line with the present Moscow model.

And we can expect the far east Asian nations (especially South Korea) to develop through the tension of being on a major hegemonic boundary.

Southeast Asia and Indo-Pacific

One key area to watch will be Southeast Asia. Already the term ‘Indo-Pacific’ is becoming the new geopolitical buzz phrase. Southeast Asia (even including Philippines with its entrenched post-colonial links with the United States) is a mix of independent and contested territory; by the latter I mean that it is contested for influence by different religions as well as diverse regional and post-colonial polities.

Hopefully, Southeast Asia – as a region – can remain relatively free of those hegemonic influences, and can flourish as a kind of ASEAN commonwealth; and keeps itself free from the territorial fundamentalism, where borders and visas – and only borders and visas – matter.

Summary

The system of territorial nation states has evolved, since the Post-WW1 Treaty of Versailles in 1919, towards its textbook optimum; a world of many independent territorial states, indeed a change from the recent globalised world of interdependent administrative states. The human world will always remain a mix of big states and small states; there is no prospect of the breakup of China, India, USA, Russia or any of the other G20 territories. (Though if my speculation re the United Kingdom comes about, I think it would have to become a British Union in which England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland etc. are recognised as separate countries, as they are indeed by FIFA.) And there’s no obvious prospect of any of today’s small nation states merging into any union beyond the scope of the present European Union.

Covid-facilitated (and GFC-facilitated) ‘Territorial Fundamentalism’ is an excessive backlash from the globalisation epoch of the 1990s and 2000s. After-all, humanity is a dispersed though connected fraternity of nearly eight billion people. Border-controls of the types that are emerging are fundamentally cruel; and cruelty towards any of us is ultimately cruelty to all of us.

Despite our present zenith of territorial independence, many nations are significantly influenced by regional hegemons; a few countries find themselves caught between two regional hegemons. New Zealand is one of those hegemons, in the south Pacific; albeit a minor hegemon. Indeed countries like Tonga are not only pulled towards New Zealand.

The wider solution to the problems of humanity is to develop a concept of global human rights – for example, through a public equity framework – while acknowledging a wide plurality of social and territorial identities. While movement across the global human landscape should be as politically free as can be practically managed, the economic, political and climatic incentives that persuade people to seek refuge from certain places need to be addressed and understood. Regional hegemons can choose to play benign rather than malign leadership roles in this process. And human rights principles should prevail over administrative rules. We need an order based on principles rather rules.

————-

Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

contact: keith at rankin.nz

The umbrella term Pacific Islander or Polynesian has been criticised as degrading and insensitive.

Researcher Dr Seini Taufa, who is a New Zealand-born Tongan, said the names were not indigenous terms and were insulting.

Dr Taufa is research lead for Moana Research and Senior Pacific Advisor for the Growing up in New Zealand Longitudinal Study.

She has given evidence to the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care’s Pacific inquiry being held in South Auckland.

Dr Taufa quoted author Albert Wendt:

”I am called a Pacific Islander when I arrive at Auckland Airport. Elsewhere I am Samoan.”

Dr Taufa said lumping everyone together robbed people of their true identity.

‘Constructed by palagi’
”We did not name ourselves Pacific Islanders, we did not name ourselves Polynesian. These are terms that were constructed by palagi within a colonial context.”

She said preconceived ideas around being called a Pacific Islander or Polynesian influenced the way Pacific people self identify.

”While the umbrella term Pacific is useful when making global comparisons, it’s futile when applied to actual people and groups of people who consider themselves not Pacific or Polynesian, but Samoan, Tongans, Fijians, Cook Islanders and so on.”

Dr Taufa said that in a New Zealand context Pacific people had been marked for as long as they had settled in Aotearoa whereby the Pacific embodiment was interpreted differently from context to context.

”On the rugby field and among the All Blacks, Pacific male bodies are celebrated. In a crime and punishment context, Pacific male bodies are associated with racist discourses of violence, rape, gangs, fear and danger,” she said.

”Pacific people thus construct their identities and live their lives at the intersection of positive histories, language and culture and negative and stereotypical ideas and beliefs produced by the dominant group.”

Dr Taufa said many abuse survivors experienced racism and discrimination first hand.

Told he wasn’t Samoan
“One young man asked about his ethnic background responded with Samoan, but was told by someone in authority that he wasn’t, as he was born in New Zealand.

”As a young boy who relates being Samoan to Christianity, to family and to his mother, he is forced to adopt an identity that doesn’t belong to him — a New Zealander — and, with it, the trauma of what he was exposed to in state care as a New Zealander.”

She said it spoke to the power held by a dominant group.

”To label another with little consideration of the detrimental nature of such actions.”

Dr Taufa said the importance of ones ethnicity should never be doubted.

”I hope that it raises questions amongst those in the system to be more cautious of how they record, how they document and the fact that it can and has, through our survivor voices, had an impact on their well being.”

Dr Taufa said there were inadequacies of ethnic classification and data collection in New Zealand, both past and present.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

The documentary Loimata, The Sweetest Tears has won the Grand Prix du Jury at Tahiti’s FIFO (Festival International du Film Documentaire Océanien).

Produced and written by senior lecturer in communication studies Jim Marbrook at Auckland University of Technology and his sister Anna Marbrook (who directed the film), it debuted at Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival 2020, where it received outstanding reviews and box office sell-outs.

The documentary also made the stuff.co.nz top 10 films of 2020 list. AUT students formed part of the crew for some of the Auckland portions of the shoot.

At the prizegiving ceremony, jury member Julia Overton, a leading figure in Australian film and television, described Loimata as “a film that was really well directed . . . on an
important subject: childhood trauma”.

She added: “Our congratulations to the whole team who presented this family’s story with so much compassion.”

Jury member Doc Edge director Alex Lee said: “The film’s narrative is superbly told, giving us a personal connection with the subject, Ema. We are taken into her world where she confronts issues of culture, family, the tradition of wayfaring, sexual abuse, identity, life and death.

“While her mortality is urgent and pressing, the film enables us to pause and reflect as Ema navigates these issue. This is an excellent example of skilled filmmaking and a feature-length theatrical Pasifika documentary which the world needs to view, indicative of the treasure trove of content of our region rarely seen and funded internationally.”

Healing pathway
Director/producer Anna Marbrook said: “We are so thrilled and honoured to be among such an amazing selection of films in competition. This award is a tribute to the protagonist of the film Lilo Ema Siope and her dedication in forging a healing pathway for her extraordinary family – a pathway deeply rooted in her culture, history and philosophy.

“Tahiti is hugely significant in voyaging kaupapa so to win an award there dignifies both our film and Ema’s legacy as a voyaging captain and waka builder.”

Producer Jim Marbrook said: “This is another vital stepping stone that helps us take our film out into the world and also deeper into the Pacific region. We set out to make a documentary that was both cinematic and intimate and the reactions to the screenings and this prize have vindicated our creative choices.

“It was a complex movie to produce because the material was so sensitive.”

Loimata had its television debut on Waitangi Day on Māori Television and is available to watch on their on demand website for the next two months.

Loimata, The Sweetest Tears takes the viewer on an emotional healing journey with extraordinary ocean-going waka captain, Lilo Ema Siope.

The film is an intimate exploration of a family shattered by shame working courageously to liberate themselves from the shackles of the past. A journey of courage, tears, laughter and above all, unconditional love.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

What were you doing during the foreshore and seabed hīkoi in 2004?

I wish I could say I was at the protest, gripping the hem of Nana’s dress while she raised her fist in the air, marching for sovereignty, echoing the cries of our tīpuna who were fighting for the very same thing on the very same whenua all those years ago.

But this wasn’t the reality for me and for so many other urban Māori who grew up disconnected from our culture. I was living in Avondale, Auckland and watched the protest unfold on the news. Mum was still at work and I was eating noodles, my homework spread out on the dinner table.

A sea of black and white flags flying in the air came on the TV. I remember a wave of emotion coming over me from seeing the crowds of brown faces who looked like me, who looked like my mum, my nana.

I wish I could say it was a feeling of pride but it wasn’t. I felt whakamā – a word every Māori knows because it is an emotion that has been forced upon us to feel inherently bad for who we are.

The news coverage of the foreshore and seabed told me Māori were greedy, wanted special privileges, were angry over nothing and were trying to ban the public from beaches. It didn’t speak of Māori relationship to the land, the history of land confiscation, the fight for sovereignty or the issues that have come from colonisation and dispossession.

It was a narrative carefully formulated by the media for the intended target audience which was, you guessed it: Pākehā.

Misframing a story just one example
Weaponising activism through misframing a story is just one example. We were also sold a narrative that Māori are the criminals, the baby killers, the gang members, the underachievers, the prisoners, the drug and alcohol addicts.

What do you think this does to a person when you are constantly fed a false narrative of your identity? Your mana diminishes every time you switch on the news, open the newspaper, turn on the radio. Even worse, what happens when you are a child?

The media didn’t care how this narrative would impact me or the thousands of other Māori growing up in urban cities, unsure of who we were, no grandparents alive to teach us our identity, busy parents trying to push us into mainstream because that’s what they were told would be “best” for us and so we were forced to learn about who we are through the eyes of the media. And it wasn’t pretty.

Many years have passed since the foreshore and seabed hīkoi, yet in the year 2021 the same racism exists today, instigated by the same institutions that continue to push this same, tired narrative.

Joe Bloggs calls up a radio station well known to be racist to Māori and says “they’re (Māori) victims of their own genetic background. They are genetically predisposed to crime, alcohol, and underperformance educationally” – and the radio host who used to be the Mayor of Auckland doubles down and says something equally, if not more, racist.

This incident is not shocking to Māori, because we have heard this our whole lives. The question we should be asking ourselves is: How have we allowed the media to get away with this for so long? The continual, blatant attacks against Māori from this particular station have been among the biggest contributors to racism in this country.

There are many examples of racism from this network but I’m not about to dive into its racist history, because I’m tired. We. Are. Tired. Google the radio hosts, look at their Twitter feeds, turn on talkback at any time of the day and the same, racist rhetoric will be there.

Network needs to stop hiding
John Banks deserves criticism but the network needs to stop hiding behind the facade of this being an individual problem. There are many John Banks who come in different forms, some working in the media who get to say whatever they want under the guise of “free speech”. Even the Christchurch terrorist attacks, where a white supremacist murdered 51 people could only keep these people quiet for one week before the station went back to regular, racist programming.

So what happens now? I can predict what will happen because this is the same vicious, ugly cycle. The racist outburst goes viral, there is some outrage. Advertisers pull out, there’s a loss of revenue, the network apologises. The person is fired. Then it happens again the next day, the next week, the next month. It seems it is much more convenient to take out the individual rather than address the racist and colonial system that exists within our media and institutions.

It’s good to see the outpouring of support from Pākehā but we need more than empathy. We need action. You get to feel outraged for a day and then go home and forget about it and not think about it again. Māori can’t switch it off. We experience racism in our workplaces, in everyday life and we have to turn on the media and see it there too.

How many more racist outbursts do you need to hear before something is done? How many more articles do you need to read before there is change?

This isn’t a matter of opinion. This is about human rights.

Shilo Kino is a reporter and the author of her new book The Pōrangi Boy, released last month with Huia publishers. She writes about social issues, justice and identity. This article was first published by Newsroom and is republished on Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.
Twitter: @shilokino

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz