Indigenous support for Palestine around the world has been overwhelming — and Aotearoa New Zealand is no exception, says a leading Māori environmental and human rights advocate.

Writing on her Kia Mau – Resisting Colonial Fictions website, Tina Ngata (Ngati Porou) says that week after week, tangata whenua have been showing support for Palestine since Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began last October 7.

“This alone is a mark to the depth of feeling New Zealanders have about this matter, not just that they show up, but that they KEEP showing up, every week,” she wrote.

“In an age where wrongdoers rely on the public to get bored and move on — that hasn’t happened,” said Ngata, an East Coast activist writer who highlights the role of settler colonialism in climate change and waste pollution.

“Quite the opposite, actually — with every week passing, more and more tangata whenua are committing time and effort to understanding and opposing the genocide being carried out by Israel, first and foremost as a matter of their own humanity, but also as a matter of Indigenous solidarity.”

She was responding to publicity over a counter protest earlier this month by Destiny Church members who performed a haka in the middle of a Gaza ceasefire protest in Christchurch.

Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters have been taking part in weekly rallies across New Zealand in support of an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an independent state of Palestine.

More than 31,000 killed
More than 31,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza so far and at least 28 people have died from malnutrition as starvation starts to impact on the besieged enclave due to Israeli border blocks on humanitarian aid trucks.

“As we’ve seen here in Aotearoa (and in so-called United States/Canada and Australia as well), there are always a few Indigenous outliers who are co-opted into colonial agendas, and try to paint their colonialism as being Indigenous,” Ngata wrote.

FARC’s Derek Tait & his gleeful public dehumanising of Palestinian protesters in the name of Destiny Church’s Tu Tangata thugs during a standoff in Ōtautahi yesterday, his racist behaviour & misappropriated haka managing to make last nights lead story on 1 News no less. pic.twitter.com/LodBTMwfNV

— Kelvin Morgan 🇳🇿 (@kelvin_morganNZ) March 3, 2024

“In Aotearoa, those outliers have names, they are Destiny Church (and their political arm, the ‘Freedom and Rights Coalition’), and the ‘Indigenous Coalition for Israel’.

“This is not Indigenous support for Israel. It is Indigenous people, recruited into colonial support for Israel. It is easily debunked by the following facts:
– Israel is a product of Western colonialism
– Both groups are centered on Euro-Christian conservatism
– Both groups are affiliated with the far-right and white supremacists
– Māori have made it very clear, on our most important political platforms, that we stand with Palestine.”

Ngata wrote that when news media profiled these groups as “Indigenous support for Israel”, it was important to note that a “hallmark of Western domination is the tendency to see Indigenous Peoples as a homogenous group”.

“Even the smallest cohort of Indigenous peoples are, within a Western colonial mind (and to Western media), cast as representative of the whole,” she said.

“Equally important to note is that Indigenous people, through the process of colonialism, are regularly co-opted into colonial agendas, and this is often platformed by media to suggest Indigenous support for colonialism.

NZ’s ‘colonial project’
“The most energy-efficient model of colonialism is Indigenous people carrying it out upon each other, and New Zealand’s colonial project has relied heavily upon a strategy of aggressive assimilation and recruitment.”

Ngata wrote that it was clear Israel’s claims of Indigeneity were “unpractised, clumsy [and] unconnected to the global Indigenous struggle and unconnected to the global Indigenous community”.

“This is a natural consequence of the fact that they are colonisers, and up until very recently, proudly claimed that title,” she said.

Unsurprisingly, she added, Israel did not participate in the 2007 UN vote to endorse the Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Researching this story took me down some wild rabbit holes and the challenge was making it all make sense. Israel has been maneuvering in the Pacific for decades.

Israel and the Pacific – a surprisingly close ‘friendship’https://t.co/mUpa3qMtyb

— Indira Stewart (@Indiratweets) March 10, 2024

While 143 countries voted in favour for the declaration at the UN, four voted against — Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, with 11 abstentions, including Samoa. Recent articles and video reports have highlighted some groups in the Pacific supporting Israel, including the establishment of an “Indigenous Embassy” in Jerusalem.

“You know who DOES have a record of showing up at the United Nations as Indigenous Peoples?” asked Ngata.

“Indigenous Palestinians and Bedouin, both of whom have decried the colonial oppression of Israel.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Papua’s Guinea’s National Court has issued an interim restraining order stopping the planned eviction of thousands of Morata settlers on portion 2733 in the capital of Port Moresby.

MSaka Lawyers, engaged by National Capital District (NCD) Governor Powes Parkop, went to court last Friday in light of the looming eviction by First Estate Limited, a company owned by a local individual and his Chinese business partner.

Governor Parkop, a former human rights lawyer before entering politics, said the interim orders should give the settlers “some comfort”.

Clarifying his government’s stance, he reiterated that people claiming title to land and their investment partners should provide alternative solutions to the thousands of affected families who are made homeless due to eviction.

He called on title holders and their investor partners to have talks with him on how this humanitarian crisis could be addressed.

“Our people cannot be left homeless for corporate greed or just for the benefit of one title holder,” he said.

More proactive action
“Lands Department and National Land Board should ensure too that they don’t award title to individuals over land which already has thousands of people in occupation,” said Governor Parkop.

Governor Parkop has also directed the Physical Planning Division and Regulatory Department of NCDC to be more proactive in stopping illegal occupation and settlement of both state and customary land in the city.

He made the call yesterday during the first Physical Planning Board Meeting for NCD for 2022.

“Many of these issues could have been avoided had NCDC and Department of Lands cooperated to prevent or stop all illegal occupation and settlements of state and customary land in the city,” he said.

First Estate Limited will be moving a motion on NCDC standing and abuse of court process while NCDC will be moving a motion on the legality of the UDL.

Justice Kariko ordered that:

1. The matter is adjourned to 2 Feb 2022 for hearing of the Plaintiff’s Notice of Motion (NOM) filed on 10/04/21 and the First Defendant’s NOM filed on 02/07/21;
2. Parties shall file and serve any further affidavits for the hearing by Monday 31/01/22;
3. Parties should settle and hand up to the court on the return date a chronology of all related litigation in all courts in relation to the dispute in this proceeding;
4. The hearing of the motions shall not be further adjourned except for good reasons; and
5. Until the return date, the First Defendant, its servants and agents including members of the police force are restrained from entering into the subject land and carry out steps to evict the residents on the land formerly known as Portion 2733, Morata, NCD.

Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

National Capital District Governor Powes Parkop has warned Papua New Guinean ethnic groups to stop fighting and killing each other or they will be evicted from the city.

Parkop told the media and settlers living around Moresby South settlements who turned up at Badili police station on Friday that they must stop the fighting and senseless killings.

“I am not bothered where you are from, but if you continue to cause problem attacking each other, I will come and remove you all – simple as that,” he said.

“And if you can’t learn to live with each other then you don’t deserve to live among everybody else.”

A negotiation with landowners at Vadavada along Taurama road was also going on and settlers there who planned to start any fight or killing in the future would be removed, Parkop warned.

“I have the responsibility in terms of development of the city. NCD is planned for development and most of these houses in the settlements are unplanned and have no approval. I have the power to remove them,” he said.

Powers would be used
Parkop said if another fight or killing erupts in Moresby South, his powers would be used and he would not hesitate to remove everyone in the settlements.

He said police were doing their best to fight law and order in the city and he would also play his part to make the city safe for developments.

“I have given an ultimatum to Vadavada settlers and I hope they don’t start any fighting again and the same applies to settlers of Moresby South,” he said.

Parkop added that the authorities had had enough of “this nonsense” in the city with law and order and serious action would be taken.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

For Margaret Mills, adventurer, environmental campaigner, activist poet and Greenpeace stalwart, it was a lifetime dream coming true at 91.

When she opened her parcel from the mail at her hilltop Waiheke island home just over a week ago, out popped advance copies of her maiden book, The Nine Lives of Kitty K. – the saga of a horse whisperer and her happiness and tragedies in the early settler days of outback Otago.

This was a wonderful Christmas present after a five-year labour of love. Writing the book took 14 months and then a further four years to get it published.

But she really dreamed about writing the book many years ago and when she finally had a chance to write it, she did so with tremendous enthusiasm and persistence.

“An extraordinary New Zealand debut historical novel … celebrating an unsung heroine of the Goldfields,” says her publicist Karen McKenzie.

In fact, most of the book is a true story, with only the early parts in Ireland being a reconstruction.

“Set in a turbulent period of goldfields’ history, The Nine Lives of Kitty K. paints a vivid picture of pioneer life as told by the sons and daughters of those who lived it and survived the terrible Depression of the 1890s,” says McKenzie.

‘Toughest woman in Otago history’
“Kitty Kirk (1855–1930), arguably the toughest woman in Otago history, endured those times, supporting herself as a woman alone.”

Former Pacific Media Centre director David Robie says the book tells a story of Kitty’s life at the tail end of the goldrush that “provides a glimpse of the harshness of life in early settler times – especially for women”.

He adds: “The author, Margaret Mills, herself an outback adventurer with a green heart, characterises in real life some of the grit and joyous energy displayed by Kitty.”

Mills is a much liked character on Waiheke island who had a role on the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior when it was bombed in Auckland on 10 July 1985 with the death of photographer Fernando Pereira.

She asked to be relief cook for a month when the campaign vessel arrived in New Zealand after a humanitarian voyage rescuing Rongelap islanders from the ravages of a US nuclear testing legacy in the Marshall Islands.

Mills had only been on board three days when French secret agents bombed the ship.

“I heard the captain say, ‘Oh Margaret, are you still here? We’ve been bombed!’ and I laughed. Well I mean, would you think of being bombed here? No,” she told Newshub in 2015.

After the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior Mills continued to work on Greenpeace ships.

Her friendships with crew members changed her life.

Her Kitty K. book will go on sale in mid-February and she hopes to have two launches – one on Waiheke and the other in Queenstown where “people will really care about this story of early hardships”.

• The Nine Lives of Kitty K.: The Unsung Heroine of the Goldfields, by Margaret Mills (Mary Egan Publishing, February, NZ$34.95)

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz