“Indeed the Pākehā did have some useful technology but not the kindness of heart to see that Māori also possessed much great technology which if Pākehā were prepared to adopt would lead to stability and peace and the building of a great new society”. – Te Whiti, 1882 Today on 5th November 1881, the New […]
Read more "#Parihaka – peace, revolution & the hope for a better NZ"I propose that gender is not a static, platonically absolute ideal. Our humanity, and thus our sexuality, means so much more than simplistic metaphysical maleness and femaleness occupying female and male bodies. Irony is a bastard: I don’t know whether to call it an obsession or an ambivalent affinity, but ironically the sexual policing by […]
Read more "The good news of sexuality"The top 100 billionaires added $240 billion to their wealth in 2012- enough to end world poverty four times over.”[1] As the chasm between the rich and poor widens, it is evident that a more creative approach needs to replace the trickle-down theory. There needs to be a comprehensive system that takes into account ‘all’ […]
Read more "Tax havens and the capital of the 1%"Six years ago on October 15th 2007, the New Zealand police flexed their authority in a nationwide sweep on supposed ‘terrorists.’ Later known as Operation 8, the raids arrested an initial 17 in which 4 of them – Tame Iti, Te Rangikaiwhiria Kemara, Emily Bailey and Urs Signer – were later vilified as the ‘Urewera […]
Read more "We will remember Operation 8: Police terrorism"“Ki ngā mana ki ngā mauri o te whenua i raro iho i ngā tikanga o tātou tūpuna” – The prestige and life force of the land is enhanced beneath the mantle of our ancestral ways In a majority of indigenous cultures the Earth is not seen as a pool of capital resource nor a […]
Read more "Earth Mother and multinational corporations: someone rather than something"When will the world take indigenous rights as seriously as the rights of other minority groups? Whether it’s been gender equality; the American civil rights movement; the abolishment of Apartheid South Africa; and the recent growing rights of the LGBT community; it seems that the rights of indigenous voices have been neglected or naively dealt […]
Read more "Indigenous rights: the last voice to be recognised"“You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” – Morpheus Since the Pax Romana (c.30 B.C-200 A.D) and the ‘Christianization’ of the Roman […]
Read more "Addressing worldviews: Exiting the Greco-Roman matrix"“We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.” – Martin Luther King Jr. Human lives are the new commodity. Indeed the UNODC proclaims that almost every nation in the world is affected by trafficking, “whether as a country of origin, transit or destination for victims” (UNODC, […]
Read more "Human trafficking: addressing the free market of human lives"Supposedly, Aotearoa New Zealand was discovered by Abel Tasman in 1642, but how can you discover a country when people are already there? Even though indigenous rights have come a long way since the overt oppression during the colonial ‘age of discovery’, it is evident that important systemic factors have yet to change let alone […]
Read more "Terra Nullius: It’s time to change the history books"Though the first 300 years of the Church was characterized by followers being openly tortured and vilified – since the Greco-Roman hijack of Constantine, the Church has been the oppressor not the liberator, the executioner not the comforter, the racial bigot not the embracer of all people groups. Brian McLaren unpacks the Church’s historical problem […]
Read more "Colouring outside of the lines: addressing the exclusivity of the Church"
The Postcolonial 