Post by Kiwi Frontline on Nov 21, 2020 10:50:10 GMT 12
Dear Editor (Sent to the Hawkes Bay Today 17/11/20)
REGIONAL COUNCIL SHOULD EXPLAIN MAORI CONSTITUENCY RUSH
Hawke’s Bay Regional Council should explain the rush to vote today (Wednesday, November 17) on having Maori constituencies, and give reasons for the need for such an arrangement.
A Maori ward is a significant change in voting arrangements in our district. Citizens are entitled to have a say.
If the regional council wishes to move on such a proposal, it should at least show that it supports the democratic process and let our community vote on whether such a proposal should proceed.
If under-representation is the reason for such a move, the council should also explain exactly how Maori are under-represented on the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council.
After all, the council has a three-member Maori Partnership Group.
It also has the Hawke’s Bay Regional Planning Committee to represent eight treaty settlement groups.
And it looks like two of the nine current councillors have Maori ancestry.
MIKE BUTLER, Hastings
Dear Editor (Sent to the Rotorua Daily Post 17/11/20)
CHANGE OF HOUSE NAMES ROTORUA BOY’S HIGH SCHOOL
While I support the school principal suggesting that the four school houses may need a name change, I Don’t think we should forget all named were very important mariners in world, not just English history.
What appals me is that Mr. Grinter has linked his suggestion to “Slavery & Colonialism”. What arrant nonsense.
Mr. Grinter would do better if he had every senior student prepare an essay on the life, times and accomplishments of those named for each house. A very simple 15-minute Google search would reveal the following, plus much more.
Three of the four had died well before our country was known to any European.
Those three were all explorers that contributed greatly to world knowledge.
The other fought and won a major sea battle 35 years before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.
Had he lost the battle the predominant language of this country may have become French or Spanish. Dwell on that for a few seconds! No treaty would have eventuated under either!
Only one of the four ever ventured into the Pacific, but even then, was never nearer than 12000km to this country.
All four were alive when slavery was common across the world. It was however abolished by Britain in 1833, yet was still being practiced here at the time of the treaty signing.
I very much doubt whether any of the four ever indulged in cannibalism either.
Change the names Mr Grinter if you wish, but don’t deliberately twist or bury history as you do so.
MURRAY REID, Cambridge
Dear Editor, (Sent to the Southland Times 18/11/20)
It is reported (Stuff, 17/11/20, 11:25) that according to Gore Main School principal Glenn Puna, at a Southland Principals’ Association conference last year, cultural trainer Raiha Johnson “explained” the importance of incorporating tikanga Māori by drawing a circle with a line and stating that “f schools were meeting Treaty of Waitangi obligations,, the line would be straight down the middle with equal shares between Māori and the crown.”
This, Mr Puna, and everybody else, should note, is an utter falsehood, a gross distortion of the truth, and if nobody at the conference challenged it, then I am astounded at the brazen effrontery of whoever invented this tale and the profound ignorance of Southland principals and Raiha Johnson who apparently accepted it.
The Treaty of Waitangi was a short, simple and straightforward agreement by which the Maori chiefs ceded such sovereignty as each possessed completely and for ever to the Queen and all Maoris were granted the same rights as the people of England. That, in essence, is all.
Whatever the Minister of Education or anybody else may say, it is completely false and utterly absurd to claim that any school has any “Treaty of Waitangi obligations” whatever.
Again, claiming the existence of “equal shares [of anything] between Māori and the crown” has not a vestige of truth in it.
If the compound of ignorance and blind acceptance of such falsehoods is typical of schoolteachers in Southland or indeed anywhere in New Zealand, then they are displaying a degree of incompetence which renders them unfit to perform the vital task of educating our country’s children. What my old Bluff teacher and mentor, Johnny Gardiner, would have thought of them, I cannot imagine!
BRUCE MOON, Nelson - Bluff schoolboy, 1938-1946
www.kiwifrontline.nz/media/letters-to-the-editor/unpublished-letters
REGIONAL COUNCIL SHOULD EXPLAIN MAORI CONSTITUENCY RUSH
Hawke’s Bay Regional Council should explain the rush to vote today (Wednesday, November 17) on having Maori constituencies, and give reasons for the need for such an arrangement.
A Maori ward is a significant change in voting arrangements in our district. Citizens are entitled to have a say.
If the regional council wishes to move on such a proposal, it should at least show that it supports the democratic process and let our community vote on whether such a proposal should proceed.
If under-representation is the reason for such a move, the council should also explain exactly how Maori are under-represented on the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council.
After all, the council has a three-member Maori Partnership Group.
It also has the Hawke’s Bay Regional Planning Committee to represent eight treaty settlement groups.
And it looks like two of the nine current councillors have Maori ancestry.
MIKE BUTLER, Hastings
Dear Editor (Sent to the Rotorua Daily Post 17/11/20)
CHANGE OF HOUSE NAMES ROTORUA BOY’S HIGH SCHOOL
While I support the school principal suggesting that the four school houses may need a name change, I Don’t think we should forget all named were very important mariners in world, not just English history.
What appals me is that Mr. Grinter has linked his suggestion to “Slavery & Colonialism”. What arrant nonsense.
Mr. Grinter would do better if he had every senior student prepare an essay on the life, times and accomplishments of those named for each house. A very simple 15-minute Google search would reveal the following, plus much more.
Three of the four had died well before our country was known to any European.
Those three were all explorers that contributed greatly to world knowledge.
The other fought and won a major sea battle 35 years before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.
Had he lost the battle the predominant language of this country may have become French or Spanish. Dwell on that for a few seconds! No treaty would have eventuated under either!
Only one of the four ever ventured into the Pacific, but even then, was never nearer than 12000km to this country.
All four were alive when slavery was common across the world. It was however abolished by Britain in 1833, yet was still being practiced here at the time of the treaty signing.
I very much doubt whether any of the four ever indulged in cannibalism either.
Change the names Mr Grinter if you wish, but don’t deliberately twist or bury history as you do so.
MURRAY REID, Cambridge
Dear Editor, (Sent to the Southland Times 18/11/20)
It is reported (Stuff, 17/11/20, 11:25) that according to Gore Main School principal Glenn Puna, at a Southland Principals’ Association conference last year, cultural trainer Raiha Johnson “explained” the importance of incorporating tikanga Māori by drawing a circle with a line and stating that “f schools were meeting Treaty of Waitangi obligations,, the line would be straight down the middle with equal shares between Māori and the crown.”
This, Mr Puna, and everybody else, should note, is an utter falsehood, a gross distortion of the truth, and if nobody at the conference challenged it, then I am astounded at the brazen effrontery of whoever invented this tale and the profound ignorance of Southland principals and Raiha Johnson who apparently accepted it.
The Treaty of Waitangi was a short, simple and straightforward agreement by which the Maori chiefs ceded such sovereignty as each possessed completely and for ever to the Queen and all Maoris were granted the same rights as the people of England. That, in essence, is all.
Whatever the Minister of Education or anybody else may say, it is completely false and utterly absurd to claim that any school has any “Treaty of Waitangi obligations” whatever.
Again, claiming the existence of “equal shares [of anything] between Māori and the crown” has not a vestige of truth in it.
If the compound of ignorance and blind acceptance of such falsehoods is typical of schoolteachers in Southland or indeed anywhere in New Zealand, then they are displaying a degree of incompetence which renders them unfit to perform the vital task of educating our country’s children. What my old Bluff teacher and mentor, Johnny Gardiner, would have thought of them, I cannot imagine!
BRUCE MOON, Nelson - Bluff schoolboy, 1938-1946
www.kiwifrontline.nz/media/letters-to-the-editor/unpublished-letters