1/05/2020

Headline, January 06 2019/ '' ' NEW ZEALAND NOW ' ''


'' ' NEW ZEALAND NOW ' ''




IN SEPTEMBER LAST 

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that the national school curriculum would be changed to require lessons on the 19th century New Zealand Land Wars, in which troops killed more than 2,000 Maori.

So, as History unfolds, An act of vandalism by a Maori man has led to a curriculum change. New Zealand, stops to think and ponder more closely at its past. And this is how this story unfolds.

An 80-year-old Maori man walked up to a statue a colonial-era British naval commander one winter morning in 2108, a can of paint and a claw hammer in his hands.
''The red paint was to change the way he looked, and the hammer was to break his nose.'' said the man, Taitimu Maipi.

Mr. Maipi's small act of vandalism in the city of Hamilton, New Zealand, was intended to be a reminder of the pain that white settlers inflicted on the indigenous Maori people. It ended up forcing a national reckoning over historical memory and cultural identity that paralleled in many ways the upheaval a year before in Charlottesville, Va.

The attack in Hamilton drew extensive coverage in the local newspaper. Residents responded with with letters denouncing the vandalism. And the conversation caught the eye of one longtime reader : Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

In September, Ms. Ardern announced that the national school curriculum would be changed to require lessons on the 19th-century New Zealand Land Wars, in which troops killed more than 2,000 Maori.

''I did not see that coming,'' Mr. Maipi, a longtime activist, and recently as he stood beside the bronze statue of Capt John Hamilton, which remains in the middle of Hamilton's downtown square.

In a different time, the seemingly minor gesture of protest, after the attack, Mr. Maipi stopped by  City Hall to leave his contact information and later got off with a police warning - might have been quickly forgotten.

But his defiant action came not long after the deadly white supremacists violence in Charlottesville over the planned removal of a Confederate statue.

''I think it's all connected,'' said Aaron Leaman, a reporter for the Waikato Times, which published a series of  articles as part of a campaign to bring more of New Zealand's history into its schools. ''I don't think what happened here could be seen in isolation.''

After Mr. Maipi's vandalism, some New Zealanders called for the statue's removal because of the role of Captain Hamilton  - for whom the city is named, though he never set foot there - in the deaths of Maori during the Land Wars, which raged from 1845 to 1872.

Those bloody conflicts broke out after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 between the  colonial government and the Maori. Dispute over land sales grew into major campaigns to confiscate territory and reinforce British sovereignty.

Community upheaval followed these assaults against the Maori and more than 100 years later, the Maori still lag on many social measures like income and life expectancy, though the government has worked to close the gap.

New Zealand is still paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in settlement claims related to the treaty.

''I just wanted to expose the fact that this statue shouldn't be here,'' Mr. Maipi said. ''I wanted to break something,'' he added. ''I really meant what I did.'' Captain Hamilton, he said, ''was a murderer.''

Other people - many of them older, white residents who wrote letters to the editor - complained about the damage to public property and argued that removing the statue would be akin to erasing the history. Some used racist language.

''A lot of people were saying this is terrible, destroying public property, and we were saying, come on people, there's a lot of history behind this, and there aren't a lot Maori statues or any kind of acknowledgement of their role,'' said Jonathan MacKenzie the editor in chief of The Waikato Times.

''Clearly, the people reading has little understanding of the country's past, and what they knew was based on the wrong information,'' Mr. MacKenzie added.

While some of the bigoted statements might once have been ignored, said Mr. Leaman, the reporter, such views now command greater attention after the massacre at two mosques in Christchurch. ''It's easy to brush them off as fringe,'' he said,  ''but after Christchurch, we take hate speech more seriously.''

The Honor and Serving of the Latest Operational Research and Thinking on History Past and Future, continues. The World Students Society thanks author, Jamie Tarabay.

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011:

''' History & Haunts '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

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