Ae Marika! 25 October 2011
KAITAIA AIRPORT For the past couple of weeks I’ve spoken of the need to get the representatives of Ngaitakoto, Ngati Kahu, the Far North District Council and the Minister of Treaty Settlements together to discuss the future of the Kaitaia Airport. Well, last Friday, thanks to the chairman of the Board, I managed to get [...]
Ae Marika! | 18 October 2011
Congratulations to the All Blacks – they hit the Convicts so hard they couldn’t get into the game and cuzzy bro’ Quade wasn’t able to fire at all. Mind you, all the other Maori boys – Israel Dagg, Cory Jane, Richard Kahui, Aaron Cruden and Piri Weepu – played awesome!So let’s enjoy the moment, and [...]
Ae Marika! | 11 October 2011 | Sometimes life just sux …
Tomorrow we bury a good man, Hone “Man” Pomare. Hone was only 40 years old, but the stories they tell about him suggest a man of many more years than that. Like a lot of us, Hone had been away in Aussie for years. He came home a few years back and that’s when I [...]
Ae Marika! | 4 October 2011
Last week I wrote about the arrogance and the racism of the Far North District Council. A Council “communications adviser” challenged my claims. So here’s what actually happened. Our Kura was in a dispute with the Council over some petty little rules about building up at the airport. I know they were petty, because everything [...]
Ae Marika! 27 September 2011
Last week I got an email inviting me to a meeting with the Far North District Council about the Kaitaia Airport. Apparently, now that the ownership of the airport is likely to go back into Maori hands, there’s a bit of a panic about whether or not the airport can continue to operate. The email [...]
Ae Marika! | 20 September 2011
I was talking to a whanau a few weeks back about some problems they were having with Work and Income (WINZ), and this kuia started talking to me about how sad she was for the young people of today because there didn’t seem to be much hope for them. She talked about how when she [...]
Ae Marika! | 13 Sept 2011 | Drop the Charges
Four years ago I copped flak for saying that “I will not sit quietly by while State forces terrorise my people. I will speak out against the rule of law if that law imposes terror on Māori communities, and I will speak out against it in parliament, on television, in newspapers, and anywhere else I [...]
30 August 2011
Last Thursday I met with parents and staff from the Special Needs Unit at Ranui Primary School who were freakin’ out about National’s plans to shut them down by cutting staff funding. The Unit has two RTLB (Resource Teacher of Learning and Behaviour) staff looking after 18 students (half are Maori) all of whom have [...]
Ae Marika! | 23 August 2011
I called in to the Holy Sepulchre down in Auckland last week to pay my respects to Sir Paul Reeves, the type of person you don’t see too much these days … a gentleman. I first met Sir Paul when he was ordained Bishop of Auckland, and I was impressed by his humility and his [...]
Ae Marika! 16 August 2011
As the fires that raged through London over the last few weeks die down, political figures across England are stepping all over one another to label the rioting as mindless thuggery without rhyme nor reason, and yet it seems to me that the reasons behind the riots are blindingly obvious. They may not be what [...]
