Comments on: Goff delivers wedge to split the left

By: tautokai.baxter

tautokai.baxter — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:39:13 +0000

Well i guess yeah. But in Maori terms, there is only one word. Which was what I was referring to. He tika i roto i Te Reo Maori.

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By: greenfly

greenfly — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:30:45 +0000

Ae tautokai kei te whakaae au.
He tangata whakaaro maarama te ‘Sapient’ na!
He’s a stickler!

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By: Sapient

Sapient — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:56:58 +0000

tautokai.baxter,

No, the Maori tribes called themselves maori. The Europeans called them Maori. The word maori is of Maori origin but the word Maori is a European word designating a peoples. maori means common or ordinary while Maori designates a ethnically defined group. Maori is by no means the same as maori.

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By: tautokai.baxter

tautokai.baxter — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:32:14 +0000

Greenfly, thats what Maori means as well. Because thats what the tribes called themselves to the explorers. Thats what they were to themselves, just normal.

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By: Jezza

Jezza — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 01:32:12 +0000

The speech was just politics, having a dig at National over their ETS, trying to split the Maori Party to regain those seats for Labour, trying to appeal to middle class white people and trying to call out National’s foreshore intentions…

I don’t really see the big deal…

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By: greenfly

greenfly — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:32:38 +0000

btw bj, you might be interested to know that ‘maori’, with a lower-case ‘m’, means ‘ordinary’.

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By: greenfly

greenfly — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:30:57 +0000

Hone Harawira apologises for his mistakes but the Maori Party refuse to acknowledge theirs.

Shame.

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By: bjchip

bjchip — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:15:00 +0000

Didn’t know it was also “thank you”. Kia ora.

With numbers of migrants who are stretching to learn English well enough to get along in the society, exclusive use of Te Reo is going to come across as exclusionary.

Use it yes. Use it MORE (accompanied by an English version). It is educational for all of us who just got here.

I am happy to pick up what I can… ( believe me – Te Reo is easier to pronounce than Russian ) … but until I finally retire I am not likely to have time for a course.

respectfully
BJ

PS
Russian hello => ” sdrasdvuitsya ”

which is of course, not the way a Russian would spell it.. and I promise you that you’d be dead lucky to say it correctly twice in a row until you have practiced for a while.

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By: samiam

samiam — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:21:06 +0000

You can build a house, live, sleep etc on the land as such you can claim to own it, at least for a while anyway. You cannot live on the foreshore or seabed. It is not our domain.
I ask again how can anyone own the un-ownable?

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By: tautokai.baxter

tautokai.baxter — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:16:29 +0000

Kia ora is thankyou BJ. As well as being hello or greetings. I personally think the use of Te Reo on anything is a good thing because it raises its awarness. However I do acknowledge your point BJ. But hopefully it will inspire you and others to learn, there are courses. And yes Te Reo should be compulsary in schools and I think it should be Green Party policy to

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By: toad

toad — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:02:22 +0000

Agreed, BJ.

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By: bjchip

bjchip — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:39:20 +0000

Actually Toad, I am not sure that the concept is utopian. What it is, is contrary to Western thought. The notion that you can own something that existed before your parents were born and will exist after your children have died is foreign to many cultures.

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By: bjchip

bjchip — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:37:18 +0000

Ata Marie Greenfly

Now I need the words for “Thank You”.

respectfully
BJ

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By: toad

toad — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:33:19 +0000

samiam, the same could equally be said of land. It is a utopian view that some anachists and marxists have aspired to, but it ignores the realities of history.

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By: samiam

samiam — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:54:12 +0000

Toad, you say…”Tangata whenua property rights over the foreshore and seabed were established long before anyone else got here”
Really?
Now silly me, but I thought the ocean has held dominion over all of it, not us pathetic humans.
I just don’t get how anyone can claim ownership over the unownable.
I can understand how Maori would feel aggrieved at crown ownership. My point is that, rather than belonging to everyone (the Crown)(the commons), it should belong to no-one.
As for some form of Maori guardianship, sorry that doesn’t cut it with me. We have had a batch, at Waimarama Hawkes Bay, all my life. It has always been and continues to be the local Maori who take, take, take on a far more destructive scale than others. It just makes me sad.
Mana Whenua? or Mana Moana? They wouldn’t know the first thing about it.
I’m about protecting the fish etc from greed and exploitation, I don’t want brown ownership, or white or anyone to be in a position to say ‘It’s mine’.
I just don’t think The Greenz have thought it through far enough. Goff’s motives may be shonky, but for the Nats to play political ping pong with the coastline is disconcerting.
If, Toad, you are correct and Tangata Whenua do have a claim, then My fallback position is that all born New Zealanders are Tangata Whenua. Anything else is racism and eliteism.

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By: greenfly

greenfly — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:38:37 +0000

ata (morning)
marie (peaceful)

Ata marie bjchip!

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By: bjchip

bjchip — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:04:57 +0000

Well, I don’t speak Navajo or French either. C, Fortran, C++, Ada, Java, Basic, Assembler, Lisp…. My Wife and Mom-in-law are working on me learning Russian, I have a full time job and this little avocation trying to keep the blog sorted with respect to some of the science. I’ve been here 6 years and haven’t had a chance to take the basics. I’d be happy for some sort of serial lessons in the Newspaper or something like, but I don’t have time for more than a few minutes a day… and I don’t get it.

My kids are getting it and I am pleased with that, but I’m going to be learning whatever I can get AFTER I retire, and any speaking I do then is likely as not to have a Russian accent,S which I am sure will be amusing to someone.

respectfully
BJ

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By: Metiria Turei

Metiria Turei — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:20:59 +0000

BTW, i dont speak the reo too well at all, but I think you should use the reo anytime you want in any forum you choose, including here. If we dont start using it like this, we wont get any better and we wont provide support the efforts to protect our indigenous language. So kia kaha greenfly and tautokai.baxter, you guys go hard.
mxx

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By: katie

katie — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:19:50 +0000

BJ, Toad;
my rusty 100-level te reo was good enough to follow that exchange – and I learnt back in the 80’s, so I really mean rusty!

Perhaps a spot of correspondence school or Te Wananga o Raukawa courses are in order – very cheap/free both of them. I understand some can be done via the net.

Meyt –
totally agree with you. Goff has always (IMHO) been a weasel, and those were definitely weasel words.

There have always been Maaori MP’s in both of the main parties – generally, the East Cape, Hawkes Bay and South Island were Labour, with minor variations, and the King Country (Ngaruawahia) were National. The Maaori Party are mostly academic/radicals, outside of the usual frameworks that impell Maaori politics.

If anything, Goff is having a hissy at Maaori for deserting their ‘natural’ electorate of working-class Labour support, by denigrating the changes other parties want to see enacted on the Foreshore & Seabed issues.
There was a lot of arrogance from Labour at the time of the Hikoi, and Maaori have not forgotten this. Add the ‘terror raids’, and you get a vast amount of alienation in the electorate amongst Maaori taxpayers who feel that the State is not serving their interests at all.

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By: SPC

SPC — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:10:41 +0000

It’s rather polite to question what Goff is doing, before subsequently realising the inevitable political gain from disaffected liberals moving from Labour to Greens.

The question is whether Labour’s gain of some Pakeha identity centred voters moving from National would actually outweigh liberals who vote National as they are no longer able to see one as any better than the other on such issues.

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