it's offensive for us to have anybody
celebrate somebody who visited murder
upon our people and in cept in an
experience that we are still enduring
today
[Music]
it's a commemoration or an anniversary
of invasion and imperial expansion
[Music]
it's a war zone in many places around
around old turtle we have some of the
highest suicide rates in the world for
our people we have poor housing our
infant mortality rates are unacceptably
high our incarceration rates are higher
than anywhere else in the world but all
of those challenges stem back to the
fact that we have had our
self-determination stripped from us
through a process of colonization and
then we see dollars being rolled out for
the celebration of the causes of all of
those issues it's deeply offensive and
deeply hurtful
[Music]
in the past we haven't been that good at
creating space where Maori people in
parking how people come together in a
way that feels comfortable for both
parties
people actually want an opportunity to
share their story that's the most common
thing so you'll see over these days that
they've been arranged to ensure that
everybody feels heard and everybody
feels respected the fact that cooks
story and the brutality of cooks story
has been suppressed for so long as is
really a symptom of this larger issue
that New Zealand has as well which is
the idea that we are racially harmonious
we ourselves have bought into that and
and so we tend to have a strong sense of
denial about our colonialism's a
colonial racism is really the bedrock of
racism and I'll tear door upon which all
other forms of racism are built
you