Tino Rangatiratanga?

Great comment from Indymedia.

The systems of trustboards and runanga were modelled off of the Maori Affairs model and has circumvented the traditional system of checks and balances within most iwi areas.

The very structure of some iwi is now based on what is the mordern corporation with share holders, CEOs, board of directors etc.

The major difference being that most of the members of the iwi are not active participants in the planning and restructuring of the iwi model or even the day to day runnings, but are bystanders watching corporate elites with timi bit of knowledge and knowhow of modern corporations, finance and investment, playing with the blood money payed as hush money by the Government, now used by corporate iwi elites to forge a new class of Maori elite rich fat cats.

Tino Rangatiratanga is rapidly being swapped for the illusion of power that masses of putea gives, and all the empty souless development projects that will add huge financial asset bases to the books of these iwi corporations.

These iwi corp leaders are frauds, they stand as imposter rangatira, brown people in suits who are using the mana of the iwi (and the power that exists when people are bandied together as an iwi is with their autonomy that comes from such unities) to build their own empires at the behest of future generations of Maori that will have to learn about their culture in a museum and reruns of Waka Huia on tv.

Those future generations that will learn about the ocean as it was, the seabed and foreshores as they were, the forests that used to be, the rivers as they used to be, the lakes as they used to be, the mana that their tribes used to have, everything in past tense.

And when all the putea is gone, and the assets have been sold off by creditors to pay the bills, the fishing trawlers hocked off for a song because the fish stocks were fucked years before the crown craftly handed Maori the quotas in a swap for our mana moana, when the land turns to dust from years of over fertilisation that took palce long before it was returned to Maori in a treaty settlement, when the foreshores that used to team with fish, shell fish and other marine life are covered in mussel spat from the over use of mussel farms smothering every bit of life from the seabed...

...and when the last Maori dies that could fluently converse in te reo Maori, and all that we know now is gone or exists as replicas or computerised, or preserved like a mokomokai in some museum, I hope that all of us that lived through this period of time, wherever we may be at that time, be it rarohenga or beyond, I hope we hang our heads in shame, for it is in this generation, our generation, that the final hammer and nails have been handed to us, to this generation, to nail into the coffin of the people currently called Maori and we are either nailing them in hard, or standing by watching without interfering.

This bullshit being passed off as iwi settlements and iwi investment and this new unprecendented rise in cooption of Maori representation into Parliament, needs to be stopped now and those perpetrators need to be held to account. The masses of Maori uninvolved in these doings still hold the mana and do have the ability to put pay to the short sighted deluded actions of a few elitests and wannabe dogooders who are convinced that this is the right way forward for Maori.

Kia mau tonu ra ki to kawau maro

Karawhiua!

Te Iwitoa