Maori commentary on the Iwiocracy

What are Iwi doing for the vast majority of Maori? Because it’s one thing to be calling out the government on their bullshit, but how about we start looking at our own?

Aunty Heihei giving a powerful, poignant speech on iwi and Māori MPs.

NB: Strong Language pic.twitter.com/hrqddO2PyF

— Elliot Page (@ElliotIkilei) January 31, 2023

Preach it sister!

You can only drive around in flash Range Rovers and Mercedes for so long before the people who look to you for help starting noticing the gap between you and themselves.

We don’t need more Maori lawyers and Treaty of Waitangi experts. We need more Maori working the trades, starting businesses and getting science and management degrees if they do insist on going to university – something I think is increasingly questionable for many people as I look around at debt-laden, over-educated idiots “communicating” with me.

I’m also going to add Julian Batchelor’s blog site, Stop Co-Governance, to the reference list of blogs on the Right side of our home page. This opening announcement on its home page is exactly what Aunty Heihei is talking about.

Chris Trotter sees it too:

Thanks to thirty years of Treaty Settlements, the NICF (National Iwi Chairs Forum) is both well-positioned and well-resourced to flex its muscles. Between them, the Iwi represented at the Forum command assets valued in the billions. That buys them all the big law firms and all the big lawyers they need. It buys them top-of-the-line lobbyists and public relations experts. It buys them influence in the news media and the universities. It means that, when the NICF whistles, serious politicians from all the major parties tend to come running – up to and including prime ministers.

Make a handful of Māori aristocrats and other assorted high-flyers rich and powerful, and not only can they then be relied upon to keep the urban Māori poor quiet, but also to co-opt anyone of a mind to stir them up.

For a while.

The great risk of re-establishing a well-resourced and powerful indigenous elite is that, a generation or two later, those responsible will be faced with confident, highly educated young Māori who can think of no good reason why they – the privileged beneficiaries of the Treaty Settlement Process – should continue to provide a buffer between the heirs of their colonial conquerors and the tens-of-thousands of Māori families made poor, and kept poor, by colonisation.