Flag the referendum – let’s save our country

I see red over this one – I’m not voting in the first flag referendum – and will vote for the status quo in the second. I’d like to see a new flag for Aotearoa, but one based on more of a consensus and genuine sense of who we are. There are more important tangible things to sort out – like decent housing and incomes for all, the nature of sovereignty, and climate change.

Ironic that this flag-waving exercise should be happening right at the time the world needs to set aside national interests and negotiate a global climate change agreement that will protect us all. A useful diversion from a global forum where New Zealand can’t hold its head high.

First thoughts are usually the best, so why not go with the original flag of New Zealand – the one chosen by the United Tribes of New Zealand in 1834 to signal New Zealand-origin boats, and used at their Declaration of Independence of New Zealand in 1835.

Or, as Brian Rudman said, let the tino rangatiratanga flag fly boldly as the national flag for all of us:

It has the red and black halves representing the creation myth, and a central white koru representing the unfolding of new life, renewal and hope. It also has the wow factor. 

In a public submission process in 2009, this flag got 80 per cent of the vote as a national Maori flag.

The four, now five, flags up for consideration against our current Southern Cross, don’t meet design considerations for being a true flag – they are more logos than brands. Listen to typeface designer Kris Sowersby on this interview with Kim Hill (at 47.30 mins in) on how the de facto ‘client-designer relationship’ was skewed by a signalled preference for a silver fern at the start. ‘We may get the flag we deserve,’ he concludes.

The flag debate is an expensive side-show – and devisive, as factions try to promote their particular bit of cloth or – like the RSA – battle hard to save what we have.

I met someone a few weeks ago who wanted to promote a strong national identity based on being a genuine protector of the environment and defender against climate change. This would be  ‘living up to our brand on the world stage’ she said; not just promoting ‘clean, green New Zealand’ as an increasingly tarnished image. This is what we need to focus on – work out, together, as much as possible – what kind of nation are we; who do we really want to be? Then decide on a flag represents that identity.

This is the nation that first gave women the vote, introduced comprehensive social welfare to support the dignity of all its people in the 1930s, protested against French nuclear tests in the Pacific, and told the United States to keep their nuclear weapons at home when visiting.

Where is our world leadership when it comes to the single biggest long-term threat facing the planet – climate change? A half-hearted commitment to cut our emissions by 11 percent on 1990 levels.

Be part of history – work and stand for a fair nation, and for a fair climate.

Some things never change

My first home - Huirau Road

At the beginning of the year, I visited the place where I was born (well, the place I first lived in after being born at the hospital – the usual location for entering this world in our modern society). My first home was a white house at the corner of Huirau Rd, just south of Turua on the Hauraki Plains. Fifty years later, the area hadn’t changed a bit in any substantial way from when I lived there, apart from some fresh paint on some of the houses, and one or two newer ones down the road. Even the old, small dairy factory across the road – abandoned even when we lived there in the mid-1960s – still sported a turquoise green door (ok, fresher paint) that always remained in my memory from that time. My father actually worked as a dairy chemist at the big, new, massive Kerepehi factory some kilometres away.

My reason for going this year was to visit the Dalmatian farmer across the road and down the way from our old place – whose youngest son had been my first friend. I visited with my friend, and we chatted over lunch with him, his Dad, and middle brother, who now ran the family dairy farm. It was oddly reassuring, that even within our radically transformed dairy industry, some things have never changed. That a family business is still in the family, and that the Dalmatian farmer, at 92, was still gardening and growing grapes at the back of his house, even if wasn’t working the farm any more.

And after all these years, I learnt that he had actually worked in a bitumen mine back in then Yugoslavia (now Croatia) – he’d never wanted to be a farmer. It was family machinations here in New Zealand that led to him becoming a dairy farmer on Huirau Rd shortly before my parents moved there in 1962. In their European tradition, family land was family land – you wouldn’t sell the family farm just to buy a bigger and better one. You’d keep the land in the family, to pass to future generations. He was keeping this tradition alive, even for his family land back ‘home’: when he and his youngest son (my friend), visited Croatia a couple of years ago, he sorted out the titles for four blocks of land to retain there – one for each of his sons living in Aotearoa New Zealand.

This was the second 92-year old European I had spoken to within a couple of weeks whose ‘tradition’ was to keep family land in the family, rather than trade up for a bigger dairy farm. The other had come from Austria – and had farmed in the Karaka area of south Auckland – though he had to sell up when he stopped dairying, as no one in the family wanted to keep it.

Nothing may have changed at Huirau Rd, but down the way, the old Kerepehi site reflects the new world: a Chinese company has bought the property to make ice-cream for export back to the Chinese market. It signals some of the ironies of life: that while “some things never change”, “the times are [still] a changin’ ”.

It may mean nothing to you, but that little place on Huirau Rd is where I was born, and deep in my psyche, the Hauraki Plains is ‘home’.

Ahakoa he iti, he pounamu

Although it is small, it is precious

"Oh, the things that you find"

I was grateful to receive this week a book, Bygone Days by George Kaye: a series of vignettes on aspects of Lower Hutt in the early 20th century. This morning I read the chapter about when "A Future King Toured Moera" - my own suburb. The day in March 1927 when the Duke of York (the future King George VI) "came to Moera, saw Moera and left Moera".

Not without visiting a few families first in this working class suburb still being built. The King, along with Prime Minister Gordon Coates and Lower Hutt Mayor W T Strand, called at the Stewarts' place on Mason St - a family of 11. The King said the youngest Stewart (Eileen, just a few weeks old) reminded him of his own daughter Elizabeth (our still reigning Queen). While for the Mayor, it was the large macrocarpa outside the house that reminded him of his boyhood days - so much so, he would not allow for it to be cut down.

So, concluded our quirky chronicler Kaye, "in 1927, two people found something in Mason Street, Moera, that reminded them of something: His Royal Highness, the Duke of York of his baby daughter; His Worship the Mayor of Lower Hutt, of his boyhood."

Funny parallels. When I first arrived in this suburb, a narrow footbridge over a branch railway line reminded of Puhinui railway station in south Auckland near where my grandparents used to live; while along the river, next to the main railway line, a row of crows-nest poplars puts me in mind of my early years on the Hauraki Plains. A line of such trees grew along the south boundary of our factory house with a dairy farm beyond. Shortly after we left the house when I was three, the new occupants cut the trees down - Dad was disgusted.

I only hope that if ever a proposed cross-valley link road goes through the Hutt Valley, those poplar trees aren't in the line of fire. Or that I had the power of a mayor to decree whether trees should remain, or be cut down.

Thanks to the lone piper

Though I don't have any direct Scottish ancestry as far as I know, there's nothing quite like the bagpipes for stirring my musical blood.
Today I heard strains blown clear across the Hutt River/Te Awa Kairangi, from Strand Park on the opposite bank, to our suburban street - probably a kilometre's distance. A norwester helped the music along. It seemed to be a lone piper out for a practice in plenty of space - I think I've heard it before around here.
I went down to the water's edge to hear with clarity - and within a natural setting as I stood beside the mud-exposed streambed: flax blowing in the gusting wind, ducks on the water and seagulls buoyed southward. It was a marvellous way to say goodbye to the light at the end of this grey, windy, dampish day.
With the sound of the bagpipes stirring in my blood, and a need for courage and strength in my own life, I leave you with Scotland the Brave:

Common Origins: The longest journey to the youngest land

Lisa Matisoo-Smith leads the Genographic project for the Oceania/Pacific region – one of 11 global regional scientific teams using genetics to trace the long-term anthropological origins of people in all parts of the world.

Talking to Kim Hill on the weekend, she outlined the Africa to Aotearoa research project which aims to chart the migratory history of all those of us who have ended up in Aotearoa/New Zealand – whether 1000 years ago; or last week. (Btw, the government has decided to cut funding to the Allan Wilson Centre doing the NZ-based research at the end of the year – go figure.

More information about the Africa to Aotearoa project is available here, and says among other things:

The islands of Polynesia and, more specifically, New Zealand was the last region in the world to be permanently occupied by humans and thus holds an important place in a study of human migrations and migration histories. Our relatively small population of 4.4 million, the relatively recent migrations, and the biological and cultural diversity of the country make NZ an ideal study in the development of a national identity.
....
The goal of this project is to better understand the genetic history of New Zealanders and to use this information to identify population origins, historical interactions and other aspects of our population history.

Those who have voluntarily provided DNA samples to the project learn the anthropological (not the recent genealogical) story of their direct maternal or paternal ancestors — where they lived and how they migrated around the world many thousands of years ago – including the one common female and male ancestor that each of us is linked to way back in Africa about 160,000 years ago. 

Just goes to show – we are one family: sisters and brothers (well, distant cousins anyway).

Listen to the Radio New Zealand interview:

Are we a Brand, or are we are land?

Today, I want to address the ‘dark side’ of being a New Zealander – no, I’m not referring to murders, drug-dealing and crime; nor the recent loss to the green-and-golds across the Tasman. No, I’m talking about what I’ve come to call the “All Black-ification” of New Zealand; the gradual subsuming (it seems to me) of our national identity to the black and white fern on an often black background.

Today on the train was a young woman wearing with a black jacket emblazoned on the back with ‘newzealand.com’, and a black shoulder bag brashly proclaiming ‘100% Pure NZ’ and directing you to the link traveltrade.newzealand.com, with tips to the travel and tourist industry on “How to sell New Zealand” – all part of the NZ Inc approach: We’re just one big happy business.

I first came across the NZ Inc concept in the National Party manifesto of 2008 – a ‘whole of business’ approach to our overseas dealings – whether it was trade, diplomacy or overseas aid. It ended up, among other things, with the previous semi-autonomous ‘NZAID’ agency focusing on poverty alleviation being pulled back into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade as the NZ Aid Programme, complete with a new image – the black and white fern (it aint silver). The Aid Programme has become another element “flying the flag” to promote New Zealand’s “National interest”.

Now since June 2013, Air New Zealand has being dumping its long-time Oceanic green and teal colours in favour of pure black and white, featuring the New Zealand fern trademark as well as the Air NZ koru. And some of the planes are “All Black” too.

I can’t show on this blog what the trademark is. That would be breaching copyright. But read this interesting and fascinating history – “an official campaign of long-term infiltration” – of how the current “New Zealand Way” black and white fern eventually became the Brand of New Zealand.

Rather telling that the first item under “Tourism New Zealand” in its Wikipedia entry is ‘Rugby”. I just sense this looming darkness washing over our land. 

Tell me – are we a Brand, or are we a land?

Making a day of it on Matiu

Every six weeks or so in summer I head out to Matiu (aka Somes Island) in the middle of Wellington Harbour as a volunteer with the Eastbourne Forest Rangers. For a volunteer job, it’s pretty cruisy – most of the time. Supplementing the work of the full-time Department of Conservation rangers, our most important task is welcoming people ashore and making sure they don’t bring un-welcome guests with them – such as rats, mice (unlikely), Argentine ants (they will eat live birds, skinks and tuatara – not kidding) and weed seeds (enough on the island already, thanks). Then it’s just a matter of roaming the island keeping an eye out: checking people aren’t wandering off track or lighting up, making sure boaties and kayakers don’t make illegal landings, and pointing out the odd tuatara or two (my favourite part of the job).

But recently, I journeyed over for a Whakawhanuangatanga Day (building relationships), hosted by the Kaitiaki Board for Matiu – a joint management Board between the owners Taranaki Whanui, and DoC who looks after the island on a day-to-day basis. This was a day to celebrate recent achievements and progress and say thanks to the various groups and people who are nurturing the island back into fullness of life – EFR, Forest and Bird (planting out since 1981), the Matiu-Somes Charitable Trust and others.

Special tribute was paid to the Karobusters, with the unveiling of the mural above – celebrating their 10 years on the island eradicating karo (a native, but not here thank you) and other unwanted pest plants that make life hard for those natural to the area. The mural may be the first of many similar artistic endeavours on the island, as the Kaitiaki Board would like to use different spaces around the island to acknowledge the various contributions made.

As I’ve said before on this blog, Matiu is a microcosm of Aotearoa New Zealand for me. It’s story reflects and touches on our land’s geological history, Maori settlement, European colonisation, agricultural and industrial development, two World Wars and the ongoing migrations of people and wildlife. The island has been returned to the tangata whenua, is co-managed between iwi and government, and now powered almost solely by sustainable energy – wind and solar supplemented for some cooking and heating needs by an experimental hydrogen-from-water unit.

Matiu was a popular place for picnics shortly after European arrival in Wellington in 1840, then became closed to ‘normal human traffic’ when it became first an animal quarantine station, then one for humans: to prevent unwanted diseases entering the mainland. However, in 1995, the animal quarantine station closed and the island was opened to the public again – revealing its chequered history and new-found place as a sanctuary. It is now a safe place for kakariki, native skinks, tuatara, etc – and for people: to find out how our land used to be, and could be again. 

It’s elemental: a toast to Te Awa Kairangi

Feeding the flames beside the Hutt River

The invitation came out of the blue: “FIRE AND WATER ... A celebration of community and river at Whakamoonie (the official signs call it Poet’s Corner - guess someone's exercising poetic license to rename this spot on the Hutt River between the Whakatikei River and the Moonshine Bridge).

In any case, Friends of the Hutt River were “providing an opportunity to enjoy yourselves down at the Hutt River.... There will be BBQ and bonfire.  Stone skimming and stone throwing. … Greater Wellington [regional council] will provide information on progress on understanding the cyanobacteria problem.”

- Hah, there’s the catch, entice people along with inducements of fun and free food, then whack them round the face with the serious stuff: “This is your river – it’s deteriorating, badly”.

The elements were simple enough:

·    a talk from a ranger on how to identify that dastardly cyanobacteria algae – the dark brown/black stuff will kill dogs and maim people (well ok, officially the line is: ‘can cause irritation of the skin, eyes, nose and mouth, and if swallowed, can cause vomiting, diarrhoea, abdominal pain, cramps and nausea”).

·    a swim (even if there was a bit of cyanobacteria up river)

·    floating paper boats, and a home-made raft made of planks strapped together over a couple of steel drums

·    a good, old NZ gas BBQ – brought down to the stones in the back of someone’s van

·    wrapped up by toasting marshmallows over an open fire (yes it was permitted) in the bottom part of a steel drum.

From the ranger we learnt that many of the nutrients (such as nitrogen and phosphorus) feeding into the Hutt River are entering through groundwater.  The causes? Not so sure on that. Probably things like stormwater, fertilizers and chemicals used on farms, lawn and garden, urban runoff. (No doubt, some of the chemicals used by Council Parks departments also contributes a share).

So, some serious long-term things to consider – and Friends of the Hutt River will continue to work on the council to understand and fix levels of toxicity of the river, as well as monitor river flows. But the main purpose of this afternoon was to enjoy what we have, even it is currently less than perfect.

Yes, a simple formula of fire and water to toast the River Hutt/Te Awa Kairangi – ‘the river of great value’. Let’s try to keep it that way; and make it better and safer than it currently is.

Read more:

Friends of the Hutt River - Facebook page

Greater Wellington - Rivers & Streams

Toxic algae facts

Circling suitcases in the sand

The first phrase in my first notebook of the year was 'Becoming a New Zealander - one life-long process of becoming a New Zealander - becoming part of this land.'

Wellington celebrated 150 years of its existence on 19 January. And to commemorate the first 'organised' [some call it that] European settlers coming ashore to New Zealand, there was a bit of a party on the Petone foreshore. No sailing ships, but there was a waka. The most evidential remembrance of those first arrivals (apart from a few people in fancy 19th century dress) was a great pile of suitcases - about the size of a large bonfire - on the beach.

A little later, I noticed people marching those suitcases from one end of a line on the beach to the other. The line was sometimes straight, sometimes curved, sometimes spiralled in on itself, depending on the rather erratic instructions of a slightly agitated man in 19th century garb. The story was: it was the 'excess baggage' of a young 19-year-old immigrant, and we had to get all his luggage from the end of the beach where it had arrived to the immigration office (aka Settlers Museum).

Amazing how many people saw this apparently pointless exercise of moving suitcases in the sand, and joined in - including me and my two daughters.

I felt there was some symbolism in this. I have written about 'unpacking your bags' more than once in this blog, so won't unpack that phrase for your now (read the links).

Instead, I wondered if these suitcases on the Petone foreshore reflected all the 'stuff' we have brought from overseas - physical possessions, cultural baggage and ways of doing things, and memories of other times and places. 'Stuff' those of us who are living now have brought on board the Aotearoa 'waka', and stuff that has been handed down as a legacy from our ancestors - good and bad. How much of it is a good fit for this land, and how much is waste, or out of place? These days, it's not only the 'excess baggage' of tourist trinkets and duty-free liquor we may bring on board, but also most of our clothes, shores, electronic goods, linen, whiteware and much of our food is sourced from offshore - is this really living?

We bring it all in and shift it around, sometimes creating mazes and traps for ourselves - but to what real, ulitimate purpose? Some questions for today. Answers some other time - or add your thoughts below.