Watching and Learning
Mokopuna Lessons
Earlier this year, my amazing great-granddaughter, Atareta, spoke in her regional Ngā Manu Kōrero speech competition. Her topic was The Coalition of Colonisers and she called out the coalition government’s decisions that were deliberately targeting Māori. She finished with this call to action:
We all make choices when we take action against things that are not fair. In my whānau, some of us would be right there with the protesters, and some of us would prefer to work in the background to educate Aotearoa against racism. The point is that ALL of us would do something!
Me? I’m the flag-waving, protesting type! This speech is Day 1 of my protest action –- against the coalition that thinks it can take us backwards and recolonise us all over again! I don’t think so!
What is your action going to be?
Fast forward to Tuesday 19 November when Atareta, invited by Te Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti organisers who had heard her speech, stepped up to the microphone in front of Parliament Buildings alongside the also amazing Hana Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke. At 14 years old and to an audience of over 60,000 flag-waving protesters, Atareta showed us all just how far her protest action has come. This time she said:
As rangatahi Māori. We’re watching… and learning.
We’re watching Hana-Rāwhiti and learning that as the youngest person in parliament in the world - you can make people take notice.
We’re watching older people in parliament who don’t listen and don’t change their minds - and we’re learning that there has to be a better way.
We’re watching other young people who have helped organise this hīkoi - and we’re learning that we don’t have to wait until we’re older to find our voice and have something to say.
I could not be prouder of Atareta, so I thought I’d follow her example and explore what other lessons adults in parliament are teaching our rangatahi. There is no shortage of cases.
They would have watched the Minister of Education demonstrate how little she knows about education when she said children should be in school and not participating in the hikoi. Then, they would have learned that a Minister who holds herself up to have some sort of moral high ground, dismissive of the right of parents to educate their children through experiencing this history-in-the-making, is perfectly comfortable—under her breath or not— referring to her Labour counterpart as a “stupid bitch” in the House of Parliament. So much for morals then. Appalling lesson, Erica Stanford!
Lessons in Integrity and Identity
Our rangatahi would have watched MP Willie Jackson kicked out of the House for calling David Seymour a liar and refusing to withdraw the remark, and they would have learned about integrity and that it’s important to take a stand. Great lesson, Willie Jackson!
They watched Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke rise to her feet, tear David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill in half, cast it to the floor, and lead that powerful haka of protest that has gone viral across the globe. The world was watching, and learning, along with our young people. A powerful, inspiring refusal to compromise your identity to fit into the white box that is parliament and the lesson to always be who you are.
Lessons in Colonialism
As Hana’s video went viral, they watched, repeatedly, the Speaker of the House roll his eyes and groan, “No, don’t do that,” then hear Seymour crying victim and demanding Hana be ‘named’ and disciplined for what he called her “war dance.”
Our rangatahi know her name and her leadership. Why can’t our parliament include tikanga and the right of Māori members of parliament be Māori? Arrogant, pathetic and embarrassing, Gerry and David, wearing your privilege and your racism like badges of honour that our young people can see right through.
In those few short minutes, we saw a microcosm of Aotearoa New Zealand society in a place that should know and do better – two older men entrenched in their racist colonial ideologies, Māori MPs joining the action across party lines, support from the public in the gallery, and a young Māori woman taking the lead and showing them that the world has moved on. It was a major lesson.
Lessons in Manipulation
Our rangatahi are watching David Seymour asking what is so wrong with wanting everyone to be treated equally as he tries to justify the rationale behind his divisive bill. Tina Ngata explains how important it is for Seymour and those few who support him to control the narrative. She shows how the same talking points that Seymour spews out in monotone, on repeat, ad nauseum, falsely frame his position in terms of fairness and justice but they completely leave out the narrative of colonial harm and pretend we all started on “some magically even playing field.”
So, young people learn that one man with zero emotional intelligence and a total lack of understanding of their worldview can manipulate the truth to suit his own quest for votes and power. Since we have taught them from the time they were babies that this is called lying, they see that Willie Jackson was right!
Lessons in Coercion and Bullying
They watched and noticed the convenient absence of our prime minister when they arrived at parliament on Tuesday, and they have heard him repeat many times that he does not support the bill and will vote against it. They rightly think, so why allow it to get to this stage in the first place? And they learn about coercion (they would recognise it as bullying), how power corrupts absolutely, and how adults who lead our country will compromise their integrity at any price to get the power they crave.
They understand why the chants, “Kill the Bill” rang out across parliament grounds and will have learned, as Atareta said, they were aimed at people “who don’t listen and don’t change their minds.”
The whānau who chose to bring their children on the Hīkoi instead of leaving them in schools to be subjected to Erica Stanford’s flawed structured reading, writing, and counting regime, gave their children powerful literacy and numeracy lessons they will never forget.
Lessons in Literacy and Structured Racism
Our rangatahi listened to powerful speakers—Tangata Whenua and tangata Tiriti alike—and will now be learning about writing submissions against the bill, learning skills of argument, persuasion, points of view, research, critical analysis, and increasing their vocabulary—in te reo Māori and English. They learned what emancipatory educator Paulo Freire called “reading the world,” that is, understanding the political context of your world before you can effectively “read the word.” That means, Erica, that reading is not about ‘structure’ and decoding letters and sounds but is “dynamically intertwined” with students’ lives and realities. That’s critical literacy. You need to learn that, Erica.
The coalition government's inability to “read the nation,” or last week at the first reading of the bill, completely failing to “read the room,” are glaring examples that they while they are talking up a smokescreen about structured literacy and numeracy, in the background what they really mean is blatant, intentional, structured racism.
I heard from principals who had received the directive from David Seymour telling them to silence their support for the Hīkoi, warning them that schools are crown entities and should remain politically neutral!
That takes me right back to my first year of teacher training when I joined a group that protested having to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen as part of our induction process. My specific action was to write a letter to a national newspaper arguing against the oath and the singing of God Save the Queen instead of our own anthem. The response was swift. I was summoned to the Training College principal’s office to be sternly reminded that, under the Education Act, no one could be employed as a teacher without swearing this allegiance, and protesting against the Queen’s anthem was not in keeping with the oath. I had been dealt the first lesson I remember about colonisation and power—the very same lesson, 62 years later, that my great-grandchildren are still being subjected to. Shame on us as a country that we have gone right back to that assimilationist bullying!!
Lessons in Corruption
And while we are talking about literacy, and hiding the truth, let’s not forget the blatant misuse of power I pointed out in my last blog post where Elizabeth Rata, a member of the ministerial advisory group supposedly overseeing the totally unnecessary English curriculum changes, inserted herself and her own personal and commercial interests into the group writing the curriculum. The same Elizabeth Rata who criticised the indigenisation of our universities and was one of seven White signatories to the infamous Auckland University’s letter opposing parity for mātauranga Māori with other bodies of knowledge in the school curriculum, particularly the science curriculum (Ngata, 2021). Our children are unable to watch that play out, given the intentionally hidden nature of the process, but their learning will be damaged as a result.
Lessons in Numeracy
Our children didn’t miss out on any maths in their participation in the Hīkoi. Quite the opposite in fact!
They learned about percentages – for example, that 8% is not a majority despite David Seymour thinking he has all the power.
They have learned addition. If you add up the 2,262 people who switched from the general roll to the Māori roll in November, plus the 862 who enrolled for the first time on the Māori roll, you get 2,262 + 862 = 3,096 more people on the Māori roll—and that number is increasing daily.
They have learned that 281,150 (the number of people who signed the Stop the Treaty Principles Bill petition (as of Thursday, 21 Oct) is 35,150 more people than the 246,000 who voted for ACT in the last election. That’s critical maths, Erica!
They also learned selective estimating and how the media and different groups and individuals downplayed the strength and size of the Hīkoi numbers to suit their own agendas. The politicisation of crowd sizes is nothing new and this was a masterclass in denial. It may not have reached the 100,000 Te Pāti Māori claimed, but if you added in the protests across the country at the same time, it’s probably the most accurate. As The Spinoff’s Joel McManus observed, “Media estimates of the crowd size ranged from 17,000 to 100,000+, but one thing we can say for sure — it was bloody massive.”
As for subtraction, our rangatahi will count the dozens of laws that are under scrutiny and up for review, including at least 40 acts with Treaty principles clauses, and the deletion of all mention of Te Tiriti from some 28 of these already. Among those, as Jessie Moss points out in her article Whitewashing te Tiriti out of education, is our education curriculum, where the words “designed to give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and be inclusive of all ākonga” have been removed, and the words “the centrality of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and its principles” are insultingly replaced with “based on the science of learning”.
As Peeni Henare explains—using the Treaty Principles Bill as a smokescreen, these deletions are continuing without consultation and without most people realising they have gone. Again, the lesson our children receive is one of deceit and their learning will be damaged by our actions.
Lessons in Kotahitanga
The young people who participated in the Hīkoi, who marched and held flags and banners up high at any place in Aotearoa, whose absence was approved by many of their schools, who watched the livestream of the protest in their classrooms, or who worked in the background in their communities as the Hīkoi passed through, learned vastly more than they would in any one day, or any one week, of “structured” literacy or numeracy in their schools.
They watched, they participated, and they learned what the coalition government’s adults will never teach them. They learned and felt the force of kotahitanga, coming together for a cause greater than themselves and greater than any one posturing, privileged person’s quest for individual power and supremacy.
They will continue to watch and learn and it’s up to us to put actions before them that are about truth, integrity, and how important it is to stand up for what is right.
We also need to watch and learn from this younger generation who, as Hana-Rāwhiti’s actions showed, will never compromise who they are, and will increasingly challenge the government’s and the education system’s relevance to their world. As Atareta said, pointing at Parliament buildings directly behind her:
Ahakoa he aha te kaupapa, ahakoa ko wai te kāwanatanga o te wā, inā toi tū te oranga o te iwi, e kore rawa tātou e ngaro.
No matter the cause, no matter the government of the day, if the well-being of the people is upheld, we will never be lost.
BEST lesson, Atareta!
