Manafesto

(after Miriama Aoake)

These are a list of our kaupapa and demands. 

 

We believe

We demand

We reject

We support

We seek

We call to

 

A manafesto (after Miriama Aoake)1

 

As Maaori, we mitigate the world using an ontology that links our body’s genealogy to the whenua of this land. It is in direct opposition to western notions of bodies and of land. Our bodies speak across waterways, maunga, to our ancestors, and to our inherent potential to adapt and survive. Our relationship to the land is inscribed in our bodies and our language. Tangata whenua. Tangata meaning ‘people’ and Whenua meaning land and/or placenta. All of our stories speak to Papatuuaanuku and Ranginui. 

 

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We believe that every living thing has mana and a mauri.

We believe in the potentiality of kaupapa Maaori to continue to be expansive, and in turn enable us to learn as much about this world as we can in order to understand our place, as Maaori within it.

We believe in turn that the broad, cross disciplinary approach of Kaupapa Maaori will allow us to build relationships and offer solidarity. 

We believe that matauranga Maaori can act as a poi swinging between different worlds and this allows us to enact acts of care, love and reciprocity. 

We believe and understand that as Maaori we are inherently politicised bodies, not because of colonisation, but because our socio-cultural relations are community based decision making.

We believe in a participatory democracy where everyone exercises power, not a procedural democracy where everyone just exercises a vote every three years. 

We believe it’s impossible to negotiate with the Crown because they demand that we first deny our own sovereignty and rangatiratanga.

We believe everyone has the right to speak and be heard, unless the words spoken deny our humanity. 

We believe that culture is not static.

We believe in big mana moves.

We believe in mean Maaori mean.

We believe in utu, not revenge. 

We believe in collective ways of working together. 

We believe in the plurality of gender identities and expressions.

We believe in an economy that works on reciprocal obligations, not money and the exploitation of labour. 

 

We, not unlike our tuupuna, travelled between different cultures as far as India and South America, so it is not unreasonable that to be Maaori is to always be thinking critically and seeking new ways of being and understanding. 

 

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We demand a return to thinking about the body in the relation to time and space. 

We demand the immediate return of stolen land back to tangata whenua. 

We demand the recognition that the past is never past and that history shapes the present and that your ancestors stole from ours.

We demand that the government return our land in the same pristine condition in which they stole it.

We demand the rejection of any sovereignty the Crown feels it has over Maaori. 

We demand the immediate overthrow of the government.

We demand a leader who is Maaori and who works alongside Maaori.

We demand better access to healthcare and education.

We demand to run our own healthcare and education systems. 

We demand to live in a country where more people speak te reo maaori than english, which is not an official language, just a default colonial language.

We demand that all Maaori be given access to their language.

We demand that for Maaori learning te reo rangatira be absolutely free and in an environment that is beneficial, first and foremost focused on revitalising te reo rangatira within urbanised Maaori populations.

We demand resources be put in place so that any Maaori anywhere can trace their whakapapa. 

We demand the defunding of the racist New Zealand police force immediately. 

We demand the abolishment of the racist New Zealand police force, who act as the Crown’s lapdogs carrying out their white supremacist agenda of not just denying us freedom, but attempting to eradicate our existence.

We demand the destruction of all prisons in this settler colony, as they are a colonial system used to control Maaori.

We demand the adoption of community based ways of mitigating harm instead of criminalisation. 

We demand the immediate release of all non violent prisoners before any cannabis referendum.

We demand that, should the cannabis law reform be passed, the development of this industry be led by Maaori, who are predominantly affected by drug related incarceration and remain the main innovators of this industry.

We demand the eradication of all debt that any Maaori person has.

We demand the eradication of all student debt and that universities as they currently stand need to be rebuilt and run by Maaori academics and researchers.

We demand that all university chancellors be fired and their salaries redistributed into making universities sites for learning, rather than existing as exploitative cash cows.

We demand that all vice chancellors give their million dollar, university paid mansions to rough sleepers and that they put themselves under the guillotine.

We demand that all empty properties be inhabited by rough sleepers and that they are given needs for sustenance.

We demand that billionaires have their wealth confiscated and we would like them to know that we are digging a haangi pit for when the day comes. 

We demand a new way of being that isn’t a return to pre colonial times (which is impossible) and isn’t directed by any european ideology, but instead is a culmination of different ideas, led by Maaori.

 

All politicians are bastards and it doesn’t matter who you vote for because a politician always gets in. ACAB baby.

Oink oink oink

let’s fry the pigs until they are crispy.

 

All colonisers (Don Brash, Brian and Hannah Tamaki, Paul Goldsmith, Mike Hosking etc) who disrespect our wishes deserve a taiaha to the head. 

We mihi to the young waahine who shot Captain John Fane Charles Hamilton right between the eyes at Pukehinahina in 1864. 

Burn all statues down of that murderous bastard.

We can’t stop and we won’t stop.

 

TRT everyday.

 

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We reject the idea that there is any one way in which to be Maaori. 

We reject all colonial fictions wielded by the Crown. 

We reject the authority of the Crown and its position as ‘lawful’ or ‘just’. 

We demand that tikanga is recognised as law, not lore. 

We reject those who are too much waha, and not enough kaha.

We reject the notion of treaty settlements, because they are cheaty settlements.

We reject the notion of ‘settling’ treaty claims because, like matua Moana says, you don’t ‘settle’ a treaty you honour a treaty. 

We reject the idea that there is any one way in which to be Maaori. 

We reject all borders and the way that they contribute to racialised geographies. 

We reject the patriarchal codes of behaviour to which Maaori society has been subject to through colonisation. 

We reject and fundamentally contest the misconception of the role of women being oppressed subjects within te ao maaori.

We reject the ‘civilising’ nature of christianity and see it as a disease no different or less devastating than the effects of smallpox.

We reject the idea that there’s only one way of being Maaori.

We reject Ancestry.com and blood quantum theory. 

We reject the notion of ‘treaty partnerships’, because the Crown does not understand what this means, let alone what it looks like. 

We reject the idea that there is any one way in which to be Maaori. 

We reject the romanticisation of the settler colony of New Zealand, particularly by Australians. 

We reject the need to get moko just to assert our place in Maaoridom and feel that, although it’s our birthright, it’s not integral to our decolonisation. 

We reject the idea that there is any one way in which to be Maaori. 

We reject the idea that ‘we are all immigrants.’

We reject the European idea that someone can ‘own’ land, because under tikanga you can only exercise conditional rights and unconditional responsibilities towards it. 

We reject the idea that there is any one way in which to be Maaori. 

We reject western constructions of linear time. It has always been and will always be non linear and porous. 

We reject western ideas of ‘progress’, ‘civilisation’, ‘discovery’ and ‘exchange.’

 

We’re not calling this country ‘Aotearoa’ because it’s the settler colony of ‘New Zealand’…for now. 

 

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We support Maaori who wish to engage in nonviolent protest as much as we support Maaori who seek tino rangatiratanga by any means necessary. 

We support all oppressed peoples in their fight for emancipation.

We support tino rangatiratanga for hapuu.

 

TRT all day everyday AAKE AKE AKE. 

Fee-fi-fo-fum

 

I smell the blood of an Englishman

Be he alive, or be he dead

I’ll grind his bones to make my bread

 

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We seek the destruction of notions of ‘work’ and ‘leisure’, as neither are distinct or separate terms.

We seek the immediate defacement and annihilation of all colonial statues and the immediate return of all crown owned land. 

We seek the immediate return of original Maaori names of the whenua. 

We seek the acknowledgement that everything has a whakapapa: the land; the sea; every living thing; and you and I. 

 

Karanga mai, karanga mai, karanga mai 

 

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We call your attention to the fact Te Tiriti o Waitangi guarantees iwi and hapuu ‘tino rangatiratanga’, absolute chieftainship, and it grants the Crown ‘kaawanatanga’, only qualified chieftainship. 

We call to communal modes of being, of sharing and showing care and respect to ways of life. 

We call to our tuupuna. We acknowledge their triumphs, their struggles, and that they’re always with us and live through us. 

  1. This title is adapted from Miriama Aoake’s thesis A Cyborg Manafesto: Articulating A Mana Wāhine Political Theory