Maori Tattoos are still bloody tattoos

This is a mug-shot of Erana Te Haeata Brewerton, a 60-year-old Maori who was up in Japan recently on some junket.   

Her facial tattoo saw her barred from a hot spring in Hokkaido and she went bleating to the media crying it was all too “culturally insensitive”.   

Bullshit.  

For starters the Japan Bathhouse has the right to ban who-ever it sees fit, serve the best interests of the business, particularly the ‘bread and butter’ locals.    

Secondly Ms Breweton this is Japan and not New Zealand. 

You were a visitor so why not be equally sensitive to their culture? 

The Japanese hate tattoos because of their criminal connotations.  

They lump all tattoos together, don’t have time to run it by the N.Z Embassy.  

Nor can the spas owner be expected to tell a so called ‘traditional’ tattoo from a similar one some chick got done one drunken night in Thailand. 

The hot spring made the right decision not allowing you entry. 

You need to wake up and accept that tattoos particularly facial ones are intimidating, globally associated with gangs.

Go to any maximum security prison and you’ll soon see the ‘customers’ are all tatted up.  

Many N.Z prisoners have tattoos not too similar to your own and are equally passionate about them.  

Maori criminal fraternity is all but 100% tatted-up. 

Here are some examples of modern-day ta mokos equally valid to a layman as Ms Brewerons.   

 

 

 

 

 

As a so called ‘leader’ and ‘ambassador’ for her culture the best thing Erana Te Haeata Brewerton could have done to disassociate herself from the underbelly of Maoridom was to not have got a tattoo in the first place.  

 

Maori Rejection of Organ Donation on Spiritual Grounds Costs Maori Lives

New Zealand has one of the lowest organ donor rates in the Western world.

How low?

Well in 2005 just 29 people became donors after they had died.

The biggest ethnic group in need of new organs in New Zealand ironically forms the lowest ethnic grouping of donors.

N.Z Maori. 

It is therefore rather ironic a trans-gender ex Maori MP, Georgina Beyer, is leading the charge for more Kiwis to become live organ donors.

The motivation is Beyer herself (?) is in need of a new kidney.

Rather than target the entire population Beyer should have started her quest to increase organ donation amongst her own people; many of whom reject the concept on spiritual grounds.

In 2006 The Maori Party voted against Jackie Blue's ultimately failed Human Tissue (Organ Donation) Amendment Bill because they "don't believe in organ donation" knowing fully well Maori formed a large percentage of people waiting for organ donation, some of their own whanau would die as a result of their belligerence.

The easy solution to solving a lack of live organs is to incentivise the system.

If you are registered donor, like me, you go to the top of the heap.

Those who fail to register or have no one in their inner circle (so not to penalise children) on the registered-list go on the waiting list.    

It is therefore hard to feel sorry for Maori as a whole when it comes to organ-donation given their cultural rejection of the medical procedure. 

    

Technically The South Island is not part of Aotearoa.

Intrigued at the increasing usage of Aotearoa as a pre-European Maori word meaning (the North and South Islands of) New Zealand, recently I spent a few hours in the Christchurch library researching the topic. Oral tradition makes research of this nature never perfect, opens up many contentions but here’s my best effort.   

Prior to European settlement there was no unified New Zealand, for want of a better term.  

There were numerous Maori tribes, sub tribes in the North Island and South Islands, Stewart Island and Chathams.  

There was, still remains geographic Maori names for all the islands, rivers, mountains which anyone can google up.    

However it is fanciful, modern invention to suggest a 17^th century Maori would have called his wider environment Aotearoa, encompassing all of what we now know as New Zealand.    

A pre-European Maori living in say Southland mostly lived an isolated life, had little interaction with other tribes other than those bordering his village.      

He or she would have no comprehension as to the scope of Aotearoa a united union of all Maori.   

Few would have say called the South Island Te Waipounamu or other variants simply because they had no reason to think of the place other than it being the territory of ‘Tribe X’ or ‘Tribe Y’.       

Even the word Aotearoa, the widely used native term for New Zealand’ is somewhat ambiguous as to its meaning.  

'Ao' means world, globe, global, daytime and cloud. 

'Tea' is white or clear. 

'Roa' means long and slow.  

Conceivably Kupe could have discovered his new homelands on a morning a large cloudbank parted and named the place Aotearoa for reasons other than them being shrouded in cloud (The Land of The Long White Cloud) 

It’s all open to interpretation.   

Aotearoa was therefore the traditional term for the North Island being the landing point of Kupe.    

The most likely vernacular origins of the word Aotearoa we have adopted comes via English historians, commentators who made their own interpretations as to the lands being described to them to encompass the South Island.  

Unless every book I read is wrong in reality there was no pre-European word for New Zealand as a whole as we know it today.    

The traditional ‘myth’ of Kupe discovering Aotearoa is similarly varied to say the least, isolated to North Island tribes and then passed on-to South Island tribes via northern interaction.  

There was/is no one unified Maori ‘discovery' or indeed 'creation' story which just further muddies the water. 

In summary: Technically The South Island was never a part of what was loosely called Aotearoa or Kupe’s legendary discovery of what we now call New Zealand. For all intense and purposes Kupe never knew the South Island existed in the same fashion European explorers reported only what they found. As Maori populations expanded so did their legends e.g. Maui.    

 

  

 

The Stone Idols of Political Correctness

When is a rock not a rock?

When, it’s imbued – that’s imbuing of a spiritual kind, by the way.

And much like the better known 'rock-stars' out in the public domain, rocks like this, have to fly first class.

When Christchurch opened last Saturday’s newspaper (Press 14th June) readers were left to muse over a front-page article which back-grounded the zany journey of a 35 kilogram lump of green stone (more commonly known as jade, or pounamu in Maori) between Christchurch and its sister city in China, Wuchan.

This large stone was gifted by The Christchurch City Council, and flew in the first class section of an Air New Zealand plane all the way to China.

And because of it was imbued with the spirit of the Ngai Tahu tribe ( for the benefit of overseas readers a tribe = iwi ) two members of the iwi went along for the journey.

To be fair to the members of the iwi that accompanied the green stone, they ended-up in ‘cattle class’ and it was only the lump of rock that got waited-on up in first class.

Readers, bemusement at this almost comical scenario, turned to anger when it was reported the local Christchurch rate-payers portion of the trip was a cool $2,500 (not including the cost of the rock in the first place, which for the record was $5,000 max, so it's not going to pass muster with Elizabeth Taylor or be the prime target in a jewel heist )

$2,500 was in effect the price paid to abandon common sense, in preference to the stone idols of political correctness.

Maori protocol prescribed that any inanimate object blessed with the tribes ‘spiritual force’ needed to be treated in such reverence, and handed over by only those in the iwi with authority to do so, and this make-believe was good enough for the Mayor and his politically correct minions at the local Council.

But fear not residents of Christchurch, The Canterbury Atheists have gone ‘into bat’ for the maligned rate-payers of Christchurch, and anyone else, who has progressed beyond 'looking at tea-leaves in the bottom of cups'.

We've asked our Mayor (Bob Parker) the following questions:

1.) Surely it would have been cheaper to arrange an ‘unblessed’ piece of green-stone and air-freight the thing?

2.) Is it only Ngai Tahu, who have a monopoly blessing rocks & inanimate objects in this fashion, or can the rest of us take imbuing lessons and get in on the lark? Seattle is one place I’d like to visit and as a Sister-City I’m putting my own hat in the ring, both as a spiritual & practical body-guard.

3.) When an inanimate object needs blessing does the Council get comparative costs from other ‘approved’ providers like say The Druids, who are, after-all ‘into rocks in a big way’?

4.) How do the ratepayers actually know it was properly imbued in the first place and the spirit didn’t jump-out of his/her first-class seat, and disappear in a puff of smoke, prior to arriving, thus rendering the whole expensive process redundant?

I will post Mayor Bob’s answers to these pertinent questions, the moment he replies (take note of below posted at the time the article was submitted online).

Authors Note : For the record I have Maori blood (per my fathers family tree my iwi is Muaüpoko) Irrespective of my personal heritage, I'm expecting Mayor Bob to 'play the race card' in his reply. By accusing detractors like me of racism, rather than seeing our opposition as rationalism, he will attempt to stifle debate on the legitimacy of his Council funding this superstitious nonsense about 'rocks with spirits'. This will be his tact, for sure.