Annette Sykes: Bruce Jesson Lecture 2010
Annette Sykes: Bruce Jesson Lecture 2010
Kua ngaro koe ki te poouri otira e whai kee ana koe i ngaa tikanga a tetahi noatu
When you fail to sustain your beliefs,
sovereignty, freedom
You become lost to
yourself as you are subsumed by those whose customs and
practices you must now serve
In 1980 following the furore which was engendered by the publication of the Maori Sovereignty articles, Bruce Jesson commented:
“Essentially, Maori sovereignty is about the complete incompatibility of the Maori and Pakeha ways of life, and about how economic and political power has resolved this conflict in favour of the Pakeha.”
At the time there was a strident group of Maori radicals who readily identified with the concept of Maori Sovereignty and with Maori resistance to Pakeha intrusion into their territories, their values, their mindscapes and their landscapes.2 The core was drawn from an urban underclass from the communities of South Auckland, Hastings and Wellington. Their message was simple: Pakeha have colonised our hearts and our minds and have substituted our traditional systems and institutions with ones that Awatere described as exploitative, oppressive, dehumanised and spiritually deficient.3 It was time for the nation to turn the page on an era of greed, irresponsibility and injustice and an era of change was demanded.
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ENDS