676
Green & indigenous News
123 readers
16 users here now
A community for Green & indigenous news!
founded 1 month ago
MODERATORS
678
679
680
682
683
This story was originally published by Northern Journal.
Max Graham
Northern Journal
Even after the Ambler Road got a green light from the Trump administration last year, the contentious state-proposed mining haul route across northern Alaska hasn’t been a sure bet.
For one thing, the 211-mile road still needs substantial financing — to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more than $1 billion.
It also needs approval from two private companies that own some of the land the route would cross: the Indigenous-owned regional corporations for Northwest Alaska and the Interior, known as NANA and Doyon, respectively.
A tense relationship between those businesses and the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, the state agency pushing the road, has been a key challenge for the project.
But an agreement quietly reached between the two corporations and Alaska state agencies signals that those dynamics could be shifting.
NANA and Doyon signed a nonbinding memorandum of understanding with the industrial development agency, known as AIDEA, and a few other stakeholders in early December.
The agreement, which hasn’t been previously reported, reflects “a mutual interest in creating a clear framework for future discussions about how to best advance” the Ambler project, John Lincoln, NANA’s chief executive, said in a statement to Northern Journal.
In recent years, the Native corporations have criticized the state’s approach to the project and restricted access to their lands, with NANA saying that the agencies pushing the road were not adequately consulting with residents along the route.
The new agreement does not reflect a formal change in NANA’s position or a decision to support the road, a NANA executive wrote in a Jan. 16 letter to shareholders obtained by Northern Journal.
But it does appear to mark a milestone in negotiations between the corporations and state officials.
State officials and other signatories would not release a copy to Northern Journal. A public records request with the state agencies involved is still pending.
The agreement includes certain requirements aimed at protecting regional interests if the road advances, including jobs for Indigenous shareholders, strong subsistence protections and limiting future road access to private and industrial use, according to NANA’s shareholder letter.
The road’s boosters say that access would be limited to private and industrial traffic. But some of the project’s critics worry that it could eventually draw urban hunters who would compete with locals for caribou and other harvests.
NANA’s letter to shareholders says the agreement “begins the process” of forming a legal entity that could hold permits, easements and other rights associated with the road project.
The project would stretch across the southern foothills of the Brooks Range, headed west toward mineral deposits away from the existing North Slope oil-field access road, the Dalton Highway.
The proposal has long provoked fierce debate across Northwest Alaska and the state. Supporters say it could create much-needed jobs and stimulate the economy in a rural region where full-time employment is scarce; opponents say it risks disrupting a wild swath of the Arctic, potentially harming caribou, fish and subsistence traditions.
Observers on both sides of the issue have been keenly watching NANA and Doyon’s positions on the project.
Both landowners initially allowed AIDEA to conduct preliminary work on their lands. But they then chose to discontinue permits when they felt like the state’s efforts weren’t sufficiently accounting for local interests.
Last year, state officials intensified efforts to win the corporations’ support. The project also got a huge boost from the Trump administration, which undid Biden-era restrictions and reinstated the project’s federal permits.
The new agreement “does not constitute a final determination about the Ambler Road, its construction, or any commitments from the signatories,” Lincoln, the NANA executive, said in his statement.
Rather, Lincoln added, it “is meant to foster constructive conversation and shared understanding.”
“Everyone involved remains focused on thorough analysis, open communication, and honoring the needs and perspectives of the communities that could be affected,” Lincoln said.
A Doyon spokesperson declined to answer questions about the agreement.
Other signatories include Ambler Metals, a company seeking to develop twin mineral deposits near the end of the proposed road; K’oyitl’ots’ina Ltd., another Indigenous-owned corporation in the region; the U.S. Department of the Interior; and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
The post In new agreement with state, Indigenous landowners soften resistance to Ambler Road appeared first on ICT.
From ICT via This RSS Feed.
685
686
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon at Waitangi. (Photo: Mark Papalii/ RNZ)
At Waitangi this year, the prime minister structured his speech around the three articles of Te Tiriti, and explained what each article says and means.
The problem is that he was just plain wrong, writes legal scholar Carwyn Jones.
When the prime minister, Christopher Luxon, spoke at Waitangi last week, he set out a terribly distorted view of the country’s founding document, Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Here are some of the things he got wrong.
Article 1: Kāwanatanga
Article 1 granted the Crown the authority to establish a government to exercise some authority and regulation over the settler population here in Aotearoa. It did not grant the Crown any authority over Māori. Apart from anything else, that would have been inconsistent with the ongoing Māori authority guaranteed in Article 2.
Nevertheless, the grant of kāwanatanga was a significant concession by Māori. Less than five years earlier, in He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni (the Declaration of Independence of New Zealand, 1835), Māori leaders had made it clear that there was no other legal, political, or constitutional authority in Aotearoa, apart from their own.
So, the prime minister was fundamentally incorrect when he described Article 1 as follows:
“It is the agreement that there is a Sovereign, and one government elected by and responsible for all New Zealanders.”
Māori agreed to no such thing. The Waitangi Tribunal has been explicit on this point:
“Our view is that, on the basis of what they were told, the signatories were led to believe that Hobson would be a rangatira for the Pākehā and they would retain authority within their own autonomous hapū . . .
Our essential conclusion, therefore, is that the rangatira did not cede their sovereignty in February 1840; that is, they did not cede their authority to make and enforce law over their people and within their territories. Rather, they agreed to share power and authority with the Governor.”
For the prime minister to claim that Māori agreed that one government should be responsible for everyone is pure invention.
Article 2: Tino rangatiratanga
The central concept in Article 2 is tino rangatiratanga. This is the fullest expression of independence and self-determination. It is a continuation of the existing Māori authority that had been recognised in He Whakaputanga.
In Article 2, the Crown guarantees that this authority will be maintained in relation to all those things that are highly valued. This is a guarantee of legal, constitutional, and political authority, not merely a protection of property rights.
It is a guarantee made by the Crown to iwi and hapū. It creates obligations on the Crown towards iwi and hapū, not the other way around.
It is, therefore, difficult to understand how the prime minister came to describe Article 2 as:
“The authority of iwi and hapū to fulfil their own obligations as partners to the Treaty . . .
It is a recognition not only of property rights, but of responsibility . . .
It is why iwi and hapū have a significant contribution to make to the protection of our natural environment.”
This is a markedly different meaning from that expressed in the Crown’s own Cabinet Office Circular on Te Tiriti o Waitangi / Treaty of Waitangi Guidance, which states:
“Put simply, by Article Two the Crown promises that Māori will have the right to make decisions over resources and taonga which they wish to retain.”
And “taonga”, we should remember, refers to all those things that are highly valued, not merely to physical property.
Consequently, the rights protected by Article 2 are hardly limited to “making a contribution” to protecting the natural environment, but instead provide real decision-making authority in all areas of public policy that affect Māori.
Article 3: Rights of citizenship
Article 3 is often referred to as the “equality” or “citizenship” provision. It includes aspects of both concepts.
It provides that Māori are entitled to the same rights as the settler population. As with Article 2, this is a guarantee made by the Crown to Māori. It doesn’t say anything about the rights of other New Zealanders.
Yet in his speech, the prime minister said this article refers to “that promise that we are all equal in the eyes of the state.”
Here, he again moved away from the language of the cabinet circular, which states:
“Put simply, by Article Three the Crown promises that its obligations to New Zealand citizens are owed equally to Māori.”
This is not at all the same as “we are all equal in the eyes of the state”. Rather, Article 3 is a promise that Māori would enjoy “all the rights and privileges of British subjects”, in addition to, not instead of, the promise of tino rangatiratanga.
The prime minister went further off track in discussing Article 3 by suggesting that a person’s ethnicity should not be relevant to healthcare decisions, among other examples.
Yet public health experts have shown that delivering effective and efficient healthcare in Aotearoa today must take ethnicity into account.
And the Waitangi Tribunal has explained why Te Tiriti and Māori rights are necessary considerations for achieving equitable health outcomes.
Moving beyond misinformation
The prime minister wrapped up his speech at Waitangi by saying: “Some people will take a different view of the Treaty to me. That’s fine.”
It’s true that people will have different views on the role of Te Tiriti in public life. They may disagree about whether the Crown ought to fulfil the promises it has entered into, and how it ought to do so. That’s fine.
However, none of that changes the text or meaning of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
There are many important matters here that we ought to discuss and debate as a country, but a constructive and mature conversation can’t take place if the discussion is built on misinformation.
Dr Carwyn Jones. (Photo supplied)
Dr Carwyn Jones (Ngāti Kahungunu) is Pūkenga Matua (Lead Academic) of Ahunga Tikanga (Māori Laws and Philosophy) at Te Wānanga o Raukawa, and Honorary Adjunct Professor, Te Kawa a Māui (School of Māori Studies) at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington.
The post What the PM said at Waitangi was wrong appeared first on E-Tangata.
From E-Tangata via This RSS Feed.
687
The 596-bed Waikeria prison, 14 kilometres south of Te Awamutu in Waikato. Expansion plans for a further 800-plus beds are underway as the prison population hits an all-time high.
Our prison population has hit an all-time high and is projected to keep growing faster than expected as a result of coalition government policies on law and order.
Here’s Dr Paula Toko King, a kaupapa Māori health researcher, talking to Connie Buchanan about why that’s a problem, both for community safety and the health of whānau who’ve been in prison.
I started off in paediatrics because I really liked working with tamariki and whānau. But I started to see the same things, day in and day out. Things like the lack of good quality housing for whānau, and subsequent preventable childhood illnesses. And I thought: “There must be a better way than just trying to pick up the pieces.”
So I moved into public health medicine and began to focus on tāngata whenua rights to health. I took the perspective that Māori are born with inherent rights to health and wellbeing — and those rights start with our whakapapa from the universe.
Our Indigenous rights today are articulated in documents like He Whakaputanga and Te Tiriti, and are supported by international conventions like the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. But I felt very strongly that tāngata whenua rights existed already, and those later expressions of rights simply support that.
I ended up working in areas of severe inequity for our people — our tamariki, rangatahi, pākeke, and kaumātua — in state prisons, youth justice, state care, and disability. I use the word tamariki very purposefully in that list too, because the age of criminal responsibility in Aotearoa is 10 years old, so we have children going through the prison system too.
The research I’ve been involved with for the last few years is a kaupapa Māori project called Tiaki. It looks at the impacts of imprisonment on Māori and their whānau. And it considers how to improve wellbeing once those who’ve been in prison are back in the community. What are some of the things that can make life better for them? How can we disrupt the cycles of harm that imprisonment causes?
The reason there’s a need for this work is because the evidence shows over and over again that prisons don’t work. Not in terms of community safety, nor in terms of rehabilitating those who are imprisoned.
Decades of government-commissioned reports and academic research say the same thing. They show that prisons are harmful environments in themselves. They cause more harm and poorer health.
That’s partly because whānau who end up in prison are often already unwell. They have higher rates of mental health issues, addictions, head injuries, and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. They’re also overrepresented in things like vision loss, hearing loss, and mobility issues. And they have a higher rate of chronic conditions like cancer and cardiovascular stroke.
So they’re a group of people who aren’t well and have higher health needs than the general population. And when we looked at the data on people being released, we found that they had three times the death rate of the general population. The incidence of death was highest in the first month after release. There also had high rates of emergency department presentations, and longer stays in hospital, usually in the first week after release.
So the prison environment exacerbates a whole range of existing conditions.
Just one example of why this might be the case is that around a quarter of released prisoners don’t have access to subsidised primary health care. They’re not enrolled with a Primary Health Organisation (PHO). And why are they not enrolled? Because the Ministry of Health and Health New Zealand rules say that people in prison, or on remand, aren’t allowed to be enrolled with a PHO.
There are so many basic problems, but that’s one of them. In general, the attitude from the Ministry of Health and Health New Zealand to people in prison is: “It’s not our problem.” There’s no integration between the prison and health systems. It’s excessively siloed. But health services should be accessible across the system, no matter where you are.
We hear of this same problem with kids in youth justice residences and other state care. It’s a very similar issue.
Why are kids and adults in prison not receiving health and disability services the same as everyone else? It’s really important that their health needs are addressed, especially if we want people to rejoin society and be contributing community members.
As for the idea that prison promotes community safety — they don’t. Because people aren’t actually in prison for that long, as a rule. What happens most often is that people cycle in and out of prison, up to 100 times, in some cases. They get out. But they’ve been harmed in prison and are largely unsupported to become part of the community again, and then they end up back in prison.
That cycle doesn’t make our communities safer. There’s no evidence to say that prisons give us safe communities. But there is plenty of global and national evidence to show that they cause intergenerational harm.
So for the prime minister to say that it’s a “good thing” that our prison population is now headed toward 11,000 is, to me, an extremely uninformed view. If he reads the government reports — and there have been multiple government reports on this over the last four decades — they show quite clearly that prisons cause harm and don’t make communities safer.
I also think he’s forgetting how much money it costs to keep someone in prison. The cost is phenomenal. It’s almost $200,000 per person, per year.
Meanwhile, the government is doing work through its Social Investment Agency to support tamariki of whānau who are in prison, and tamariki of whānau who’ve been in state care, and tamariki who are excluded from schools. And yes, there should absolutely be investment there. But then, why are they piling people in through the prison doors at the same time, at massive expense, and creating more of those harms that they’re trying to fix at the other end?
Why not equitably invest in kaupapa Māori organisations in the communities, which everyone knows have been underfunded for decades, to support people’s health and wellbeing when they come out? The evidence shows that’s an effective way to help prevent them going into prison in the first place.
Yet lots of people in our society are happy to have vast amounts spent on the mass imprisonment of our Indigenous population. It’s an industry. And the industry relies on society thinking that this is the only way.
But it’s just not a fiscally responsible thing to do.
There’s a reason why the prison population is almost 11,000 now. Legislative changes by this government — including bringing back the “three strikes” law and introducing the Gangs Act — have extended criminalisation by creating new categories of crime. And of course, there are the well-documented racialised inequities across our criminal legal system, which have led to our prison population being over 50 percent Māori in men’s prisons, and over 60 percent Māori in women’s prisons.
The Māori figures are likely higher than that because Corrections has been incorrectly recording ethnicity data. They’ve admitted it. The government has protocols that have been around for 20 years on how to record ethnicity data, but the Department of Corrections didn’t use those. They just did their own thing. They used a made-up system where people in prisons self-identify some sort of “preferred ethnicity” which is totally unrelated to what Statistics New Zealand requires. So there are longstanding inaccuracies in the public reporting of Māori numbers in prisons.
During the research we did as part of the Tiaki project, we realised that there would probably be an undercount of Māori as a result, and of other groups too.
And just as we suspected, there was an undercount of Māori by about 6 percent. That equated to about 405 more Māori in prison than the government statistics say. And that has huge implications when you think about all those people and their tamariki and communities. It’s not just individuals.
The prime minister’s view is the privileged bubble view, where it suits one group to make whole populations invisible. And that makes sense when we think about where prisons came from. They were set up by the colonial state to scoop up anyone who they didn’t want to deal with, or needed out of the way, in much the same way as asylums kept mentally unwell people from society’s view.
I don’t think it’s rocket science. We’ve set prisons up from a system that is rotten and racist to the core, and so the proportion of Māori in prison has kept growing over the years. In the 1900s, we were 2 percent of the overall prison population. Then around 21 percent by about 1945, and more than 50 percent by the 1980s.
But if you want a society that prevents harm and promotes wellbeing, and if you’re thinking critically about the evidence, then you start to think that surely there must be an alternative. I would say: Don’t put people in prison in the first place. We can find other ways of dealing with harm.
I think we should really be critiquing the idea that prisons are inevitable. And listening very closely to our whānau who’ve been in prison. They are the experts on their own lives. In our research, we supported those who had experience of prison to be qualitative researchers or kairangahau. They spoke to dozens of whānau who’d been in prison. Those whānau desperately want things to be different for their tamariki, and they shared their stories for that reason. They have the solutions for those who choose to listen.
In the meantime, there are some pretty basic things that should be done to help whānau who are coming in and out of prisons. The state could clean up its act in terms of its own processes and practices, which are excessively slack.
For starters, Corrections could follow government rules and record ethnicity correctly, so we have an accurate picture of who we’re dealing with and what services in the communities might best help them when they’re out. That’s a no-brainer.
Secondly, Health New Zealand could change the PHO rules so that people who’ve been in prison can access subsidised healthcare when they come out.
It could fund kaupapa Māori health organisations equitably — they’ve been underfunded for years and years — so they can better support those who’ve been imprisoned and harmed by the carceral system.
The state should be accountable for what’s happening now. It should acknowledge that as soon as you create more conditions of harm, you’re going to have a lot of people who’ve been harmed coming out the other end.
But we also know the state is not going to provide long-term solutions because that’s like asking a problem to solve itself.
What I and my research colleagues think is worth doing is valuing the perspectives of those who’ve been in prison. They understand their own challenges better than anyone else. Our whānau have such insight into the solutions that would help their own wellbeing. If there’s something this research has given me, it’s faith that we can rebuild our own world. Trauma isn’t the only thing that can be carried down generations — we can create intergenerational wellbeing and vitality, too.
I’m reminded of something Matua Moana Jackson would say, though I’m paraphrasing. He’d say: Colonisation is a blip. We’ve been around for thousands of years. We have our own tikanga, our own ways of being Māori. And yes, that’s been disrupted, but it isn’t forever.
So I’ll carry on doing this work in the belief that we can collectively rebuild the world that our mokopuna deserve to inherit.
As told to Connie Buchanan
Dr Paula Toko King (Te Aupōuri, Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Whātua, Waikato Tainui, Ngāti Maniapoto) is a Public Health Medicine Specialist and Research Associate Professor at Te Rōpū Rangahau Hauora a Eru Pōmare (University of Otago, Wellington) and the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, Australia. Her research focuses on upholding tāngata whenua rights to health and wellbeing and the impact of racism, ableism and disablism, state care, youth justice residences and prisons on Māori health and health equity.
The post Our prisons cause more harm appeared first on E-Tangata.
From E-Tangata via This RSS Feed.
688
The New Zealand delegation at the UN in 2010, when New Zealand endorsed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2010. (Photo: Broddi Sigurdarson/UNPFII.)
US President Donald Trump’s threats to colonise Greenland may be countered by Indigenous conceptions of diplomacy, writes Professor Dominic O’Sullivan.
Nanaia Mahuta’s first speech as New Zealand’s first female Māori Foreign Minister gave the international rules-based order a distinctively Māori interpretation. That interpretation remains especially valuable today, as a breaking down of rules, rights, and basic human decency characterises Donald Trump’s foreign policy.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Trump’s recent threats to make Greenland the subject of a new round of colonialism, just as the local Inuit peoples’ colonial relationship with Denmark appears to be coming to an end.
The rules-based order provides no guarantees, but it does at least give non-colonial aspirations a fair chance.
Greenland’s view of Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty goes beyond independent statehood. It relies on international co-operation to advance cultural, economic, and social interests. There is clear alignment with the foreign policy based on Māori values that Mahuta developed.
Comparing these ideas from Indigenous peoples at opposite ends of the world offers a more promising way of thinking about stability, peace, and prosperity.
Inuit people mainly settled Greenland around the 12th century, and their three linguistic and cultural groups account for 90 percent of the population.
Greenland is not a member of the European Union, but it is a member of NATO, whose insistence on rules-based diplomacy over the last few weeks has thwarted Trump’s imperial ambitions. That’s left military invasion as his only obvious path, which he has so far rejected in the face of international pressure.
In 1946, Denmark refused an offer from the United States to purchase Greenland for $100 million in gold, and Trump also tried to buy the territory during his first term in 2019. But Inuit are still not “for sale”.
Māori foreign policy and a doctrine of Indigenous diplomacy
New Zealand, like much of the liberal democratic world, is presently more inclined to timid and sometimes even sycophantic deference to Trump.
While there are economic and security reasons for this, there are also conceptions of fairness and justice — tika and pono — that should influence how a small nation like ours presents itself to the world and contributes to the international order.
As Mahuta put it, these values include:
Manaaki — kindness or the reciprocity of goodwill.
Whanaungatanga — our connectedness or shared sense of humanity.
Mahi tahi and kotahitanga — collective benefits and shared aspiration.
Kaitiakitanga – protection and stewardship of our intergenerational wellbeing.
These values make a significant contribution to an evolving international doctrine of Indigenous diplomacy, which is most comprehensively expressed in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Greenland, a strong advocate for the declaration, is implementing it with Danish support. Denmark was one of the 143 UN member states that voted to adopt the declaration in 2007. New Zealand, along with Australia, Canada and the US, voted against it, and 11 countries abstained.
In 2010, John Key’s government reversed New Zealand’s opposition, saying the declaration was an aspirational instrument. But under the 2023 coalition agreement with the National Party, New Zealand First insisted that the government stop work on implementation.
Nevertheless, the declaration provides an international relations framework to which Mahuta clearly wanted New Zealand to make a distinctive contribution. It remains of potentially great value to a world struggling to uphold basic humanity.
The declaration is part of the rules‑based order. It says that the rules of self‑determination — and the stability, security, and certainty these can bring — belong to Indigenous peoples as much as anyone else.
The declaration accepts that states have the right to govern. However, Denmark’s colonial authority over Greenland and its people is constrained by the territory’s powers of self-government. Over time, these powers have become more significant, and independent statehood is now a realistic ambition.
Elsewhere in the world — just as Te Tiriti’s rights of rangatiratanga and citizenship, grounded in equal tikanga, constrain the rights of kāwanatanga (government) — the declaration makes the rights of government conditional. Governments must respect Indigenous self-determination, culture, and equal participation in public decision-making.
State sovereignty is not, then, an absolute power over Indigenous nations. They have the right to maintain and strengthen “distinct political, legal, economic, social and cultural institutions”, as Article 5 of the declaration sets out.
These rights respond to an Indigenous claim to political space. Using their own cultural frameworks — not only in their relationships with the states that govern their territories, but also in their relationships with other states and with Indigenous political communities elsewhere — Indigenous peoples have a right to be present, and to contribute meaningfully, wherever public decisions are made.
As Mahuta said: “Underpinning all of our efforts are relationships, relationships, relationships — he tangata te mea nui. These are the building blocks for our international connections.”
Relationships underpin opportunities for people, not just nation states, to have a meaningful political voice. For Greenland, the most effective guard against US imperialism is its relationships with Denmark and its NATO allies, supported by the principle “Nothing about us without us”, the essential and founding presumption of its foreign, security and defence policy for 2024-2033.
The policy emphasises Greenlandic influence on international policies of decolonisation, self-determination and human rights. It refers to Greenland’s advocacy for the declaration and, more broadly, its promotion of substantive Indigenous participation in international forums, such as the Inuit Circumpolar Council, which it sees as an important site of extra-territorial sovereignty and diplomatic voice.
Sustainable development goals
Nanaia Mahuta also saw the UN Sustainable Development Goals as “a strong platform to initiate action that will create long-lasting impact” for Indigenous peoples.
In truth, however, the goals mention Indigenous peoples only twice — once, as peoples whose subsistence farming rights should be respected, and once as peoples whose vulnerability requires that they receive the state education system’s special attention. The goals don’t mention Indigenous self-determination, rights to culture, or rights to meaningful influence in public life.
However, when the declaration is used to critique the UN development goals and is treated as an instrument of international diplomacy, important possibilities arise from otherwise general statements about justice, peace, and the goals’ ultimate objective of “leaving no one behind”.
For example, Goal 16 asks what a just institution looks like and how institutions must work so that no one is left behind. It means that, at home and in international forums, Māori and Inuit people should be able to provide influential answers to questions such as: What does a just school, hospital or parliament look like? What does a just foreign policy look like, and how does it reflect our values and serve our interests as much as anybody else’s?
Contesting imperial claims
Indigenous diplomacy allows Indigenous peoples to set their own terms of engagement with the wider world. Not simply by responding to aggressive imperial claims from the White House, which has defended its position by saying: “We live in a world, in the real world . . . that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power . . . These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
The alternative rules-based order could be crafted to open political spaces for substantive participation by Indigenous peoples as peoples of inherent agency. They could participate as shareholders in public authority, not as stakeholders to be consulted in someone else’s project.
A just, rules-based order could use the declaration as a guiding influence on world politics, where Indigenous peoples aren’t merely objects of financial transactions between states, or subjects of international law, but peoples of agency with a substantive presence in the definition and application of international law.
The declaration and the broad claims of indigeneity it expresses also mean that states can’t be the only sites of political authority. Sovereignty only works as a descriptor of political authority if it is defined more broadly. If it’s defined as only the power of the state, then it misses other spaces of authority where important decisions are made, or should be made — iwi and hapū, for example, and Indigenous assemblies or parliaments in other parts of the world. The concept of rangatiratanga within these contexts is also useful simply because a rangatira is the person who “weaves people together”.
Weaving people together is a more ambitious form of relational authority than a world governed by force. It’s worth pursuing for its contribution to the security of all peoples, not just some.
Greenland’s sole protection lies in adherence to a rules-based order.
Dominic O’Sullivan (Te Rarawa and Ngāti Kahu) is a professor of political science at Charles Sturt University, adjunct professor at the Auckland University of Technology and Victoria University of Wellington. Dominic is the author of nine books, including Te Tiriti, Equality and the Future of New Zealand Democracy, which Auckland University Press will publish in June 2026.
The post An Indigenous diplomacy is possible appeared first on E-Tangata.
From E-Tangata via This RSS Feed.
689
“Equity in healthcare doesn’t mean treating everyone the same,” writes Brandi Hudson from Te Tiratū iwi Māori Partnership Board.
A change to prescription time-frames isn’t a win for all whānau, writes Brandi Hudson.
I understand why some people welcomed the policy change extending the prescribing period to 12 months. It means fewer repeat appointments. Less admin. Less cost. More convenience.
But where I work, at Te Tiratū Iwi Māori Partnership Board, we’re deeply concerned.
Without strong equity and safety safeguards, this change risks widening Māori health inequities, increasing under-care, delaying diagnosis, and causing medication-related harm.
The policy itself sounds tidy. Prescribers can issue prescriptions for up to 12 months for some medicines, while dispensing at the pharmacy still occurs in maximum three-monthly periods. Controlled drugs are excluded. It’s framed as a way to reduce unnecessary appointments and ease pressure on the system.
The trouble is, medicines sit inside real lives. And for many whānau, those lives include multiple conditions, inconsistent access to care, and long gaps between clinical reviews.
It’s easy to imagine a “stable patient” who takes one medicine and has no complications as the basis for policy change. But many of our whānau are managing complex comorbidities, such as diabetes alongside asthma, cardiovascular disease alongside kidney issues, chronic pain alongside depression, and respiratory illness alongside poverty-related stress. Even the presence of two conditions can create risks, interactions, and side effects that need regular review.
For those whānau, prescribing is not just a matter of being told: “Here’s your tablets for the year.” The prescription is part of a care plan that should include monitoring, blood tests, screening, follow-up, and the chance to adjust treatment before harm occurs.
That’s why Te Tiratū supports reducing barriers, but we can’t support a change that reduces the number of touchpoints without putting in place safeguards to protect those who are already missing out.
Māori face significant barriers to accessing medicines. Despite higher rates of chronic conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and respiratory illness, Māori are overall less likely than non-Māori to access dispensed medicines. In some cases, prescriptions aren’t collected at all because cost, transport, and system barriers make it too difficult.
Extending the length of a prescription doesn’t automatically fix those issues. In some cases, it could even mask them. On paper, a person might look “covered” for 12 months. In reality, they might still be missing doses, skipping follow-ups, not getting blood tests done, or deteriorating quietly until they end up in hospital.
There’s another risk we need to talk about honestly, and that’s the assumption of “clinical stability”.
Who will get labelled stable enough for a 12-month prescription? And who won’t?
In a health system where bias can shape decision-making, sometimes unconsciously, our whānau may be less likely to receive careful follow-up, or more likely to be deemed “fine” without the monitoring that should come with long-term medicines.
Māori don’t experience ill-health in isolation. We live with higher rates of the country’s top five killers — cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stroke and respiratory illness — often all at once. These conditions don’t arrive one by one. They stack, interact, and compound over time.
Add to this the realities many whānau face, such as not always having enough kai, stable housing, or financial security. These are not side issues — they directly affect whether medicines are taken as prescribed, whether follow-up appointments are kept, and whether pain or deterioration is noticed early.
For many of our whānau, poor oral health and chronic foot problems are not minor inconveniences. They affect mobility, sleep, ability to work, and self-esteem. Pain becomes normal. Limited mobility becomes normal. Struggling through becomes normal.
And when complexity becomes normal in a health system under strain, it can quietly slip through the cracks.
Instead of prompting closer monitoring, long-term medicines and complex conditions can be treated as “baseline”. Symptoms are more likely to be interpreted as expected rather than concerning. Whānau may be assessed as “stable” or “fine” not because they’re well, but because their level of unwellness has been unconsciously normalised.
This is how bias can operate without intention. Not through overt neglect, but through lowered expectations of recovery, stability, and follow-up.
Equity in healthcare doesn’t mean treating everyone the same. It means recognising when people are carrying more medical, social, and economic burdens, and responding with more care, not less.
Dr Leanne Te Karu, our expert advisor, has warned that reducing prescribing touchpoints can reduce opportunities to detect deterioration, review side effects, adjust treatment, or optimise medicines. And while community pharmacists are essential, they can’t replace comprehensive clinical review and diagnostic reassessment.
That’s why the solution isn’t simply to provide longer prescriptions. The solution is to build stronger systems around them.
We need national guidance on who isn’t clinically-appropriate to receive a 12-month prescription, and we need equity-focused monitoring that shows what is happening for Māori, not just what is happening on average across the whole population.
We need transparent reporting of adverse events, hospitalisations, medication changes, and wastage. We need Māori-led evaluation of safety, trust, communication and cultural safety.
Most importantly, we need to stop treating medicines as isolated clinical decisions and start treating them as part of a Treaty-aligned system of care.
Te Tiriti obligations of partnership, equity and active protection aren’t optional extras. Partnership means Māori are involved in designing and governing the processes that provide access to medicines, not merely consulted after decisions are made.
Equity means Māori achieve the same access to subsidised medicines and support services as everyone else, with real-world barriers like transport and culturally appropriate information addressed directly. Active protection means outcomes for Māori are monitored, and the policy is adjusted quickly if harm is emerging.
There is a better way forward. Māori pharmacy experts like Dr Te Karu have long advocated for a Te Tiriti-aligned strategy, grounded in Pae Ora and mātauranga Māori, to bring all the right expertise into the room and design medicines pathways that reflect whānau realities, not just administrative convenience.
A 12-month prescription might reduce hassle. But it won’t keep you well if the system stops checking in.
If we want this change to succeed for whānau, we have to measure success by whether Māori are safer, healthier, and better supported — not whether the paperwork got lighter.
Brandi Hudson (Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Rarua, Ngāti Pikiao) is the tumu whakarae (chief executive) of Te Tiratū Iwi Māori Partnership Board, providing strategic leadership across the Waikato rohe to strengthen Māori influence in health system design, planning and service delivery.
She has held senior roles across community, government and not-for-profit sectors, including inaugural CEO of the Independent Māori Statutory Board in Auckland.
The post Lighter paperwork, or better care? appeared first on E-Tangata.
From E-Tangata via This RSS Feed.
690
Kim Workman as a young policeman in the late 1950s. (Photo supplied)
Tā Kim Workman spent 67 years working in the police and criminal justice system. Over that time, he says, too little has changed in approaches to criminality and social harm. In fact, he says many of the attitudes and ideas that were prevalent when he joined the police force in 1958 remain entrenched today.
Here he is, reflecting on a lifetime of trying to shift how we think about crime and punishment.
In 1957, I was of serious concern to my parents and the local police officer. I’d sat School Certificate twice, and got lower marks the second year than the first. I’d also acquired a liking for alcohol, got hooked on jazz, and was headed for a life of dissolution.
Without my knowledge, they applied on my behalf to be accepted as a police cadet. The application was initially declined, but when a successful applicant failed to turn up, I was recruited as a substitute, arriving 10 days late at the police training school.
I graduated in September 1959, knowing what was expected of me. My job was to fight crime. The most obvious measure of that was a high arrest and conviction rate.
A “lock ‘em up” culture was pervasive. Police sergeants ramped up constables to make arrests, and we competed with each other to see how many we could make over an eight-hour shift. Cars of young people would be routinely stopped — and pedestrians, too. Stopped, questioned and searched. Any protest or resistance led to trumped-up charges: obstructing the police, obscene language, or resisting arrest.
At that time, the urban face of Aotearoa was changing fast. We were seeing the most rapid urbanisation of an Indigenous population anywhere in the world. In 1945, just 26 percent of Māori lived in urban areas, but by 1966, that had increased to 62 percent.
If hassling young people on the street was standard practice, then it was increasingly aimed at young Māori. New to the urban environment, they were more likely to be stopped than Pākehā.
In the space of just four years — between 1954 and 1958 — reported Māori youth offending rose by 50 percent. This increase was not related to how Māori behaved in this strange urban world, but how they were viewed by non-Māori. Māori urban migrants were perceived and treated as a potentially dangerous underclass.
Being a Māori in the police was equally challenging. In 1958, there were 2,600 sworn police officers, and only 26 of us were Māori.
I started to take Pākehā colleagues home to events at our marae. The hospitality, abundance of food, and absence of alcohol were not what they expected. Our elders fussed over them constantly, and my female cousins, ever on the lookout for suitable husbands, sometimes made their stay rather special.
Systemic bias in the police, however, was ingrained. In that same year, Commissioner Les Spencer publicly declared that Chinese, “Hindus” (Indians) and Pacific Islanders were unsuited to policing and would not be recruited. Apart from Māori, in his opinion, policing should only be done by the “white races”.
Three years later, the 1961 Hunn Report confirmed that Māori were more likely than non-Māori to be imprisoned, sent to borstal, or placed on probation. They were less likely to have their court cases dismissed and more likely to be committed to the Supreme Court for trial. Most Māori came to court with no idea how to plead or defend themselves. About 80 percent of Māori were represented by counsel, compared to 60 percent of Europeans, and so most Māori, up to 85 percent, would end up entering a guilty plea.
The Walter Nash Cadet Wing graduation in 1958. (Photo supplied)
A punitive society
Aotearoa was a punitive society. In 1954, the Department of Justice noted that, per head of population, we had 50 percent more people in our prisons than they did in England and Wales.
Punitive attitudes toward young offenders dominated. The pervading idea was that a good boot up the bum, a good thrashing, or military training would solve everything.
In 1961, corrective detention was introduced. Young offenders aged 16 to 21 were sentenced to detention centres for a three-month boot camp experience, intended as a short, sharp shock to straighten them out.
About 60 per cent of those who went through the detention centres were reconvicted within one year, and 70 per cent within three years.
The next iteration of corrective “training” that replaced the boot camps in 1981 was no better. A 1983 Department of Justice study found that 71 percent of corrective trainees were reconvicted within a year of release. Nonetheless, that sentence was not abolished until 2002. Then boot camps were reintroduced eight years later.
In 1972, as a police youth aid officer, I began visiting Kohitere in Levin, which was an institution for boys aged 14 to 15. There were 110 boys in residence there.
On my first visit, the impact of what we were doing to our young people hit me. I was met with a sea of brown faces — of the 110 boys in the institution, 90 percent were Māori.
The place was a hellhole. Research since has confirmed that these children and young people endured physical, sexual and psychological violence, as well as secure cells, knock-out sedatives, and electro-convulsive therapy.
My first response to going inside Kohitere was one of anger. Anger and disbelief.
Anger that the state could allow such conditions — conditions so inhumane they were almost guaranteed to turn vulnerable children and youth into scarred, distrusting, and sometimes dangerous adults. Anger that senior public servants and policy advisers could have allowed these conditions to continue for so long, knowing that they were parties to the creation of criminals. Anger that no one understood that the offenders of today were almost always the victims of yesterday. But the moment they were old enough to be held accountable for a criminal act, their history of victimisation and neglect became of no account.
It was almost as though the state, having neglected the welfare and needs of children in its care in the first 12 years of their life, was able — once the child inevitably progressed to committing a criminal act — to breathe a collective sigh of relief, reclassify the child as a young offender, and quickly transfer any accountability away from themselves. Instead, the problem with youth offending was framed as one of personal responsibility, which belonged to the individual.
Those visits to Kohitere were a career-defining moment. Until then, I had believed that the attitudes to Māori in the police force were mostly attributable to personal racism or ignorance. But now I realised that systemic bias existed across the criminal justice system.
The lack of Māori and Pacific police officers and social workers, the lack of networks with Indigenous communities, the resistance to anything other than Pākehā values and beliefs, all added up to deep bias across the system. Research has since established that in 1972, 9 percent of all Māori males aged between 17 and 19 years spent time in prison.
Forty-seven years later, in October 2019, I gave evidence at a public hearing of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. When I walked into the anteroom, I was greeted and hugged by two survivors. I had met both of them at Kohitere in 1972, and then again 18 years later, when I was the head of prisons. I stayed to hear their evidence, and my thoughts lingered on how their lives might have turned out had we done things differently.
From 1996 onwards, the police proactively developed a strategy to increase responsiveness to Māori. But the outcomes for Māori have not greatly changed.
It is time to face an inconvenient truth: improved Māori-police relationships and culturally appropriate programmes and services (in whatever guise) may make a positive contribution to the police culture, but they do not, on their own, address the underlying presence of racism and systemic bias.
Kohitere Boy’s Training Centre in Levin was one of the main institutions subject to complaints about abuse in state care. Photo: RNZ / Aaron Smale
Prisons
In 1989, I was appointed Assistant Secretary, Penal Institutions, in the Department of Justice. The facilities in many institutions were run-down, inadequate or non-existent, and too little was done to provide prisoners with constructive activity.
A ministerial report, Te Ara Hou (The New Way), came out shortly after my appointment. It found that the traditional prison system was largely failing to rehabilitate or deter offenders, because of an “irreconcilable conflict” between the two fundamental objectives of prison: secure containment and reform.
The report recommended establishing separate Habilitation Centres to focus on rehabilitation. The Department of Justice was not in favour, and the idea was eventually abandoned.
While I was in that job, we came up with an alternative, which we called He Ara Hou (A New Way). We engaged prisoners in constructive activity — things like literacy and numeracy, educational advancement, employment skills, cultural activities, and programmes addressing criminogenic needs.
We took advantage of the existing prison structure, which mostly comprised 60-bed units. We decided that each unit would be expected to function as a whānau, with the unit manager directly responsible for a budget to cover gardening, arts, music, carving, creative writing, and so on.
Most units had their own kitchen, and the prisoners prepared meals under supervision. Some units were allocated a weekly food budget. In the initial stages, it was a challenge. One unit manager ran out of money, with three days still left in the week. He was sent a booklet on the virtues of fasting. Prisoners were also expected to help organise sporting events, and held whānau days where families gathered to take part in social activities.
As confidence grew, staff introduced initiatives of their own. Prisoner councils were formed, and some prison units were desegregated. Outside volunteers became part of the prison community.
Prisoners had traditionally been regarded as a liability within prisons, rather than as a potential asset. He Ara Hou challenged that thinking, engaging prisoners in the formation of policy and processes at a local and national level.
Overall, the staff response was predictable. About 5 to 10 percent were actively opposed, about 15 percent were enthusiastic and provided critical leadership in embracing “a new way”, and the rest were passively accepting.
Then, in 1993, an incident occurred at the newly-established Mangaroa Prison. A prisoner stabbed an officer with a chisel. Three other prisoners saw him do it and failed to alert the prison staff. The offender was transferred to another prison to ensure his safety. The witnesses, however, who were all Mongrel Mob members, remained at Mangaroa.
I contacted the prison, concerned, and was assured they would be safe. But over the next few days, I became increasingly worried. Four days later, I instructed a prison inspector to visit the prison. He phoned with bad news. The prisoners who’d witnessed the attack had been held for three days naked in an outside exercise yard and repeatedly beaten by prison officers. Their injuries included extensive bruising, and one had a fractured skull.
Now I had a problem. Mongrel Mob members did not make statements to the police. Instead, they waited for an opportunity to exact retribution. Nor was I convinced that the local police would do a thorough investigation.
I decided on a different approach. I contacted a former Mob leader who retained significant mana in the gang. He visited the prisoners and persuaded them to make statements. With the consent of the Secretary of Justice, I also hired a private investigator to conduct an inquiry. Nineteen prison officers were initially suspended, and 12 were eventually dismissed.
When the dismissals became news, I expected support from my colleagues. I was mistaken. The phone didn’t ring, and my normally busy office was bereft of visitors. I was on the outer. In Parliament, two opposition MPs called for my resignation.
That evening, the phone rang. It was a Mongrel Mob leader. We talked for some time, and he thanked me for drawing a line in the sand. His words had a considerable impact. This was the first support I’d received for my actions, and it meant a great deal.
I resigned from the Prison Service at the end of 1993. There were three key performance indicators for those in my position at the time: prison escape rates, suicide rates, and the incidence of violence. The rate of prison escapes declined steadily between 1989 and 1993. By 1993, the suicide rate had dropped to 0.01 percent, one suicide, compared to 0.16 percent, or eight suicides, in 1989.
In 1992, there was a total of 40 assaults by prisoners on staff, most of which were minor and didn’t involve injury. The number of prisoners completing educational coursework had increased by a third.
Since then, the literature has confirmed that prison social climate has an influence on prisoner wellbeing and behaviour, and correlates with incidents of violence and disorder within prison. A more positive social climate is associated with lower behavioural disturbance, higher levels of motivation, more positive therapeutic relationships, lower rates of violence, and more positive treatment outcomes.
But in 1994, after my resignation, the department abandoned He Ara Hou and established a strict regime emphasising security and control. There was a dramatic reduction in escapes, but suicides increased from one in 1993 to 10 in 1994.
I found the whole experience both uplifting and debilitating. Before my resignation, I’d been diagnosed with severe clinical depression. Recovery took three years. I emerged more or less intact, and with two major insights.
The first was to abandon ambition. When you’re overly ambitious, you tend not to speak the truth. You say what you think people want to hear.
The second was to rejoice in failure. If your ideas have any value, others will eventually carry them forward.
The impact of neoliberalism
In 1995, the Department of Corrections was established, and its chief executive, Mark Byers, ushered in a drive to increase efficiency by minimising cost and maximising security. Corrections were looking for competent service providers that could meet the demands of the market economy.
In 2003, when I was National Director of Prison Fellowship, the department accepted a proposal to establish a faith-based prison unit at Rimutaka Prison.
While there was very little research available at the time about the effectiveness of faith-based units, later research confirmed my suspicion that the connection between involvement in conventional religious activity and offending was not that well supported empirically.
A stronger influence on subsequent behaviour is the social attachments that people form within a church and similar social structures. In other words, individuals with strong pro-social attachments are less likely to commit crime.
So, within the construct of a faith-based unit, I felt there was an opportunity to try out new ideas.
There was no problem identifying suitable volunteers to teach the literacy, numeracy, budgeting and other skills prisoners needed to survive on release. There was a strong emphasis on creative and recreational activity — arts, carving, music, and creative writing.
The 60 prisoners were divided into four groups of 15 prisoners each, known as Living Unit Groups (LUGs). Each LUG gathered for study and met four nights a week with a facilitator to discuss their day and issues of a personal nature.
The group served as a surrogate whānau where members could experience love, concern, trust and commitment — things they might not have known in their biological families. They learned to accept responsibility for their choices and actions, and to support those who were going through difficult times. Potential troublemakers were usually outed by other prisoners, and there was positive peer pressure to behave in accordance with the unit’s values.
There were three defining differences in our approach. We flooded the unit with volunteers. We emphasised the importance of “giving back” — prisoners who were eligible for work release were formed into work groups and went into the community daily. They chopped firewood, mowed lawns, and painted buildings. Finally, restorative justice was not considered an “intervention” but a way of life.
On one occasion, food brought into the prison by volunteers for an event went missing. Enquiries revealed that two prison officers were responsible. When confronted, the officers owned up and were asked to replace what they’d taken. They came back with food for the event, and all was forgiven.
The changing criminal justice system
The restructuring of the public sector in the 1980s and ‘90s facilitated a more conservative political regime. There had been growing public opposition to policies that appeared to benefit the “undeserving poor”, increased cynicism about welfare, and growing support for more aggressive controls over an underclass perceived to be disorderly, drug-prone, violent and dangerous.
Politically, there was more emphasis on responding to this public clamour than relying on the expertise of criminal justice professionals and empirical research.
Crime wasn’t viewed as an indicator of deprivation and need — it signalled ill-discipline and inadequate controls.
From the 1990s, New Zealand and similar western nations experienced a steady decline in the crime rate. Despite that, the imprisonment rate continued to rise. Between 2004 and 2005 alone, the prison muster grew by 10 percent. The prison system was in trouble.
Kim Workman on the job. (Photo supplied)
Public criminology
In 2006, I was part of a group that ran a conference called Beyond Retribution, aimed at giving prison volunteers and the public a broader understanding of criminal and social justice issues.
We debated current criminal justice policy and its effectiveness in reducing the prison population, explored alternatives to existing practices and policies, and identified ways of meeting the needs of victims and their families. We invited parliamentarians, judges, gang members, ex-prisoners, academics, crime victims, and prison volunteers.
Regardless of political or ideological persuasion, all 180 people who came seemed to be of one mind: Reform of the criminal justice and penal system was necessary. There was a healthy scepticism about the value of imprisonment, and an acceptance that the nation needed alternatives. We offered a stellar line-up of presenters, and by the end of the first day, the venue was humming with animated discussion.
But at the time, there was very little well-informed wider public debate. The news media was dominated by the Sensible Sentencing Trust and its “tough on crime” agenda. Criminologists and criminal justice experts were notable by their absence. We needed to do more.
In 2007, with the support of Prison Fellowship, we agreed to launch a project called Rethinking Crime and Punishment. It was conceived as an independent policy think-tank on justice and social harm issues. I resigned from Prison Fellowship shortly afterwards, to focus on this new challenge.
I set about trying to understand how attitudes toward crime and punishment were formed, and whether it was possible to change them. It seemed to boil down to three things.
The starting point was moral intuition, the spontaneous perceptions that all humans have about other people and the things they do. Moral intuitions arise long before moral reasoning has a chance to get started, and these intuitions tend to drive out later reasoning.
Second, we accept information that confirms our identity and values, and reject ideas that conflict with those.
And third, our values are shaped by our social environment. When politics change what is considered normal and acceptable, our values change along with our circumstances.
There was a time in New Zealand history, for example, when we believed that anyone who needed health treatment should receive it without payment, that tertiary education should be free, that it was normal to care for those who were less fortunate than ourselves, and wrong and abnormal to neglect them.
Such values have steadily changed. More people believe that the state has less responsibility to support the poor and weak, especially if they’re seen as being primarily responsible for their own situation.
Privatisation, a focus on the market economy, a belief in austerity for the poor, and acceptance of inequality all served to shift the common values baseline and generate a culture of insecurity and uncertainty.
The Rethinking project aimed to provide the public with better information about crime and justice issues, promote evidence-based policies, rebut policies or draft legislation that were unsupported by research, encourage criminologists, academics, and criminal justice professionals to actively engage in public conversations, and provide a “replacement discourse” — an alternative discussion that focuses on relevant goals such as securing community safety.
We began a weekly blog, held regular public panel discussions, and issued media releases. We appeared before select committees whenever relevant legislation was introduced. We presented evidence to demonstrate what the unintended consequences might be and proposed alternative approaches.
By 2010, we had made very little impact, and I wondered whether we should continue. I shared that view with a senior member of the judiciary. Within a week, I received a number of phone calls and emails from people of significance, urging us to persist.
I was pleased that we did. In 2011, the deputy prime minister, Bill English, publicly referred to prisons as a “moral and fiscal failure”. As the Otago Daily Times reported:
“Opening a Families Commissions 50 Key Thinkers forum on May 11, Mr English referred to prisons as a ‘moral and fiscal failure’. In so doing he burst the hot-air cloud of rhetoric and emotion that so often envelops discussions of crime and punishment in this country — and which runs contrary to what much evidence and research reveals about it.”
That same year, I realised that most of the people actively engaged in justice reform were 40-plus years old. We decided to call a meeting of young people, expecting 10 to 15 people to attend. Instead, 44 turned up — law and criminology students, community workers and young public servants, all of different ethnicities. Their enthusiasm was palpable. Within two weeks, they had formed a committee, appointed co-chairpersons, and named themselves JustSpeak.
They held monthly forums regularly attracting audiences of over 200. In 2012, they made submissions to select committees on 10 pieces of legislation, and produced two significant publications, one on Māori and the criminal justice system, and another on reducing the prison population. Over the next six years, more than 200 young people became involved. MPs attended, listened, and took part in panel discussions. One steadfast supporter was a young politician by the name of Jacinda Ardern.
JustSpeak has been through some difficult times, but it has stayed the course. In the last two months, it held a function at Parliament Buildings, launching the Aotearoa chapter of Global Freedom Scholars Aotearoa, a transnational network advocating for an increase in support for prisoners to access higher education. It also released a report that explored the sentencing of wāhine Māori in the criminal courts.
JustSpeak was not a sub-committee of Rethinking Crime and Punishment — it was a social movement. We had been gifted with a bunch of young warriors who were able to do all the things that were beyond me, and more. They were articulate, feisty, and respectful. They understood how to advocate and write solid policy.
Meanwhile, I found increasing satisfaction in writing, and in 2014, I moved away from advocacy to reading, writing, study and reflection.
Kim with members of JustSpeak in 2017. (Photo supplied)
There was one issue, however, that continued to niggle: the treatment of Māori in the criminal justice system.
In 2019, the public became concerned at the behaviour of the Police Armed Response Teams that had been set up to attend armed incidents following the mosque killings in Christchurch. They were out of control, wearing paramilitary regalia, armed to the hilt, and randomly stopping and terrifying youth and children, mostly Māori. In March 2020, together with Julia Whaipooti from JustSpeak, we lodged a claim about this behaviour with the Waitangi Tribunal.
On the same day, I visited the incoming police commissioner, Andrew Coster, to explain what we had done and why. I persuaded him to appear with me on national TV, where we discussed the concept of “policing by consent”. That was the start of a continuing conversation with the commissioner about the problematic police relationship with Māori and Pasifika communities. The Armed Response Teams were subsequently abandoned, and our conversations continued.
Within the next few months, the Black Lives Matter movement and the George Floyd killing contributed to an international crisis of confidence in policing.
In late 2020, Commissioner Coster decided to establish a three-year research project, “Understanding Policing Delivery”, to look into fairness and equity within the police. I was invited to chair an independent panel to oversee and monitor the project. I accepted the position, and together we selected a panel of 15 members.
We did research with the police, not just about them. The police established an Operational Advisory Group of 30 frontline officers from across Aotearoa. Panel members met regularly with the frontline police, whose perspective was critical to the research. Within two hours of our first meeting, police officers themselves identified situations where bias existed.
By the end of 2024, we had published three major reports and 10 case studies, which demonstrated systemic bias across the police in a range of areas, including data collection, police training, de-escalation, who “deserves” fair and equitable treatment, and disability awareness. We also identified exampes of police innovation and positive policing. The research covered Māori, Pacific, Rainbow and disabled communities.
The research has been described as world-leading. For me, it has been the highlight of a very long career. Its completion was a sign that I could now, at the age of 85, safely retire.
The research is now in the hands of the police executive, and its key recommendations wait to be actioned. We may not get what we want, but that in no way detracts from its mana.
This is not an inert piece of academic work, headed for antiquity. Its truth speaks out now, and will continue to speak out for generations to come. It may gain more initial prominence internationally than it does domestically, but I believe eventually its truth will speak to the nation.
Kim Workman, after his investiture as KNZM for services to prisoner welfare and the justice sector, with the governor-general Dame Patsy Reddy on 30 April 2019.
We must keep trying to point the way
When it comes to crime and punishment, the tendency of public commentators has been to argue against the current political positioning, rather than promote viable alternatives.
That, I think, is where criminologists must come into their own. Are we doing enough to understand the changing economic, social and cultural conditions that affect how crime is publicly understood and acted on in our society?
I don’t think we are. If criminology isn’t prepared to work harder to sit at the table, it’s going to end up on the menu.
Recently, writer and social activist Denis O’Reilly commented on the state of the criminal justice system in Aotearoa:
“. . . our prison population has soared to 11,000 inmates. The muster is disproportionately Māori (53.4 percent) and trending upward. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has declared the increase in the prison muster to be a ‘good thing’, characterising it as the price of ‘restoring law and order.’”
Members of parliament were saying the same thing 64 years ago. It was not true then, and it is not true now.
Higher prison populations do not reduce crime. A few weeks ago, the US Sentencing Project released a new study showing the opposite. It noted:
“States that reduced their incarceration rate witnessed greater declines in crime rates. From 1999-2023, New York cut its prison population by over 50% — and during that same period, violent crime dropped by 34%, outpacing the national decline of 28%.”
We still have a police and political culture that is more comfortable focusing on individual wrongdoers or procedural failings than on systemic bias. Yet the Auckland University of Technology recently released a report showing that Māori faced harsher sentences than Pākehā for similar drink-driving offences — with lasting consequences. It reminded us that when all other factors are held constant, Māori are still 11 percent more likely to be prosecuted than Pākehā.
So, we need to continue to speak truth to power.
The price of having a vision, and the determination to pursue that vision, includes humiliation, loneliness, and abuse. The reward is that if you persist for long enough, you have the potential to transform the way we think about justice.
We may never see a justice system that favours restoring humanity over punishment. But we must keep trying to point the way.
Imagine a nation that measures itself by how it treats the least, the lost, and the lonely. Where strength is not defined by the capacity to engage in political and civil conflict, but by a determination to forge peace and come together in a spirit of unity.
This different, better place beckons us. We will find it not across distant hills or within some hidden valley, but within our own hearts.
Tā Kim Workman. (Photo supplied)
This is an edited version of an address given by Tā Kim to the Australia and New Zealand Society of Criminology.
Kim Workman KNZM QSO (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa, Rangitaane o Wairarapa) had an extensive career in the public service, followed by 30 years of involvement in criminal justice reform. Over the last 10 years, Kim has increasingly contributed to the academic literature on criminal justice policy, Treaty and Māori development issues, racism and inequality, and culture and identity.
The post Kim Workman: My life in the criminal justice system appeared first on E-Tangata.
From E-Tangata via This RSS Feed.
691
Psychologist Dr Awanui Te Huia says the stories we tell ourselves are critical to whether we advance in our learning of te reo. (Photo: Ashlee Decaires)
Negative self-talk can undermine efforts to learn te reo Māori. Atakohu Middleton gets advice from Dr Awanui Te Huia, an expert in the psychological factors that can affect Māori learning te reo in later life, on how to reframe that unhelpful internal chatter.
I was in my late 30s when I finally made a wholehearted commitment to learn te reo.
That was a while ago now, but there’s still, often, a flutter of apprehension in my puku when I go into reo Māori-only spaces, as I don’t get to speak te reo much in my everyday life. Heading off last November to the Toitū Te Reo festival in Heretaunga, a celebration of Māori language, those pūrerehua (butterflies) started fluttering again.
I know the pattern now. It takes a few minutes of stuttery speaking before my reo warms up and starts to flow, and another 10 minutes before my Anglophone brain gets out of the way. What never stops is my harsh judgment of myself when I make an error or don’t phrase things in the most Māori way.
So Awanui Te Huia’s session at Toitū Te Reo was a must. Awanui is an academic at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington and holds a doctorate in psychology. Her research focused on the factors that support or hinder language development in Māori learning their heritage tongue.
Awanui’s talk, titled “Manaakitanga and the courage to be uncomfortable”, began by pointing out that complicated emotions often accompany our reo journeys: Sorrow that we don’t have our tūpuna language, anger at the colonising processes that ripped it from us, and discomfort at being competent adults who feel like incompetent children in Māori-language classes.
We want to become fluent quickly to close the gap and heal the wound. Learning our heritage language as an adult often means bringing a pile of baggage to the task, and the self-talk in our heads can become the biggest barrier to learning.
In her talk, Awanui offered examples of these internal monologues.
“I’m expected to know more than I do because I’m Māori . . . I should wait until I know just a bit more before I use Māori with the kids. Imagine if they heard me saying this, and now they’re going to carry that to kura . . .
“We have all these stories about being perfect,” said Awanui.
The stories we spin
As Awanui explained, whakamā (shame, embarrassment) can disrupt our ability to learn, remember and recall.
When we’re feeling vulnerable, with negative self-chatter going round and round in our heads, the fear of making a mistake stills our tongues. If we feel we might be rejected or judged for making an error, the fear and anxiety centre in our brain, the amygdala, is triggered, which prevents learning.
“Our bodies respond — not our logic, not our brains. So we need to change our thinking.”
The stories we tell ourselves, Awanui said, are critical in determining whether we advance in our learning.
She posed some questions, and it’s worth thinking about each one now, as you’re reading this:
Where do the stories we tell ourselves about our ability to learn or use te reo Māori come from? What early experiences have shaped how I feel about te reo in my life? What are the stories I tell myself about my ability to learn or use te reo Māori with others? How do these stories contribute to the attributions I make about te reo? For instance, when I make a mistake or celebrate a milestone, how do these relate to the “reo stories” I’ve told myself about my ability to learn or use te reo?
Awanui explained that our inner self-talk can be negative (wairua whakaweti) or positive (wairua manaaki). “We need to look for wairua manaaki within ourselves: ‘I learned a new thing before, I can do it again,’” she said, using the example of learning to drive a car. “We’re all able to learn new things.”
Here are some common examples of wairua whakaweti or negative self-talk — the limiting beliefs or convictions we hold that restrict our potential.
-
- If I make a mistake, it’ll affect how Māori others think that I am.
- I should wait until I know more before I use te reo.
- I’m expected to know more than I actually do, because I’m Māori.
- I don’t have time now to enrol in a course, so I’ll wait until I have more time.
The key to shifting limiting beliefs is reframing them and replacing them. For example:
“If I make a mistake, it’ll affect how Māori others think that I am” becomes “If I make a mistake, others will be encouraging” and “Mistakes are part of learning, and my identity is not reliant on this particular sentence being correct.”
“I should wait until I know more before I use te reo” becomes “I’m going to use what I know now with the understanding that sometimes I make mistakes, and that’s okay.”
“I’m expected to know more than I actually do because I’m Māori” becomes “Because I’m Māori, I’m reclaiming multiple parts of my identity. I’m going to be kind to myself as I connect to this part of who I am.”
“I don’t have time now to enrol in a course” becomes “I’m going to create small achievable habits that I can do regularly so that I create incremental progress.”
The reality of learning, Awanui said, is that all learners make mistakes — and as she said this, I heard in my head Pānia Papa saying “Nau mai te hapa” or “Welcome the mistakes” at a kura reo many years ago.
Awanui pointed out that we’ll never have enough time to get our reo to where we want it. We just have to keep going. “Use the micro-moments,” she said. In other words, use whatever reo you have when an opportunity arises.
Emotional regulation — an important part of the reo toolkit
Being able to regulate our emotions by controlling our breathing, Awanui said, is “the number-one cheapest tool”. It helps activate our parasympathetic nervous system, the network of nerves that relaxes the body after periods of stress or danger. “When our bodies feel safe, our bodies and our brains are able to concentrate on the thing that we’re trying to do, which is learning.”
If you’re getting wound up, she recommends pacing your breathing and extending your exhale. Inhale for four counts, hold for four counts, exhale for six counts, then repeat for several minutes. “This can help us to shift out of ‘fight or flight’ mode,” she said. “It’s something you can do quietly and around lots of people, and nobody’s really going to notice.”
Safety also comes with finding reo buddies with whom you can make mistakes, and environments where te reo learning is valued.
Awanui also has a message for proficient speakers — they can play a critical role, too. “We need to be as encouraging as possible, as much as possible, with all of our friends and whānau who are giving it a go.”
I often grumble to my husband that I’m jealous of kura kaupapa kids and all the talented adult learners who speak as if they were kura kaupapa kids. Quite rightly, he reminds me that I wasn’t a kura kaupapa kid and never will be, so why am I beating myself up?
He’s right, of course. My reo has improved a lot over the years, and that’s the reframing I need to adopt. The next time I walk into a reo environment, I’ll aim to make the most of what I’ve achieved without judging myself — or thinking others are judging me.
Dr Atakohu Middleton (Waikato, Pākehā) is a journalist whose lengthy career has included outlets as diverse asRadio Waatea*, theGuardian(UK), theNew Zealand Listener, theSunday Star-Times, and theNew Zealand Herald. She lives in Tāmaki Makaurau. Her book*Kia Hiwa Rā!, on Māori journalism in Aotearoa, was published in 2024.
Share your reo experiences with researchers
Are you a parent transitioning your whānau from English-dominant to te reo Māori-dominant at home? Are you learning te reo Māori and working to build relationships in your community where you can practise and use te reo? Are you a graduate of Kaupapa Māori education working to maintain te reo Māori after leaving kura?
Associate Professor Awanui Te Huia and her colleagues are keen to hear about your experiences for the research project Kia tōnuitia te reo: Enabling thriving reo Māori homes and communities. For more information, use the QR code below or email Awanui at awanui.tehuia@vuw.ac.nz.
The post Breaking through the biggest barrier to learning te reo appeared first on E-Tangata.
From E-Tangata via This RSS Feed.
698
Bone-chilling cold and Arctic winds gripped the northeastern U.S. over the past few weeks, straining electricity systems and raising power prices as people cranked up their heat. Now, as the region finally starts to thaw, early data shows how America’s offshore wind farms helped keep electricity flowing during the extreme-weather stretch.
The results demonstrate the bitter irony of the Trump administration’s ongoing — and potentially unlawful — battle against U.S. offshore wind development. Federal officials are calling for additional fossil fuel power to prevent future winter blackouts, all while trying to block the build-out of offshore wind, one of the most valuable resources for cold-climate coastal states.
“Performance data is showing in real time that offshore wind delivers reliable power when the grid needs it the most … at the scale this region and our country need,” said Liz Burdock, president and CEO of Oceantic Network, which advocates for marine renewable energy sectors.
Burdock was speaking on Tuesday in New York City at the group’s annual International Partnering Forum, where hundreds of offshore wind developers, policy experts, and labor leaders gathered to regroup following President Donald Trump’s yearlong attacks on five in-progress offshore wind farms.
For years, independent energy experts have forecast that offshore wind could deliver substantial amounts of power to densely-populated, land-constrained communities along America’s east coast — particularly during winter cold spells, when demand for fossil gas exceeds supply. And grid operators in the region have been banking on offshore wind capacity to come online to meet the rising electricity needs of data centers and electrified homes and vehicles.
Read Next
Trump destroyed offshore wind. The Northeast can’t live without it.
The data from January shows that the nation’s two operating utility-scale offshore wind farms — South Fork Wind and Vineyard Wind — performed as well as gas-fired power plants and better than coal-fired facilities, including during last month’s Winter Storm Fern, experts said at the event.
The 132-megawatt South Fork Wind farm, which delivers power to Long Island, New York, had a “capacity factor” of 52 percent last month. The metric reflects how much electricity the project actually generated compared with the maximum amount it could generate in a given period. That puts South Fork Wind on par with New York state’s most efficient gas plants.
“The wind capacity in the Northeast is absolutely amazing, particularly over the winter,” said Mikkel Mæhlisen, vice president of the Americas Generation division for Ørsted, which jointly owns South Fork Wind with Skyborn Renewables.
The 12-turbine project became America’s first utility-scale offshore wind farm in 2024, when it started providing power to some 70,000 homes. Last winter, it was also a beacon of reliability, notching a 54 percent capacity factor between December 2024 and March 2025.
Vineyard Wind, meanwhile, can already produce as much as 600 MW of clean electricity off the coast of Massachusetts. The project, which is 95 percent complete, is one of the five offshore wind farms that were forced to halt construction late last year in response to Trump’s stop-work orders, which cited ambiguous “national security” concerns. Federal judges have allowed all five projects to proceed as the developers’ complaints move through the legal system.
Read Next
Trump is trying to kill clean energy. The market has other plans.
However, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum says the Trump administration plans to appeal those court rulings, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.
During Winter Storm Fern, Vineyard Wind had a 75 percent capacity factor, Burdock said. Once fully operational, the project will deliver power at a price of $84.23 per megawatt-hour to the New England grid. That’s markedly less than spot wholesale prices during the storm, which spiked to over $870 per MWh on January 25.
Soaring gas prices and limited supplies pushed utilities in New England to fire up oil-burning power plants in order to avert blackouts, assets that are typically too expensive to justify running. The result will be even higher bills for the region’s residents, who have historically faced some of the highest energy costs in the nation — in part because New England lacks recoverable resources like oil and gas, said Katie Dykes, commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
Having a more diverse energy mix would help states reduce the reliance on firm, dispatchable, but also costly and dirty power plants during such challenging periods.
“Variable resources like wind and solar, when they’re operating during these cold weather periods, they’re actually helping to keep a lid on prices,” Dykes said during a panel. “It means we can reduce the runtimes of those more expensive oil units. It also means that we can preserve the runtime of those [fossil] resources that are relying on stored fuel.”
Proponents of America’s nascent offshore wind industry said they’re hopeful the five in-progress projects will be completed as planned. In New York, Ørsted’s Sunrise Wind and Equinor’s Empire Wind would together provide 1.7 gigawatts of new capacity — enough to meet more than 10 percent of the electricity needs in New York City and Long Island.
“The last few weeks have been extremely stressful,” Gary Stephenson, a senior vice president for the Long Island Power Authority, said about the region’s cold snap. The municipal utility, which serves 1.2 million customers, purchases power from South Fork Wind and will connect its grid to Sunrise Wind, which is expected to start operating in 2027.
“I really wish we had that Sunrise facility online. That would have taken so much pressure off the natural gas system,” Stephenson said at the event. “So we’re looking forward to that [coming online] towards the end of next year.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Offshore wind showed up big during the East Coast’s brutal cold on Feb 14, 2026.
From Grist via This RSS Feed.
699
This story was originally published by Grist.
Tristan Ahtone
Grist
When Billie Eilish told Grammy audiences that “no one is illegal on stolen land,” she ignited a small firestorm that went beyond celebrity discourse, revealing deep fault lines in how America confronts its own history.
Critics accused her of hypocrisy, pointing out that her multimillion-dollar Los Angeles home sits on Tongva land. Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas invoked her line in a Senate hearing, calling the entertainment world “deeply corrupt.” Meanwhile, pundits and commentators spawned online backlash and memes. And The Washington Post published an op-ed defending property law and dismissing land restitution.
“No, Billie Eilish, Americans are not thieves on stolen land,” op-ed authors Richard Epstein and Max Raskin wrote on Thursday. Only days before, Eilish responded to ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and killings by pointing to America’s history of violent colonialism and genocide directed at Indigenous peoples. The Washington Post authors argue “it’s time to put Eilish’s theory of property out to pasture,” arguing, “it is easy to call land stolen, but what about the innocent purchasers who acquired in good faith in the interim? Are they thieves?”
This language, these arguments, are reasonably predictable. They appear when Indigenous dispossession is pushed into the public eye.
But there are countless examples throughout history of Indigenous peoples being forced to cede land under threat of violence, take for example, what is currently Washington State. Between 1854 and 1855, territorial governor Isaac Stevens pressured tribes in the region into ceding much of the West Coast to the United States. His warning to Yakama Chief Kamiakin was explicit: “if you do not accept the offer … you will walk in blood knee-deep.” The threat was not rhetorical — less than a decade earlier, the California gold rush brought settlers west and culminated in what California Governor Gavin Newsom would later call genocide. “No other way to describe it,” Newsom said in 2019. “That’s the way it needs to be described in the history books.”
The U.S. frequently combined economic pressure, unequal bargaining power, and the threat of military force in treaty negotiations, and establishing Minnesota was no different. The federal government withheld rations promised to tribes after previous land cessions, and allowed settlers to violate previous treaties — which are federal law — in order to hunt and claim land in agreed-upon Indian territory. With the treaties of 1851, signed at Mendota and Traverse des Sioux, the Dakota Nation was forced to cede 35 million acres — nearly the entire bottom half of what later became Minnesota. Tensions eventually led to the Dakota War, a five-week conflict that forced the removal of nearly all Indigenous peoples from the state. Those actions, that war, have also been called genocide by Holocaust and Genocide scholars, as well as the act’s direct beneficiaries: the Minneapolis and St. Paul City Councils.
In The Washington Post, Epstein and Raskin refer to the land acknowledgements that spring from these histories as “accepting generational guilt,” adding that statements of apology, like those by the state of California, “thankfully” don’t transfer title backward to the original owners, “for if they did, civilization would collapse.”
Scholars of settler colonialism have long documented how the U.S. has framed whiteness as synonymous with “civilization,” while casting Indigenous peoples as obstacles to progress — a racist framework where owning property becomes the key marker to civilization. Epstein and Raskin’s argument operates squarely within this tradition. By treating property titles as the foundation of civilization, it obscures the history that made them possible: war, forced removal, forced assimilation of children, and policies that historians and government officials have described as genocide.
Take for instance the Morrill Act of 1862, which used land taken from tribal nations to fund the land-grant university system: nearly 11 million acres taken from more than 250 tribes to establish 52 universities.
Then there are state Enabling Acts, laws passed by Congress that authorized the formation of a state government and allowed for admission to the Union. As Indigenous homelands became territories and territories became states, newly-formed state governments carved land out of their newly acquired “public domain” through their enabling acts to fund state institutions, services, and public works. Those lands are now known as state trust lands.
The primary purpose of state trust lands was education and has remained so to this day. Land-grant colleges, for instance, opened their doors with the help of the Morrill Act, then states stepped in with more income from state trust lands. Grist investigations have since identified 14 land-grant universities still benefiting from more than 8 million acres of land taken from 123 Indigenous nations through 150 Indigenous land cessions. This land generated approximately $6.6 billion in profit between 2018 and 2022.
Nearly 25 percent of state trust lands that benefit land-universities are designated for mining or fossil fuel production. In Montana, oil and gas extraction, timber, grazing, and other activities on state trust lands generated $62 million for public institutions, with a majority of that cash going to K-12 schools. Ten states use nearly 2 million acres of state trust lands to fund state prison systems. In 2024, those lands disbursed an estimated $33 million in funding to carceral facilities. At least 79 reservations in 15 states have state trust lands within their boundaries, an estimated 2 million acres, that provide revenue to support public institutions and reduce the financial burden on taxpayers. “Every dollar earned by the Land Office,” said New Mexico Commissioner of Public Lands Stephanie Garcia Richard in 2019, “is a dollar taxpayers do not have to pay to support public institutions.”
In at least four states, tribal nations pay states for access to those lands despite being within their own territorial boundaries — an estimated 11,000 acres. The Ute Tribe paid the State of Utah more than $25,000 to graze on those trust lands in 2023 alone. While critics have been quick to point out that institutions like K-12 schools benefit everybody, it’s important to remember that many tribal members don’t attend state-run schools at all, they enroll in Bureau of Indian Education schools that receive funding from the federal government.
But return of those lands remains mired in bureaucracy. In 2024, Grist reported that more than 90,000 state trust lands inside the Yakama reservation — the reservation created under threat of walking knee deep in blood — were mistakenly carved from the Yakama Nation due to a federal filing error. The tribe has fought for its land to be returned for nearly seven decades, but Washington has refused to let them go: American property law says the state’s ownership over those lands is legal because the state holds the deed.
But Washington acknowledges that this is an injustice, and that that land should be returned to the tribe. However, then-Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz, argued that righting that wrong would take revenue away from beneficiaries like K-12 schools. The state, therefore, would need to be compensated for their loss of revenue, even though those lands were wrongfully taken in the first place. Between 2021 and 2023, those state trust lands generated about $573,000for state beneficiaries — less than 1 percent of all revenue from all trust lands across Washington state.
In The Washington Post op-ed, the writers say that “the effort to undo the past would involve trillions of dollars in transfer payments and coerced title shifts that would unsettle every home mortgage, every mining and oil lease.” They are correct. To return land to tribal nations would be to unsettle — pun intended — the very foundations that drive climate change and threaten life on the planet. A fact echoed by more than 600 scientific and conservation studies over the past 20 years that say Indigenous land return offers significant environmental returns with serious implications for tackling climate change.
Ultimately, the controversy surrounding Eilish’s remark reveals less about celebrity or even property than the limits of America’s moral imagination, including at influential media outlets. Democracy may die in darkness, but America was built in daylight, and in America, oppression and injustice don’t need shadows to thrive — they need champions.
The post Billie Eilish, stolen land, and the climate cost of America’s dispossession appeared first on ICT.
From ICT via This RSS Feed.
700