BLOODY MAORIS

September 2005

......................................BLOODY MAORIS
.............................

My wife came home the other day to find a maori standing where her husband once was. What do I mean? had I put a hangi down for tea? Was I sitting in the backyard on a wooden beer crate untangling a fishing line, the car jacked up in the back yard getting bogged, singing Tutira Mai Nga Iwi, ( i-wi!) , ta-ou ta-tou - e (I can sing both parts).
No, I was just confirmed as on the maori roll.
I did buy a big bottle of lion red to celebrate. and I tell you what bro.. it tasted pretty bloody good eh..whehehehe...
I've never officially been a maori before. Even unofficially I'm not too sure. My taste's are so pakeha, so white. I don't imagine many maori having Raymond Carver as a favourite writer. or staying up to watch "Curb your Enthusiasm" or having worn out their copy of Televisions "Marquee Moon". My music tastes in particular are demographically miles from Hokianga central and would be more those of a middle-aged canadian geek with a comic shop.
Years ago I had a chance to test this out on a captive audience. I was in a public bar in Wanganui where, for god knows what reason, they had a Meat Puppets CD on the jukebox. I put it on. It was a big mistake. And eyes with brown tattooed arms soon scoured the room for the sonic culprit. I tell you what bro .. I was like ..SO maori at that moment.
Sometimes my pakeha side is so white I think it is jewish. Recently I had a guitar amp repaired. I didn't want to pick it up when it was ready. So for reasons i don't even understand I rang the guy up on my cellphone and told him I was in Nelson on business so I couldn't pick the amp up until Monday. He said "whatever don't worry about it.." as a normal sane person would.
I then went down the road for coffee and who should walk into the bloody cafe but the repair guy. Ridiculous. I am supposed to be in Nelson and now suddenly I'm starring in my own episode of Seinfeld as George. I had to hide ludicrously behind a magazine until he left the shop.

Evidence of my maori genes, however, can be seen in the way I conduct repairs. A bit of 8 gauge wire here, a strip of tape there, some blue tack. If balmy Prince Phillip was to tour my house I am sure he would look at my work and say
"Did a maori fix this?"
Which would be accompanied by howls of racism etc but he would be right. I do fix things in a haphazard fashion and even now if I take someone home to meet my mum, she will say-
"Don't let him take anything to bits. It'll never go back together again"
But I'm bloody proud of that because it's one of the few avenues my brown side gets to show through. Everytime I see a appliance in pieces, a nut unfastened or a car bit unattended in the garage - I swell with pride. Once were warriors. eh.
Also in the way I play guitar, you can see my maori side rise to top of my gene pool, and look around for some puha and pork. Not all the time, but if you could hear me play a song like, Golden Harvest's "I Need Your Love" , the touch-of-the-tar-brush strumming, brown blood connection is unmistakable.
Sometimes, "shame on you boy!" I make jokes at my maori sides expense. (but for the benefit of mankind cos laughter is the best medicine).
I was working on film once and a lighting guy locked his keys in his ute. People were trying to get into the car with a coat hanger. I walked up, forced my way through the crowd and said
"Stand aside. I'm a maori..............."
"I could break into cars before I could spell"
It's a terrible thing to say.. but bloody funny eh .. and i can get away with it because I am a maori. Maoris themselves love that shit. It's your white middle class liberal who spends time fretting about comments like that. I should know because most of them are my friends and they squirm when I say that sort of stuff. I'm sure it's them who are behind the moves to force people to pronounce maori correctly. The average maori could care less.
I was at a 80th a short time ago for a wonderful old maori man I know well. Many of his rellies from the Hokianga were there - you know "real maori's" whose maori knowledge was not acquired in a book from the women studies department but on the mean streets and rugby fields of Northland. People for whom 'the foreshore debate' is more often than not, about when they will go to the foreshore to get a feed off the rocks. And... their maori pronounciation was terrible.
"Wangeray"
"marry"
I had to laugh.
I personally dislike trying to legislate or to MAKE people conform to stuff like this. The direction we are going in New Zealand means that more and more of us speak maori correctly anyway. I know most young people I know do. Let it run it's course.
Besides that, Maoris have been butchering the pronounciation of english for years and you dont see anyone complaining about that. If a large Maori Black Power member came up to you at a pub and said " You fellahs got a fuckin light"
I dont think you would say
"I think the word you are searching for there is 'fellows' my good man"
" Do you fellows have a light?" would you?

So, in spite of all my pakeha sensibilites I have had the good 'hori' sense to vote as a maori. Which means it will actually COUNT. As usual, in my electorate, Helen Clark will win, regardless of what I do. So I will vote for John Tamihare and for once my vote my have some value. I guess Tamihere is not perfect but his main mistake is having lunch with a journalist, getting pissed and saying what he thought and I could garantee that if the private conversations of any politician were made public they would be damaging. I can only imagine what someone like redneck West Coast MP Brian Connelly says to his mates at the Greymouth pub considering what he says TO the media. I watched him on TV talking about how much he hates cats.
Thats fine, because in the country cats are not the cute beloved moggy but a real pest. But then he went on, in the manner of someone relating an amusing anecdote that had just popped into their head, to describe how he once threw a cat onto a fire.. his face formed into a smile at the recollection. Then, probably recognising the horror on the faces of the journalists from civilised society he said. "the fire was almost out though"
Oh. thats alright then Brian.
I have often admired Tamihere's opponent Pita Sharples but the maori party are too steeped in a culture of blame rather than oneof self-determination. (oh my god. now I am a maori I'm turning into Alan Duff).
I feel the Maori party potentially represent a huge retrogressive step for Maori. If only because I think they could cause a reactive "WHITE-FLIGHT-RIGHT" swing toward National. Every time they are interviewed I can hear a collective groan from the general New Zealand populace. Which only just drowns out my own exasperated sighs. The treaty spokeman on 9-to-noon talked in an air-fairy fashion, devoid of specifics, of restarting the whole treaty process in "maori terms".
and about the time she said "what we'll do. . . . . . is have a hui..." thousands of voters switched to National. Hone Harawira has compared Brash with Hitler and somehow according to Turiana , Donna Awatere Huata was the victim of a racist system and did nothing wrong. She is apparently a role model for Maori. Urgghh.

ferreting out perks he has found a bald head useful. He could run but he can't. Hide?

yeah bro.. I'm proud of my maori blood. but I'm proud of my pakeha blood too. I'm proud of all my blood. and I need all of it I can get to redden my face in anger when I read about the nasty ACT party.
or The MEAN BASTARD PARTY.
I imagine Muriel Newman can barely sleep at night while there is an unemployment beneficiary out there somewhere. Not from any sense of compassion, but because they are taking HER money or OUR money. Hello! isn't our unemployment rate the lowest in the western world. She is still banging on about people on the dole living the life of riley. I suppose she forms these ideas when she cruises past the decrepid houses in Otara in her mercedes..
"look at them! they're are having the time of their lives!" They have even got roofs on their houses.. its not right!"
Then there's their awful leader - "perk buster"
Rodney "I know theres a scandal in here somewhere" Hide.
He is like a cross between Mole from Wind in the Willows, a two-bit detective and a failed traffic warden. (thats a bit harsh -ed)
Ok. A highly sucessful traffic warden. A self-righteous, fastidious, petty, warden, full of an inflated sense of their own importance and...(OH shut up! - ed)
Go National! in Epsom.
Go John Tamihere in Tamaki Makaurau!
Go fishing the Maori party!