December 18, 2023
Pakeha activists roused to support tiriti
The ACT Party’s efforts to get up a referendum on the meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi has stirred up not just Māori but Pakeha tiriti activists.
Heather Came, a member Treaty People, the national network for treaty educators, says the coalition agreements and the new Government’s 100 day action plan contain multiple elements which breach te tiriti and will set back racial justice for decades.
She says a hui in Auckland in response brought together not just veterans of Waitangi Action and other groups from the 1970s and 80s but younger activists, teachers, health workers and members of migrant communities keen to contribute.
At last week’s Fair Pay and Smokefree protests in Wellington she met an 88-year-old pakeha women on her first protest.
“She had her chair and she was all wrapped up warm and she said ‘I’m going to be at all of them,’ so I think there’s some people who have never been politically active, that coalition agreement has inspired them to hit the streets so I think as we get more organised there will be more and more tauiwi and pakeha able to respond and turn up and write submissions, and cook make banners, all =of the things that are needed to be some of the back room crew,” Dr Came says.