April 02, 2024
Study spaces used for racial wedge
Te Pāti Māori education spokesperson Tākuta Ferris says Government MPs are promoting forced assimilation by supporting attacks on Māori and Pasifika study spaces.
Māori and Pasifika students at the University of Auckland say they’ve been attacked and bullied after ACT posted pictures of signs outside their study areas, and ACT tertiary education spokesperson Parmjeet Parmar has written to all universities and polytechnics asking for a list of safe spaces.
Mr Ferris, a senior Māori advisor at Massey University, says it’s a deliberate assault on the freedom of expression that universities should encourage.
“They’re calling things out as separatism and apartheid as beig some sort of wedge whereas in actuality they’re creating the wedge themselves and they’re driving it in quite deep,” he says.
Mr Ferris says Māori rights of cultural expression and freedom of speech were guaranteed in what’s called the fourth article of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the verbal guarantee given by Lieutenant Governor Hobson in response to a question from the Catholic Bishop Pompllier about religious freedom.