Daily Archives: January 9, 2022

WELLINGTON, New Zealand On the windswept coast of Chatham Island, about 500 miles east of mainland New Zealand, stands a statue of a thick-jowled, cheerful man, his gaze fixed on the endless sea stretched before him.

The memorial honors Tommy Solomon, who for decades has been mythologized as the last full-blooded member of the Moriori people, the native Polynesian inhabitants of the island. Today, many New Zealanders remember Mr. Solomon, who died in 1933, as the last survivor of a culture that drifted into extinction.

Except it hadnt.

After Mr. Solomons death, a few hundred people with at least partial Moriori heritage remained. Over the decades that followed, they survived cultural marginalization in a country where children were taught in school that Moriori were inferior to the dominant Indigenous group, the Maori. And now they are fighting to establish themselves in the national consciousness as a thriving native people.

A milestone came late last year when New Zealands Parliament approved a settlement over historical injustices suffered by the Moriori. The government agreed to pay the group 18 million New Zealand dollars ($12.3 million), hand over a range of property and grant a degree of control over cultural sites important to the approximately 2,000 people who now identify as Moriori.

I never thought wed get here, to this stage, to see such praise, said Elaine Goomes, an elder who had traveled to Wellington, the capital, from Chatham Island, which is known as Rekohu among the Moriori. Its a new day.

The history of the Moriori is one of peaceful isolation and violent subjugation.

Their origins have been the subject of debate. According to the groups oral history, Moriori traveled directly from Polynesia to Chatham Island and its surrounding islets almost a millennium ago. Maori explorers, the Moriori legend holds, joined them only centuries later.

Some archaeologists, however, argue that the Moriori descended from successive groups of Maori who traveled to the Chatham Islands from the New Zealand mainland, perhaps around the year 1500.

What is not in dispute is that the Moriori developed a separate culture over their centuries of inhabiting the islands.

While some prominent Maori scholars have asserted that the Moriori language is a dialect of the Maori language, Moriori note that about 70 percent of the words in their language are different from their Maori counterparts.

Perhaps more important was the Moriori culture of pacifism. This tradition developed in part because of the small size of the Chatham Islands and the groups small population, which peaked at about 2,000 people in the 18th century. A belief known as Nunukus Law held that if Moriori used violence outside strictly limited circumstances, their bowels would rot.

That pacifism is central to the historical injustices that the Moriori suffered, which have been chronicled in books like Guns, Germs and Steel, by the geographer and historian Jared Diamond, and Cloud Atlas, by the novelist David Mitchell.

The Moriori held to the tradition when Europeans arrived on the islands in 1791, bringing with them diseases and pests, and again, after fierce debate, when two Maori tribes that had fled brutal conflict arrived in 1835. Despite being fed and welcomed by the Moriori, the two tribes sought to claim the islands.

Maui Solomon, a grandson of Tommy Solomon and the chief Moriori negotiator in the newly completed settlement talks with the government, describes what came next as a genocide. Upward of 300 people were killed, and the remainder were enslaved by the Maori. Many subsequently died, he said, from kongenge the Moriori word for illness arising from deep despair.

By 1870, just 100 Moriori remained. That year, a government court established to resolve property disputes awarded 97 percent of land on Chatham Island to one of the Maori tribes on the basis of its conquering of the Moriori.

Over the next century, myths sprang up regarding the Moriori. Ministry of Education publications promoted the now-debunked idea that the Moriori initially lived on New Zealands main islands and were pushed out by more advanced Maori. The story was used to justify Europeans colonization of Maori, portraying them as just one wave of settlers.

Michael King, New Zealands most prominent historian, who died in 2004, wrote that nobody in New Zealand and few elsewhere in the world has been subjected to group slander as intense and as damaging as that heaped upon the Moriori.

As a child, Maui Solomon said, he was told by his social studies teacher that a distinct Moriori culture was a fiction. A lot of our people turned their face away from their Moriori identity, because it was a source of pain and hurt and confusion, he said.

The raising of the Tommy Solomon statue marked the beginning of a small cultural renaissance. The Hokotehi Moriori Trust, the groups main representative body, has worked with musicians, writers and software designers to publish traditional songs and stories and produce a Moriori-language learning app.

Many Moriori hope the government settlement will reinforce that renaissance and help affirm their Indigenous identity alongside Maori, who make up 17 percent of New Zealands five million people. Andrew Little, the government minister in charge of treaty negotiations with Maori, said in Parliament that the settlement had started a journey of revival, reminding the rest of the world, including the rest of New Zealand, that the Moriori are a proud people.

The settlement took years to achieve in part because of legal challenges from the Maori tribe Ngati Mutunga, whose leadership continues to claim exclusive authority over Chatham Island and fears that amends to Moriori could affect its own settlement. About 700 people, with a mix of European and Indigenous ancestry, live on the Chatham Islands today.

The chair of Ngati Mutungas representative body did not respond to a request for an interview.

Maui Solomon said that while he wished the pact had gone further, the negotiating team and our people are satisfied weve done everything we can in this generation to get a settlement. We probably couldnt squeeze any more blood out of that reluctant government stone.

Rahiri Makuini Edwards-Hammond, a Moriori student who witnessed the final approval of the settlement in Parliament, said that it would bring long-awaited recognition.

We know who we are, we know what we went through, we know what our karapuna went through, she said, referring to Moriori ancestors. But more than anything, from my perspective, this is finally something that can be acknowledged by other Maori, by tauiwi non-Indigenous New Zealanders and by people around the world.

Read the rest here:

Revival for New Zealand's Moriori Nearly Pushed to Cultural Death - The New York Times

University of Auckland physics professor Shaun Hendy, whose work on Covid-19 scenario modelling has helped inform the New Zealand government's response to the pandemic.

Phil Walter | Getty Images

Two of New Zealand's top Covid-19 experts are taking legal action against their employer, the University of Auckland, over its response to the harassment the scientists have faced from the public amid the pandemic.

Shaun Hendy, a physics professor, and Siouxsie Wiles, an associate professor of medical science, filed separate claims with the Employment Relations Authority, against the vice chancellor of the University of Auckland.

Hendy and Wiles claimed their employer had "responded inadequately or not at all to their health and safety concerns" amid harassment from members of the public who "disliked or disapproved" of their commentary on the coronavirus.

According to a ruling dated Dec. 24, the Employment Relations Authority approved the pair's requests to move their claims up to New Zealand's Employment Court.

The ruling stated that Hendy and Wiles had "suffered vitriolic, unpleasant, and deeply personalised threats and harassment that has had a detrimental impact" on their physical safety and mental health. It also said the harassment they faced has not only continued but has been "getting worse and 'more extreme' in nature."

Hendy's work on Covid-19 scenario modeling has helped inform the New Zealand government's response to the pandemic. Meanwhile, Wiles was named the 'New Zealander of the Year' in 2021 for her prominent role in explaining the science of the coronavirus pandemic to the public and media.

The scientists said they are "expected" to provide public commentary as part of their employment. However, this is something that the vice chancellor denied, though acknowledged that they are "entitled to do so."

Hendy and Wiles started raising concerns about the harassment in April 2020. According to the ruling, they had suffered harassment via email, on social media and video sharing platforms, as well as in the form of in-person confrontations and threats of physical confrontations.

For example, the ruling detailed how Wiles had been the victim of "doxing," where someone's personal information is shared online. She had also received an "associated threat to physically confront her at her home."

In addition, Hendy was physically confronted in his office on the university campus by someone who threatened to "see him soon."

According to the ruling, Hendy, Wiles and another colleague were urged in a letter from the vice chancellor in August to keep their public commentary to a minimum. The letter also suggested that they take paid leave to enable them "to minimize any social media comments at present."

However, the vice chancellor denies instructing the scientists to minimize their public commentary, claiming it "merely advised the applicants that doing so is an option they may want to consider."

Hendy and Wiles aren't the only Covid experts to have been the subject of harassment amid the pandemic.

Chief White House medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci has talked about receiving death threats, which have required him to be protected by federal agents.

See the rest here:

New Zealand Covid experts take legal action against employer over harassment from public - CNBC

Feature

From having a name the principal couldn't pronounce at school to hitting the shot to win the WTC - it's been some journey for Ross Taylor

When you're a half-Samoan kid from Masterton, life has some possibilities laid out for you, but other paths seem steep and narrow. This being a small town deep in rural New Zealand, there's always the chance paddocks could be in your future. If you were into sports, the region is better known - like many of this description are - for rugby.

So if you've got shoulders the size of a milking shed, your fast-twitch fibres are in good order, and you have height, there's gotta be a No. 8 jersey somewhere with your name on it, right? The principal at your primary school might have mangled your actual first name, Luteru, to the point where your mother just brought your one Anglicised given name to the front of the queue, but rugby announcers, even in the provinces, are by now well-versed with the Polynesian names on team rosters.

But there was always the matter of the bat hitting the ball like a fearsome peal of thunder, and in those moments, the prosaic stuff - who you are, where you're from - tend not to matter. And when you're hitting, no matter how withdrawn and affable you are, or how nervous you might feel, coaches, teammates, and opponents see a strut. Don't feed that rasping cut of his. Beware of those booming drives. And for the love of all that is holy, stay the hell away from those pads.

In international cricket, things are more complex. This is not a good New Zealand side that you are a part of. In fact, it is said, perhaps not uncharitably, that it is one of the worst. When in this context, you become captain, and hole out to deep midwicket playing that shot that is one of the foundations of your game, there are questions about responsibility. Or worse. On the global scale, New Zealand is a broad-minded and generous place. But even in New Zealand, athletes from certain ethnic backgrounds find themselves the subject of more cynical strains of criticism than others. You're never told you don't have the talent.

Still, life is not without its trials. You have a growth in your eye that comes on so gradually you don't notice you're not picking bowlers out of the hand under lights any more. The Test schedule for New Zealand goes cold just as your own form is running hot. And oh, just to drive the point home, you literally get hit in the balls - a missed reverse-sweep in the nets leaving your gonads in such a state they require surgery, the injury forcing you to miss matches.

If we're being critical, there is the matter of only briefly having threatened to push the Test average past 50 (although, if you play the majority of your innings on pitches where even normally unremarkable seamers can spit venom at any time of the day, these can feel like fantasy numbers). Could that conversion rate have been higher? We're nitpicking.

If you're that kid from Masterton, though, with the name the principal can't pronounce, you might look back and think that for all the publicly-played out travails, dramatic turns, and blows both physical and emotional, there could hardly have been a more gratifying road for you.

Andrew Fidel Fernando is ESPNcricinfo's Sri Lanka correspondent. @afidelf

Here is the original post:

Farewell to the kid from Masterton - ESPNcricinfo