Re: <nettime> Some background to Christchurch

Thank you, Luke. Furthermore, your country - I learnt this from two ‘Kiwi’ plumbers currently living in Brixton and with whom I occasionally carouse - is impressively in the van with respect to counter-seismic building codes. As I understand it, new and retrofitted houses in eg Christchurch, lying along major faults, are designed to rest on, so to speak, skis, uncoupling easily from the foundations in a ‘big one'. This is precisely the opposite of what we do here in the San Francisco Bay Area, where bolting down the superstructure to the base using Simpson (brand-leader) Ties is standard practice and more or less mandated by architects, contractors and insurance jockeys.

And speaking of casual racism, the vernacular tipis and reedhouses of the local tangata whenua - in which one might even relish a Richter 7 or 8 event - are, under the current Euro-settler dispensation, laughably 'out of code’.

Kī tōnu taku waka topaki i te tuna,

Iain

----------------------------

On 25 Mar 2019, at 13:44, Luke Munn <[email protected]> wrote:

Sure, the Springbok protests were hugely formative, but I would say boiling anything down to one event is placing too much emphasis on it.

With respect, dating the 'beginning' of inequalities and civil unrest back to 1981 is also a pretty Western/white perspective. Aotearoa has a long history of civil unrest, not least in the New Zealand wars / Land Wars beginning around 1845.

Since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 between Māori and the Crown, New Zealand was always meant to be something other than the "Britain of the South Seas".

While the Treaty certainly has been contested and willfully misinterpreted historically, it nevertheless establishes a key framework for cultural relations.

What it sets up is a multiracial but bicultural society made up of "tangata whenua" (people of the land, indigenous New Zealanders) and "tangata tiriti" (people of the treaty, non-indigenous New Zealanders).

So when you see Muslim boys perform a haka (ceremonial dance), or see, as I did on Sunday, a 'Love Aotearoa Hate Racism' rally led by tribal flags and concluded by karakia (Māori prayers), then you're seeing what the Treaty should, in its best moments, establish.

Of course there are lots of other factors too. The fact that NZ has historically been relatively open to immigration produces an everyday cosmopolitanism, to the point where Auckland is one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world. Jacinda Ardern's strong leadership in response to the attacks was another. The reaction against some of the worst aspects of other countries, like mass shootings in the US, would be another.

Still, as you noted, more needs to be done. Casual racism against 'asians' in the context of our housing crisis is just one recent example. I just wanted to push back a little on the Springbok tour as single catalyst, and suggest a longer, and less overt lineage of cultural relations in New Zealand. Our country is small and young, but it's still complicated! :-)

best, Luke

On Mon, 25 Mar 2019 at 23:08, David Garcia <[email protected]> wrote:

Simon Perkins a colleague at Bournemouth University sent me these reflections on the background to the impressive national response to the Christchurch massacre:
If you see the recent attacks in Chch as part of a more long-standing and generalised effort to deal with the country's inequalities then for me the beginning of this was the civil unrest and the aftermath of the 1981 Springbok Rugby Tour of NZ. What happened was that in protesting the inequalities in South Africa there became a wide-scale recognition that NZ also had real issues, which needed to be dealt with. The result was that there was there was a groundswell to make the country work for all. As the NZ historian Jock Phillips explains it "the tour represent[ed] the emergence of an independent Pacific nation to challenge the previous image of New Zealand as the 'Britain of the South Seas'. Playing rugby against South Africa was consistent with New Zealand's traditional identity as a loyal servant of the British Empire. The anti-tour movement had a different vision. New Zealand could be seen as an example of an independent, racially tolerant society, a moral exemplar." https://springboktournewzealand.weebly.com/aftermath.html

And so, the public outpouring that we've seen since the mosques shooting are in someways a direct beneficiary of the Tour, where I think the attacks have shocked the country into realising that again - more needs to be done. BTW. if you're interested, this is a documentary made by the anti-tour protester/director Merata Mita: https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/patu-1983