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Cut out and enjoy with friends
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Wishing all New Zealanders a joyous and uniting Waitangi Day.
For the unaware: Waitangi Day is New Zealand’s national day of angst of celebration.
It is not so much celebrated in New Zealand as mourned, and its traditional place of reverence is often the site of jostling, hectoring, protest and abusive crowds.
“While the old guard may be putting down their taiaha, the new generation are adamant activism still has its place in Waitangi commemorations. Potaka Maipi has spent the day with protestors”
Do you live abroad and experienced Kiwi’s Waitangi Day Celebrations in your country? We hear it can be quite a jolly occasion outside of New Zealand, although Kiwis do have a reputation for being on the sauce for most of the day. Have a Kiwi workmate? you won’t be seeing them much the next morning (in New Zealand its called pulling a sickie).
Are Kiwis being a credit to their country in your neck of the woods?
E2NZ.org 
There are similar contradictions here in Oz in regard to Australia Day, aka “Invasion Day” to indigenous Australians, however despite the inevitable controversies, it appears, from this side of the Tasman, that our national celebration is far more inclusive of other ethnic groups. Perhaps the Kiwis have painted themselves into a corner with a celebration specifically oriented around two ethnic groups within an increasingly multi-ethnic culture. So, what in the past, was a celebration of relatively enlightened settler-indigenous relationship (particularly contrasted with Australia or the most of the Americas) might be problematic in the future. I’ve always assumed that NZ was a model for Australia to follow.
I’d be interested to find out how Kiwis who aren’t Maori or of European descent view Waitangi.
I love the bingo!
The impression a lot of white kiwis have is of Maori somehow being treated better than indigenous white people. It frequently infuriates me that so few have born witness to the terrible situation in northland and the east cape, of Maori living in poverty, their shocking health and life expectancy, the infant mortality and child abuse etc etc. the last 30 year of market economics have been devastating to Maori, absolutely reprehensible. Yet the worse it gets for them the more the knee jerks and says that they brought it on themselves.