Amnesia

My cat died, and apparently the next stage of grief is grumpiness.  Yes, there are a bunch of reasons I don't like 5 November, since you asked.  

• Guy Fawkes is a bizarre artefact of colonialism, inherited from centuries ago and the other side of the world.  It's literally a celebration of someone getting tortured and executed.  Fellow white people, is this really our best work? 
• Animals like my late Kōwhai are being scared, harmed or even killed by private sales of fireworks boom boxes - or as I like to call them, 'moron self-ID kits'
• Anything that reminds me of Katy Perry is surplus to requirements, thanks

I'm glad I got that off my chest.  Because there are also reasons I care deeply about 5 November.  I am conscious - maybe you are too - that my care runs deeper than my knowledge. 

Nations make choices about the things they celebrate, and how they celebrate them.  Those choices can be bitterly contested.  Maybe they should be.    

But you can't contest what you don't even know about. 

Things are changing now, but I never learned about New Zealand history at school, or not much at least.  If you'd asked me back then what it means to study history, I might have said something about world wars, or someone else's kings and queens of old. 

Maybe some guy who bit the dust five centuries ago for trying to blow stuff up.

And it sent me a message.  That message wasn't that there are parts of Aotearoa's past that are confronting, discomfiting, hard to talk about.  That at least might have been the beginning of a reckoning.  Rather, the message was that Aotearoa - or at least the people who were here first - simply didn't matter at all.

I wish I had learned about Parihaka. 

That is not just about the injustice, the grievance, the hurt that is only now starting to be put right.  Te Whiti-o-Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi were visionaries of the global anti-violence movement, decades ahead of their time.  In 2003, Parihaka was visited by a delegation of representatives of Martin Luther King Jnr, Mahatma Gandhi and Daisaku Ikeda. That’s a big deal.  

This is a legacy that's nothing short of extraordinary. Its teachings are the birthright of our kids.  

It's been a while since I was at school, and after this many years, school can no longer be the thing I blame.  Learning about this place I live, that's now on me.  I chip away gradually at my own amnesia.

There are plenty of great things to read, penned by people much more knowledgeable than me.  This classic tune is a good place to start.