For all people, language forms an important part of culture, and plays a crucial role in daily life as a means of effective communication.
Colonisation / Hekenga Whakatangata Whenua
PYF: A TRIP TO TAHITI, BUT WHAT ELSE WOULD IT BE?
Nicole Mathewson describes the Pacific Youth Festival - from pre-departure nerves to an experience that taught her more about culture, respect and love than she learned in all her years at primary and secondary school.
PACIFIC YOUTH HOLD FAST: WE CAN’T IGNORE COLONISATION
Just Focus member Omar Hamed writes about his experience at the Pacific Youth Festival in Tahiti, and how he and another JF member, Char Clark, got caught up in the middle of the struggle for self-determination in Tahiti.
Interview with an Aotearoa peacebuilder
by Annie Boanas, age 23, Wellington
Pauline Tangiora Q.S.O., Q.S.M. is a Māori elder from the Rongomaiwahine tribe on the East Coast of the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand. She has affiliations with many other tribes. She is a Justice of the Peace, a former President and currently Vice President of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (Aotearoa), the former Regional Women’s Representative for the World Council for indigenous peoples, an Earth Charter Commissioner and a member of the Earth Council. She is a life member of the Māori Women’s Welfare League and a Patron of the Peace Foundation. She has represented Aotearoa at many international fora and was a Consultant to the International Steering Committee of the World Court Project, a legal challenge to nuclear weapons.
She has also been recently nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
The Treaty of Waitangi and Māori-Pākehā Relations in New Zealand
Nicole Matthewson, age 17, offers her opinion on race relations in New Zealand and National party Don Brash’s controversial Orewa Speech
New places
By VAIOA ULUGA
Colonisation wrecked countries
Couldn’t live da way we wanted to be free
Claimed independence…
E tu! Stand up!
By PAORA DURIE. E tu! Stand up! Know your past, be proud of it; be strong in the present. The four elements of hip hop have bled their way into the throbbing veins of New Zealand, providing a positive way of dealing with the legacy of colonisation.
Betrayal in the Pacific
By JEHAN CASINADER. Native West Papuans continue to fight for their freedom. In the recent past, three major countries have struggled for control of West Papua. Two failed. One didn’t.
Colonisation: what does it mean?
By Roya Azadi. What does the word colonisation really mean? Are we the leaves of one tree?
Wars as an act of…
By Paul Zoubkov and the Global Focus Advisory Group. Wars from colonisation, wars as a profit and war in the hands of the media.
