13 ways of looking at a white supremacist

and The Savage Coloniser Show in Otautahi Christchurch

Talofa friends, after a long break. I’ve been up to my eyes trying to write for TV which I’ve found infernally difficult and massively anxious-making. And then Covid which hit our house for the 4th time. But apart from stress and sickness, the shining bright spot has been the fantastic 4 night season of THE SAVAGE COLONISER SHOW thanks to the Word Festival.

It hit hard here in Otautahi where much of the show is set - and not just because the cast was nervous that they might be targets if some of Christchurch’s scarier white supremacists decided to make their presence known. Thank you Word Festival for getting some security in. I’ve watched the show in Tamaki Makaurau and Poneke but the feeling here was quite different. Pin-drop loaded silence, tears and laughter but something else too.

We sat in Papa Hou The Black Box Theatre on Rolleston Ave while we listened to Rolleston himself talk about what he did here in Christchurch when he was superintendent of the Canterbury province 1868-77 and Minister of Native Affairs 1881. I wonder if you know it was Rolleston who gave the order for the massacre on Parihaka? So much of our history is buried. So many New Zealanders are deeply ignorant of what happened here and how that established the racial inequality that underpins life in Aotearoa today.

And here is where I could write a whole essay: if we knew the history of massacre and rape and land-theft in this country over the short two centuries since it was colonised, we would never have allowed this government to do what it is doing right now. In our ears, the constant racist narrative to bolster the swift moving destruction of Te Tiriti; the disappearance of our children into boot camps etcetera etcetera etcetera.

I don’t have the heart (or tbh time) right now for that essay, but I will share a new poem with you. As usual, please feel free to share this post with anyone/s who might appreciate it.

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13 ways of looking at a white supremacist

When my teenager was a baby there was a white supremacist  on a TV news programme talking about his life and his new Mormon wife. Blonde, American and that makes anyone seem successful.

When my teenager was a toddler, a friend from my mother’s group burst into tears and told me her baby-daddy was a white supremacist. I’d spoken to him on the phone a number of times. It’s surprising how many stories I know about him. Apparently he went out with a Sri Lankan woman once.

My teenager was small when there was a group of white supremacists doing neighbourhood patrols to keep us safe. They patrolled my mind and up and down the beach, the footpaths by the beach and the big carpark overlooking the beach.

That carpark is a place I like to go. I sit in the car, look out at the sea and try to soothe myself. I can hear the crash of the waves or maybe it’s the fall of Doc Martins – not the trendy ones we’re all wearing these days but the ones with metal toecaps for head-kicking.

 It’s a very particular sound, the sound of a brown person lying in a carpark by the sea.

Ssshhhh

Ssshhhh

Sssshhh

Crnchhhh

At my daughter’s primary school, a boy called her a ni**er, so, she pushed him over. I didn’t make her apologise, but I had to tell the deputy that he couldn’t use the word ni**er to tell me about it. And then I had to explain why he couldn’t use the word ni**er to tell me about it.

Sometimes, my daughter goes to church with members of our family. She sees the man from the TV interview there.

My cousin tells me stories about the Linwood end of Cashel St and Hereford St and pretty much the whole suburb of Phillipstown and how he learned to run really fast through people’s yards and jump over their back fences. Especially if he went walking there at night.

At our local high school (not my daughter’s high school) another of our better known white supremacists – who made his name during the Christchurch mosque shootings, not for being the shooter but for being a keen supporter – ran for the school board.

Sometimes my daughter and I see his work-van in our street or down by the shops. It caught my eye. I thought the symbol on the van was some kind of Hindu image. I had to google to learn it belonged to Heinrich Himmler’s SS.

I met a Turkish woman, a few days after the massacre, whose son was shot but not killed. When we went up to the hospital to see him, I nearly passed out. He climbed out of his bed to save me from falling. I hear he is in the police force now.

My teenager is coming to the end of high school. Some white supremacists in our country know me because I write poems about racism and colonisation and white supremacy. Some of them call me names and some of them send me death threats.