The Three Headed Taniwha

Government powhiri Waitangi Day

Talofa friends,

It’s been a minute. Well, it’s been a month. I’ve been having a quiet breakdown of sorts, but there’s nothing like a Waitangi haka to make me write again. I sat down on Waitangi Day to watch the full coverage of the government powhiri at Te Tii Waitangi marae.

So many hideous things. Well three hideous things - our three headed taniwha: the evil baby head, the wicked weasel head and the spitting angry head. And all the vile things they stand for.

But it was the haka that undid me. The toa that stood and lept and stamped and shouted and howled - they undid me. The fury and grief and pain and contempt shook me to my marrow. They howled for themselves, for tangata whenua and for all of Aotearoa. I sat here in Otautahi and howled too. I keened for our country and for the treaty. And for myself. It helped me give sound and tears to some of the pain and filth and fury I have been choking on over this last year.

A young warrior performed the whakapohane: showed his buttocks and his genitals. He rendered the three-headed taniwha noa. Because, what could be less sacred, what could be more contemptible that this beast, this three-headed spider?

Government Powhiri: Te Whare Runanga, Waitangi Treaty grounds 2024

There we are watching

Down the tunnel of time

Down the funnel of Youtube live

There we are burning

In the fast twitch fibre of the muscles

Of the youngest warrior on the marae atea

There we are swimming

In the blood of him

Steering Takitimu

Tainui

Te Arawa

Mataatua

Kurahaupo

Tokomaru

Aotea

From Hawaiki across Moana Nui a Kiwa

The same way his ancestors cut

Those wa’a through our moana to va’a and vaka

And finally waka

You landed here

Brought the whole Pacific with you

So, now you are my son, and I am your māmā

Go my boy! I shout through my tears

From my kitchen table in Otautahi

Yes, show them your arse!

Yes, my boy, show it!

Because we shit them out

Those governors

Those sons of massacrists

Those sons of murderers

Those law twisters, those treaty breakers

Because we eat them every day

Swallow their filth

Digest their poison till we puke

Watch the one who spits on his whakapapa

With every step

Who squats over the wero like shitting on the marae

And leaving it there

(Did no one tell him how to kneel?)

Watch the old man who rails and rails and rails

His own crap, his own crap, his own crap

Watch the one who half bends with forked tongue

 – unity and destruction  –

Empty and squalid as a scalp

Here we are watching you

Watching and watching you

Stand and talk and talk and talk and talk

E noho we tell you, E noho we shout

Toitu te Tiriti

Toitu te Tiriti.

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Notes

One of the young warriors performed whakapohane during the wero

7 waka from Hawaiki to Aotearoa

Wa’a, va’a, vaka, waka: Polynesian words for canoe

David Seymour did an odd squat - to pick up the rakau whakawaha (baton that clears the way) during the wero (challenge) - rather than kneeling

Winston in his speech said ‘ Stop the crap’

Annette Sykes in her speech referred to those who speak with ‘forked tongue’

E noho: during his speech, crowd called for Winston to sit down

Toitu te tititi: Honour the treaty