KAPAI: Welfare dependency the fuel for failure and violence

Winter when we were kids was all about keeping warm and keeping amused inside our Macville Rd whare. I used to look forward to running home at lunchtime from school to feast on a mountain of freshly baked pakipaki (flattened bread), smothered with enough butter to send a surgeon into a seizure, cups of hot tea - as much as you want and a warm hug from my Mum.
All my mates would get really harawene (jealous) when I would wave that last crispy piece of buttered crust in front of them back in the school playground, teasing them about their boring bit of bread, thinly covered with some sort of spread that must have been painted on with a brush, not smothered with a carving knife.
Their sucky sandwiches would never get a Wilson warrant of feedness in our whare.
At night we would huddle around the Conray heater watching 77 Sunset Strip or juggling for grid positions in front of the flushfit-fed fire waiting for Doctor Kildaire at night or Speagull the Seagull in the morning.
But the big gig on a cold winter's night would be parking my warm jarmies up alongside the other 10 sets of toes, while our ears tuned into the stereogram waiting for Selwyn to give away a few fridges or a fist full of fivers.
Me and my Tui St mate Gordon Boydy Craig got into French knitting that became a couch contest on cold nights to see who would show up at school the next morning with the longest length of stitched wool and there was a time when the only morning that mattered to us in winter was meeting up with my rugby coach Syd Maxfield and the mighty 9th grade Mounties.
And I guess life can be like a lesson on warmth in winter.
It's up to the individual to keep themselves warm not to rely on the wood of a fire or the wool or the warmth of a mother's awhi (embrace) just as it is not the fault of the firewood if the flames fade and there is no more warmth.
The comparison I am trying to make is to offer an alternate answer to the angry airwaves of talkback who have tried to crucify a community or hold a race to ransom as an excuse for the tragic deaths of little baby twins Cru and Chris Kahui.
To demonise an entire group because of the behaviour of one is mob mentality and to chastise an entire congregation for failing to recognise one of their flock in crisis is like blaming the wood because it didn't keep the fire warm.
The death of these two little darlings had everything to do with the environment they were brought up in and nothing to do with the colour of their parents.
I have never joined to the blame game but consider myself a staunch activist in the "awhi angel" whanau who try to seek solutions to these insane acts.
But if you want to follow the food chain of blame in these senseless killings then it starts fairly and squarely at the individuals who committed them, then those who allowed them to happen and then to a lesser extent, family friends and whanau who suspected but said nothing.
But you cannot pour scorn and blame on a community or a race for the failure of a few.
If you were to lift up the mat and take an honest look at how this happened as I am trying to do, I would have to look at the underclass of society that has been created by the benefit.
A benefit where no boundaries have been put in place, just fences of failure for families free of obligation to roam free, to do what they want, when they want, to whoever they want, in this case venting their failures on two innocent babies.
And for Maori to use the excuse that they live in a depressed society created by their Caucasian cuzzies is a blame game they have been playing for far too long.
We are all individual and unique human beings living on a common playing field called planet earth and the rules of the game for us all are the same.
Last Saturday I saw the real game being played by true believers in the game of life and they were both Maori and Pakeha.
And it was at a venue where many would least expect to find the fairness that society is crying out for on talk back.
It was at a Rugby field in Ngaiterangi at an after match function between Arataki and Opotiki where a great game had been played between two evenly matched teams separated by the brilliant boot of a boy called Oyster.
At this Rugby Club players and individuals had decided to stand up for their whanau and families and held their after-match function without alcohol but with their kids, and to see staunch six foot-something locks looking after their wives and feeding their kids was a snapshot into the society I want my kids to grow up in.
To have Mayor Stuart Crosby sitting alongside them feasting on a kai of paua (all legal size) and hangi kai fit for a king was real leadership as it was the BOP Rugby Union for having their club liaison officer Steve Anderson there, walking the talk.
When individuals stand up and take responsibility for their actions good things happen and it filters down like the coil of a French knitting cotton reel or the warmth of a family fire.
When we start asking what can I do and not why did it happen we all get warm from the results and when we awhi (embrace) the angels that are making this happen for our kids then good things start happening in our community.
My living language (Te Reo) word for this week is Awhi (pronounced ``arefee''), meaning to embrace.
May your winter be warmed by the awhi of answers and not chilled by the game of blame.
Pai marire
tommy@indigenius.org