A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
Opinion
As Hoturoa Barclay-Kerr, the co-chair of Tuia 250, said in a recent interview on The Project, “History happened, it can’t be changed.” In a later interview he quoted Nelson Mandela, “Resentment is like drinking poison, and hoping that it kills your enemies.” I admire Hoturoa, very much. He’s a starnavigator who knows how to look across the horizon.
In my own work as a scholar I’ve studied cross-cultural relations around the world. At watershed moments like Tuia 250, leadership really matters. Leaders can speak and act in ways that divide people, or bind them together.
In dealing with the mistakes of the past, it’s possible to enter into a spiral of anger, insult and mutual recrimination. This happened in places like Northern Ireland and Bosnia, tearing families, communities and the wider society apart. In that kind of scenario, everyone loses, and nobody wins.
Or it’s possible to try to understand what went wrong, apologise and resolve to do better, as Aotearoa New Zealand did when it established the Waitangi Tribunal. History suggests that’s a wiser pathway to follow.
As Wayne Ngata indicated in a recent statement about giving the first pohiri for the tall ships and their crews at Uawa: “We did it in 1769 for Tupaia and Cook, and we are doing it again in 2019, because they are our manuhiri, and we share a past, bad and good, and a future hopefully better.”
The first encounters between Maori and Europeans on land happened in Turanga-nui-a-Kiwa almost 250 years ago. In the Tuia 250 commemorative events, I hope our leaders can show that kind of wisdom, for the sake of our children and grandchildren.
