Council urged to confront racism

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Indigenous rights advocate Tina Ngata is calling on Gisborne District Council to consider the role racism played in its since-overturned decision to put up Endeavour models in downtown Gisborne without public consultation.

The decision prompted an outcry among tangata whenua, who view James Cook's ship as a symbol of oppression, and it led to an apology from Mayor Rehette Stoltz.

At a council meeting on Thursday, Ms Ngata urged elected members to avoid similar hapa (mistakes) in the future by examining the way racism manifested.

Despite the mamae (pain) brought about by the Endeavours decision, Ms Ngata said she was thankful for the discussion it had opened up.

Racism was most obvious to those who bore its negative effects “because you get followed through a pharmacy or pulled over more often than your Pakeha cousins”, she said.

It was thoughts, words, deeds and policies that upheld racial inequity, and there was no border control for it.

The Ku Klux Klan white supremacist movement arrived in New Zealand in the 1920s, although that was the hard end of racism, Ms Ngata said.

“If racism has been in our region, at what point did it stop being in our region?

“Why would we be the exception to the rest of the world?”

She suggested research as the starting point for addressing racism — “an historical analysis of how we got to this place”.