KEY POINTS:
Some people I know shudder every time they hear the word "Kiwi". They scorn the label, despising the way it sounds, and what it stands for.
Who wants to be identified with a flightless brown bird? Well, me, actually. I like that it's uniquely New Zealand, that it
belongs here.
But, of course, when you're a bona fide Kiwi, a New Zealander born and bred, you can afford to be a take-it-or-leave-it purist. No one questions your right to belong, or not, as the case may be. You can be as contemptuous, as critical of such things as you care to be.
Those of us who were born elsewhere, who don't easily get lost in the crowd even after decades here - four in my case - aren't afforded such latitude. Listen to any recent immigrant and you'll notice how desperately they want to belong, how quick they are to refer to themselves as Kiwi.
I do most of my listening in taxis, where, for example, a cheerful Bangladeshi taxi driver told me why he sends his New Zealand-born children to a Muslim school: so they can understand their Muslim heritage. Yes, his kids have Kiwi accents, and yes, his daughter did have to wear the Muslim headscarf "but when she goes swimming, she's a Kiwi", he told me proudly.
On the other hand, the less devout Iranian taxi driver, who sent his children to mainstream schools, told me he was relaxed about whether his children ended up as Muslims, Christians or something else. "They're Kiwis, you know? It's up to them."
Indeed, it is. And, absent the pressure to conform to a closed, exclusive definition of being a card-carrying Kiwi, most of us revel in the freedom to discover what it means for ourselves.
"I love this country," my 14-year-old son enthused recently, as he began to count the ways, starting with: "We have no snakes." He'd been immersed in the conflicts of Croatia, Rwanda and Darfur, so his optimism was understandable. There's a sense here that none of our problems are too big to solve, if we really put our minds to it.
The fact is no one loves being Kiwi more than us foreign-born aliens. It's not that we outsiders don't see the negatives, but that we have a keener appreciation of the positives.
I love the informality that goes with being a Kiwi. I love the fair-minded, friendly, egalitarian, down-to-earth qualities of Kiwis.
We're a temperate nation, where good sense usually triumphs and no one stays mad for long.
Extremism doesn't flourish here, perhaps because of the goodwill that pervades Kiwi society.
So I get a little nervous when politicians start sacrificing our sense of peace and security, our fragile but evolving sense of "us" for a little political mileage.
As if we haven't been over-excitable enough of late. And I don't just mean the unseemly scuffle between Trevor and Tau (neither of whom, let's face it, have ever been models of gentlemanly behaviour).
But then it seems to be the season for feverish over-reaction. Maybe we'd have been in a better mood if the All Blacks had brought that rugby cup home.
Certainly, most people hope the arrests of the "Urewera 17" on firearms charges and activities which may or may not have been terrorism was an overreaction on the police's part. This is the same Tame Iti, remember, who in addition to his theatrical shooting of the flag, once unexpectedly brandished and fired a firearm in the presence of Helen Clark during another official Tuhoe ceremony. That, too, was a piece of traditional theatrics.
But it's been almost as hard to fathom the resulting response. Pita Sharples, not surprisingly, got no sympathy at all for his intemperate claim that the arrests had set race relations back 100 years. Roadblocks, armed squads, choppers - those tend to go with the territory when police suspect people of dangerous activities, and who seriously expects police to call a hui before making arrests?
As for the marches in support of the Urewera 17, most people have been bemused by them. If there's convincing evidence that the police have overstepped their authority and trampled on due process, it's yet to surface.
So Winston Peters had a point when he questioned the reaction to the arrests. It's when he goes on, in vintage, fear-inducing Winston fashion, about apartheid, the national anthem and the "uniquely Kiwi New Zealander becoming an endangered species" that he loses me.
But I'm all for saving "uniquely Kiwi New Zealanders", whoever they are. Peters says being a uniquely Kiwi New Zealander is "more than a way of life or embracing our environment , it's an attitude and a vision".
I'd love to know more about that attitude and vision. But aspiring new Kiwis should note that "embracing the environment" doesn't include running around the bush with guns, according to Peters. Just to be clear.
