Poetry verses colonisation in New Zealand

Por: Tusiata Avia

I am a poet and I do what poets do, I write about what is important to me. In 2019, New Zealand celebrated the 250th anniversary of James Cook’s arrival here. James Cook is widely known as an English ‘explorer’ of the south Pacific. What is not widely known is that Cook also lay the ground-work for the violent colonisation of New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific islands in the 1800’s by the British and French.

I was horrified that New Zealand would celebrate this man (and spend twenty million dollars on this celebration)! What were we celebrating? The beginning of colonisation? But, why? Colonisation brought genocide, rape and land theft to the indigenous people of the South Pacific. In New Zealand, colonisation almost succeeded in destroying our indigenous language. Colonisation ransacked and pillaged the indigenous people, so, 250 years later Maori make up only 17% of the population but 52% of the prison population.

Read those percentages again. Let the math sink in.

250 years later, Maori are drastically over-represented in every negative statistic you can think of: low life expectancy, physical and mental health; high poverty, unemployment etc. To celebrate this is offensive in the extreme.

So, I did what a poet does. I wrote a poem in response to such a celebration. I wrote a poem about Cook’s arrival and what he did. I didn’t hide that I was angry – what kind of soulless creature wouldn’t feel angry about such terrible injustice? Why wouldn’t I be angry about the massacres that followed Cook’s ‘discovery’ of ‘New Zealand’? The massacres that some of us know here of (Parihaka) and all the ones that have been systematically buried.

All the massacres, rapes, removal of children, unjust imprisonments, land thefts that we have not been taught about in our school system. Our education system has brainwashed us with a different story, so, now we believe they never happened. Why wouldn’t I be angry at the scale of this injustice? Why isn’t everyone?

When he arrived, Cook didn’t just land here and harmlessly potter about looking through his telescope, ‘encountering’ Maori and brushing his wig. Tina Ngata, Maori author and researcher, points out, “When someone lands and shoots the first person they see and then the next day shoots another 15 and then wants to get a closer look at a waka [boat], so they shoot everybody in the waka…and everybody in the waka was unarmed – they were just fisher-people. To call that an ‘encounter’ is egregious in the extreme.”

This was the beginning of New Zealand’s Gaza. How could I sit back and be silent while people celebrated? What kind of heartless monster devoid of conscience would I have to be?

So, I wrote a poem called ‘The 250th Anniversary of James Cook’s Arrival in New Zealand’ and I didn’t mince my words. Strong injustice demands strong words. Why should I play nice? What was I afraid of? Who was I going to offend and what kind of people would be offended by such a poem?

In 2022, four years after I wrote the poem, it appeared on a major news platform and then I found out what kind of people were offended by such a poem. There were a number of politicians, most notably, David Seymour, now soon-to-be Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand. There were also a number of other far right activists and white supremacists.

David Seymour has the biggest platform, has very wealthy backers and therefore got the most attention and was able to create his own politically self-serving narrative around my poem. Seymour (who at this time was in opposition) said the (former) government should come out and denounce my poetry *show and "declare it will give nothing to racism, and withdraw the funding". 

Hang on a minute, how does a show about racism become accused of being racist?

Seymour continues: "The government says it wants to stop hate and then it appoints board members who fund this stuff. How is it any different from the kind of hatred that led to the Christchurch shootings?"

Answer: when it is used by a deeply cynical, stop-at-nothing person who would compare a protest poem to the Christchurch mosque shootings. The shootings in Christchurch in 2019 was an armed attack by a white supremecist on two mosques which killed 50 Muslims and injured many more.

The same kind of heartless, vile person who would invoke the ongoing trauma of a whole community to build a narrative against the freedom of expression of a poet and a single poem (he mentions no other poems which are just as opposed to colonisation, he obviously hasn’t bothered to read anything more). Seymour to spearhead a two year bullying campaign against me, stirring up hatred which has caused threats against my life.

Globally, New Zealand has a reputation as an open, fair and peaceful society, but that is just branding. Like so many other places in the world we are swinging to the hard political right and embracing all the things we once stood against. Although, relative to some other parts of the world, we have a measure of freedom of expression but the current right wing government is cracking down hard on it. I have learned this in a very personal way and it has become a threat on a more public stage to other artists

In New Zealand, we tend to think freedom of artistic expression can only be restricted in countries far away from here; countries ruled by totalitarian regimes. A government doesn’t need to torture or imprison artists to keep them quiet. If our current right wing government removes funding from the arts (as they are threatening to do, in response to my poem) then, that is a major step towards silencing the arts – particularly the arts that criticise our current regime.

I’ve been fortunate to win a number of arts awards in the last year (Prime Ministers Award for Literature – Poetry and Senior Pacific Artist). Every time I win an award the current government – led by our far right party, ACT – issues another threat against me and our national arts funding body.

I’ll leave my story there, but the point I’m illustrating is the power of a poem to prick the conscience of the powerful who continue the machinery of colonization and racism that their forefathers established.

Recently, someone suggested I should not continue writing about this. Perhaps, I’m just stirring things up, making things worse. Wouldn’t it be better if I stopped writing about this and left it alone?

And my answer to that is a big NO! Why? Because I will continue to speak my truth to power – despite death threats, hate-mail, public bullying and despite my own fear. When I stop speaking my own truth to power, I am robbed of my voice. Without my voice I have no strength. Without strength, I have no hope.

Do not underestimate the power of a single poem. Poetry has the power to discomfort the powerful. It has the power to shake up a country. It has the power to draw people out from behind their masks and show themselves as racists, as hateful, as frightened. And as Cesar A Cruz famously said, it has the power to comfort the disturbed: to let those without a public voice hear a voice that echoes their own. It gives those people a sense of speaking truth to power too.

I am committed to always writing my truth via the powerful, mystical voice of poetry. I know now after years of experience that if stay true to my voice that I am always speaking for someone else who has no voice. I encourage you, my poet brothers, sisters and siblings to do the same.

*(Four years after writing this poem it became part of  The Savage Coloniser Show, a stage adaptation of the book, which won best book of poetry at the 2020 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. In our 2023 theatre awards it won 5 awards including Best New Play. The show was partly funded by Creative New Zealand, our national arts funding board.)