WOKE

 

OK, I'm alright with that. I don't like the way that right wing American conspiracy theorists have put a negative spin on this and, to them, 'wokeness' is liberal indoctrination and a way of reversing American history (as they perceive it).

I think that I'm generally woke. I'm sure that Richard is as he is a reasonable person who has liberal ideas. I suspect that Robert is still asleep.

I flew from Whangarei to Wellington yesterday evening. When the plane arrived I recognised a lot of Maori dignitaries and important people disembarking to, I guess, drive to Waitangi for the early  meetings prior to the celebrations on Tuesday. No doubt it will be pretty volatile up there given the negative attitudes to Maori and The Treaty as voiced by leading members of the coalition government.

On the plane down there were also a lot of important looking Maori - one in particular who had a police protection squad waiting for him on landing at Auckland,. It's unusual to see police armed with pistols in holsters in New Zealand unless there is a particular threat or operation going on. I wondered why these Maori were going the other way, away from Northland when Waitangi Day is a few days away but overheard a couple saying they were meeting others in Palmerston North. Maybe they were going to be part of the pre-Waitangi hīkoi.

I became aware that many of my fellow travellers were speaking Maori. This sounded nice but I wished that I could understand it. I'm a very lazy student so it's probably not a good idea for me to try to learn Te Reo at my age. When I was young at school  though, we were taught French and Latin and I studied French at university. How I wish that things in New Zealand were more enlightened in the 1960s and that St Pat's gave us the option of learning the Maori language.