nau mai haere mai - welcome to the fridge..
Subcommandante Marcos: "We are an army of dreamers, that’s why we are invincible"Ko te kai a te rangatira he korero no reira nau mai ki to tatou pataka korero. Welcome to The Fridge our pataka of political korero where no issue is to hot or to chill for our collective of rioters, writers, poets, activists, streetkids, and dreamers. We need an outlet for radical indigenous voices here in Aotearoa. The Fridge will focus on the pacific region recognising the historical and cultural connections with what is happening in the pacific with the struggle for indigenous self-determination here in Aotearoa.
Comrade Kiritapu speaks at the UN
Jump for Justice - Tia Taurere
Jump for Justice
When Transit NZ declined the application to fly the Tino Rangatiratanga/Maori Independence Flag on the Auckland Harbour Bridge during Waitangi Day Commemorations this year, some people just wanted to throw themselves off it.
"Creative Resistance is one way to raise awareness to our struggles" Tia says. "The Maori Flag is banned yet we are constantly seeing other flags flown on this bridge, it is out right racist".
Indigenous peoples rights, independence and self determination are just some of the reasons Tia Taurere and Mera Penehira are draping themselves in their beloved Tino Rangatiratanga flag to bungy off the bridge.
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Ask the simple questions by Helen Te Hira
In two days time an elderly couple will leave a suburb of Auckland, to return home to their country the Philippines. For a short time they have stayed with whanau, and enjoyed the birth of their first born mokopuna.
In returning they will leave whanau and a new network of friends gravely concerned for their lives. The fears are well founded as the man is a union leader, a person who has worked and lived amongst the poor of his country and province, for over 30 years.
They will take the 11 hour trip home with the knowledge that just two days ago another of his colleagues was shot and now added to a list of over 800 people they call 'salvaged' - a person from the community kidnapped, tortured and murdered for organising against poverty, for challenging the US backed puppet regime of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
When asked 'Why go home when you can become a refugee here?'
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Like a bridge over troubled waters.. by Teanau Tuiono
Like a bridge over troubled waters by Teanau Tuiono
Teanau Tuiono [ngai takoto , ngapuhi ] was one of the spokespeople for te ata tino toa / te tino toa a group that put an application into transit to fly the
Tino Rangatiratanga / Maori Indpendence Flag on the Harbour Bridge.
When we put our application into
Transit to fly the flag on the Harbour Bridge on Waitangi day, we thought, now that would look nice, (
hey it looked good photoshopped) it is 2007 after all, surely the people living here in anti-nuclear godzone would let something as non-threatening as a flag fly on a bridge.
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Aaka's by Cathy Rexford [inupiaq - alaska ]
Aaka’s
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The TV was always on at Aaka’s, from the moment she first awoke in the morning and her plastic bottomed Isotoner slippers swished past my room, to the late evening when she again shuffled the unusually long hallway back to her bedroom to fall asleep on her side of the bed despite the fact that she was the only one to occupy it. After 60 years of marriage, old habits are hard to break. Aaka’s arthritis confined her to the first floor of her beautiful brown two-story that Aapa built her in his younger days. He bought the new house where she moved about with ease, and after he passed away, lawyers in big city Anchorage transfered the legal guardianship of the modern one-story to Mildred Sikatuaq Rexford. My uncle Edward Rexford, her third child, was given the quirky two-story; an inheritance which left my father and aunt with no home equity, and perhaps a few wrinkle apparitions between their eyebrows. They would have to make it on their own in the arctic. However, my grandmother remained in her pre-fabricated, three-bedroom home on First Street of Kaktovik, Alaska, for the rest of her days.
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A Movement Moving by Kiritapu Allan
Still a recent memory in the minds of mainstream New Zealander’s is the uprising voice of indigenous activism in Aotearoa of the 70’s and 80’s. People remember the late Whina Cooper and the land march, watched the Treaty and Te Tiriti dialogue go from zero to hero then infuro. Fiscal envelope, Seabed and Foreshore, Maori Party, Waitangi Settlements leave different tastes in a baby nations mouth. And we, the rangatahi of today, step into this legacy of our history and forge into continuing a movement that has long begun.
I remember being 16 when I first stumbled upon the Tino Rangatiratanga movement and being inspired by the articulation of colonization and its injustices. Seven years on and at the ripening age of 23 I now realize that the conversations that once were so fresh have become stagnated and our movement is in desperate need of new energy.
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Pasifika Rants from the streets - Tony Fala
Kia Ora friends
As brown left oriented activists and community workers, we are usually locked down in day to day political struggles, campaigns, protests. On down time between events, people are involved in media work, maybe practical day to day work for they own organisations, some leafletting, Union organising on job sites, maybe writing policy pieces arguing against local or central government policy. Sometimes politico's are writing articles for left wing and radical or revolutionary journals or papers, arguing the toss over issues, trying to organise groups of people through their ideas founded out of practical struggles.
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Water under the bridge? By Maria Bargh
Water under the bridge? By Maria Bargh
Wellington still has a few posters up.
“4 Million Careful Owners�.
A man.
He’s waist deep in water.
Apparently the government’s Sustainable Water Programme of Action campaign is not about ownership. Apparently the issue of ownership is specifically excluded from the whole Programme. Then why does the billboard say “OWNERS?� Apparently the advertising agency was mis-briefed and it should have been ‘users’.
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