Te Runanga Whakawhanaunga i Ngā Hāhi o Aotearoa

NZ Māori Council of Churches

Air NZ trample on Mana Māori.

Fr. Anthony Brown, Katorika Maori representative and spokesperson for TRWINH asks that Auckland's International Airport Arrivals and Customs remove and change their carpet. He comments, “whoever thought to make a carpet with our official, beautiful and living language and the sacred and ancient art of tukutuku on it? Just for visitors to this country to walk on without so much as consulting with Māori”.

TRWINH is critical about the hurtful, insulting, inconsiderate, insensitive and inapproriate trampling on Mana Reo (language) and Mana Toi (artwork). Look for more appropriate ways to adorn our international airport, for example, with the promotion and use of karanga, traditional calling, whakairo, carvings, and waharoa, gateway to greet manuhiri tuarangi, visitiors, as they disembark and enter our beautiful country and culture.

TRWINH recalls the days of putting tattooed Māori faces and heads on tea towels, teaspoons and licking postage stamps, thought to be arty and cultural and not bothering to ask if the images were a relative or ancestor, or even to consult on what is customary and what’s not; many $2 and foreign run tourist shops exploit Māori culture by producing a proliferation of material for profit and gain with Māori motif and design, and have consulted Māori?

TRWINH sends a bouquet to someone in government and treasury for asking Ngāti Porou and the Ngata whānau if Sir Apirana Ngata’s whakaahua, image, could go on the $50 note – takes pride of place with Sir Edmund Hilary $5, Kate Shepherd $10, The Queen $20 and Lord Rutherford $100.

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