Issue 87 - editorial

The other ‘r’ word

Everything happening in the world right now it seems can be blamed on the ‘r’ word – recession. And what is that ‘r’ all about? Well some very greedy and unscrupulous Americans, and some greedy Europeans too, have been allowed to borrow billion of dollars to create debts way beyond their means of servicing. It’s this that has caused the collapse of the banking system in the northern hemisphere.

As part of the trend towards globalisation, and with finance companies and banks here aping, granted to a lesser extent, some of the investment strategies of their larger international counterparts, Kiwis too find themselves hunkering down for a cold financial winter.

We could predict that Maori, as a large part of the unskilled labour force, will be the most affected by this unbridled greed, with job losses beginning to happen and more predicted gloom. Even when we have jobs, we are paid thousands of dollars a year less than Pakeha, and as whanau we will have to dig deep to hold things together.

But having said that, it might equally be predicted that Maori institutions and businesses are going to ride out these troubled times better than others.

Prior to the last big recession of the 1980s it was the fancy investment companies playing with money like a game of Monopoly that were the top 10 companies in this country. None of those companies has survived. But the top Maori companies and incorporations of that time are still with us. Why? Because they were producing real things like food, sheep, beef, wool and dairy products; while prices paid for them might have dropped, in the end they were products that people still needed. Since then we’ve branched out a bit into wine, fish, even power generation and Internet services, but the solid base is still around land.

There’s another English word beginning with ‘r’ that Maori have learned the meaning of over the years and that word is ‘resilience’.

That’s why I find people like Pakura Ahuriri such an inspiration. In this issue we have a story about this fantastic kaumatua who is encouraging people in his area to dig up their backyards and grow their own food. There are thousands who could imitate this resilient kaumatua’s example and improve the health of their whanau too.

Speaking of homegrown, we’re marking a couple of significant birthdays in this issue. There’s the five-year-old youngster, Maori Television, which has burst into the living rooms of the nation and seems set to stay as a vibrant Maori presence on our screens. And then there’s Te Karere, TV One’s Maori news programme, which has been around for a bit over a quarter of a century. Both, as our stories tell, are examples of Maori initiative and creativity, which had huge resistance to their establishment by Pakeha gatekeepers, but which have survived by having truckloads of that other ‘r’ word - resilience.

Kia ora