“To karakia or not to karakia, that is the question.”
The karakia episode
The new Mayor of Kaipara, Craig Jepson, campaigned on the basis that he would run a secular council, with no preferential treatment for any race. When elected he followed through and made the decision that there would be no reflection of any type at the beginning or ending of formal council meetings.
At the first council meeting he stopped new Councillor Pera Paniora from performing a karakia and advised her of his decision. This was followed by an unfortunate confrontation in which Councillor Paniora repeatedly claimed that she had the right to perform a karakia.
Councillor Paniora accepted the mayor’s ruling after several objections. However, in her maiden speech she performed the karakia. At the end of her speech she was joined by Maori supporters in the public gallery in a Maori song.
The incident was reported widely in the media with emphasis on the validity of the claims of Councillor Paniora.
Subsequent to that meeting Councillor Paniora approached Mayor Jepson to seek a compromise. As a result it was agreed by all councillors, including councillor Paniora, that immediately prior to each of the eleven formal council meetings in the year the ten elected members would take a turn, if they wanted, to perform a personal reflection of their choosing. The order of performing the reflection was based on the alphabetical order of the councillors’ Christian names.
At the next council meeting new Councillor Ash Nayar chose to perform a karakia. At the next Mayor Jepson offered a quote from Thomas Sowell:
"When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination."
Councillor Paniora subsequently expressed the view that the quote was racist.
Immediately following Mayor Jepson’s reflection a member of the public, Baylys Beach's Pere Huriwai-Seger, stood up and performed a karakia. (It was filmed by his wife and made its way on to the internet.) Mayor Jepson asked Mr Huriwai-Seger to leave. He later explained that he did so because members of the public were not allowed under Standing Orders to interrupt from the public gallery.
Prior to the last council meeting on 29 March 2023 Councillor Eryn Wilson-Collins chose to perform a karakia. Baylys Beach resident Samah Huriwai-Seger was given a speaking slot in which she asked for the permanent return of karakia to open every council meeting. Her supporters Mirinia Arana-Pou and Careen Davis unfurled a "PROTECT OUR KARAKIA HONOUR TE TIRITI" banner alongside Kaipara Mayor Craig Jepson. The former was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Jepson Atheist or Racist”.
These events were reported as causing community outrage, and resulted in a 6,000 signature petition asking for the resignation of Mayor Jepson. A hikoi of about 400 people protested prior to a council meeting at the mayor’s “banning" of the karakia. A circular adverting the hikoi stated that Mayor Jepson had treated Councillor Paniora and the Maori community as a whole in a disrespectful manner “by disregarding our Custom and Tikanga” in refusing to allow a karakia.
Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon was “shocked and disappointed” and added:
It's very important for councils and all organisations to create the right space to encourage Māori to honour the Treaty of Waitangi, to provide a space to express their culture and language.
The article referred to Nanaia
Mahuta’s comments:
Local
Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta said council meeting etiquette was for
elected representatives to decide.
"I would
hope that the tikanga or proceedings can be determined based on the input of
all councillors who have been elected to represent their community,"
Mahuta said.
Far North Mayor Moko Tepania was
reported as follows:
Local
Government New Zealand (LGNZ) national council Northland representative and Far
North Mayor Moko Tepania said Mayors were entitled to run their meetings as
they saw fit.
It was 2022 and councils were required to uphold Treaty of Waitangi principles in their spaces and decision making, Tepania said.
The article continued:
Paniora said she would be working, for
the rest of her three-year term, to make sure the karakia was eventually said
at the start of the meeting.
Paniora accepted members of the public
gallery attending a council meeting were not able to interject in
meetings. However, she said tikanga
stood outside that and a karakia was part of honouring the Treaty of Waitangi
which was part of the law of the land and Māori lore.
Race relations commissioner and former Gisborne mayor Meng Foon said he was disappointed in Jepson’s hardline behaviour.
"If he is banning karakia in Māori and allowing others to say prayers or sayings, that is racist,” Foon said.
Meng Foon completely misconstrued the situation.
The article
also reported the comments of former New
Plymouth mayor and national pro-Māori ward campaigner Andrew Judd who said that
he had been in Jepson’s position:
“I am a
recovering racist. Behaving in the same
way was part of my own ignorant journey,” Judd, who was Mayor from 2013-2016,
said.
The mayor’s
continuation of his anti-karakia position was embarrassing.
“We are a
partner in the Treaty of Waitangi,” Judd said.
“I was
shocked and hurt when I saw what he had done. I saw myself, how I once was,
reiterating white Pākeha supremacy,” Judd said.
He said it
was easy for Pākeha who felt as the mayor did to feel empowered by Jepson’s
actions.
Judd said Jepson had a Trumpist approach which included belittling the indigenous voice.J
In an interview on waateanews.com Māori Party Tane Vice President John Tamihere said that the new Kaipara mayor’s refusal to allow karakia at council meetings was a deliberate and premeditated attack on Māori.
His comments can be heard here: https://waateanews.com/2022/12/05/mayoral-karakia-veto-attack-on-maori-identity/His comments are reported as follows:
Mr Tamihere says while prayer may be about religion for
pakeha, for Maori it’s about wairuatanga.
“The day you attack our wairuatanga you attack our
essence, the very heart and soul of who we are as a people, and that’s what
this mongrel has done, and they dress it up as if it’s secular versus religion.
That’s just a lit. (sic) It’s an out and out attack on who we are as a
people. Without our wairuatanga we couldn’t have survived colonists like this
mayor,” he says.
Mr Tamihere says Mayor Jepson’s action is an exercise of
white privilege designed to appeal to the sort of anti-government voters behind
the Groundswell movement.
The following is a transcript of some of the comments in an interview on waateanews https://waateanews.com/2022/12/07/pera-paniora-kaipara-karakia-ban/
Interviewer
I talked to the Minister of Local Government Nanaia Mahuta. She said that mayor was wrong, and that mayor has got it very wrong, and he can get it right and can apologise as well.
Does the new mayor not understand that he is on your whenua, that it belongs to Ngati Whatua, that there are protocols to follow regardless of whether you are in parliament or whether you are in council? This is the tikanga of mana whenua and he has said that he wants to be an inclusive mayor but does he not understand that inclusivity actually means that he needs to uphold the tikanga of mana whenua?
It is racist, it’s dog-whistling.
Councillor Paniora
I felt like it was an ambush, it was an attempt to embarrass me and to degrade our cultural practices.
It’s not just karakia, it’s what else, what other Maori customs and practices our tikanga will be gone next.
We are the indigenous people, we are the mana whenua, the tangata whenua. We have a special relationship with the Crown, we are Treaty partners. We are the first people to live in this land.
It is systematically and repeatedly trying to silence the Maori voice.Susan Botting’s reports can be seen
here:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/480344/kaipara-mayor-unbans-karakia-from-council-meetings
Otago Regional Councillor Kevin Malcolm
He was reported as follows:
A quarter of the Waitaki district’s population, where he lived,
were Pasifika, and he questioned whether Tongan and Samoan residents should
also be represented at council meetings, he said.
“We are here to represent every person in Otago – if you start
doing it for one ... where do you stop?”
He said the council should revert to what it did to open meetings
last term: nothing.
“Just start your meetings and do the job properly.”
The report added:
Council chairperson Gretchen Robertson said in
a statement that there was no mandated form of welcome for meeting leaders to
follow, but the current standing orders allowed for “reflection”, such as a
karakia, at the start or end of a meeting.
The Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand
recognises this importance through the fourth article ... which guarantees
Māori and non-Māori, all individuals, the freedom and the protection to
practice their religious, faith and cultural customs. In your organisation, it's therefore
essential to adopt a religious tolerance policy that upholds article four of
the Treaty of Waitangi.
_________________
Next: 2. Karakia and the law
