Covid made Māori stupid....

All my life Māori have had a healthy distrust of government and politicians right up until Covid when Jacinda started dishing out dollars.

As time went on and we got deeper into the pandemic, more and more people who used to question the motives of every government fell by the way side.

People who were "anti-coloniser" were suddenly lining up to become promoters of "coloniser" drugs. One Māori MP going so far as to tell us all she became a vaccinator.

Where was the promotion of rongoa? Not once did I see Te Pāti Maori promote rongoa. Not once did we hear about them talking to protestors in Wellington. It took ex Māori Party MP Marama Fox to go there for Māori to feel heard by 'one of their own'. Marama was interviewed for the River of Freedom documentary. A good watch for those of you who are only just starting to see the cracks of what and who you once believed in.

Jacinda made nearly $1 billion available for Māori specific funding during Covid. For things that weren't even health related like the $60 million that was set aside for what they're calling incentives to get a Covid jab. You remember the incentives. The hangi and supermarket vouchers. Where are the positive outcomes for that spending?

Didn't those of you who chose to take it question why you needed an incentive if it was safe and effective? Didn't you question why people who are open about their dislike for the 'colonial system' were supporting Jacinda's colonial rules and stopping you attending tangi of loved ones?

Didn't you question why John Tamihere went to court for the private details of unjabbed Māori?

5 and a half years on from the start of Covid, some of the very people who are the most vocal about oppression and colonisation have been the biggest perpetrators of what they accuse others of doing. They've been trading your details. They've been making money off you, that they've using to fund election campaigns. Money meant for charity to service communities. How many youth programmes were cut to fund TPMs election launch in 2023? How many food parcels didn't go to whānau because John used $400k for his personal election campaigns?

Why does John Tamihere get paid more by a charity than Chris Luxon gets paid as PM of this country?

It seems to me Maori are great at holding others to account and wanting answers but it doesn't appear that we're so great at holding our own iwi, hāpu, whānau or MPs to account for their illegal and dodgy behaviour. Instead, too many of you support them because "fuck them colonisers", while you sit there pretending that Maori haven't been fighting each other since we started arriving here. The pissing contest between Ngati Whatua and Tainui at Te Matatini powhiri, shows we're not as united as the front we put on makes it appear we are and the inter tribal wars still occur today albeit through mean other than actual war.

Which brings me to another point. Indigenous means originating or occurring naturally in a place. If Maori are indigenous, why do we include Waka in our whakapapa and why do Maori believe our spirit returns to the homeland when we die? When things don't make sense they should be questioned. And we're not seeing enough of that. Instead we see Māori get attacked for saying these things out loud or told they're kupapa because they have a different point of view. They're looked down on as if they're "moumou tō toto Māori".

I am not now, nor will I ever be Iwi Maori because Iwi Maori is not who we are as a people. But that doesn't not mean I'm not Māori by blood or by nature.

We are individual hāpu with our own tikanga and kawa and I'll fight for mine to not be lost in this pakehafied, bastardised united nations version of Te Āo Māori the likes of TPM wants to see us all subscribe too so they can be THE voice for Māori.

It's a pity, so many were blinded by Covid dollars, bribes and bullshit narratives because while some of you are out here now getting angry at the coalition over a few Maori words in an English book, you've got your eyes closed to every thing else going on in this country and how we are fast losing it to foreign entities thanks to some of "our own people".