This article was first published by RNZ
Māori leaders met with indigenous tribal leaders from the United States on Tuesday - a chance for both groups to learn from each others' experiences.
The Inaugural US Indigenous Tribal Leaders' Symposium was hosted at Parliament in Wellington by local iwi Te Atiawa and Ngāti Toa.
Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira chief executive Helmut Modlik said it was a privilege to wānanga and discuss together.
Māori needed to put words into action and find ways to go forward, he said.
“The insights that could come from our North American chiefs would be really helpful for our leadership, our community here, to answer those questions, what can we do moving forwards.”
By sharing their experiences of colonisation they have been able to identify what they could learn from each other, Modlik said.
“What’s been telling in the couple of days we’ve spent together is the parallels, the circumstances that they have faced at home have in some respects been far more dire than ours and certainly longer.
“One of the chiefs here this morning said their tribe had first contact in the late 1500s, so they’ve been enduring the impacts of colonisation for a much longer time.
“The perseverance, the unremitting will to actually achieve truth telling, justice, healing. These are very inspiring things to hear from others and that really does capture the wairua we feel at this point in time, we’re optimistic.”
Kirk Francis, the chief of the Penobscot Nation in Maine in the northeastern United States, said he saw a lot more similarities than differences between Māori and indigenous people in the US.
“I see treaty meddling, I see a lot of things going on that I can certainly relate to, and the fact that we’re in more of a self-governance space than folks here doesn’t really negate the fact that, even without those geographical boundaries, that governing their own citizens for themselves is extremely important for the future of the people.”
Francis said there was still a long way to go for his people, but they were proud of the successes they had so far.
“We’ve come a long ways in the last 45 years, we’ve gone from a tribe that was treated as wards of the state... We didn’t have running water, electricity up until the late 1970s, we couldn’t even vote in our own state up until 1969-70 so we’ve come a long ways.
“We have our own judicial branch, we have our own legislative branch, we have our own law enforcement, housing, education, healthcare, we run all of that.”
It has been inspiring to see how Māori have responded to their own challenges, he said.
“What I’ve been struck by here is just the tremendous cultural knowledge that exists here still, despite the challenges... I’ve seen non-Māori people speaking the language just out of respect.”
United South and Eastern Tribes executive director Kitcki Carroll (Cheyenne and Arapaho) said in just four days of being on New Zealand soil, he had also noticed many similarities.
“We’re 10,000 kilometres, approximately 6000 miles away from here, but that indigenous experience in history has many mirror images of itself.”
But it was not just unique to them, it was indigenous peoples globally, he said.
“Invisibility, challenges with our federal, parliamentarian counterparts, etc, having our inherent sovereign rights and authorities understood and respected and honoured. Disparities - health, social, economic - and all those sorts of things, there’s a lot of different similarities between our two communities.”
It was not until the 1970s under a policy of self-determination that indigenous North American tribes began to see positive changes, he said.
“Every federal policy before that was sought to simulate, terminate, [and] remove, so it has only been within the last 50 years or so we’ve been in the space of recognised rights to self determination and self governance.”
Although, there were still “embedded limitations and boundaries” in US government policy he hoped the future would be obstacle-free.
“What the next era is about is unencumbered, noninterference with our creator given rights to exert our inherent sovereign rights and authorities for the benefits of our citizens and communities.”
By Pokere Paewai and Emma Andrews of RNZ
