Manawatu Evening Standard
August 16th 2003
I've had enough. I'm not the only one who's had enough. John Tamihere, you can keep your food basket, which we call the foreshore. I hope you don't get too much sand in your soup when you eat your pipis, but you're going to have to like it. Why? Because I've had a gutsful. You want the foreshore, you want the forest, your want the fish, you want the oil, you want the gas, you want the land, you want me to support your whanau, your iwi. Uncle Tom Cobblers and all, to vote labour, give you extra health and education funding, and not to criticize you or yours. If I do say anything to upset you, I'll be called racist.
So to hell with you and your food cupboard. We're leaving. We're going to take our food cupboard with us, and a few other things as well. We're closing KFC, McDonalds and the fast food chains, and that includes the Kai Kart in Ruatoria. We're taking our pubs, our TABs and our breweries, our libraries, the newspapers, Friday Flash and Best Bets will all be things of
the past. DB will stand for Dead and Buried. We'll take our cars, our trucks,our homes, our petrol and we'll leave the Black Power on rollerskates. If you want to go to the races, you'll be betting on wetas, or wekas. We'll rip up the roads, airports and most communications, but we'll leave you the phone system because I'm sick of pushing button one for no answer, two for a further wait and three for total silence.
You'd better nurture the flax bushes because we're taking our clothing stores, our carpet makers and our shoe shops. We're pulling down your home and taking the TV, the DVD, the Playstation, the fridge, the washing machine and your mattress. We'll leave you with Maori radio and Maori TV because I think you deserve them. You can keep your Warriors and the part of the Maori rugby team that us actually all Maori, but we're taking the All Blacks, netballers, basketballers, cricketers and everyone else except the waka paddlers. We're going to let down your tyres and take away your pumps and I hope you can swim because I'm taking the outboard motor with me that you use to go and get your crayfish pots. DIY will become a Maori word because we'll take our tractors, our tools, The Warehouse, our secondhand shops and Work and Income. You can have the power companies after I've turned off the lights and taken the switches. We'll leave you with manuka, gorse and blackberry because a lot of it is on Maori land anyway, but the beef and mutton will have to go, so good luck with your kunekune hamburgers and possum stew. It's a pity you got rid of the moas.
After a lot of thought we are going to take the railway. We'll find an Aussie who'll want to buy it from us as we leave, but we'll leave you with a few professionals to keep you happy. We'll leave you all the lawyers, consultants, land agents and secondhand car salesmen. They should keep you very happy arguing for years. However, despite the temptation to leave it behind, we'll take Parliament with us too. So goodbye John, to free taxis, free feeds, free aeroplane rides, free speech and freedom. You'll be very happy when I've gone because there'll be a Maori population explosion. I'm taking all the condoms, pills and asprin.
And I nearly forgot, the names. We want them back. You can't have Maoris called Jackson, O'Regan, Walker, Cribb, Shelford, Sykes, Sharples or Smith. The Howard Morrison Quartet sounds like a group or orchestral strings. Now John? Where did you get that name from? You pinched it from a pakeha apostle.
But before we go I'd like a little reciprocation. We'd like back our muskets, the beads, the blankets, a flagpole, two dozen cakes of soap, and especially the old whiskey. You don't realize how much an 1868 vintage Johnny Walker bottle would be worth now, let alone 19,244 casks of the stuff. I figure that amount of whiskey would probably be worth as much John Bank's Britomart plus the boat harbour now, but we'd like it back.
Actually, I may put in for a claim for it before I leave.
Barrie Gibson
If you would like to send a reply to Barrie, please send an email to the
While you're at it, if you are taking back YOUR KFCs, McDonalds and fast food chains could you also take back YOUR heart disease, obesity and diabetes? If you are going to take back YOUR pubs, breweries and TABs could you also take back YOUR gambling, alcoholism and tobacco (along with YOUR lung cancer and emphysema)? Together with YOUR cars and trucks could you please take YOUR car exhaust emissions, respiratory illnesses and road toll?
If you're taking YOUR homes could you please take YOUR overcrowding and unsafe, substandard housing? Why on earth would you abandon YOUR gorse? Considering it was YOUR ancestors who desired a bit of ole Bonny Scotland and instead laid the foundation for a ghastly and dreadful weed to take root in this lovely land consuming and destroying the indigenous vegetation (goodness much like YOUR colonization) and please don't leave YOUR possums (or rabbits, stoats and thar) as they are devouring native trees, plants and birds by the mouthful and contributing to the general destruction of our ecosystem.
Take YOUR beef and mutton but don't forget YOUR greenhouse effect causing methane gas, YOUR erosion and YOUR lake destroying fertilisers.
It all got me thinking since you are in such a tizzy can you please take back YOUR pure methamphetamine, YOUR marijuana, YOUR ecstasy and YOUR heroin. YOUR people brought them in, supplied them, and profited nicely from the sale. Oh and please take YOUR Judaeo-Christian religion which shattered traditional holistic belief systems and allowed YOUR Salvation Army minions to sexually abuse children.
Happy to give you back YOUR muskets, YOUR beads and YOUR blankets put also be so kind as to take back YOUR diseases, YOUR sexism, YOUR racism and YOUR ageism. Since you kindly recognized notions of reciprocity then quid pro quo and return to Tangata Whenua Maori the billions of dollars that were made during privatization as well as the fraudulent land grab of the 19th and 20th centuries. Hey and return the finances from the sale of raw products, sales from the slaughter of marine animals, the clear cutting of trees, and exploitation of the oil and gas fields.
You can have the names, easy come easy go. But are you really asserting that man was made in YOUR image (as your comments about the apostles clearly demonstrates)? Sorry to disappoint you but last time I checked the apostles came from the Canaan region (Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, and the southern portions of Syria and Lebanon) and not the middle of Essex. Hardly the epitome of the British Empire, unless you are making a claim to the Holy Land as well?
But in contemplating your overzealous reclamations it has occurred to me that most of these belongings are not even YOURS. I understand that your inane and unjustified sense of superiority leads you to believe that you are the progenitor, the creator, the architect of all things, however this defies known fact.
The US can take credit for the KFCs and McDonalds (and most of the other fast food chains). Better check your facts DB Breweries is owned by Asia Pacific Breweries Limited (a Singaporean Company). The cars and trucks had their genesis in the United States, Germany, Japan and are now mostly imported from Australia and Japan. Speaking of Japan they can lay claim to the technology that facilitated the development of TVs, DVDs, PlayStations, fridges, and washing machines and have largely contributed to their manufacture and distribution most of the petrol is sourced from the Middle East and of course since James Hardie Pipelines was acquired by Crane Group Ltd (Australians and the Dutch) in 1998 you can't really lay claim to that either. Sorry can't take the plumbing as Mico Wakefield Group (a leading" distributor of metals, fasteners, plumbing supplies and pipeline systems) was similarly acquired by the Crane Group.
Nice to try and claim clothing considering most of it is imported from China. Good you didn't try and claim the phone system considering the majority of Telecom and Clear shareholders are Ameritech Holdings and Bell Atlantic Holdings Ltd (both US companies). Goodness and you thought you could take the newspapers but considering that both YOUR newspaper The Manawatu Evening Standard and New Zealand's largest media company (INL) are owned by Australians you'd better think twice before doing so.
Considering that YOUR people have sold most of what you consider to be YOURS, you can go (in fact I insist), but keep in mind that you don't have much left to take. The thing to remember is that Tangata Whenua Maori NEVER gave up their full exclusive and undisturbed possessions of their Lands and Estates, Forests, Fisheries and other properties.
It was YOUR people who did that.
Mrs. Nikolasa Biasiny-Tule