Tgirl Swag Has the Sanction of Heaven

I know most of tumblr is thinking about the USA right now. but fuck the nz government right now too. tomorrow, the treaty principles bill, the 'worst, most comprehensive breach of Te Tiriti in modern times' is being introduced to parliament early, because there were activations planned country wide and the cowards decided to pull it forwards. fuck this government. a friend of mine had to go home early, crying. I've been in shock all day since it came out.

check on your Māori friends, e hoa mā. see what they need. see how you can help. everyday, we see and experience racism. from people around us, up to our government. community care will save us.

in case people wanted a source

The Spinoff has a pretty good debunking of the supposed “rationale” behind the bill in this opinion piece by Carwyn Jones, the academic quoted in that Guardian article above:

There’s also this newsletter from this morning that explains the current situation pretty well:

For people overseas, you know how it's a popular simplification that here in Aotearoa New Zealand we did way better than every other colonial nation when it came to our relations with the indigenous population?

Well, for the sake of communication, let's ignore that that's actually bollocks. We've got our cool Treaty that made us better. The Treaty Principles Bill seeks to redefine how our Government follows that Treaty. How, you might ask? Why, by COMPLETELY IGNORING LITERALLY EVERYTHING IT SAYS of course!

The bill is being pushed by the ACT party, who are treating the Treaty of Waitangi like the USA's founding document, as if every founding document ever written exists to codify a set of rights for all citizens equally. That is not what Te Tiriti is! Te Tiriti is a document codifying the relationship between Crown and Māori, in such a way that at least the Te Reo version explicitly ensures that Māori are not erased.

It is not a founding document meant to lay down human rights. Know what does that here? The Human Rights Act. The Treaty is what says "hey you pākehā, you can settle here, just don't fucking trample māori in the process."

And yes, it's more complicated. The Crown have never followed Te Tiriti. Not properly. And the English language version was explicitly written not to be a correct translation and by the English text the Crown has more rights than the chiefs agreed to. But putting that aside for a second, we have a treaty, and in recent decades there has been a push to do so, in part by the establishment of the Treaty Principles by the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 which laid out specifically how the Government is meant to follow the Treaty and uphold Māori rangatiratanga, which is most widely agreed to mean sovereignty. The following are the 1975 Principles:

Basically, Māori did not cede sovereignty, they keep their land and treasures, and the Crown is supposed to be in partnership and consult Māori. Māori are guaranteed a voice in government and in decisions. That's why we have Māori electorates in our elections! Māori, as per current law, are guaranteed representation in Parliament. Whether or not it's enough is another topic, but they're at least guaranteed something.

ACT, through the Treaty Principles Bill seeks to go in the complete opposite direction. They have three principles they want to replace the 1975 ones with:

Principle 1 is pretty insidious - because the New Zealand Government means, in this context, the representation of the Crown. Whom there has been much controversy over lately, with the Prime Minister and head of ACT's coalition partner National saying - against the academic consensus - that the Crown has absolute sovereignty. The point of Principle 1 is to erase the idea that Māori have any sovereignty over themselves, or that they are in any way their own group outside of a Crown hegemony.

Principle 2 is again pretty insidious. It puts all property rights on equal standing. I might point out that Māori lost 74% of the entire North Island between 1860 and 2000 (having had 80% of it in 1860, and at most 4% of it in 2000), and what of it was gifted to the Crown for specific purposes was not returned after those purposes were done. When does this Bill decide "their land" begins in time? Now, when almost all Māori land has been stolen? After all, this Government have recently removed the rule that said Māori could still claim seashore rights despite not having had exclusive use of it which the criteria normally requires, if their land had been stolen. Y'know, that thing that typically prevents one from having exclusive use of one's land! And they're using their recent Fast Track Proposals Bill to cut Māori out of decisions that affect what land they are recognised as having. Under these rules, an Iwi has to defer to the Crown wanting to build a pipeline through fucking wāhi tapu (sacred land) (WHICH BY THE WAY IS NOT SOMETHING I MADE UP, THAT'S A RECENT NEWS STORY) because they would have no codified right to disagree, especially not under the Fast Track Bill which literally allows the Crown to decide arbitrarily that the Iwi is being too precious and ignore their objections entirely.

The story I linked? To illustrate this, the above two principles seek to unequivocally side with the Council, the Crown, on the pipeline, and remove all avenues for Tūhourangi, Ngāti Tūmatawera, to fight back and protect their land from a Crown body that does not in any way respect them or the graves of their tūpuna. Because well, they can say nope, the government has a right to do this, and the land belongs to the Council, never mind it was stolen.

Principle 3 is just a dogwhistle. That's not the point of the Treaty, not remotely, and it's already covered by the Human Rights Act. In fact, it goes directly against the Treaty, because, as is painfully fucking obvious, the whole POINT was that Māori were not culturally annihilated by the hegemony of a much larger power! The whole point was to make explicit that Māori, as per this agreement, have certain fucking rights to make sure they're not overwhelmed!

And it's obvious that this interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi removes literally the entire point of the Treaty. The Treaty Principles Bill is one side of a codified relationship seeking to unilaterally eviscerate the protections supposedly built into that relationship for the other side. The Crown signed a contract, saying they had to respect Māori. And now that progress is meaning it might be slightly followed, the Crown's representatives in the coalition Government are seeking to make sure the Crown no longer has to follow any part of that contract.

If New Zealand is supposedly better than other colonial nations, this government is trying to do everything possible to change that and get rid of the one thing that demands the Crown and Iwi be equal. The one thing that means we did better? Yeah, that is the thing they're trying to get rid of.

Kia ora, me again.

So I thought I'd add something on.

Two days ago, a march began against the Treaty Principles Bill. Interesting use of the word began, some of you from the rest of the world might think. Well, I don't mean a march down a city street.

I mean a march from Pōtahi Marae, all the way to Parliament. For reference, Pōtahi Marae is only 30km southeast of Cape Reinga, the northernmost point of Aotearoa, and Parliament in Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington) is about as south as you can get in Aotearoa without having to take a ferry or plane to Te Waipounamu (the south island). That's a more than 1000 kilometre route, and yes, some of it will be done by car but large chunks of it won't be.

This march, or hīkoi, follows in the footsteps of the 1975 Māori Land March, another such hīkoi made in response to continuing theft of Māori land by Pākehā who deemed it "unproductive" and passed laws allowing it to be compulsorily turned into public land and used by Pākehā against Māori objections. That march took 29 days. This hīkoi will be nine.

ACT are attempting to declaw and destroy every victory Māori have ever won against the encroach of colonial oppression, and prevent any further victories. They even suddenly brought forward the introduction of the Bill to before the hīkoi and, more importantly, before the Waitangi Tribunal could make their analysis of it. That means the Tribunal, and any official voice that can point out how flagrantly this Bill violates te Tiriti, is being explicitly cut out, they're not allowed to step in on Bills already before Parliament as I understand it.

I'm brain disabled (autism), not in very good shape, and don't already own walking shoes. By all rights I should not even be thinking about going to a march this long. I'm still going. It's going to be a hell of a distressing disruption to my routines to sort out shoes before I go, and breaking in new shoes with a fifteen kilometre walk in the hot sun probably isn't the best idea, but I'm going to join it. The hīkoi passes through Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), where I live, tomorrow, and will march across the Harbour Bridge from Onepoto Domain (departing at 10am), splitting into two to go to Takaparawhau (Bastion Point) and Ihumātao. My only lament is that I know that I'm not going to be able to continue with them south. I can't make that journey, and I can only imagine the dedication and strength, mental and physical, of those doing it.

It should not be in any way notable that I'm going. But Pākehā, like me, need to be taking part in these things far more. And it's to other Pākehā in particular I'm talking to when I say that.

We have a duty to support the fight against this Bill, against normalising it even if it fails. All these evils, all these attacks upon Māori, they were done in my name. In our name. They weren't my ancestors, I'm a first generation kiwi, but that doesn't matter. It was done in my name, so that I and every other Pākehā after them could have a miniature England to live in in the Pacific. As (I would like to think) tangata Tiriti, we have a duty to spit on that and say no. No, you do not do that in my name. To stand in kotahitanga with tangata whenua and uphold our Treaty. To any Pākehā who've reblogged my little explanation above after @takataapui reblogged it, get off your keyboard and join the hīkoi if you in any way can. Even if it's just one leg of it.

Not in my name. Toitū te Tiriti.

possibly stupid question but couldn’t the democrats just like lie about their campaign promises. like just say oh we’ll give kids free lunches we’ll give everyone healthcare and then quietly tell their donors it’s all horseshit so they don’t lose any money from Big Child Lunch Debt. like can’t you just lie. it feels like there is 0 cost to doing this once you get in power aside from people being mad at you when they don’t get what you promised, which seems to happen all the time anyway, and is marginally more inspiring than “nothing will fundamentally change.” like am i missing something obvious or is “addicted to losing” the actual explanation

What’s especially funny is that this is pretty much exactly what Obama did in 2008 and it worked. He successfully did an ideological rugpull on exactly those terms and very few people in the US even cared that he didn’t follow through on his promises

an interesting thing that has happened to me the more i read is like

that whole 'people were just as smart in the past as they are now' thing is... it's useful to avoid thinking about the past as being being the domain of a universally inferior Other, but also like

i don't think people really appreciate the ways in which a lot of people living right now are way, way healthier than a lot of the people living in the past, in ways that have enormous effects on people's ability to think about stuff

the effect of iodized salt alone! and we don't put lead in everything anymore!

i'm saying this because its important to understand that a much much larger proportion of people in the past were regularly struggling with illnesses and deficiencies that today we think of as health emergencies

that's gonna affect things even before we get to questions of social technologies for learning and experimentation...

so like every once in a while when i see some shit in a history book and i'm like 'wait seriously' i remember the people they're talking about are largely illiterate, most of them experienced childhood malnutrition of some kind, and intellectual curiosity largely wasn't useful because in many cases answers better than 'idk ghosts' did not yet exist.

like, even the stuff they were experts on they still understood primarily through just-so stories because their society just straight up lacked the tools to examine the causes and effects more closely, right? if you don't know what nitrogen is but you do know what four-crop rotation is, you have to make up a story to explain it.

and if you believe that story is true, you might make decisions based on that story that go very poorly for you.

so like, people in the past weren't stupid, yes. but it's also important to recognize how people here in the future are smarter in ways you might not realize, and you gotta temper your despair about The State Of Misinformation Today or whatever with the recognition that we are, by and large, much much better equipped, physically socially and technologically, to deal with misinformation and find the truth than the majority of our ancestors

This passage is interesting to me at least; I'm always curious about how ancient peoples understood the small but non-zero amount of observable progress that was happening around them.

snowy owl with pristine white feathers, ordering a hotdog with extra mustard. onlookers observe first in horror at the imagined inevitable mustard stains, and then in awe as it opens its mouth and the entire hotdog goes down in one go with perfect precision like it was eating a vole.

youre offline because you have an irl life and miss one load bearing post on here and all of a sudden you dont understand any of the vagues on your dash for the next week

the worst person you could think of should also never get executed by the state btw

If you wanna fix problems with the world the first thing you have to do is kill the impulse to stigmatize literally anything. I'm serious. Stigma is the enemy of compassion, and compassion is the most essential tool to fixing social ills.

There are no ifs, ands, or buts in this. Stigma is wrong.

since i'm talking about stick people yuri anyway here are some scattered shitposts i never bothered to port over to tumblr

pills that make you green but in the porn universe

[ID: Three panels.

Panel 1: A stick person is talking to a doctor

"Doctor I would like to turn green"

"Green like my... pickle?"

Panel 2: Zoom in on the other one.

"No absolutely not. What the fuck. This is extremely unacceptable behavior for a medical professional. I am going to risk my chance at medication by reporting this incident. Fuck you."

Panel 3: Zoom in further.

"please I just want to get the services I'm asking for it's every fucking day in this timeline no I don't want 'extra sausage' and 'special sauce' on my pizza I want to have dinner I am hungry"

End ID.]

my constant stream of thank yous and sorrys will save me from the ass beating i have coming for the crime of having needs

there should be an extreme form of blocking called “burnt bridge” that blocks that person along with everyone who follows them all at once

not good enough at math to do hard sciences

not good enough at language skills to do humanities or social sciences

not practical enough or good enough at finance or people skills to do business

not interesting or creative enough to go into the arts

go into psychology

a maid is a type of worker that helps with household chores

you should've voted bernkastel no matter wherekastel

cookbook zine called Feeding Trans Women

ive been working on a transfemme feedism zine with this exact title!

i’m gonna be honest that is probably a better project for this name