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People gather ahead of a march to the parliament in protest of the Treaty Principles Bill, in Wellington, New Zealand, November 19, 2024.
New Zealand rocked by indigenous rights controversy
Over the past few days you might have seen that viral clip of New Zealand lawmakers interrupting a legislative session with a haka -- the foot-stamping, tongue-wagging, eyes-bulging, loud-chanting ceremonial dance of the nation’s indigenous Maori communities.
What was that about? The haka was led by Maori lawmakers opposed to a new bill that would curtail certain special privileges for their community, which has historically suffered discrimination. Thousands of Kiwis have also marched to the capital, Wellington, as part of a broader protest against the bill.
The back story: Maori rights were first spelled out in a 19th century treaty with the British Crown. But it was never codified or properly translated, opening the way for exploitation of the Maori, who today make up about 18% of the population.
In recent decades, courts have brought the spirit of the treaty into various laws seeking to address that legacy of discrimination. Some have included quotas for Maori communities in public institutions.
The bill’s backers say that’s unfair. The small, rightwing ACT party, part of the governing center-right coalition, wants to codify Maori sovereignty but outlaw preferential treatment for any groups.
But critics from across the political spectrum say the bill would upend one of the world’s most successful experiments in equitable relations with indigenous communities, opening the way to fresh exploitation of Maori people and lands.
The bill won’t pass. Even the prime minister is opposed to it.
But it brings to New Zealand one of the most contentious culture war questions of the day: do communities that have suffered exploitation or discrimination have a right to preferential treatment in the name of social justice – or does that spotlight race and ethnicity in ways that deepen social divides?
Partnering for the future: Indigenous communities and energy transition
Listen: Investing in infrastructure isn’t the only important factor in the energy transition. It’s also about partnering with Indigenous peoples in energy projects. In this episode of Energized: The Future of Energy, host JJ Ramberg and Enbridge CEO Greg Ebel talk to Justin Bourque, President of Athabasca Indigenous Investments, and Mark Podlasly, Chief Sustainability Officer of First Nations Major Project Coalition. They discuss how a partnership deal between Enbridge and 23 Indigenous communities in northern Alberta is improving life for those communities and how Indigenous peoples are investing in the energy transition—and their futures.
Listen on Apple, Spotify, Goodpods, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes will be published every other Thursday.A rainbow is seen behind the Australian flag, the Indigenous flag and the flag of the Torres Strait Islands in Canberra, Friday, July 28, 2023.
Will Australians back Indigenous referendum?
Australians will vote on Saturday in a referendum on whether an Indigenous Voice to Parliament should be enshrined in the constitution. “The Voice,” as it has become known, would establish an advisory body to the government on issues that affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. Importantly, it would have no legal power to enforce its recommendations.
Background. Indigenous Australians, also known as the First Australians, include hundreds of thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have lived on what is now Australian territory for thousands of years. Currently, they make up about 3.8% of the country's 26 million people.
For much of the first half of the twentieth century, Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families as part of a government scheme to hasten the disappearance of Indigenous culture. These children, who were often placed in state-run institutions rife with abuse, became known as The Stolen Generation.
Since then, Indigenous Australians have been stuck in a cycle of poverty and are incarcerated at disproportionately high rates, currently making up 32% of the prison population.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, for his part, has been pushing hard for Aussies to vote “yes” in order to address historic wounds and improve living conditions for impoverished Indigenous communities.
But proponents of a “no” vote, including the opposing Liberal Party, say that creating a race-based, unelected body is divisive and will only exacerbate racial divides and have few actionable implications.
In order to pass, a majority of voters and a majority of states (four out of six) will need to vote in favor. No referendum has ever passed without bipartisan support and the latest polls show that this one is unlikely to either.Destroyed buildings in the aftermath of the deadly earthquake, in Antakya, Turkey February 19, 2023.
Hard Numbers: Turkey/Syria quake death toll, Modi ally’s biz empire crumbles, West Bank violence, AMLO believes in elves
50,000: The death toll of the Feb. 6 Turkey/Syria earthquakes topped 50,000 on Sunday. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is feeling the heat over allegedly corrupt practices that led to so many collapsed buildings on his watch ahead of the May 14 election.
145 billion: The industrial empire of Indian billionaire Gautam Adani lost $145 billion — 60% of its value — in the month following allegations of fraud by Hindenburg Research, a US-based short seller, which Adani virulently denies. The Adani Group has faced years of corruption allegations, but it remains to be seen if the longtime ally of PM Narendra Modi is too big to fail.
2/1: Violence ensued in the West Bank on Sunday after a Palestinian gunman killed two Israeli settlers. That sparked a retaliatory rampage by settlers on the village of Hawara that killed at least one Palestinian, bringing the West Bank to boiling point.
7 million: Did someone leave the wardrobe open?! Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, tweeted a photo of what he claims is an “aluxe”, a mischievous woodland spirit from Mayan folklore requiring gifts to appease it. The tweet had 7 million views as of Monday morning and is not out of character for AMLO, who has long revered indigenous beliefs and culture.
Indigenous people: true guardians of land and oceans
If the earth were a company, who'd you pick to run its assets?
For Hindou Ibrahim, co-chair of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change, it should be Indigenous people, who have been protecting the land and the oceans far longer than governments. That's what makes them the true guardians of ecosystems.
"We cannot sustain and protect this biodiversity if we do not recognize and respect the rights of indigenous peoples to their land tenure" and access to finance, Ibrahim says in a Global Stage livestream conversation hosted by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft.
Corporations have CEOs. The planet, she adds, should appoint Indigenous peoples as "chief ecological officers" so all "the funding can go to us directly. And we can decide it our way."
Watch the full Global Stage livestream conversation "The Road to 2030: Getting Global Goals Back on Track" .
- The Graphic Truth: Has climate change hurt or helped farmers? ›
- We can't fix climate change without protecting biodiversity, says UNFCCC official ›
- Hard Numbers: ECB rate hike, China-India thaw, Indigenous oil drilling pause, Nigerian donkey penises ›
- Racial injustice Down Under: Australia’s Indigenous peoples ›
- Hard Numbers: Indigenous land protests in Brazil, dirty Thai cops, Iran’s new cabinet, Italian euthanasia vote ›
Truck driver Jakub Pajka, 35, poses for a picture after an interview with Reuters at the highway A2 parking near Warsaw, Poland, September 28, 2021.
What We’re Watching: Europe's trucker shortage, Mapuche emergency in Chile, Japan’s military plans
Truck driver shortage across Europe: No, the UK is not the only European country with an acute shortage of drivers to move goods around. Indeed, the entire continent is now desperately in need of more truckers, mainly as a result of soaring demand coupled with less people willing to do a job for low pay and poor working conditions. The situation in mainland Europe is not as bad (yet) as in the UK, where Brexit has aggravated the problem: the army has been deployed to refill gas stations amid backed-up ports and empty supermarket shelves because EU drivers now need visas. Still, the shortage is creating a massive headache for European companies already struggling to keep up with so much pent-up demand. What's more, a new EU-wide law will soon require truckers to be paid the minimum wage in each EU member state they transit through. This is all precisely what the IMF has been talking about this week, when it warned that supply chain disruptions are slowing down the global post-pandemic recovery and driving up inflation.
Will Japan go Teddy Roosevelt? We all knew Japan's new PM Fumio Kishida speaks softly, but now his party wants him to also, as the 26th US president once advised, "carry a big stick." The ruling Liberal Democratic Party says it wants Japan to spend at least 2 percent of GDP — about $100 billion — on defense. That would double the country's current military budget, which has traditionally been pegged at 1 percent to comply with the pacifist spirit of the country's post-World War II constitution. Kishida hasn't committed to that target, but the mere party proposal could signal a profound shift in Japan's defense policy which has a lot to do with... China. When the more hawkish Shinzo Abe was in charge, the LDP didn't let him tweak the charter in order to beef up the military. But that was before China, whose navy often trolls Japan's near the disputed Senkaku islands, was as powerful as it is today. Still, the Japanese must tread carefully given that memories of its militaristic past remain fresh across Asia, and a move to boost spending could spark a regional arms race.
State of emergency in Chile: The president of Chile has declared a state of emergency and sent troops to two southern regions of the country, following deadly clashes between police and indigenous Mapuche groups there. The Mapuche have long demanded more autonomy and the restitution of certain ancestral lands that are now owned by logging companies. Mapuche grievances contributed to the wave of unrest that swept Chile in 2019-2020 over the broader issue of rising inequality. Those protests led to a referendum that voted in favor of rewriting the constitution, which currently doesn't recognize any rights for Chile's sizable Indigenous population. The current state of emergency lasts two weeks, but could be extended. We're watching to see if the move provokes further violence, and whether the Mapuche issue figures heavily in the run-up to the first round of the presidential election next month.