#can we try actively researching and looking up the voice to parliament rather than this 'if you don't know vote no' bullshit ??

[flowers-and-literature]

Man fuck this fucking country

[aliceslantern]

Heartlines, a Kingdom Hearts fanfic, chapter 25-- Deconstruction/Reconstruction

Twelve years ago, Xemnas betrayed the royal court of Radiant Garden to his father, Xehanort. Prince Ienzo flees to another city and begins university in the aftermath, hoping the anonymity will protect him from eager eyes with ill intent. The darkness spilling across the country, as well as an individual from his past, cut short Ienzo's new beginning and bring new conflicts to light. Strained between the desires of his magic and his heart, Ienzo's choice will change him forever.

Modern Fantasy AU, Soulmates, Zemyx. Updates Fridays until it's done.

Chapter summary:  With Radiant Garden under control of the resistance, it's time to rebuild. Ienzo tries to repair the damage done to his family.

Read it on FF.net/on AO3

---

White sheets. Cool air. Color and light. He felt so heavy, and it took him a moment of grappling into consciousness to realize it was because he could barely move his legs.

“Ienzo? Love?”

Ienzo turned his head as much as he was able. He seemed to have motion in his upper body, but even that was difficult, like tugging on puppet strings. “Ev-even?” He swallowed.

“Would you like some water? I’ll get some. Don’t move.”

As if he could help it. Blurrily, he saw Even retreat to a corner of this room--the castle infirmary?--and pour water from a pitcher. He knew he should be grateful to still be sighted at all, after using so much magic. He squinted. Even handed him the cup; he could barely close his hand around it, but he managed it at last. Despite IV fluids, he was so thirsty .

“Are you in any pain? I can get you some medication if--”

“No. I’m not. But I can’t… it’s hard to move.”

“...I know.” Even smoothed some of the hair from Ienzo’s face. His own face was pale, pinched, a large bruise along his throat yellowing. “From the magic use. Breaking down a limiter of that strength… then triggering what you did… frankly, it’s a miracle you’re still alive.”

“Will I be like this… always?”

“I’m optimistic you’ll recover yet, but… there may be some lingering effects.”

“What’s happened? How long have I been out? Where’s Amalia? Where’s--?”

“One thing at a time, child. It’s imperative you remain calm.”

Ienzo tried to center himself, tried to take deep breaths. Even took his hand and rubbed it, gently.

“Amalia is safe and well. I suspect Ansem is enjoying having time with her. Once he received some blood replacement, Demyx was fine too. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled you’re awake. It was all rather… dramatic, how it went down. You’ve been unconscious close to three weeks.”

“Aeleus? ...Isa? What of… everything else? Xehanort’s forces? The son who called himself Ansem? He wasn’t in the throne room that day--”

Even’s eyes went blank, and he turned towards the window. “I’m afraid when I… felt your burst of magic--it was felt everywhere, Ienzo, I don’t think you understand--I assumed the worst and I--I did something reckless. He was our jailer, in my old labs, something he no doubt had great pleasure in. For the first time in my life… I acted on impulse.” He looked at his free hand, which was trembling. “I knew you were in trouble, and I--”

Ienzo had never heard Even sound so shaky. He choked down guilt. “You killed him.”

“...He was the gatekeeper.” He’d turned faintly green.

“Was that the first time you took a life?”

“It does not matter. It needed to happen either way.” He swallowed. “I made my way there, with ease. You killed every Heartless in the vicinity. Those that were human were knocked unconscious, or fled.”

“I… I did?”

“...Quite. The initial scouting indicates that… you may have slain every one in the city.”

“It was not conscious,” he admitted. “All I saw was that Demyx was bleeding out and the soulbinding reacted to all that--”

“--and the rush of emotions triggered magic. Of course it did.”

Ienzo lay back a little. “So without the three of them… and no Heartless…”

“The capital city’s under the control of the resistance.” But there was no happiness in his expression.

“Shouldn’t we be… glad? This is among the best case scenarios--”

“The sudden death of Xehanort and two of his sons has caused something like a power vacuum. The people don’t know how to react. There’s still darkness and various devotees of it spread throughout the country. Some states have turned over towards us, but others are… hesitant. Waiting to see might happen. And there are those who are outright fighting. Aeleus and Isa are among the front line, trying to see what can be done to restore order without worsening things. Meanwhile your father is trying to pursue international aid… and research better ways to defeat the darkness.”

“And of you?”

A pause. “I’ve been taking care of you.”

“I’m sure you’ll be relieved to go back to research, then.”

Even reached forward to smooth Ienzo’s hair. “To be truthful, it has been nice, to have this space to think. To consider.”

Ienzo understood. “...It’s alright if you’re upset, Even.”

“It is so silly , that I feel such guilt for killing one who’s killed thousands with his actions--but my feelings are not important.”

“I’m sure that’s not the case.” Ienzo struggled to sit up; Even adjusted the pillows under him. “So much for fighting back.”

“I think you’ve done enough. You must recover for what comes next.”

“Amalia. I need to see her.”

He hesitated.

“Please, Even.”

“...Quite.” He seemed to go a little deeper into himself. “Perhaps there will be one day when I’m not constantly in fear of your life.”

“I sincerely hope so.”

Ienzo watched him leave the room. He’d never seen Even so scattered before, so almost… unsure . Had something else happened he was not telling Ienzo, about the man calling himself Ansem? That bruise…

He hadn’t been conscious long, but he was already exhausted. He could still feel his legs, but moving was the problem. Perhaps he could get a wheelchair, and get around that way? He couldn’t seriously sit around and do nothing while all this fighting happened--

The door opened. In came Demyx, carrying their daughter. She’d gotten even bigger since Ienzo last saw her--another month he’d missed--and she was chewing on a teething ring. “Hey,” he said, softly. Like Even, his eyes were closed off.

“How do you feel?” Ienzo asked.

“Me? Oh, I’m fine. Ugly scar, but oh well, right? How are… you?” Amalia was staring at him, not with fear like before, but perhaps curiosity. Ienzo tried to reach out to her with his magic, but it was like swatting wet laundry; it didn’t come instantly to his call. So instead he reached out one trembling hand. She smiled and handed him the slimy teething ring. “Oh, sweetie, I’m sure daddy doesn’t want that.”

“Could I…” He wasn’t sure he was physically strong enough to hold her.

“Ah… sure.” Demyx pulled the chair closer to the bed and plopped her onto the mattress. “I’ve been… bringing her in here for a while every day. While daddy takes his long nap, right?”

She made a sound like “boo.”

“She talks.” Tears rose to his eyes.

“Well. Vocalizes.”

She clapped her hands together.

“And she can hold herself up.”

“She crawls, too. Ah--like that.” She had dragged herself almost across Ienzo’s lap. “I have a feeling she’ll be running before long.”

Amalia looked up at him and made a noise that could only be expressed as “?”

“Daddy,” Demyx said to her helpfully. “You remember now, yeah.”

“Baba.”

“Daddy. Good.” He smoothed the curls off her forehead.

Ienzo felt a rush of affection which was almost painful. “Look at you, big girl.” He wasn’t sure what else to say. She tugged at the sleeve of his robe. “Can you help me?” he asked Demyx.

“Sure.” He eased her into his lap. Amalia pressed her cheek against his chest. “See? Crisis averted.”

“I’m guessing the curls came from you.”

“The only time my hair was long enough to tell was when I was underwater, so.” He shrugged. Amalia gave him a toothless smile. “Look at you, happy girl.”

Ienzo noticed the difference in his voice when he spoke to the two of them. “Are you comfortable? Here?”

“Oh, yeah. Ansem set us up nice in your old room. If you don’t mind.”

“Why would I mind?”

Another shrug. “Oof, drool patrol.” He grabbed a tissue and dabbed at it. “She’s teething something wicked.”

“Maybe the next time you come you could bring me a book, so I could read to her.”

“She’d probably like that.”

Ienzo wrapped his arms loosely around her, and she let him. Feeling the warmth and weight of her--the subtle twitch of her limbs-- and hearing her little babbling eased this awful ache he’d had for so long. “I missed you,” he said to her. He kissed her head. “I missed you so much. I just… hope we can be a family now.”

“That would be nice,” he said softly. “Wouldn’t it?” The last part he repeated in a goofy voice, and Amalia laughed. “You think you’ll be okay?”

“Even’s optimistic. And I trust him.”

“He’s been up here almost constantly.”

“But the castle is… safe, for you two?”

“Oh, yeah. Magic users crawling out of the woodwork to help. I've still got some fight in me."

“I hope that soon I can be back on my feet, and start being a bigger part of her life.”

“One thing at a time.” Ienzo wondered if he was imagining the flatness in his eyes. “Isn’t that right, Li-li?”

---

It took Ienzo weeks to start feeling something resembling “normal.” For several nights the pain of his healing nerves kept him awake, but at least once it was through with he could limp around a little. He could play with Amalia a little more actively. Physical therapy made him somewhat stronger, and while he had to use a cane to walk more than a few steps, Even believed it would be gone before long.

Members of his family and the resistance ducked in and out. Ansem brought him books, briefed him on the situation as it developed. “Almost feels as though my skills to rule have grown rusty,” he admitted. “It is difficult to tell… which members of parliament left are lying, when they say they did not hold any allegiance towards Xehanort. I’m tempted to dissolve the whole thing and hold elections, but we simply can’t do so at the moment. Making sure our people are fed and safe and cared for is more important than politics at the moment. Thankfully the bordering nations have been kind enough to send along resources and medics.”

“I wish I could help,” Ienzo said. “Being here, waylaid and helpless --”

Ansem just patted his hand. “You jumpstarted a revolution, Ienzo,” he said.

“So I’m told, but I wonder if you all are exaggerating to salve my ego.”

The pat became more of a squeeze. “Control of Radiant Garden was crucial,” he said. “And you achieved that.”

“Only because Xehanort mortally wounded Demyx, and I reacted instinctively--were it not for that my whole plan would’ve collapsed--”

“Ienzo. Why are you being hard on yourself?”

He felt tears in his eyes. “These past six months… I’ve been sitting here in luxury playing silly mind games while my daughter grew up without me, while the rest of you suffered. ”

“You did the best you could with what you had--and you did pretty damn well. This guilt is pointless, Ienzo.”

“I… I know.”

“We are together now. We will rebuild. And I hope things will be better than they were before.”

He sniffled. “Is it over? Can it just be over?”

Ansem drew him into an embrace.

---

Spring began in earnest. Ienzo realized one morning as he woke in the infirmary that the lingering smell of darkness that had hung over Radiant Garden was gone, and a fresh rain brought in the sea air. He no longer needed the cane, but he tired easily, and his legs still ached tremendously. Once he was well enough, he insisted that he be more involved in the reconstruction, insofar as he could.

There was the reality of Xehanort’s youngest son’s experiments. Ienzo had purged the Heartless, but the poor people who had not been transformed were instead traumatized and in some cases catatonic. While there were doctors and psychologists willing to help them, it was hard to tell if they could be helped. Ansem organized national days of mourning for those who had been lost, and released the lists of names so families could have closure. The youngest son had kept meticulous records.

He asked community leaders to come forward with ideas as to help their nation move on. Darkness still existed; but now that people had hope, they were more willing to fight. That, and with the darkness easing, they were getting early signs that the planet could still heal. Ienzo swore he could feel its pulse, its life reaching up to his magic. He wished he did not feel so powerless.

“We don’t want things to go back to the way they were,” Ansem said in a broadcast. “Clearly, “normal” meant “suffering” for some. Darkness… only made that pain more obvious. If we wish to maintain the light, we must heal one another.”

Finally, Ienzo was well enough to go back to his rooms, and begin repairing his family… because it was going to take a lot of work. Amalia was more familiar with him, more comfortable, but still she always looked towards Demyx when she needed something.

And there was the matter of… Demyx.

At first Ienzo thought the distance between them was all paranoia on his part, but it became clear in the way Demyx spoke to him, especially when it came to their daughter. “You dressed her in that? She hates that one, it’s itchy against her scales.” “Sure. You can do that. I guess.” “Look, I know you’re trying, but strawberries give her gas .” “You let her nap too long. Now she’s not going to sleep through the night.” That, and the flatness in his eyes. It wasn’t openly unfriendly, but it lacked the warmth that they’d had before.

More straining than this, in some ways, was sharing a bed. Ienzo had honestly been looking forward to reconnecting on a physical level--he hoped it would help him sleep the deep way he had when they lived together--but that first night Demyx just rolled onto his side and fell asleep. He let it go a few nights, wondering if it were just a pain of readjustment, if he were just used to sleeping alone. Finally, he just got fed up and crawled over to spoon him, jerking him out of his sleep. “What are you--?”

“Trying to touch you?”

“Well could you please not?”

For a moment there was just silence.

Demyx exhaled heavily and ran his hand through his hair. “Look, I… I’m sorry for snapping. But I… I’m not comfortable .”

Ienzo swallowed and felt a lump in his throat. “Would you prefer I slept elsewhere?”

“No, it’s… it’s fine.”

Ienzo eased back to his side of the bed. He knew he would not be able to sleep. As it was, he was struggling not to cry.

The next day they behaved as normally as they could in front of their daughter, but when Ansem came and asked if he could spend some time with her, Ienzo agreed before Demyx could get a word in edgewise. “We need to talk,” Ienzo said.

Demyx wrinkled his nose. “Do we have to?”

“Yes. We do.” Ienzo was surprised to feel his temper flare, but he kept it in check. “Look, we’re… we’re parents, and we’re soulmates . A lot has happened, and you have a right to feel the way you do. But that can’t begin to heal if we keep ignoring it.”

He seemed to not know what to say.

“How do you feel, Demyx?” Ienzo asked.

He rubbed at his arm. “I feel like… I feel…” He swallowed. “Something’s just wrong ? With me?”

“You’re processing.”

“Not that. I don’t know. For a long time I just missed you so much it hurt, and I didn’t know how I was going to do any of it, be her dad, or…” He trailed off, a flush darkening his face. “And then I saw you again, and you were alive, and I was so happy and so relieved and I don’t know what happened since then. Something’s wrong.”

A suspicion slid into place, and Ienzo’s voice shook when he asked, “wrong how ?”

Tears flooded his eyes. “I don’t feel anything. When I look at you. You’re the father of my child. But it’s just… I feel like… I was meant to be her dad, but… I don’t know if I’m meant to be with you?” His voice quivered and broke. “I want to. I want to be in love with you again. But I…”

“I think I understand,” Ienzo said woodenly.

Demyx hesitated. He stared at Ienzo for a moment, and then he took a few steps forward and kissed him, hard.

And it was different.

Physically, it felt the same, the way they moved together. But it was just a nice kiss, without the heavy reassurance that yes , this is part of you, everything is safe, everything is okay.

In his mind’s eye, Ienzo saw Xehanort gouging him below the heart. “Oh,” he said softly.

“What’s wrong with me, Ienzo? Am I just depressed?”

“No,” he said. Numbly, he pulled away.

“...What?”

And then he started laughing.

“ What ?”

Once he began, he couldn’t stop, until tears were running down his face, and he couldn’t breathe, and somewhere the gasps of laughter became sobs, and he was curled in a ball on the floor. He felt Demyx’s hand on his back, warm but the touch was so wrong .

“Ienzo. What is it?”

He looked up. “Xehanort broke the soulbound.”

[endenogatai]

Germany’s COVID-19 contacts tracing app to link to labs for test result notification

A German research institute that’s involved in developing a COVID-19 contacts tracing app with the backing of the national government has released some new details about the work, which suggests the app is being designed as more of a “one-stop shop” to manage coronavirus impacts at an individual level, rather than having a sole function of alerting users to potential infection risk.

Work on the German app began at the start of March, per the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft institute, with initial funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Federal Ministry of Health funding a feasibility study.

In a PDF published today, the research organization reveals the government-backed app will include functionality for health authorities to directly notify users about a COVID-19 test result if they’ve opted in to get results this way.

It says the system must ensure only people who test positive for the virus make their measurement data available to avoid incorrect data being input. For the purposes of “this validation process,” it envisages “a digital connection to the existing diagnostic laboratories is implemented in the technical implementation.”

“App users can thus voluntarily activate this notification function and thus be informed more quickly and directly about their test results,” it writes in the press release (which we’ve translated from German with Google Translate) — arguing that such direct digital notification of tests results will mean that no “valuable time” is lost to curb the spread of the virus.

Governments across Europe are scrambling to get Bluetooth-powered contacts tracing apps off the ground, with apps also in the works from a number of other countries, including the U.K. and France, despite ongoing questions over the efficacy of digital contacts tracing versus such an infectious virus.

The great hope is that digital tools will offer a route out of economically crippling population lockdowns by providing a way to automate at least some contacts tracing — based on widespread smartphone penetration and the use of Bluetooth-powered device proximity as a proxy for coronavirus exposure.

Preventing a new wave of infections as lockdown restrictions are lifted is the near-term goal. Although — in line with Europe’s rights frameworks — use of contacts tracing apps looks set to be voluntary across most of the region, with governments wary about being seen to impose “health surveillance” on citizens, as has essentially happened in China.

However if contacts tracing apps end up larded with features that are deep linking into national health systems, that raises questions about how optional their use will really be.

An earlier proposal by a German consortium of medical device manufacturers, laboratories, clinics, clinical data management systems and blockchain solution providers — proposing a blockchain-based Digital Corona Health Certificate, which was touted as being able to generate “verifiable, certified test results that can be fed into any tracing app” to cut down on false positives — claimed to have backing from the City of Cologne’s public health department, as one example of potential function creep.

In March, Der Spiegel also reported on a large-scale study being coordinated by the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research in Braunschweig, to examine antibody levels to try to determine immunity across the population. Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI) was reportedly involved in that study — and has been a key operator in the national contacts tracing push.

Both RKI and the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft institute are also involved in parallel German-led pan-EU standardization efforts for COVID-19 contacts tracing apps (called PEPP-PT) that’s been the leading voice for apps to centralize proximity data with governments/health authorities, rather than storing it on users’ device and performing risk processing locally.

As we reported earlier, PEPP-PT and its government backers appear to be squaring up for a battle with Apple over iOS restrictions on Bluetooth.

PEPP-PT bases its claim of being a “privacy-preserving” standard on not backing protocols or apps that use location data or mobile phone numbers — with only arbitrary (but pseudonymized) proximity IDs shared for the purpose of tracking close encounters between devices and potential coronavirus infections.

It has claimed it’s agnostic between centralization of proximity data versus decentralization, though so far the only protocol it’s publicly committed to is a centralized one.

Yet, at the same time, regional privacy experts, the EU parliament and even the European Commission have urged national governments to practice data minimization and decentralized when it comes to COVID-19 contacts tracing in order to boost citizen trust by shrinking associated privacy risks.

If apps are voluntary, citizens’ trust must be earned not assumed, is the key argument. Without substantial uptake the utility of digital contacts tracing seems doubtful.

Apple and Google have also come down on the decentralized side of this debate — outting a joint effort last week for an API and later opt-in system-wide contacts tracing. The first version of their API is slated to be in developers’ hands next week.

Meanwhile, a coalition of nearly 300 academics signed an open letter at the start of this week warning that centralized systems risked surveillance creep — voicing support for decentralized protocols, such as DP-3T: Another contact tracing protocol that’s being developed by a separate European coalition which has been highly critical of PEPP-PT.

And while PEPP-PT claimed recently to have seven governments signed up to its approach, and 40 more in the pipeline, at least two of the claimed EU supporters (Switzerland and Spain) had actually said they will use a decentralized approach.

The coalition has also been losing support from a number of key research institutions which had initially backed its push for a “privacy-preserving” standard, as controversy around its intent and lack of transparency has grown.

Nonetheless, the two biggest EU economies, Germany and France, appear to be digging in behind a push to centralize proximity data — putting Apple in their sights.

Bloomberg reported earlier this week that the French government is pressurizing Apple to remove Bluetooth restrictions for its COVID-19 contacts tracing app which also relies on a “trusted authority” running a central server (we’ve covered the French ROBERT protocol in detail here).

It’s possible Germany and France are sticking to their centralized guns because of wider plans to pack more into these contacts tracing apps than simply Bluetooth-powered alerts — as suggested by the Fraunhofer document.

Access to data is another likely motivator.

“Only if research can access sufficiently valid data it is possible to create forecasts that are the basis for planning further steps against are the spread of the virus,” the institute goes on. (Though, as we’ve written before, the DP-3T decentralized protocol sets out a path for users to opt in to share proximity data for research purposes.)

Another strand that’s evident from the Fraunhofer PDF is sovereignty.

“Overall, the approach is based on the conviction that the state healthcare system must have sovereignty over which criteria, risk calculations, recommendations for action and feedback are in one such system,” it writes, adding: “In order to achieve the greatest possible usability on end devices on the market, technical cooperation with the targeted operating system providers, Google and Apple, is necessary.”

Apple and Google did not respond to requests for comment on whether they will be making any changes to their API as a result of French and German pressure.

Fraunhofer further notes that “full compatibility” between the German app and the centralized one being developed by French research institutes Inria and Inserm was achieved in the “past few weeks” — underlining that the two nations are leading this particular contacts tracing push.

In related news this week, Europe’s Data Protection Board (EDPB) put out guidance for developers of contacts tracing apps, which stressed an EU legal principle related to processing personal data that’s known as purpose limitation — warning that apps need to have purposes “specific enough to exclude further processing for purposes unrelated to the management of the COVID-19 health crisis (e.g., commercial or law enforcement purposes)”.

Which sounds a bit like the regulator drawing a line in the sand to warn states that might be tempted to turn contacts tracing apps into coronavirus immunity passports.

The EDPB also urged that “careful consideration” be given to data minimisation and data protection by design and by default — two other key legal principles baked into Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, albeit with some flex during a public health emergency.

However the regulatory body took a pragmatic view on the centralization vs decentralization debate — saying both approaches are “viable” in a contacts tracing context, with the key caveat that “adequate security measures” must be in place.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425 https://ift.tt/3bJouXO via IFTTT

[pakehastorytelling-blog]

#4 Tino rangatiratanga: fed

In this blog I am trying to only refer to other materials that are open source, that anyone with an internet connection can open up. One of the things that I think is really sad about academia and the university system is how gated it is – most of the research and knowledge sits within published journals that you need a subscription to access. This is a privilege I currently have as a university student paying fees, but I know that soon I won’t have access to that realm of knowledge anymore when I finish study. So I’ve tried to avoid external links to these gated articles, but there is one quote that is too compelling to not share. It’s from an article called “Māori women leading local sustainable food systems” by Karyn Stein, Miranda Mirosa and Lynette Carter and was published in 2018. If you want to read it and don’t have access via a tertiary institution, you can buy access via the journal portal here. They interview Māori women from around Aotearoa about their involvement with community food initiatives and discuss this with reference to food security, wellbeing and quality of life for those women and the communities they are involved in. I loved this article, but there were a few quotes in particular that stood out to me. These were from Charissa Waerea at Parihaka Community gardens

“Knowledge for me is tino rangatiratanga, it’s having that matauranga [knowledge] that comes [from], and often for me, is passed down through generations and practice – if grandmother practiced it or if your mother practices it… you learn by practice and you learn by word of mouth and that is tino rangatiratanga to me. It’s that transmission of knowledge to make sure that the future generations will know that this is a plant we’ve always used and this is how we use it…. So for me, it’s more about the total ecological system, not just gardening. But it’s also our connection to the earth by putting your hands in the soil you’re reconnecting with our creators. Most activities would do these days, there’s often synthetic material or business that prevents the contact we need to actually be having on a regular basis. So there’s a lot of healing in that connection.” (p.151)

Photo 1: Charissa Waere, Emily Bailey and Urs Signer at Parihaka Community Gardens, photographed by Cameron Burnell

I can look back and see how I was formed through the practice of being in the garden with my family (which I spoke about in post #3). By being with the land I learnt about caring for it and being cared for by it. The knowledge I gained from these experiences has shaped who I am, and not just what I know. It is an embodied knowing that sits deep in who I am. Without those experience I would be different. Therefore in some way I can relate to the experience that Charissa speaks of about putting your hands in the soil and reconnecting to creators, and about how knowledge is transmitted through being together and doing together. If you’re interested you can read more about the Parihaka gardens here. These words from Charissa and reading about the gardens at Parihaka have shaped my thinking. Before reading about these initiatives I had heard about tino rangatiratanga and had heard it defined as ‘absolute sovereignty’, but this hadn’t really helped me to understand what this meant. But hearing this explained through the vision and perspective of Charissa and the Parihaka gardens I started to have some way of imagining what this looked like on the ground (literally, excuse the pun). Tino rangatiratanga isn’t just a concept that sits upon the parchment of the Treaty of Waitangi, but it is this embodied way of living that Māori are seeking to live.

Image 2:  Te Mahi Māra Hua Parakore - A Māori Food Sovereignty Handbook, by Jessica Hutchings

In her book  Te Mahi Māra Hua Parakore - A Māori Food Sovereignty Handbook, Jessica Hutchings talks about how growing kai in your māra (garden) restores connection with nature and whakapapa, but also is a form of self-sufficiency and resilience which stands against the corporatisation of food. Jessica emphasises the damages of monocultural food production (growing one thing at a large scale, rather than a variety at a small scale such as in a garden) upon the environment, and on the health of the people. This is something I resonate with, as my Mum drilled into me the mantra ‘fresh is best’ and would often point out how much nutritional value is lost when you eat food that has been harvested days or weeks before. Jessica also emphasises how the turn towards monoculture has rendered the environment as a tool merely for economic gain, not as something which people are interconnected with. Jessica’s call is to join her in resisting these processes of food production, stating that “Food sovereignty and food security is our right as tangata whenua (people of the land): returning to the land to grow and nourish our whānau through the kai we eat is a form of everyday activism and a practical expression of tino rangatiratanga” (p.16)

I am extremely Pākehā (see photo of pale baby me in blog post #2) but I deeply respect and value that worldview that Charissa and Jessica articulate. Around the example of food I can recognise overlap where it is similar to my own values and areas where it is different and still really unclear to me. Food, gardening and wellbeing is a space in life where I feel like I have a doorway in to understanding the expression of what it is to be Māori. Writing about this here I am hopeful that other Pākehā could resonate with this, and thereby my experience of learning could become another way for others to come into more understanding of the Māori worldview. Creating bridges of understanding seem to be so important when there seems to be so much misinformation, misunderstanding and general resistance to accepting the validity of the Māori worldview in large portions of society (if you are in any doubt about this just read stuff comments on any article discussing tino rangatiratanga or  Māori rights). Looking back over my life, I can see the privilege I had in being food secure. To live in places where there was enough land and time to grow our own food, enough money around to buy what we couldn’t grown, and a family that had the time and energy and knowledge to teach me about gardening. When I was taught about gardening by my Mother I don’t think she ever would have predicted that it would become a way for me to understanding more about tino rangatiratanga. But it is through this part of my story that I was able to resonate with and think about the story and experience of others, and have any entry point into more understanding.

Image 3, 4 and 5: Photos I took of supermarket food, stacked and plastic wrapped. This kai sits disembodied from the people and ecosystems which cultivated it 

Here again, I think the telling of stories helps to reshape the way we think and understand ourselves. In terms of increasing my knowledge of the stories of what actually happened in this land, one thing I did was visit the National Library and actually go and see the Treaty of Waitangi in the He Tohu exhibition. There’s a really great little exhibition which leads you through the story of what was happening in Aoteroa in the early 1800s prior to the signing of the Treaty in 1840 and what has happened since. In the exhibition you hear from historians, activists, politicians, economists, school kids, lawyers, journalists  Māori and Pākehā alike. The exhibition begins with He Wakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni (The Declaration of Independence) signed by a number of chiefs in 1835. I didn’t even know about this document until going to this exhibition! The exhibition then explores the differences in the translation of the Treaty, centering on kawangatanga and rangatiratanga, before examining the way the Crown flagrantly breached the Treaty throughout the years that followed.  

Having done some reading and thinking about tino rangatiratanga and the Treaty, I feel like I’m right at the start of a whole of learning about the history of this place and its people. Two of the most striking things that I took away from the exhibition was the words from Moana Jackson about the treaty not being about rights, but responsibilities to one another, and an alliance which allowed for a gift exchange between Māori and Pākehā to act towards each other in good faith. What is clear from the exhibition, and even the briefest glimpse into the history of Aotearoa is that the party who has let down this alliance and not met their responsibilities is Pākehā.

Image 6: The National Library is a slightly scary looking building but the He Tohu exhibition is worth it

Images 7 and 8: This is what the exhibition entrances look like, just in case you miss them 

So the thing about all this is that the National Library is about 200m away from Parliament. As I walked around the exhibition for a few hours I saw perhaps four other people and wondered, what would happen if every civil servant and every politician was made to walk through this exhibition before they started to work for the government? What if every person in New Zealand had to take 2 hours and come and hear about this? How different would this country be?! Through the use of many voices and examples throughout the exhibition, told through video recording, you can hear stories about Aotearoa through the voices and faces of different people. This kind of story telling and sharing seems really important to me, because it humanises our histories, and for me anyway has create a bridge between my existing knowledge and life, and helped connect that with the formative events of our nation’s past. So what does all this navel gazing mean? I guess hopefully understanding some of this better helps me to be an ally to Māori as they advocate for and push for tino rangatiratanga, simply by being one less person who is ignorant of the systematic struggles they have experienced or the importance of what they are struggling for.