Effi Lincoln: Nine ways to disengage from the Woke praxis of Critical Race Theory in New Zealand.

Every time you use te reo you owe Māori more.

New Zealanders are increasingly asking what is going wrong in our beautiful country, despite us working so hard to make it inclusive and fair?

Why are there increasing demands to dismantle and replace our culture, our language balance and indeed, our entire political system which, until now, we have understood to be generally heading in the right direction?

And New Zealanders are pleading to know; What can we do to stop this juggernaut hurtling us all down the road to ruin?

How can we push back?

In this article I propose a first step that all concerned New Zealanders can use to begin this push back, and I set out my reasons why this step is vital, but also, doable.

But first, some background.

Small, isolated and proud of its history of “doing the right thing”, in the mid 20^th century New Zealand emerged as a perfect crucible for the spawning of the insidious and destructive ideology of Critical Theory. (see my June 26 breaking views article, Why I stopped learning te reo).

The aim of Critical Theorists is to disrupt and dismantle our society from within so that power can be transferred from “white western” dominance, to so called “oppressed minority” dominance.  The Critical Theorists’ only motive is to flip the social order, through the destruction of the dominant culture and the increasingly aggressive promotion of the “oppressed” minority, until that “oppressed” minority becomes all powerful.

Last century in New Zealand the emerging Māori Sovereignty movement cleaved themselves to the Critical Theorists and learned to use the Critical Theory playbook in a long game to enable them to manoeuvre to sovereignty over New Zealand by stealth, with a key feature being to use against us, the desire of “white western” people to create a fair and egalitarian society.

New Zealanders must understand that for decades now, Critical Theorists have been marching through our institutions, quietly embedding their practitioners and applying their praxis to generations of malleable children and undergraduates.

They finally have a critical mass of New Zealanders who have, in their trusting innocence, drunk deeply of the kool-aid.

The tipping point has been the election of a majority labour government led by Jacinda Ardern, whose language of “transformational” change comes directly from Critical Theory ideology.  The Critical Theorists have now been emboldened and are making their move.

So who are these Critical Theorists in New Zealand?

Critical Theory is a hydra. It has many heads.  The dominant head in New Zealand is Critical Race Theory. 

“Critical Race Theory isn’t an exercise in promoting racial sensitivity or understanding history.  It’s a radical ideology that seeks to use race as a means of moral, social and political revolution”
[Christopher F. Rufo. Battle over Critical Race Theory: Advocates and media circle the wagons and try to conceal the truth about a pernicious ideology. 27 June 21 WSJ]

And Critical Race Theory has been adopted by the Māori Sovereignty movement.

The Māori Sovereignty movement is not inclusive of most Māori.  It is a particular cabal of aggressive activists who expertly wield their “victim” status to bully their way into power and dominance over all new Zealanders.  This is NOT a fight between Māori and New Zealanders who are non-Māori, in fact, your average Māori has more to lose than most in this battle for New Zealand, for in Critical Theory ideology, your beliefs and desires as an individual count for nothing.  All that matters is your identity grouping, and within that identity grouping, all that matters is that you are “Authentic”.  But here’s the rub: in critical race theory, being “Authentic” means one thing only; that you parrot and enact the beliefs of the Critical Race Theorists.

If you are not “authentic” you are not “Māori”.

New Zealanders must also understand that trying to “prove” through reasoned argument that this “progressive” cancer is fundamentally racist and fatally flawed will get us nowhere.

Instead, we MUST disengage.

The only response to this malignant spawning hydra is to inoculate ourselves with knowledge, and to disengage.

Whilst we remain engaged, we remain as innocents to be manipulated and drawn further down the asphyxiating rabbit hole of Theory.  And Critical Theorists are masters of the manipulation of language, tying us up with shape-shifting words that mean not what we expect them to mean, but whatever the Theorists assert them to mean at that particular moment. 

This is how “equality” has morphed into “equity”.

This is how “parties” have morphed into “partners”.

This is why Te Kawehau Hoskins emphasised in her talk [Māori, Pākehā, Critical Theory and Relationality: a Talk] with Alison Jones recently that “What matters is the engagement”.

It is why Dame Anne Salmond (a “white” woman doing the work), in her University of Auckland biography, describes herself as having “a lifelong engagement with te ao Māori” and why she speaks of creating in New Zealand “a new kind of democracy” [NZ Herald 18 August 12 “Shifting New Zealand’s mindset”].

If New Zealanders truly want to come together and save our democracy, it’s time to disengage from Critical Race Theory (CRT) as quickly and completely as we can.

New Zealand’s tribal elites and their enablers, who use Critical Race Theory to manipulate us, tell us that we - those who oppose them - are racist, and that we are on our own.  

But we are not racist, and we are not alone.

You may not feel it, but we are in the majority.

The racist ones are those who are clamping us with the shackles of “anti-racism.”

The racist ones are those who are locking us into their “Treaty” prison.

The racist ones are those now about to gag us with their strangulating “hate speech” laws.

So where do we start our disengagement?

We start with the language; We start with te reo.

To quote Dame Anne once more: “a Pākehā child… who learns Māori will find themselves equipped with a new way of thinking”.  This sounds all sweetness and light, this new Māori way of thinking, but have you ever actually asked yourself what it means for your child to “think like a Māori”?  And how much time do you think should be invested in them learning to think in this way? 

There is an opportunity cost to each and every thing we do with our time. 

What is the opportunity cost to our children when we consign them to gaining the “skill” of thinking in more “Māori” ways? What other ways of thinking will decline in our children as a result of directing their efforts this way instead?  We hear plenty about what they will “gain”, but what will they lose?  In fact, what is the evidence that teaching a child who is not of Māori heritage to speak Māori changes their thinking in any beneficial way at all?

But let’s now embed the plan for our children to imbibe Māori language, in context and bring Professor Alison Jones to the table.  Jones pulls no punches when it comes to telling us what’s expected of Māori learners from here on in:

“Pākehā need to learn humility if they want to learn te reo Māori” she recently preached.  She then opined, regarding a Māori language class, that she had noticed how

“Pākehā students dominated the class, leaping forward to answer questions and show their new-found fluency.”

Her final, illuminating point?   That those whom she had divinated as “white”

“Sometimes… need to sit back and look at themselves.”

Let’s also make room at our table for Race Relations Commissioner, Meng Foon.  What light can he shed on the expectations to be placed on “Pākehā” learning Māori? Foon tells New Zealanders that learning te reo is a privilege, and with that privilege comes the responsibility to learn, also, about tikanga and te ao Māori.

So, did you, too, think that learning Māori was something you could do to show your commitment to a bicultural New Zealand? To give back a little to “oppressed” Māori and to help make us one people?

Think again!  In the dystopian New Zealand of the Critical Race Theorists learning te reo is not something you do to connect with your fellows, or because you like the sounds and rhythms of the language and the way it broadens your vocabulary, or the way it helps te reo to survive. 

To the Critical Race Theorists, learning te reo is both an exacting requirement that you, as a “privileged white,” must undertake but will never master and a privilege which they have bestowed upon you and which generates in you, the learner, responsibilities back to Māori.

Yes. That’s right.  Every time you use te reo you owe Māori more!  Welcome to Utu. 

Utu is an integral belief within the Māori world view.

New Zealand’s Critical Race Theorists expect the practice of Utu to become essential to, and codified in, New Zealand law.

Even more totalitarian, they intend “respect” for Utu to become a legal requirement.

And remember, the presence or absence of respect is always defined by the “oppressed” minority.

The Māori Language dictionary describes Utu thus;

“gift exchange, a major component of utu, created reciprocal obligations on the parties involved and established permanent and personal relationships. Traditionally utu between individuals and groups tended to escalate.  Just as feasts were likely to increase in grandeur as an exchange relationship developed over time, so could reciprocal acts of vengeance intensify.  Utu was not necessarily applied to the author of the affront but affected the whole group.  Thus, utu could be gained through a victory over a group where only the most tenuous of links connected the source of the affront with the target of the utu.”

UTU; the anything and everything debt –– with compounding interest.

Utu destroyed Māori communities before “white” people arrived, and it will destroy New Zealand communities upon its return.

Māori Critical Theorists have re-packaged their dying language as a “gift” to New Zealanders.  And now every time you use a Māori word, every time you speak te reo, you are acknowledging that you have engaged with that “gift”.

But in Māori, gifts must be reciprocated, and so the more you use te reo, the more indebted to Māori you become.   (Interestingly, the many gifts of modernity brought to Māori by “White” people appear to require no such reciprocity.  The imposition of such debt travels in only one direction.)

This creation of a debt is the essence of Foon’s comment that with the “privilege” of learning Māori comes “responsibility”.

The only way around this is to reject the “gift”; to disengage.

To do this means we must stop using te reo.

So here are nine areas in which I urge you to consider changing your practice in order to resist the further imposition of Critical Race Theory in New Zealand.  This will be hard, and I find it sad.  I hope that the Māori language can survive.  Professor Paul Moon believes it may not  but I no longer feel it is my responsibility to help enable this.

I hope, too, that there comes a time when we can all, once again, speak Māori freely and without coercion if we so desire, but for now, that hope must needs remain a distant dream.

1)      ”Pākehā”:

Yes.  Especially the word Pākehā!  Stop using it.

Professor Alison Jones herself made the obligations inherent in the use of the word Pākehā overt when she told New Zealanders that “the name Pākehā is itself a gift from Māori”.

Anyone (including the prime minister) who accepts the gift of a Māori name becomes beholden to Māori.  The obligations triggered by the acceptance of such a gift are no less powerful for being unspoken.

I suggest we become known as “New Zealanders (non-Māori)” but who wants to be a “non” person and so let’s call ourselves “New Zealanders” for short.

Thus, we have Māori, and we have New Zealanders.

2)      Greetings:

These are a simple place to start.  It is not rude to use an English (or any other) language greeting, even when another has offered theirs to you, in Māori.  It also signals to those around you that you reject New Zealand’s slide into the toppling of our Western, liberal democracy and its replacement by a CRT cabal of power hungry totalitarian commissars.

Try it.  Say hullo, rather than kia ora.  Reply ‘morning, rather than morena.

Gidday…  How’s things…  Hi!..  See you later… ‘Bye… ‘Evening...  Take care… ‘later…  Have a good day…  Hang in there…  You can do it!..  You’re up to it…  Catchya…  ‘Nite… Howdy (doody)…  See you round…  Greetings all…
Safe travels…

3)      Māori Language:

Stop trying.  It won’t get you where you think you’re going.

Te reo will never belong to you equally.  It will never be yours to play with, to modify and to use as you like.  You will always be the “other” and your attempts will leave you open to criticism and humiliation – with the odd dose of back-handed encouragement to keep you engaged.

Alison Jones talks about “the whole process” of learning Māori.  Who says there has to be “a whole process”?  Who mandates that?  And what requirement have we to agree to enter this “process”.  Did you realise there is no way to just “learn Māori”?

I enjoyed learning Māori.  In another environment I would gladly learn more, but here, now, in New Zealand, the number one outcome of us learning Māori is to give Critical Race Theorists one more building block in the construction of our cultural and political prison.

4)      Written communications:

If you use te reo in your written communications ask yourself why?  What are you hoping to achieve?  Ask yourself what obligations you are creating by using the “gift” of Māori language in this format.  Ponder maybe on how the “gift” of written English gave Māori the ability to capture their language in perpetuity. 

But for now, if you can, stop using it.

5)      Place names:

The pressure to convert to Māori place names is enormous and is increasing every day.  Good hearted New Zealanders have gone along with this, but with every English language place name we lose we become one bit more untethered from our own culture and our own past.

Touch points from our past are what unite us as families, as friends, and as a people.  In much the same way that certain smells trigger powerful memories, our shared language of our past triggers memories and relatedness.  Remember that trip to Mt Cook when you fell off the swing bridge…  Remember the day White Island exploded and you thought a nuclear bomb had gone off… Remember how we used to visit Granny in windy Wellington…  Look at that photo of Mt Egmont, wasn’t the snow good that year…

Those places existed. And now they don’t, or soon won’t.  It’s like burning books. Changing a name is a powerful way to erase from our minds, our shared past.

And how do we know that the Māori name for Auckland – Tamaki Makaurau – represents to Māori the same thing that we think it represents? The same boundaries?  The same relation to the by-laws enacted around it? The same expectations of how people should “be” when within those boundaries?

Maori place names have an essential, and valuable place in our country. I do not deny that. 

But balance, and open, respectful discussion and decision making, is everything.

Instead we see the disruption and dismantling of our language through the unilateral renaming of the places with which we are familiar, followed by the insistence that the mispronunciation of these new names represents an insulting failure requiring from us yet more obeisance.

Imagine down the track, your grandchild on your knee; you telling them the above stories and being met with “But Granny, where’s White Island?”  or “Grandad, there’s no Mt Cook!” or quite possibly the ultimate in successful schisming “Nanny what country did you come from?”

It’s all portrayed as being so petty but it’s not.

It’s a huge loss.

6)      “Aotearoa”:

Nu Tireni, not Aotearoa, was the closest Māori came to naming the country of New Zealand.

When European explorers first arrived Māori had no name for the country. The word Aotearoa was made up by historians after the arrival of Europeans.  In fact, as recently as 2002, Irehapeti Ramsden, titled her PhD: “Cultural Safety and Nursing Education in Aotearoa and Te Waipounamu”.

Irehapeti Ramsden was heavily influenced by Critical Race Theory.  And she makes it clear that the Māori Sovereignty movement, as recently as 20 years ago, had a different view to today on what Māori should call New Zealand.  It appears from her title, that the sovereignty movement at that time considered only the North Island should be known as Aotearoa.  The South Island, its own fiefdom, did not come under the Aotearoan umbrella and was known only as Te Waipounamu.

Clearly since that time, plenty of machinations have gone on in the Sovereignty ops room to iron out how best to get rid of the name “New Zealand”. 

And it appears that the “Aotearoan” faction has won out. 

Changing New Zealand to Aotearoa will be a hugely significant win in the Critical Race Theorists’ push to take over and remake New Zealand in their image.

It’s like taking Constantinople; once the name New Zealand has fallen, there’s no going back.

Māori were never (ever) known as Aotearoan, so do not buy into the idea they are losing a part of themselves if we choose to retain New Zealand as our official name.

We, all of us, have been New Zealanders from the moment we became a country.

Recreating us as Aotearoans shatters our connections with our past and destroys our cultural identity. 

The importance to Critical Race Theorists of unmooring us from this aspect of our heritage cannot be overstated.

The way they use “Aotearoa” now with impunity in every interaction with the public shows an arrogant and entitled lack of respect for New Zealanders.  Do not be surprised when they soon argue that the fact that the name “Aotearoa” is in common usage “proves” New Zealanders accept it and therefore the time to change it permanently has arrived.

They fail to see the irony in the fact that they block from the public sphere anyone who protests. 

We must continue to protest, loud and clear.

I do not begrudge anyone who chooses to use the Māori language, and refers to New Zealand as Aotearoa.  But what is happening now is fundamentally different; “Aotearoa” is being force fed into the English language. 

And New Zealand is being erased –– from English!

Our brains are being purged of the old, and the ground prepared instead for Dame Anne Salmond’s CRT Māori-centric “new way of thinking”.

We have been New Zealand for almost 400 years.  Are we to lose our identity without even a whimper?

7)      The personal:

If Ms Brown greets you with a hearty “kia ora” and tells you she wants to be known as “Whaea Sandra”, it is appropriate and respectful to reply to her, “Hello Whaea Sandra”.  Standing up in support of our own language does not require denigration of hers.  But equally, replying in English is not disrespectful, no matter what the Critical Race Theorists tell you.

Likewise, I would encourage everyone who values their family, to consider reinstating that word to describe their own.  Whanau is a Māori word which is more akin to the English phrase “extended family”.  There is no word for the nuclear family, which is the context within which we tend to use the word family, in English.

And it just so happens that Critical Theorists are out to destroy the notion of family as we in the west conceive of it.  If we no longer have a word for the nuclear family, how can we describe its benefits to our children? How can they make sense of works that refer to the “family” in this way, and what messages are we giving our children on the importance of this tight social grouping, that works so well when nestled as it is in its unique place within our extended families? 

8)      Our schools:

“Of all the techniques that have been experimented with or proposed in the increasingly desperate struggle to revive Te Reo Māori, none is more ineffective than the call for the language to be made compulsory in schools. Compulsion has failed to revive indigenous languages in every territory where it has been implemented, including places where the indigenous language belongs to the majority culture of the area. What is surprising about this repeatedly-advocated ‘solution’ to the slow collapse of Te Reo Māori is that it is finding increasing popular favour in spite of the overwhelming evidence of its complete failure to achieve its desired objective. This speaks of an environment of language revitalisation where desperation and ignorance have become close bedfellows in discussions about saving Te Reo Māori.”
Prof Paul Moon.  NZCPR Feb 4 2018

The enforcement of te reo in our schools is a fundamental part of the Critical Race Theorists’ plan to reprogram our children into a new, Māori way of thinking so they will accept domination by the CRT Māori tribal elite.  Not only that, but given Professor Moon’s adamancy that enforcement of te reo in schools will not save the language, then the question must be asked:

Why on earth would any right-minded person vote to make te reo compulsory in our schools?

As I explained in my 26 June breaking views blog, why I stopped learning te reo, Critical Theory’s aim is to destroy our “white” culture, by disrupting and dismantling it, with an especial focus on controlling our language, and on dominating our education system.  Enforcing the use of te reo in New Zealand, and destroying our capacity in English, is, unbelievably, a crucial part of this.

In this malevolent new education system, right now having its finishing touches applied in our corridors of power, Professor Alison Jones’s “sit down, shut up and listen Whitey” approach to te reo will be the norm.

Children considered “white”, and therefore in receipt of “white privilege” will be controlled through multitudinous versions of this edict, by other children, and by teachers, who are the privileged progeny of the CRT. 

Bright but “white” children will be silenced. “White” children who question or challenge, will be crushed. 

For the sake of all New Zealand students, do not allow the long slow creep of CRT Māori into our schools to continue.  Call it out wherever you can.  Demand the evidence (the scientific evidence) for its effectiveness and demand open debate on this topic at every level.

And don’t forget your children:

• Take interest in what your children are being taught in their school with regard to all things Maori; Māori Values, Māori History, Māori Hierarchies, Māori Health, Māori ‘Science’.  
  
  
• Ask them how they are being taught to view their place in this “new” world.
  
  
• Expose them to alternative points of view.
  
  
• Challenge them to understand that many “Māori” values are not peculiar to Māori but are in fact human values.
  
  
• Help them to differentiate the spiritual from the secular, and to understand that we are a secular country, and that this is a valuable inheritance we have gained from our western civilization.
  
  
• Explain to them that being a secular country means all of us are free to find our own meaning in life, and not to have the spiritual/religious beliefs of others imposed upon us.
  
  
• Bring it to their attention when you see the principles of secularity being trampled in our public life.

Articulate to them our own values.

And insist that te reo in schools never be made compulsory. 

9)      The Treaty:

The Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840.  It is one page long and was created to give Māori relief from their endless cycles of intertribal violence and revenge, control of their property and coveted access to equality and protection under British law.

Despite the many positives the Treaty brought to Māori tribes, and to their slaves, New Zealanders have repeatedly negotiated “full and final” settlements to Māori to make amends for breaches they may have suffered through mistakes in its application.

The Treaty has now been hijacked by Critical Race Theory driven Māori activists.

When it comes to the Treaty, language is everything.

CRT Māori activists have spent years holding the floor on the meaning of the Treaty such that its modern day meaning bears little resemblance to its original intent.

Māori CRT interpretations have been given unfair precedence for almost 50 years now.

Funding to enable alternative evidence to be put forward has been woeful.

Given the massive Sovereignty driven influence that Māori CRT activists have had on our current interpretation of the Treaty it is well overdue that we demand a fundamental and balanced rethink of the place it is to have in New Zealand society from here on in.

They say the debate is over.  I say it needs to start.  Your voice will determine what happens.

The Critical Theorists use a technique called reification.  It has been used by CRT Māori activists to great effect; the Treaty now means whatever they say it means.

• CRT Māori activists say the Treaty means there is a partnership between Māori and the Crown and lo, there is a partnership. The Treaty says no such thing. 
• They say the Treaty encompasses multiple “principles” that they alone can define and lo, “the principles of the Treaty” are now referred to as though they really exist. They don’t.
• They say the Treaty is the only reason “you whites” are allowed to be here, and lo, Alison Jones states this as fact.  It isn’t.
• They say that the word “Taonga” as used in the Treaty, refers to all imaginable treasures.  It doesn’t. It meant, at the time the Treaty was signed, Property procured by the spear.
• They say the Treaty is a living document.  It's not.

What else has been reified from nothingness into this Treaty by these activists?  

If you are interested in exploring this further, the booklet 

 “Are we being conned by the treaty industry” deserves your attention.

As Dr Elizabeth Rata recently said, We must disengage from the belief that the Treaty is sacrosanct. It is not.

We have finally come to the brink of the Treaty cliff. 

Do we jump? Or do we fly? 

Let’s hear the other side and then, let all of us decide.

The Treaty is no living document.  It is a metastatic invader that now threatens every aspect of our life –– it’s hard to believe that something this big, and this dangerous, began life as 322 words on a single page.

This menace is what grows when we cede our language to the diktats of Critical Race Theory.

This is why I disengaged from te reo.

It is why I ask you to disengage too. 

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The ideology of Critical Race Theory is infiltrating New Zealand,

as it is the entire Western World. This essay is my call to New Zealanders to band together to resist this pernicious ideology. For a good overview of the history of CRT and the aims of the Critical Race Theorists watch this 17 minute video by Christopher Rufo,  here.  This is an American production but it is alarmingly translatable to New Zealand.

It’s a must watch. 

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Effi Lincoln is a sixth generation New Zealander. Her roots are sunk deep in the South Island’s soil. Her heart beats in its beaches and its bush. Her eye is firmly on its now seriously threatened future as a fair and free place for her children, and her children’s children, to thrive.