"We encourage everyone to incorporate karakia daily. To help support you with this we have created some pre-recorded videos to learn karakia. Our resource is designed to give you some options that will enable you to learn and develop your confidence and skills. Note over time we will be adding more recordings for you to choose from."
The word 'karakia' surely must be a Maorified way of saying 'prayer', but it seems very difficult and may be impossible to determine whether the term was used before Europeans arrived or if there were other terms that iwi used for their incantations, chants and verbal offerings of respect to their various spiritual entities. Regardless, karakia almost always involve references to supernatural forces whether they be Christian (in practice, they usually end with 'amine'), pagan or spiritualist. They often involve communication intended for (usually unspecified) long-dead ancestors.
Massey University assistant lecturer Te Rā Moriarty was quoted as saying: “Karakia allow us to continue an ancestral practice of acknowledging orally the divine forces that we, as Māori, understand as the sources of our natural environment. We call these forces atua. So, it is a way to connect through the words of our tūpuna to the world that we live.”
It's fine of course for people to follow their faiths and to practise associated rituals. When we attend a ceremony at a church we expect religious speech, song and rituals and we tolerate that in a respectful manner. Same for a marae and even for dinner at a relative's or friend's home. But the same respect is expected by those hosts when they come to our homes or groups and find some different belief represented or no religious or supernatural practices at all.
We can choose not to attend places where the religious practices feel offensive or intolerant to us, and the hosts in those places can exercise similar choice about visiting our spaces.
However, when we are employed and rely upon that employment for our survival, we don't have the choice to avoid our place of employment. Being employed in a state service under a secular government, workers should have choice over whether they participate even passively in practices involving claimed spiritual entities or supernatural beliefs. Expecting employees to participate denies their right to choose to follow their own religion or philosophical belief and not other people's, a characteristic of totalitarian rule.
Sure, the email to health staff only used the word "encourage" but really, when your employer issues an email saying that, you know it will be expected and that ignoring or opposing it will be held against you and may cost you your job.
Pressuring state employees and even private company
employees to participate in karakia sets a dangerous precedent in eroding
separation between state and religion. As we speak, Muslim immigrants in Europe
are deliberately imposing their religious practices on non-Muslim populations
by having their distorting loudspeakers call dozens or hundreds of faithful to
prostrate themselves in prayer on public footpaths and roadways (even though
nearby mosques are plentiful). The practice reflects their belief that Islam is
so important that everyone either needs to convert to it or be discriminated
against or killed.
Short of the killing bit, that's a similar attitude to
that of woke administrators who believe that Maori practices including karakia
are so important that everyone needs to bow to them. Demands to tolerate and
respect Muslim prayers are likely to follow. After that, who knows?
A.E. Thompson is a working, tax-paying New Zealander who speaks up about threats to our hard-fought rights, liberties, egalitarian values, rational thinking and fair treatment by the state.
19 comments:
State/Corporate apartheid still reigns.
There is absolutely no good reason for public servants or anyone else to have to involve themselves in Karakia when they don’t identify as Māori. The institutions trying to “encourage” incorporating all things Māori have been created as a result of Māori seeking intervention from England to introduce democracy and prevent constant tribal warfare-in other words Western systems.
I have no problem with people using their own religion privately when it comes to helping people. If a Christian, Jewish or Muslim doctor prays under their breath that their patient will get well then to me that's fine. Same with the Maori religion - if someone who genuinely believes that says a karakia under their breath, then fine. The problem is when that is forced on others who don't believe it, or when it's just virtue signaling or, even worse, when it's regarded as treatment as it seems to be. Then NZ really has gone back to the third world.
This, is frankly an outrageous over-reach and quite clearly is agenda driven.
It needs to be retracted immediately as it creates a situation where almost every single person is caught in the crossfire of discontent either by agreeing, disagreeing or not caring.
No one is safe under an edict to bow down to a policy of dogma driven ideology.
Yet more compulsory cultural nonsense that our Coalition promised to stamp out. And here we are, 8 months later, and state funded health services are still pushing this crap.
Luxo and Reti need to get with the play and stamp on this ASAP. But that's probably not going to happen because, as always, what National promise and sign up to and what they actually do are always two vastly different things.
We noticed that all the signs at our hospital were predominently Maori or Maori first - really helpful-NOT! Have to agree with DeeM and wish that National would wake up and stop this each way bet nonsense. We don't give a stuff about politics for politics sake, it has to work for the people and it clearly is not. We listened to Andrew Hoggard talking about Regional Water Plans on the Platform with Michael Laws. It is clear that where National say they have fixed water, they have not as the 'Tea Manner Oh Why'nonsense is alive and well. As DeeM said: National for pity's sake do what you have to get this nonsense sorted once and for all and stop the shilly shallying.
DeeM spot on.
Indoctrination, full stop.
I pray ... that one day I will wake up and all this Orwellian BS will be gone, vanished, cleared off or otherwise stuck where the sun does not shine. Then we will not have to see, hear or put up with it polluting our otherwise perfect Country.
What is the financial cost to NZ with this karakia crap ?
How much time is wasted at Health meetings with this compulsory indoctrination into this artificial religion practice ?
How many Health professionals walk away from NZ because of this nonsense.
How many meeting attendees keep their heads down and don't object because their jobs and careers are in jeopardy if they speak out.
That's money and effort wasted to satisfy some woke individuals far from the front line.
Enough - are Luxon's advisors reading these messages and telling him to stamp it out and every other bit of maorification through every Govt department ?
Sure as he'll would not be tolerated in any private company.
The Human Rights Act at Section 21(j) makes it illegal to discriminate in employment on the grounds of an employee holding any or no political opinion.
Expecting employees to embrace any aspect of the ‘One Country, Two People’s’ mantra of the biculturalists and genuflect to their ethnocentric pretensions is a clear breach of human rights legislation.
The imposition of a woke litmus test is essentially compelling employees to a particular political stance.
If I worked in this area, I’d be going these Nimrods for a full legal fisting.
Nelson hospital today is at 105% capcity. A women from Blenheim was scheduled to be flown to Nelson today. She had a heart attack Saturday. The flight was cancelled as Cardio have 9 angiograms to do today since she was booked to fly yesterday.
Rather than prayers, how about functiong as a ministry in charge of hospitals instead of pandering to the egos of public servants?
Ignore at your peril, that's the message.
As an aside, I had reason to visit Middlemore hospital recently. I had to wait a while to see who I wanted to so so I waited in the "patient lounge".
While perusing the various notices posted on a board therein I found this:
"If you are Maori, you are invited to partake in a survey about your experiences in the hospital. If you partake in the survey, you are eligible to receive a $25 voucher from Countdown"
When I asked about it, I was told to leave it alone or I would be "reported"
I will tear it down at next visit.
Of interest also, the bench seats in the "patients lounge" are bolted done so can not be moved.
And we wonder why everything in our economy is langusihing, other than, of course, road cone production and the genuflection and embracement of all things Maori.
Our Public Service is supposed to be secular and, as others have indicated, there should be no promulgation of this karakia practice. Those that do should be advised to immediately desist or risk reprimand and/or, ultimately, dismissal.
Aside from the above, it's also a patent nonsense - for history records it did nothing to enhance the wellbeing of the degenerating, uncivilised tribal society that prevailed prior the signing of the Treaty.
I believe, very intentionally, there has long been an avoidance of the discussion about whether or not Maori have a religion. The word spiritual often gets thrown around in its place, but have you noticed no-one ever uses the term 'religion' to describe Maori beliefs and practices such as multiple gods, karakia, beliefs in the afterlife etc.?
By any reasonable definiton, all of the Maori spiritual beliefs and practices consitute a Religion.
But if that word was used, then we would rightly be able to say that this is a secular country, with seperation of church and state, and that there is NO state religion that has standing over other religions or lack of religious belief.
By avoiding the use of the word 'religion', those with the motivation and power to do so have snuck in not just karakia into the workplace, but also 'matauranga maori' into scientific spaces, and muddied the water of our school curriculums by placing Maori religious concepts at the forefront in subjects where, if Christian or Islamic concepts were presented, the public would be outraged.
So lets call it what it is. A religion. If you want to practice it in your own home and in your own faith community, go ahead. But it has no place in government, education, nor business.
And we wonder why we are losing so many competent, experienced health professionals overseas (well, some of us wonder, others aren't surprised).
This is all very frightening since nothing seems to be happening about reversing the religious indoctrination of our country and the maorification of all names and organisations. Many sentences contain made up Maori words that are not translated as a courtesy to the 98% of the country who don’t speak or read Maori. Perhaps there is no translation that makes sense. So I am asking someone to please start making sense of this all? I am not Maori so I don’t want to read Maori. No point. I don’t know anyone I could have a conversation with in Maori if I did bother to learn. It. Too old and I don’t care to learn it. I cannot see any of this ending well.
Incredible. When will the majority wake up to see we are being bullied by a small minority who are imposing their beliefs on the majority of us who are happy to let them believe there are fairies at the bottom of their garden but do not want to have to participate in their loony practices. When the state brings its weight to bear on making those of us who do not want to participate to take part or else - then it is time to be afeared.
Saying a karakia is usually meaningless mumbo jumbo to most of us who do not speak Maori. It would also be meaningless mumbo jumbo if government agencies "encouraged" us to speak prayers in Latin before and after meetings. If you do not say these government agency prayers you are a modern-day heretic and infidel that could be up for redundancy or be passed over for promotion.
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