Penny Marie: Five Prayers a Day - And Nobody Asked Your Permission

When cultural activity becomes religious imposition, it's time for New Zealanders to start asking hard questions.

A parent in New Zealand recently discovered that their child had been reciting prayers (karakia) to Māori gods five times a day at a standard state school. Not a kura. Not a Māori immersion school. A regular taxpayer-funded school that is, by law, supposed to be secular.

When that parent tried to have their child excused, they were made to ask - repeatedly - before being granted what should have been an obvious right from the start.

David Farrar: Woke Wellington strikes again

The Herald reports:

A bicultural overhaul of Army doctrine that features Māori cosmology at its core has led to a Government revolt, with the NZ Defence Force putting on hold part of the controversial programme.

The NZ Army’s new “general orders” to soldiers uses a pantheon of te ao Māori gods as guiding influences for its strategy “to achieve a bicultural status by enabling the recognition of Māori cultural interests as they are guaranteed within Te Tiriti o Waitangi”.

John Robertson: Make New Zealand Secular - The Fight Against State-Sanctioned Spiritual Bullsh*t

2025 edition: where your kid might get a morning prayer to Māori gods, your government job may come with a compulsory haka, and if you question any of it, you’re a racist. That’s the country we’re living in—where forced cultural rituals are the norm, not the exception, and where secularism is now just a dusty concept buried under a pile of race-based laws and bureaucratic guilt.

So here’s a little mission I’ve cooked up: Make New Zealand Secular. That’s right. No more institutionalised spiritual theatre, no more taxpayer-funded tribalism, and no more guilt-tripping the entire population into pretending we’re all spiritually connected to a goddamn tree because the Ministry of Ethnic Cosiness said so.

Point of Order: Go to Galatea.......

.......if you want to differ from other schools and be inspired by a celebrated Dutch artist

A bit of googling was necessary to find out about Galatea School – Te Kura o Kuhawaea. Its website says it is a small rural school, opened in 1935 and nestled under the Te Urewera Ranges, opened in 1935, among lush green dairy farms and beside various forest plantations.

It has 120 students.

Last year, the school applied for – and secured – funding under the Creatives in Schools programme.

This programme funds schools and teachers to collaborate with professional artists to deliver engaging learning experiences for students. It has supported more than 500 creative projects since 2020.