Thanks to Year 13 student Piripi Pinfold-Whanga, who has shared the text of his speech from the Race Unity Speech Awards competition:
Acknowledge the past and advise the present to alter the future. I stand here today, not as a statistic, but as a student who wants his voice to be heard. I stand here today, not coerced by my peers, but by my own free will and driven by the passion I feel for my people and my country. Year after year, I wait for the day of social epiphany, national equality, and global symphony. Dear God, let us orchestrate our voices, tune our thoughts, and trumpet from our hearts, that enough is enough. War after war, struggle after struggle, our unity is invisible, intangible; Ladies and gentlemen, it does not exist. The harmful words of the racist people in our country, harmful to our nation, yet we never punish them for using such words. The screams, the cries, the howls of our people, who plead for equity, empathy and morality, are lifted high by our generation but we aren’t listening. After the recent Christchurch terror attacks, Anjum Rahman, a lady who was directly affected by the destruction of her race, spoke out and said that her mosques, her communities, her people were severely impacted by the effects of racism and terrorism, and her question was, what was in place to protect Muslim people from terrorists in Aotearoa? My answer, nothing. As Helen Keller once stated, the only thing worse than being born blind, is to be born with sight, but no vision. We saw the dreadful impacts of terrorism, but our vision to resolve it crumbled. Day to day, we are living our lives in a monotonous way. We all attend the same supermarkets, the same parks, the same festivals and events, so why are our levels of racial tolerance differentiated? Our ancestors have given us the recipe for equality, which is to acknowledge and accept everyone for who they are, not where they come from, so why don’t we follow it? Why do we wait for Race Relations Day on the 21st of March to be able to celebrate and commemorate New Zealand’s 200+ ethnic communities? Why don’t we do this every day? 17 years on from the first celebration of race relations in Aōtearoa, we are still paddling our waka aimlessly around our country. Our past leaders' thoughts and ideas, sinking nowhere but into the vast depths of the ocean. Is this what we want? A future of uniform sight? Or a future of varied vision?
Men of every creed and race, gather here before thy face.
Many centuries ago, before we landed ourselves on the land of the long white cloud, the future of our country was never going to change... Our ancestors knew that, as the years passed by, their ways of eating and living would forever remain the same. They wanted more. Our ancestors wanted infrastructure that developed at a quicker rate than ever before, they dreamt of homes built by their people, to be more sustainable and to use materials that are more easily accessible. They wanted more, they wanted change. Yet, now, as we peek into the newer world, we see the same racist comments, racial posts, and racial tweets every day on social media about our ethnic communities. Over 50% of respondents in a Statistics New Zealand survey conducted in 2010, said that they feel discriminated against because of their ethnicity, and that it is happening on apps such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The change that our ancestors worked hard to achieve, has already evaporated under the hard soils that they once walked on. The overgrowth of racial epithets, and physical abuse is covering not only the beauty of our past, but the promises for our future. Tūngia tō ururua, kia tipu whakaritorito te tupu o te harakeke. Clear the undergrowth, so that the new shoots of flax will grow. Our ancestors and leaders of the past strived for change. They taught us that if we can pinpoint things that we want to change, we can slowly make it happen. Racial prejudice will never be obliterated, however, with the voice of Me and you, we can make it eradicated. Acknowledge, advise, alter.
Asking thee to bless this place, God defend our free land.
For many years, our generation has been acknowledging the triumphs of our ancestors. Yet we are halting to the commands of our leaders when we attempt to plead for freedom. Jacinda Ardern, you may not be listening, but if you are, I hope you know what’s happening. Our country is remaining divided. We as a nation are proud to acknowledge our multiculturalism, yet the vile people in our community who use racist words to promote bad behaviors are demeaning this privilege. We don’t want to remain this way. Jacinda, many people don’t think racial intolerance or racism is a problem: often because they do not experience it themselves but we’re seeing the stories bubble up to the surface now. We have 18% of migrants polled by the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment having experienced racial discrimination and a third of our formal complaints are about racial discrimination. These statistics, these polls, these past surveys, are all adding to the idea we have of racial discrimination. As a nation, we have extreme insight into the future of our country from these past surveys. Jacinda the eyes of Pāpātuanuku are staring right at you. He needs help. We need help. We can’t live in a society where people are being let off for verbal racism yet jailed for physical racism. Racism is racism. Hate is hate. We want our country to be bound together into a cultural state, not being kept apart by the foreign abuse and torture our people don’t deserve. We don’t deserve to be trapped in a free land. Jacinda, this is the land of the long white cloud. We need your support.
From dissension, envy, hate,
Jacinda, we know that the dissension amongst our citizens is tolerating bad behavior. We need clarity. The envy and hate being built up amongst our people is causing our vision of unity to become opaque. We can’t live life like this. We need rules and regulations around the tolerance of racial unity. We need to enforce punishments on the people who verbalize hatred in our communities. But most importantly, as a nationwide community, we need to be standing at the forefront of racism, optimistic, hopeful, and confident, that our leaders of the present, will listen to the commands and directions of the leaders of the past. Acknowledge, advise, alter.
And corruption guards our state
Jacinda, we need the dishonesty of our leaders to disappear. We live in a nation where words speak louder than actions. The election, a parliamentary race for governance of Aōtearoa where candidates promote false agreements and ideas just to catch the eye of the public. How can we live like this? How can we live with our leaders alarming innocent people with false statements? Are we meant to know better? Are we at fault? The words we speak may be the reasons for high levels of racism, but the actions you proceed with, are the reasons our words are continuous. Racism is a crime.
Make our country good and great, God defend New Zealand.
Jacinda, I am speaking out on behalf of my peers, and my people. We need to let go of these false impressions, and although this may just be my expression of our country’s lazy aggression, I still have a question. If we have experienced the harmful situations, if we have lived through the rough impacts of racism, if we have the tools to be able to combat racial prejudice in Aōtearoa, then why don’t we? The only tool we need, is a person of influence that can listen to the voices of the past and present generations. Jacinda, we need you to step up. Change the ways we are operating, and the ways we decide to operate. We need to acknowledge the past, and advise the present, so we can alter the future. Titiro whakamuri, kia anga whakamua. To face the future, look to the past. Please listen to our people, our leaders, our ancestors of the past, please listen to my voice. Acknowledge, advise, alter. Kia Ora.
