Persons of Colour is a community portrait project documenting stories told by PoC, from sustained life-long experiences to incidents of harassment and microaggressions.
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#4 the story of anonymous-I
I'm an indigenous non binary person from New Zealand. My father is dark & in his 60s. A law was passed when he was 7 saying all children in our country needed to go to school. School buses came & took him to school. He had never spoken english before. Only te reo. He got caned at school for speaking Maori. The native tongue of Aotearoa, spoken way before white man colonised. When I was 9, we lived in a VERY small town less than 200 people. We had to because we were poor & couldn't afford rent in the city. we went shopping one day & came home to "FUCK OFF NIGGA" spray painted all over our house.
Yet in my country no one wants to admit racism is real. In fact people even have the audacity to say Maori people have more privileges. Just yesterday a national celebrity (who has been knighted by the queen) told a Maori woman "waiheke island is a white mans island" & she should leave. (Waiheke island is a island for rich cunts)
Instead of being publicly vilified, people were looking for reasons why this is okay. "Maori people generally can't afford to live on waiheke island" etc etc. no one wants to admit the root of their issues which is their disdain for Maori folk. They dont want to confront the horrors they put my people through.
Everyday I see my peoples language and culture get destroyed. They were not happy of robbing us of rights to education, rights to fair housing, rights to fair employment. They weren't happy when the government introduced drugs into our community (intentionally) . I'm constantly reminded of causal racist rhetoric. (There's no full blooded Maoris) (you're pretty much white anyway) subtle cues to give into the waves of white supremacy.
I know this land. I'm tangata whenua. It's in my blood. My name is te wai ote oranaganui, which means the legs of the river. I am the river and the river flows thru my bloodstream. Everyday I have white supremacists trying to take my identity away from me.