Know Your Place (this is a White Man’s Island)

• notices and features
• 7 years ago
• Categories: Maori Issues, racism
• Tags: poetry, the mad butcher, the non-plastic māori

This a WHITE man’s island.

Just remember that

Just remember that you used to be here, and now you’re not

Like all the forests

Like all the birds

Like all the words

of your ancestors tongue

scrubbed clean off this landscape that’s what we’ve done

You’re welcome.

This a white MAN’S island

So just remember that

You’re not just one,

but a few notches down

from us mighty whitey warriors

who scored and converted the land

You and your babies got kicked to the curb,

Southside’s more your kinda burb, now.

Just remember that

You a milk coffee coloured woman in a white man’s world

Just remember that

Brown folk can’t afford what we can, girl

Just remember that

time when your ancestors were brought to heel

Just remember that

feeling of being born wrong when you realised that you, the child of this land

were the odd one out

and didn’t belong

on this, your thousand year pito

severed by my butcher’s blade

And all the money that my ancestors made that helps me, to help you, to help me…

You owe me

Just remember that.

 

Poem by Tina Ngata (used with permission)

The Non-Plastic Māori