Waitangi Day celebrates the treaty of Waitangi which is New Zealand's founding document. Unlike the US 4th of July (a chance for a picnic and fireworks) or Canada's Canada Day (ummm... a needed summer holiday?), New Zealand seems to take its founding pretty seriously with lots of news and articles about the relationship between the Maori and the Europeans. Most of this seems to involve which flag to display: the New Zealand flag or the flag used by the Maoris. The "solution" appears to be to fly a different (third) flag from "One Tree Hill" (which has had no tree since a Maori activist cut it down a decade ago), so perhaps one week is not long enough for us to fully fathom this conflict.
In any case, happy Waitangi day, a day we are spending not doing very much at all!
No comments:
Post a Comment