05.07.09

Yep - another Bloody Sunday.

Not in the sense of U2's political song - even though they railed against it being a protest song what else can you have taken from it?

Being Irish and struggling appear to come hand in hand, though take away the potato famine and you are left with a native struggling against an invader, a story more common than is admitted in the world, a theme that appears reflective of a necessity to understand and forgive examples of apparent exploration and progress.

Here in New Zealand we have had a similar journey - stolen lands, forfeit of rights, not allowed to speak our native language, told to forget the oral history of our Fathers and of the Land.

For what ever reason these actions failed to exterminate the native Maori language and beliefs, now we are faced with a resurgence in the field of Maori knowledge and practice.

Why am I writing of this? I'm not entirely sure as I let the fingers hit the key board without limitation though now here we have to look at the evidence, look at the weight of history.

Like a mill stone around the collective neck, some are Strong and resist though now more than ever is the acknowledgement that things were were not right and now redress is asked for.

But what redress can one ask from the mistakes of the past? What good is an apology, what good is a reversed geared racist Governmental department? How can anyone expect to see a change for the positive inside the sterile shell of a legal document that knows nothing of the pain of so many years?

There is no quick answer for a chronic problem.

With Maori over represented in prisons and with New Zealand having one of the highest per capita imprisonment rates we appear to be doing only well for those that seemingly eventually will become the benefactors of the Private Prison System that appears to becoming a reality sooner rather than later.

Dostoevsky famously stated that to measure the degree of civilisation in a society one needs only to see how they treat their prisoners,

he said this after spending time in prison himself.




With this in mind I give us 10 years before the first NZ Supermax Prison Facility is a reality.






The Grey Madness