{"id":6239,"date":"2015-07-02T12:48:21","date_gmt":"2015-07-01T23:48:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mananews.co.nz\/wp\/?p=6239"},"modified":"2015-07-02T12:48:21","modified_gmt":"2015-07-01T23:48:21","slug":"pigeons-or-pocrisy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mananews.co.nz\/wp\/?p=6239","title":{"rendered":"PIGEONS OR \u2018POCRISY"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"HoneAvatar\"<\/a>\u00a0Mana leader Hone Harawira<\/p>\n

\"SonnyTau\"<\/a>
Sonny Tau<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0This whole \u2018Sonny stole the pigeons\u2019 fiasco has turned real ugly here in the north and some of it needs to be exposed for what it really is.<\/p>\n

Yes, Sonny Tau made a dick of himself by getting snapped with kukupa up his jacket, and it sure ain\u2019t a good look for Ngapuhi with him being chairman and all, but the hysteria being whipped up by his enemies is ugly.<\/p>\n

Sonny isn\u2019t the most well-loved man in the north. He\u2019s an arrogant prick and he can be bloody rude as well. And most of the Kotahitanga types hate his guts because he leads Tuhoronuku who got the mandate from the Crown to settle the Ngapuhi claims and Kotahitanga didn\u2019t. And having that power has made him even more hate-able than normal!<\/p>\n

I\u2019m no great fan of Sonny or Tuhoronuku, and I\u2019ve made my position clear on numerous occasions. I don\u2019t want us signing away the sovereignty in 2015 that our tupuna refused to sign away in 1840. And I don\u2019t like seeing us being divided into two camps when the future we want is a future that benefits all of our mokopuna.<\/p>\n

But saying that \u2018Sonny stole the pigeons\u2019 has reduced Ngapuhi\u2019s mana, and shamed us all in the eyes of Maoridom, and the tribe has to \u2018hikoi to Invercargill\u2019 to apologise for Sonny\u2019s behaviour, and so Sonny must resign every position he holds if the integrity of the tribe is to be maintained, is just plain bizarre.<\/p>\n

He stole some pigeons for God\u2019s sake! He didn\u2019t steal somebody\u2019s land! He didn\u2019t bash an old lady!<\/p>\n

And yes, we know they\u2019re a protected species. But we all know somebody who\u2019s poached a pigeon or three to feed the old people, and we didn\u2019t make a fuss about them, we didn\u2019t call a hui to condemn anyone, and we didn\u2019t call the cops either. In fact, most of us patted the pigeon-poachers on the back and looked the other way. Actually I could name a few people in Tuhoronuku AND Kotahitanga who\u2019ve done the pigeon-poaching thing themselves \u2026 but I won\u2019t. Catching a pigeon once\u00a0in a blue moon to feed the old people is what we do.<\/p>\n

And while I\u2019m on the topic of law-breaking and bad decision-making, let me politely suggest that if we were to run the scan over the current crop of iwi leaders and pretenders in the north, we might all end up a lookin\u2019 a little rudderless.<\/p>\n

But back to Sonny \u2026 should he stand down over the pigeon debacle? Yeah he probably should. What he did was dumb and unbecoming for a man who leads Ngapuhi.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s keep our perspective here – the main threat to kereru isn\u2019t Maori, and neither is it the chairman of Ngapuhi; it\u2019s the predators brought here by the Pakeha, particularly feral cats, possums, stoats and rats.<\/p>\n

So spare me all this\u00a0holier-than-thou nonsense.\u00a0If you want to take a shot at Sonny, come out in the open and do it. But\u00a0do it honestly, like the young woman who posted a power-packed condemnation of Sonny for the way he has treated Ngati Hine. She listed 10 reasons why she didn\u2019t think he was leadership material. It was forceful and compelling stuff – short, sharp, very moving, very clear, and hard to fault. And she didn\u2019t have to mention pigeons to make her point.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know all the facts about what happened down south but neither does anyone else. I\u2019ll reserve my judgement on \u2018Sonny stole the pigeons\u2019 until the legal process is over; I suggest everyone else does the same.<\/p>\n

Mind you, there\u2019s been some bloody good pigeon jokes on the streets of Kaikohe these last few days so it ain\u2019t all doom and gloom out there!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Mana leader Hone Harawira \u00a0This whole \u2018Sonny stole the pigeons\u2019 fiasco has turned real ugly here in the north and some of it needs to be exposed for what it really is. Yes, Sonny Tau made a dick of himself by getting snapped with kukupa up his jacket, and it sure ain\u2019t a good look […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mananews.co.nz\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6239"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mananews.co.nz\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mananews.co.nz\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mananews.co.nz\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mananews.co.nz\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6239"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/mananews.co.nz\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6243,"href":"http:\/\/mananews.co.nz\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6239\/revisions\/6243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mananews.co.nz\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mananews.co.nz\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mananews.co.nz\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mananews.co.nz\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}