It’s Waitangi Day in NZ. It’s an interesting story if you’ve never read the history. I always know the day. I think a lot of Aussies do. I see so many similarities in the marking of the day with our Australia Day shenanigans.

There is debate and angst about the inequality of the original inhabitants and the invading people’s in the one land. A lot of distrust and long held sorrow. The Aussie government’s disgraceful delay in apologizing for the years of policy that shattered families across the land…and continues to affect them all generations later. All these things rear up again on a commemorative day. There is so much water under the bridge – with little allowance made for the fact that the bridge is a long way downstream from where it began too.

I like the Waitangi story – I love the pride in the Maori culture, I wish all Aussies had more understanding and respect of the Indigenous cultures here. There is so much we don’t know.

I can say Hello, Please, Thank you, Yes and No. I can count to 10, ask where is a hospital, a bank and a railway station. And I know one pickup line from pretty much every country I’ve travelled through, but I don’t know how to say these things in the language of the traditional owners of the land I live on…

Do you?