Leading from the front issuu

LESSONS FROM A RECOVERING RACIST
by andrew judd,
former new plymouth mayor
A transcription of his TED Talk, November 2017
Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa. Ko Andrew
Judd ingoa
On the 8th October 1769, Captain James Cook of the
British Royal Navy and in command of the HMS Endeavour,
sailed into a bay in the North Island of New Zealand.
This day was to be the first encounter between the
indigenous people of New Zealand, the Māori, and the
British.
Māori were to name Europeans, Pakeha. Seventy-one
years later, on the 6th February 1840, the British Crown
and most Māori Chiefs signed a treaty known as the
Treaty of Waitangi. This Treaty was to be the founding
document between two cultures. It laid out the partnership
principles to build a new nation whilst protecting
the indigenous rights of the Māori. The Treaty was written
in two languages, Te Reo Māori and English. The two
texts did not translate to match each other.
Following the Treaty signing, New Zealand saw mass
European immigration and the colonisation of New Zealand
and, with a greed for Māori land, the New Zealand
Government passed legislation against Māori, which
contravened human rights. Disputes led to war, the
consequence to Māori was mass Māori land confiscation
and theft by the Crown. This forced Māori into social
and economic deprivation, and isolation. Continuous
New Zealand governments would ignore and breech the
Treaty of Waitangi and, to this day, in New Zealand, exists
recent legislation that works against Māori.
Someone once said to me: “Māori are lazy; Māori fill
our jails; elite Māori rort the system for their own gain
and the others just want social welfare handouts; Māori
are lucky, they got saved by the British and their language
is all but dead and I’m sick and tired of hearing
about the past; They have to get over it and move on;
We are all one now”. Do you know who said that to me?
I said that to me. My name is Andrew Judd and I’m a
recovering racist.
In 2013, I was elected Mayor of New Plymouth district
and one of my first challenges was to question Māori
representation on the Council. In New Zealand, under
I hadn’t grown up in New
Zealand having to deal with the
emotion that all those horrendous
statics in health, education,
poverty, homelessness and
disproportionate incarceration
rates against my culture, are
a direct result of policies put
in place from the ideology and
world-view of another culture.
the Local Government Act councils are required to include
Māori in the decision-making of councils. One of
the options to fulfill this requirement is to establish an
elected seat on council for Māori, just as we have elected
seats for Māori in our Parliament.
Having tried and failed to secure Māori voices on
council sub-committees, our council voted to establish
an elected Māori seat. This decision ignited an angry
community response, a response that I recognised and
with which I could identify. Until I was elected Mayor, I
had never set foot on a marae. I had no understanding
or appreciation of Māori values, customs or protocols.
I couldn’t even pronounce basic Māori New Zealand
place names.
As the Mayor, I was engaging with Māori in a Māori
environment. I was witnessing the challenges that exist
for Māori and the consequences of colonisation that
are so very real for Māori. Their eyes spoke of the intergenerational
trauma as I heard of the full history of New
Zealand’s colonial past.
As I took all of this in, I was having an internal conflict.
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Healing our History through Te Tiriti