Newsletter November 2023 Māori Cosmic
Newsletter November 2023 Māori Cosmic
I venture into the Return where the Coalness exists. My lungs collapse with the weight.
As this is the last newsletter of the year, even though it’s titled November. Because who wants to read a newsletter in December, right? A lot of people are out celebrating. I thought it’d be good to do an audio for the final one, that you can listen to while you're driving away to the beach. But I was too envious, so I kept it as a long read.
This month’s newsletter, I've decided, is dedicated to the complainant who is denied access to western collective consumptive power structures to express their power of consumption. Or is struggling simply to access their community and neighbourhood. It’s been that way for this, The Cosmic Wahine living in Tāmaki Makaurau CBD.
Is the term “no Māori allowed in CBD retail?’ a commitment and promise?
Private Security Personnel Licensing Authority
Addressing wrongful discrimination with retailers in the CBD and Government departments. Firstly, it’s not easy. It’s damn hard. Still it has significant value to this complainant.
Where is the line to be drawn when retailers and municipalities make the call to protect themselves, their staff and most of all their product? In conjunction with the rights of individuals to access affordable consumption and facilities? At the present time wherein individuals in Aotearoa are struggling to make ends meet within the current cost of living crisis?
The Human Rights Commission
The CosWah can’t bear the brunt of that. Increasingly the element of dividing access to our communities by implementing processes to become racist policies are committing an offense under the HRC act. I know! How dare I make this kōrero when there are ram raids.
That kaupapa is putting me excessively into a hole.
What, are the particularities? For one, the process of deciding the complainant belongs in the worthless demographic and cannot possibly produce consumption nor the power of.
Are we seeing the co-vert rise of apartheid theory implemented into our nation's commercial and central governing facilities? I believe being aware that this topic and kōrero is not sexy or thrilling. It’s boring, tiresome, it's about complaining and being a victim, and at length it doesn’t bring the feels in the same way as the contribution to Land Rights, our identity, and protecting Te Reo Māori.
I did lay the foundations within hope, for what I can make a contribution to. This is what I offer within that aspiration
Heading towards “The separation of the Cosmic Wahine from affordable consumption”
The demographic** of thief, stealer of goods and property, well heeled streeter. Well-heeled homeless person, drug user, drug dealer, worthless piece of shit, of no fixed abode and no value. Is formed and applied indiscriminately and regardless of lawful fairness to folk like myself who are many in number.
And what are the attributes of this demographic operating, in my experience, within Tāmaki Makaurau CBD. From my experience just being a wahine māori of a mature age. But I think it is Māori and Pasifika. Where I’m concerned? Who happens to be available to get the brunt of wrongful profiling of me by putting me into that demographic.
This unlawful behaviour is perpetrated by young individual non-māori retail customer service staff, security guards in municipalities. And I’m fed up with it and fed up with them. I’m not taking that shit anymore from young people, who think I just came out of the egg.
They’re given the opportunity to dump their frustrations and splenic fears, misguided as they are, by the leaders and managers of their organizations to profile Māori, who, remember are that demographic** The negative though and without the knowledge of what wrongful discrimination is, that individual staff and team members, can be held accountable. And herein lies the dilemma when those staff are also Māori and Pasifika.
The major difficulty in resolving these kaupapa with retailers, their managers, municipalities and the other organizations they contract to assist in their protection, is complex.
The writing of complaints and the presentation of evidence and any other proof I offer in support of my evidence, is vital. It must be well organised and directed from a solid place of self worth and high self esteem and not from being on the back foot or defensive. I realise that the last sentence is not a scientific approach, however it is connected to an individual like myself to be Tiki, Pono me Te Aroha.
Big Brands and Municipalities.
Facing big brands who are protecting their brand, will openly and in a bare faced manner deny profiling. And whilst the Brand as an entity, isn’t walking the aisles looking for the demographic. The individual staff is.
Whether they’re hired to protect the loss of property and stock or not. When a demographic like the one I’ve stated in this newsletter is applied wrongfully. The matter does require a neutral third party to mediate and clear away any falsely placed representations of the complainant, and added to that, any negative projections.
But the CBD is a lot more dangerous these days for retailers and the public. Those like myself who live in the area, know where the vulnerabilities are.
Seeking legal advice:
Seeking legal advice has got to be tempered with the profile, Māori are at the bottom of the heap. This is in terms of facing further discrimination and thereby trauma.
A layperson such as myself, who engages with, for example, government departments which we already know, have the markings of systemic racism practice etched across their etheric fields. I must be ready to face the obstacles and of course, the cultural differences. I’ll not be dealing with Māori in those higher echelons of power. If there are Māori the numbers are few in pulling the levers of power.
The real issue is, being lumped in with it all. But it’s also ‘Relative’
So at present from my negative outcomes of poor resolutions, it means for a layperson, like a Cosmic Wahine, making a complaint of racism towards any one in the CBD business association? Is as I said hard and yet still worth the effort even if sometimes I think it’d be easier to shovel shit uphill, than hoping to bring justice and just fairness of accessing equality for someone like myself.
To get that without prejudice and interference though, is troubling. It’s an impossible task of a mammoth proportion. But I think it's because I have a reverse transracial identity problem. This will be offensive, yet it’s the removal of psychic components of assimilation. That I think I’m equal and a white person who can move and shake things. I have an equality crisis.
As an example, I always thought I had the privilege, till I got a short sharp cold shoulder when I visited a well known upmarket department store located in midtown. I never shop in that very special ????? store anymore.
When I first moved into the CBD in February 2022, which I repeat a lot, and took a stroll through each department, it was no longer a pleasant experience. I think they might have been concerned that my presence would encourage the Streeters to be more Streeter and already over stay the long expired welcome.
I think all the retailers in the CBD have their own story to tell. And who wouldn’t empathize with those kōrero. If I do, then I have to prepare myself to be frozen out of a shop, followed around the shop in front of other shoppers non-māori, stared intensely at by security guards and profiled.
When I make a complaint of course that can be put to the manager and staff, who can deny it and that ends that. When however I do have photographic and eyewitness proof, then I have evidence of wrongful discrimination. But wait, it can still be hidden with talk of price points being the reasons behind the need to stop theft, or testimonies from the management that will put an end to any complaints.
Transracial Identification. (a dangerous previous condition held by the Colonised Child, who has been long in their life, decolonising.)
But, never-mind and no feeling sorry for oneself for in the words of Sweet Brown 'ain't nobody got time for that’
Colonial patriarchy, Power abuse, familiarity versus Cultural safety.
When a person like myself, makes a complaint, the to and how, will determine the way a person like me will survive the experience. Personality and mental dexterity are welcome but not essential. Writing skills is a huge help. Initiative and longevity are going to give someone like me sustainability in a community where Māori like me even though, are not welcome in store.
Last year I made a complaint about a ?????? to an office of the ??????? ????, on the advice of a community organization that gives ?????? advice. They were well meaning and respectful in believing my concerns were true. Myself was pointed towards a process I had no previous experience with, to process a major complaint and suffered greatly for it.
When I gave feedback about the hell that it was? Though they believed my challenge to it was both healing and empowering. I just knew I had been seriously barking up the wrong tree and mislead into believing my own power was powerful.
And there goes that pin prick again, popping the balloon. Cultural safety and understanding of cultural familiarity, I had considered to be the stock standard everywhere, was non-existent knowledge to staff of this office of the ????????.
But the real danger for someone like myself, lay in the interconnectedness of the defendants. And by the time I discovered this, I was already gut deep into the complaint. It was too late to pull out.
That too late, delivered a form of retaliation that could only come from a confidence in a position where I’d read it as power abuse while the defendant and their teams would see it as a well needed reason to defend their honor and esteem, from a wicked no good woman like me.
The whole thing has set off a chain of events which will drive me into an inequity nightmare. Colonial patriarchy rules. It’s like trying to tell flat earthers the planet is round when we all know it's round, this ground is held firmly by both the complainant and defendant. I know insanity reigns right? Immovable object, unstoppable force.
But, I like saying but a lot, I have an economical vocabulary. There are a million and one analogies that I could list here. Suffice it to say where I only had one complaint that I thought was before me. There are now three and I’m now dealing with a whole new level above the ????? and the ??????. I’ve now put this matter before the biggest ?????? in the land of the I hope it’s not the giants. Cause I’ll just get squished.
I’m now looking to next year to resolve this and another complaint. Whilst one is left with nowhere else to go other than the ???????? to hopefully have a bigger third party reside over the top of it, the complaint and the complainant and defendant.
Dealing with ?????? and ?????? The legal system in Aotearoa New Zealand requires knowledge. And when I fail I still find a silver lining. I get to enhance my already growing strength everyday, writing skills that now incorporate some pretty mean-as research skills into how complaints are made, done, resolved and completed.
Photographic evidence is the key. Doing it discreetly is important, and most of all absolutely necessary if someone like me wants their complaint to succeed. Otherwise it's someone like me’s word against theirs of accusing, is all someone like me has got, oh and the label of hysterical. I understand how it feels to be left with that negativity. True, the CBD needs to protect its interest in the name of the good people of our city.
If we were to talk about crime and retailers and point that out as being a place to start any points of objections to the above kōrero? That would be usual and the expected way of conversational drift. However, it’s me and you know me.
Do I have to give it all up, my independence, education, fluent english and meticulous attention to detail? It’s impossible for me to accept and wear that conditioning, to take into myself the racist projections. I can’t do it. So I make complaints where I’ve got no photo or recorded evidence. And so it’s their word against mine. And the profiling continues.
But if I keep making complaints and build enough of them? I can hopefully create a research base on the outcomes and build on the findings to publish them in a book. Boring! The other option is to turn one of the complaints into a work of Self published fiction. Exciting!
I hope you can glean some knowledge of usefulness to your own process of complaints. It has value for this Colonised Child decolonising and in reclamation.
You have been a wonderful companion this year. Thank you for coming along, remaining quiet, unknown, unsubscribed and most of all hidden away in the recesses of Substacks corners. Happy Holidays to you and those you love, like and spend most of your life with.
Māori Cosmic will be around over the time that most tangata of Aotearoa are taking well deserved breaks away from their mahi, oh and the CBD.
Kia kaha ra. Manawatia, Mauri Tau. This has been Ciana Reimond signing off till 2024.
