99 – New Zealanders in Global Headlines 28 May 2008

New Zealand headlines in this week's sampling of global media appearing in The West Australian, Telegraph, Hindustan Times, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Vancouver Sun, Guardian, The Age, Star Bulletin, The Villager, Independent, The New York Times and Honolulu Magazine include:

• Colin Murdoch, "one of NZ's most significant inventors" dies, Timaru, 79
• Vaka Moana Auckland Museum's "most ambitious" travelling exhibit
• Maori self-determination and reliance a model for Canadian analysts
• John Botica's mosaic "Tree of Life" one of the world’s top 100
• John Clarke and alter-ego Fred Dagg honoured at Logies
• NZ invention, spreadable butter, "a gift from a divine providence"
• World of Wearable Arts a platform for winning Indian talent
• Raglan more than surf, popular too for "Bohemian" arts scene
• David Trubridge's "On Thin Ice" panels in San Francisco eco-exhibit
• Geoffrey Knight, tenor, sheds leathers for operetta in Australia
• New Zealand committed to eco-tourism in competitive market
• Annie Goldson's An Island Calling features in Canadian doco festival
• Rotorua attracts geocachers, "outdoor treasure-hunters" with GPS
• Peter Jackson and Pan's Labyrinth Guillermo Del Toro join forces
• CER 25th anniversary of "an almost single trans-Tasman market"
• Anthony Wilding, tennis champ, toppled as 90-year world record holder
• Te Papa defrosts and dissects rare colossal squid live on Web
• Thomas Butson "brought journalistic ambition" to NY's Villager
• Pokeno inspires alias for ex-Thompson Twin's armchair art
• Shane Bond's transfer to ICL's Dehli Giants a "no brainer"
• Darcy Lange's films screen in "textured" and "cool" NY exhibit
• Prohunt, NZ company, hired in Hawaii to eradicate wild pigs, goats

For full stories see http://www.nzedge.com/media, a 6,000-story storehouse of international activities by New Zealanders 2000-08.

Photos: Colin Murdoch; Auckland Museum's travelling exhibition Vaka Moana; Maori role models for Canada; Pebble Mosaic by John Botica.

NEW: Nga Kupu Aroha: Blog #23 By Denis O'Reilly, May 2008

A review of good work in South Auckland with previously warring groups; the system's dilemma of how to react to pro-social gang leaders; coping with the tough times when things go wrong (stick to the kaupapa and say your karakia); big inflow of P-related product threatening to wipe out progress of demand reduction strategies overnight; ANZAC has become a day of national unity; Maori and Pakeha seem to get on better when at war than when at peace; Napier Pilot City Trust works on this with Unity Week and builds the Robson Collection as a resource for building communities rather than prisons in a time when our numbers have doubled in 20 years; Governor General Anand Satyanand gives the Robson Lecture on the history of capital punishment and pays respects to community volunteers; a 93rd birthday for Helen Mason.

NEW ZEALAND EDGE INTERNATIONAL DATEBOOK

• 30 May 2008, 8pm, Winston Kingdom, Amsterdam
  Electronic 3-piece group Minuit live on stage. Ten pounds on the door.
• 19 June 2008, 6:30pm, NZ Society Summer Drinks, NZ House, London
  NZ wine and canapes on the 18th floor balcony of NZ House. Cash bar, members 10 pounds, non-members 14 pounds, reserve tickets at www.nzsociety.co.uk.
• 20-23 June 2008, TNT Eternal Summer, NewQuay, England
  The first weekender to cater for expats, in caravans and with live music. For further information and bookings go to www.tnteternalsummer.com.
• 28 June 2008, Glastonbury Festival, Somerset
  Crowded House play the Pyramid Stage. Online tickets available at www.seetickets.com.

If you have an upcoming event to add to the New Zealand Edge international datebook please send details to isobel@nzedge.com.

Best regards from London. Brian Sweeney, Producer, nzedge.com

95 – New Zealanders in Global Headlines 19 March 2008

New Zealand headlines in this week's sampling of global media appearing in BBC, Variety, Empire, Telegraph, Sydney Morning Herald, Playbill, Newsday, National Geographic, The Age, The West Australian, Economist, The Christian Science Monitor, Statesman Journal and Yachting Monthly include:

• Liam Finn tours US with Eddie Vedder, interviewed by Letterman
• Porirua's Pataka exhibits Native American Crow's Shadows
• Cooper, Walker, Icebreaker, changing world view of NZ fashion
• Et al's altruistic studies at international exhibition, Art Basel 39
• Paul Whelan, an impromptu Raimundo, "electric" in London
• Barry Barclay dies, 63, Rawene, artist laureate and Ngati director
• Keisha Castle-Hughes begins role as Celeste in Vintner's Luck
• New Zealand vineyards predict prosperity from global warming
• Teddy Tahu Rhodes vies for Bianca's affections at DC Opera
• NZs West Coast, "unspoiled" at the Rough and Tumble Lodge
• Paul Middleditch, ad-director, high-profile with Pepsi at Super Bowl
• Richard Evans, Sydney Opera House CEO, faces renovations
• Chatham Island bird fossils discovered, 65 million years old
• Bill Manhire in Adelaide charting the "unmapped space"
• NZ property entices British developers for a quick sale
• Martin Ball's Finn portrait wins Archibald Packing Room prize
• Godwits flock to NZ from Alaska in six days, passage studied
• Dame Ngaio Marsh, one of 50 crime writers to read, Guardian
• Abel Tasman sea-kayaking, "definitely not short on assets"
• NZ whaler, the Essex, sunk 1819, to feature in BBC doco

For full stories see http://www.nzedge.com/media/, a 6,000-story storehouse of international activities by New Zealanders 2000-08.

Photos: Liam Finn on tour with Eddie Vedder, Image from Crow's Shadows on show at Pataka Museum, "Plant It Hoodster" from Icebreaker clothing 2008 collection.

NEW: Nga Kupu Aroha: Blog #21 By Denis O'Reilly, March 2008

Denis notes the cycle of life as he gathers together the memories of those who have recently passed, Sir Ed Hillary, Hone Tuwhare, Shirley Smith, Del Adams, Ben Dalton Snr. Then its on to life in Aotearoa New Zealand with the Waitangi Day furore over gangs on marae, Shane Jones badmouthing Josh Masters of the Tribesmen and Killer Beez, and the Government's get tough on graffiti intentions means it must be election time. Musical notes around Warren Maxwell, Don McGlashan and the Ragamuffin festival; and grave concerns over body snatching "a new twist on the consequences of miscegany". Read on.

Photos: Sir Edmund Hillary, Shirley Smith, Hone Tuwhare and Del Adams.

Denis O'Reilly Blog #18: "How to Break Out"

Denis O’Reilly’s series Nga Kupu Aroha/Words of Love (#18, 3,300 words), from the living edge of Aotearoa

• A headline from gangland: better employment and health
• Managing crime and punishment in New Zealand; restorative justice vs the Maricopa Country chain-gang method; the passing of Joseph Roberts, mentor, coach and American Eagle; gang policies in NY (community development) vs LA (suppressive policing); recognition for Ecuador’s Latin Kings
• Tigilau Ness documentary From Street to Sky; Robert Muldoon and Rastafarianism; social rage directed into art; “music speaks louder than words”
• The coronation of Kingi Tuheitia; Bishop Paraone Turei’s sermon affirming “whakakotahi (collective unity) and the desirability of enabling Maori to be unique
• Papakainga: architecture, whanau housing and the Hawkes Bay village settlement project

Denis O'Reilly Blog #17: Looking through a kaleidescope

Angela Davis, 1974

“It must be a beautiful feeling to fly halfway around the world, touch down in a seemingly contented society, and discover a body of people who have been enacting your disobedient thinking for over 30 years.”

Blog #17 of Denis O’Reilly’s series Nga Kupu Aroha, from the flipside of the edge; “Looking through a kaleidoscope” (4,750 words):

• The meaning of Maori tangi; tangi for Mick the Aussie biker in Wellington, and Rangi Tareha at Waiohiki Marae after a 500-strong funeral in Redfern Sydney; the Hamuera Morehu Silver Band
• Arthur Young’s The Reflexive Universe and his explanation of the seven stages of evolution (Theory of Process)
• Edge-dwelling and the brink of disobedience
• The visit by Angela Davis (“the candle of social resistance”) to New Zealand with a radical agenda: the process of decarceration and introduction of restorative justice; her influence on the Polynesian Panthers in Auckland, capital of Nesia
• Definitions of “organised crime” in New Zealand; distinctions between venial and mortal sin; discontinuity of the 1980s economic reforms resulting in a 3:1 Maori/Pakeha unemployment rate; moral panic and the perspicaciousness of policy makers in regard to the criminal justice system
• “Can we reverse the trend and steer those people who are caught up in crime back to legitimate pursuits?”
• Time magazine’s cover story “New Zealand: A Culture of Violence” and Zeppelins sighted in Southland
• A good reason to get upset – the grand denial of potential; imprisonment becoming the standard expectation of our underclass, our lumpenproletariat, our nga mokai; Law & Order Select Committee submissions by Principal Youth Judge Andrew Beecroft and Children’s Commissioner Cindy Kiro
• “Could we agree on having a decarcerated nation within which the indigenous people are proportionally the least imprisoned population segment?’; tut-tutting at Australia
• “Police dragnets can criminalize whole communities and land large numbers of non-violent children in jail and don’t reduce gang involvement or gang violence…Once jailed these children will inevitably become hardened criminals and spend the rest of their lives in and out of prison…The emphasis needs to be on changing children’s behavior by getting them involved in community and school-based programs that essentially keep them out of gangs.” New York Times, 19 July 2007, “The Wrong Approach to Gangs”
• Celebration of life for daughter Kaylene; prayerful and profound intervention of a tohunga; respect and admiration for an ICU doc
• Maatariki – planted shallots, garlic, onions and chives and now time to dig in mustard so it can enrich the soil for Maori spuds: Tuteakuri, Moemoe and Perepuru
• A week ahead of politics and difficult engagements dissuading people from one path and persuading them to take another.

Posted. Raumati South

Nga Kupu Aroha #16: Denis O'Reilly

"Those that have ears let them hear"

The killing of Jhia Te Tua (2) in a drive-by shooting in Wanganui on May 5 has created grief among her family and iwi - and quite possibly a tipping point in New Zealand gang history. In the latest post in his Nga Kupu Aroha: Words of Love series, Denis O’Reilly tells of Jhia Te Tua’s tangi at Tukorehe marae at Kuku south of Levin (pictured); the talk of whanau and warriors; triangulation between gangs, police, officials; the geo-politics and zeitgeist of Black Power and other gangs; linkages between gangs, social development and criminality; factors, findings and recommendations of the latest Government report on youth gangs in Counties Manukau; a New Zealand gang timeline; international strategies for community-wide approaches to gang prevention (Divert; Contain; Redirect); and five “Maori stones” from James K Baxter – aroha, korero, matewa, mahi and mahuhiritanga – that set philosophical values for ways forward. 5,500 words of intel, analysis and advocacy. http://www.nzedge.com/features/ar-denis16.html

Says O’Reilly, “being in the trapped lifestyle of a gang is a waste of time and human potential.” He asks: “What would it take for the brothers to put down their patches? I don't just mean for an event or such - they'll generally do that if asked respectfully - but as a lifestyle. Well, what would it take for us as a nation to resolve this whole issue? If the brotherhood acknowledged that in fact they don't want a trapped lifestyle that means relative poverty, jail, and underachievement; if the brotherhood said we want to join in socially because we want our kids to succeed and we don't want them in jail, we don't want them to repeat our mistakes; as a nation what would we do?”

Denis O’Reilly is a Hawkes Bay social innovator, coach and businessman. He is a life member of Black Power. His methods of social development at the edges of our society have been honed by his experiences over three decades of mediating with gangs, working in State systems, academic research, and corporate business.

Nga Kupu Aroha #14: Denis O'Reilly

Denis O'Reilly is a social innovator and activist based at Waiohiki Marae Napier. In 1977 I co-hosted him as a speaker in the inaugural University of Waikato Winter Lectures. He spoke, chanted and probably cursed in an address about gangs in New Zealand. The NZ situation was quite incendiary, and Denis triangulated between Black Power, the Mongrel Mob, others, and PM Muldoon. Many years later he has orchestrated major events involving New Zealand corporates and Maori. Three years ago I invited Denis to write a column for nzedge.com on the very dangerous edge of the methamphetamine epidemic in New Zealand, our incarceration culture, marginalized Maori - and his fresh ideas for creating ways out and ahead. This Irish Ngati Pakeha reports on events, people, protocols, local intel, highs, doubts and the occasional crisis, with a knowingness few New Zealanders have accumulated. BS

AROHAMAI (FORGIVE ME). Feeding the soul at Parihaka a century since the passing of Tohu Kakahi and Te Whiti o Rongomai, “the human pillars of passive resistance in New Zealand”; a Festival with 7000 people clustered in campsites; the formalities of powhiri and the beauty of korero and waiata; remembrances of confiscation of land, imprisonment of people, rape of women, looting, invasion, forcible ejection and illegal arrest in 1881; postering about P (“beware of P and seek help if hooked”); “start with bring peace to your house, to your street and onward”; meeting up with Te Ringa Mangu Dun Mihaka; Unity Pacific, Batacuda Sound Machine and Kora; and the forthcoming St Patrick’s Day Maori/Celtic Hui & Huilli at Waiohiki Marae Napier with Governor General Anand Satyanand, Lady Thea Muldoon and Sir Tipene O’Regan in attendance for long festivities. 5500 words. First published March 07. http://www.nzedge.com/features/ar-denis14.html