The front-page of the W(H)anganui Chronicle today is focused on the Nat. Geo-Board NZ decision that W-anganui should be spelt with an H. The headlines featured Mayor Laws accusing the board of racism and being unconstitutional. The irony is of course if both sides applied some actual intelligence and an open-mind they would see that neither side is right or wrong, that both are right, no-one needs to 'lose' and that Wanganui could be a leading light in this bi-cultural nation, rather than it's darkest corner. Here is a letter I wrote today to the Editor, describing the 'nausea' this situation induces...
Friday’s newspaper made me queasy with that feeling you get when you know a tasteless and avoidable furore is developing. The ‘H’ debacle is primed to show the unpalatable truth about race-relations in New Zealand, and we are in the front row seats.
Like rams butting heads for supremacy, the attitudes on both sides, are stubborn and destructive. How did this become a contest between cultures? When did it become one way or no way? If in most bilingual countries, 2 languages and accordingly 2 place names are acknowledged, why not here? Wanganui and Whanganui are BOTH in common usage, they are both already valid.
Who are ‘we’ if we can’t compromise? Does a compromise mean that both sides lose? Why are so many, so bitter and insecure, that they will not give an inch, no matter how destructive, ignorant and pointless, the struggle? As this symbolic issue nauseously unfolds, be assured we will see the further entrenchment of prejudices and self-serving agendas, till we are all sick to the stomach.
A previously unpopular name for Whanganui was Petre (Peter), ironically derived (as all you good Christians know), from the word for rock. Perhaps this stubborn town was better named then, than they thought?
3 comments:
megalomania is alive and well on these shakey isles with self appointed guardians of libertarian free thought, decrying the arguments of opponents with the catch-phrase, 'they are acting undemocratically.'
go ahead and restore indigenous names and we all might get a better idea about the country we are living in.
It's scary down here at the moment chief! You only have to look on Facebook where 'culturally threatened whitey' is mobilising, with groups called "Fuck the H' and the like. The fact is this isn't about keeping something, it's about not giving anything away. It amazes me that Europeans, have conquered, colonised or converted almost the entire known world and covered it in a thick blanket of their own culture, rapidly merging to become a homogenous one. In spite of this 'we' see the restoration of a mistaken transliteration of a place name as an attack, a threat ? Or is it really just another excuse to supress the colonised culture?
As I have said elsewhere, Pakeha (My people) are the biggest Mongrel Mob ever. If NZ was a dog-show we wouldn't get in!
That reminds me, now this is sorted, when are we going to change New Zealand to Aotearoa? Or are the all the Dutch people from Zeeland, going to be culturally offended?
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