A look back at all the action we caught on video from Waitangi Day 2024.
OPINION
We voted with our cars. By 5am at Waitangi, the queue on the back road to the Treaty Grounds had already stretched to half an hour, as people tried to get to the dawn service. Before long it had blown out to 90 minutes.
It was the same elsewhere:traffic stretched for 3km in west Auckland, with people heading for the Waitangi concert at Parrs Park. Wellington mayor Tory Whanau said she’d never seen a bigger crowd at Waitangi Park, down by the waterfront.
Snarling up the roads so we can have a good time together. This is us.
We did it with music, in the sunshine, lining up for iced chocolate and mussel fritters, finding old friends and meeting new ones. Enjoying that we are doing it together.
In that dawn service, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon read from Corinthians. The body has many parts and they all need each other. If one part suffers, the whole body suffers. This is us.
I wrote yesterday that the PM has achieved the rare feat of uniting Māori. The size of the Waitangi Day crowds around the country suggests he’s done a good deal more than that, even if this was not exactly his purpose. A decent chunk of the nation has come together. This is definitely us.
You see a great mix of “us” on the parade ground at Waitangi. The Northland hīkoi arrived and waited patiently for the interdenominational church service to end. The Royal New Zealand Navy staged its Guards Parade at the flagstaff and then gave a kapa haka performance.
Over on the main stage, opera singer Kawiti Waetford ran proceedings in rapid-fire te reo and English, all delivered in a luscious baritone. Sandwiched between the kapa haka and hip hop and Ladi6 came the Harmonic Resonators, who call themselves “a Pākehā whānau country music group” and say they’re “on a journey in te ao Māori”.
Which means they mash the Everly Brothers and waiata into glorious medleys and the crowd sings happily with them. They’re from Hamilton and they are us.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon addresses the crowd at the Waitangi Day dawn ceremony. Photo / Michael Cunningham
Catana Wallace (6) from Ōtara attends the Waitangi Day free event held at Point England Reserve in Glen Innes. Photo / Dean Purcell
What are we telling ourselves on Waitangi Day? My reading is that we’re proud to live in a country founded on a treaty that wasn’t forced on either side. We’re exploring what that means, and we probably always will. But we want to do it without meanness, or fear, and certainly without hatred. This is us.
We like to get along. This is us. But we know Māori have worse outcomes by almost every social and economic measure and we have failed to overcome that. We do not want to keep failing.
The debate about how to do it is fraught. But isn’t that the debate we want to have? Not a debate about whether Māori are somehow cheating us or sabotaging our democracy.
Three quotes from Waitangi 2024:
“We are a multicultural nation proudly built on a strong bicultural foundation.”
“The Treaty is the past, it is our present and it is our future.”
One person said them all. It was the Prime Minister. He is us.
We got stuck in all those traffic jams so we could tell him: Mr Luxon, make it real. It’s your moment now.
Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues, with a focus on Auckland. He joined the Herald in 2018.
