Tue 23 Jun 2015 In: New Zealand Daily News View at Wayback View at NDHA
Prolific Auckland Pride event creator Mika says he will withdraw from involvement in the Auckland Pride Festival due to the removal of clear commitment to Treaty of Waitangi principles in Pride's objectives. Mika MCs the Pride 2015 Dawn Service on the Auckland waterfront. Mika says he has only just discovered that the Auckland Pride Festival Incorporated society, which now runs the annual festival, had been registered at the start of last year without any commitment to the principles of the Treaty. The society's predecessor, the Auckland Pride Charitable Trust, had embraced Treaty Principles in its deed. That commitment disappeared when the Trust quietly reinvented itself as an incorporated society with apparently none of the community consultation or public awareness which had led to the original Trust being set up. "I'm astonished. I can't believe that after all the decades we have spent fighting for gay rights that they have now excluded another minority. I have been doing things each year for Pride with no regrets, but to find out last night through GayNZ.com's reporting that the mana whenua/Waitangi clause has been taken out, I'm more than astonished. The Mika Haka Foundation will not be participating in Pride 2016 if this exclusion is still there." For the past two Auckland Pride festivals Mika and his team of young, mostly glbti, performers have provided the festival's opening Waitangi Day dawn service as well as performing numerous cabaret-style events and the showcasing of Aroha youth talent. The dawn service involves him in liaison with the Auckland Council, event permitting and OSH adherence as well as funding sound and other equipment and coordinating the performers. "I've done all that on the understanding that there was an explicit commitment to the Treaty principles," he says. "For them to actively take that out suggests to me that they don't want Maori involved." Pride's new deed is clear that takataapui and wakawahine are listed amongst those deemed by the new organisation to constitute the Rainbow Community. But Mika says this is not enough. "The reason for the Treaty clause is to highlight the partnership," he says. "It makes the organisation take seriously how it is involved with and works with our indigenous peoples. It enables us to be in the discussions rather than being paid lip service or having token representation. The way Pride now appears to be, it is tokenistic." Mika says it is usual for organisations committed to Treaty principles to have Maori representation somewhere on their board. "I wonder if there is any Maori presence on the Pride board at the moment." GayNZ.com will raise this issue with the Pride Board during an in-depth interview scheduled for this Friday.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Tuesday, 23rd June 2015 - 1:07pm