Kathleen van Rooyen teaches English at FAHS . She studied a Bachelor of Arts at Victoria University of Wellington double majoring in English Literature and Political Science and double minoring in Theatre and International Relations. She is passionate about NZ politics and enjoys using literature as a medium to encourage political conversation among young people. But first and foremost, she is kiwi. Her mother’s family arrived in New Zealand during the 1860s from Germany and her family history has been recorded in a book, passed down from generation to generation. This poem was first coined while she was studying but she has been changing it over the years. This is her final version. She will let it speak for itself.
Yesteryear I seized
Your tongue, your land, your seas
A cost you bore and still you pay
To submit to my superior ways
A tongue impounded where one was learned
For I now know, by force it was earned
My kin arrived in droves
Traded blankets and muskets for homes
And tore apart our Mother in rows
Proud hills violated
As fickle pockets dilated
Short-sighted were we from the pain
The scars visible today in the remains
At Waitangi together we signed
An accord that favoured only one side
A peaceful protest was your reply
Such savagery one can never condone
A fault that was mine, never your own
Women and children fled to their deaths
Better that than face the white man’s breath
Once nourishing waters ceaseless in red rage
And as the pages of history fill
Our tale is at a stop
Rights and Privileges unjustly withheld
Are tragically overdue
Reverse racism makes headlines
“Scholarships here and there, but what about me?”
Would you rather Chinese or te reo?
Grotesque question
Your warriors: “aggressors, oppressors”
Us and them
And them and us
If sorrow is a qualifier
Let mine unify
For I now comprehend
That I believed a lie
No amount of money will ever amend.