NOTE: I put this post up the other day, but then got a very irate email from a Kiwi saying that no, I was WRONG: Health New Zealand, he asserted, never sent around any notice to employees encouraging them to say spiritual prayers (karakia) during the day: a Māori custom. I objected to this as a mixing of religion and government (governmental health efforts), as well as a partial sacralization of indigenous practices. Because of the correspondent’s objection, and because I had no original evidence for such a notice being sent out—just a reader’s assertion—I pulled the post. I also informed a NZ outlet, which had asked to republish my post, to hold off until they could get evidence that such a notice about karakia was indeed circulated.
The organization in NZ has now procured such evidence, so I’m reposting what I took down, but have added the notice (with a link) verifying the government’s urging employees to pray. And to the person who told me in very strong terms that no such notice existed, well, this is a family site and I won’t tell him what to do—but you can guess.
My post, now with the notice and a link to it:
This item, from the Breaking Views website in New Zealand, is one of the rare cases of a Kiwi speaking up against forcible adherence to Māori customs on the job—in this case, saying Māori prayers. First, “Health New Zealand,” the organization in question, is a government agency that, according to its own description:
. . . . will manage all health services, including hospital and specialist services, and primary and community care. Hospital and specialist services will be planned nationally and delivered more consistently across the country. Primary and community services will be commissioned through four regional divisions, each of which will network with a range of district offices (Population Health and Wellbeing Networks) who will develop and implement locality plans to improve the health and wellbeing of communities.
And the author of this short plaint, A. E. Thompson, is described as “a working, tax-paying New Zealander who speaks up about threats to our hard-fought rights, liberties, egalitarian values, rational thinking and fair treatment by the state.” He or she is also courageous! (It’s not clear whether Thompson is employed by Health New Zealand; if so, that won’t be for long!)
The beef is that the government sent out a notice to Health New Zealand’s staff encouraging them to say Māori prayers daily. From the site:
I was made aware that Health New Zealand recently sent an email to its staff as follows:
“We encourage everyone to incorporate karakia daily. To help support you with this we have created some pre-recorded videos to learn karakia. Our resource is designed to give you some options that will enable you to learn and develop your confidence and skills. Note over time we will be adding more recordings for you to choose from.”
The word ‘karakia’ surely must be a Maorified way of saying ‘prayer’, but it seems very difficult and may be impossible to determine whether the term was used before Europeans arrived or if there were other terms that iwi used for their incantations, chants and verbal offerings of respect to their various spiritual entities. Regardless, karakia almost always involve references to supernatural forces whether they be Christian (in practice, they usually end with ‘amine’), pagan or spiritualist. They often involve communication intended for (usually unspecified) long-dead ancestors.
Massey University assistant lecturer Te Rā Moriarty was quoted as saying: “Karakia allow us to continue an ancestral practice of acknowledging orally the divine forces that we, as Māori, understand as the sources of our natural environment. We call these forces atua. So, it is a way to connect through the words of our tūpuna to the world that we live.”
Here’s the notice that the NZ news site that was going to publish my post eventually found. And yes, it is real, and came with a note:
NAME REDACTED tells me she has been advised that an email was sent to employees and invited them to view the message in their browser.
Click the notice to see the announcement—on a Health New Zealand website. The “you can read more” link doesn’t work for me; it apparently requires credentials to access. But the notice says exactly what my informant claimed. Yes, the New Zealand government is urging some of its employees to pray daily.
In the Māori dictionary, “karakia” is defined this way:
(noun) incantation, ritual chant, chant, intoned incantation, charm, spell – a set form of words to state or make effective a ritual activity. Karakia are recited rapidly using traditional language, symbols and structures. Traditionally correct delivery of the karakia was essential: mispronunciation, hesitation or omissions courted disaster. . . . .
So what we have is a government agency “encouraging” its staff to chant to supernatural powers in hope of connecting to one’s ancestors (tūpuna). This encouragement, of course, violates the separation of church and state, and is an unwarranted sop to the indigenous people. (New Zealand, of course, doesn’t have a First Amendment.) It’s one more sign of how the sacralization of the oppressed is spreading in New Zealand. Of course these prayers have no effect, and encouraging the descendants of “colonists” to say them is to force one’s beliefs on others who may not share them.
Thompson has a few words about this:
We can choose not to attend places where the religious practices feel offensive or intolerant to us, and the hosts in those places can exercise similar choice about visiting our spaces.
However, when we are employed and rely upon that employment for our survival, we don’t have the choice to avoid our place of employment. Being employed in a state service under a secular government, workers should have choice over whether they participate even passively in practices involving claimed spiritual entities or supernatural beliefs. Expecting employees to participate denies their right to choose to follow their own religion or philosophical belief and not other people’s, a characteristic of totalitarian rule.
This is especially true in New Zealand, where refusal to sacralize the presumed “oppressed” is sometimes punished severely, with threats of losing one’s job. Thompson’s piece continues:
Sure, the email to health staff only used the word “encourage” but really, when your employer issues an email saying that, you know it will be expected and that ignoring or opposing it will be held against you and may cost you your job.
Pressuring state employees and even private company employees to participate in karakia sets a dangerous precedent in eroding separation between state and religion. As we speak, Muslim immigrants in Europe are deliberately imposing their religious practices on non-Muslim populations by having their distorting loudspeakers call dozens or hundreds of faithful to prostrate themselves in prayer on public footpaths and roadways (even though nearby mosques are plentiful). The practice reflects their belief that Islam is so important that everyone either needs to convert to it or be discriminated against or killed.
As usual, I was sent this with the assumption that the sender would remain anonymous. Thompson, however, clearly has some guts, for even if he/she doesn’t work for Health New Zealand, it’s a huge risk to publish something like this anywhere.
What repellent advice (‘encouragement’ indeed!) by a bureaucrat with a tin ear for the vital, principled, and long fought for, separation of personal faith and institutional religion.
Bravo! to A. E. Thompson.
This is unintentionally hilarious. I’m going to propose to my department chair that we stop doing land acknowledgements in English before our department meetings, and that instead we translate the LA into Chinook jargon, which was the only mutually intelligible language shared among indigenous people and the various English- and French-speaking newcomers. That will make as much sense as the 95% of people in Aotearoa New Zealand who can’t have a regular conversation in Maori making their karakia ablutions in te reo.
I will also start saying a little Chinook prayer before opening the laptop in the mornings. Please send suggestions for the contents of my prayer. I’m considering “E pur si muove” for starters.
This may be closer than you think. We attended a municipal event sponsored by the city where my wife was getting a well-deserved conservation award for sustainable gardening. (It was really a excuse to celebrate the NDP success in getting the provincial premier to back down on a land-use proposal, since self-congratulation took up much of the meeting.). Anyway, the event was kicked off, after the usual land acknowledgement in English by the white leftie alderman with purple spangly running shoes and eyeglasses, by a local Mohawk woman who went on for two minutes in what I gather was some kind of invocation in what was claimed to be her traditional language. She could have been saying “Kill Whitey!” over and over again in different tenses and declensions for all anyone in the audience could have determined but they all applauded wildly when she finished.
Steeped as I am in academia, I feel fortunate that I only see this performance only occasionally, such as during graduation ceremonies.
Every department meeting; every administrative zoom meeting; every research seminar; every graduation or celebration.
What’s the Maori word for Sharia?
Oh wait, here it is. “Tariao whakature”. There we go. Salaam, Kiwi.
None of this surprises me. Before I retired I taught in the New Zealand secondary school system – karakias were beginning to be recited at any opportunity and ‘encouragement’ to participate was strong, as it was with anything Maori. I am glad I am retired.
I’m not laughing. I really, really dislike the coersive aspect to this kind of “encouragement”. We fought long and hard to get religion out of education and to take a back seat in government (for better or worse, a prayer still opens Parliament). And for good reason. I don’t have any problem with team leader starting a meeting by reminding everyone “here we are, all together, ready to focus on important work together, regardless of where we came from today”. Public servants should think about all the people they represent when they are doing their work. But calling it a karakia is a problem for me because it is a word that is now associated with religion and religious belief.
I’m still laughing. I went to publicly-funded Catholic schools where ~zero of the kids were influenced by the catechism etc. and the vast majority went on to become functionally atheist adults with church at Easter & Christmas where “HolyMarymotherofgodprayforussinnersnowandatthehourofourdeathamen” was recited at the same break-neck speed as is typical of karakia so that we could all get home for turkey. I think secular government and society will survive this crass and funny stupidity in New Zealand and here in Canada, and I think it’s more likely to survive if we all laugh at it mercilessly.
Amen!
I see what you did there…
I feel that the Flying Spaghetti Monster needs to do a flyover. Who could object to Pastafarian prayers alongside Karakia?
I object to this obvious cultural appropriation!
Seriously, though, this is ridiculous. If you want to pray, do it on your own and don’t force it on others, especially as a tacit condition of employment.
If the colonizing white NZ’ers really wanted to put their money where their mouths are, they should all just leave and go back to where their ancestors came from. Maybe the Maori should do the same as well.
See also the letter by NZ scientists in the latest issue (12jul24) of Science magazine, and the following letter by Matzke, with a response by Black an Tylianakis.
Do I really want to rely in a health care system that “encourages” (e.g., forces through coercion) prayer as part of the job?
No, I don’t.
What happened to a cuppa tea and a biscuit?
he kapu ti me te pihikete
and a chocolate fish! (or feesh)
I think you will find that ‘feesh’ is Australian, in NZ it is ‘fush’, as in ‘fush and chups’.
Yes, fush in NZ. Feesh in OZ.
I blame a tin ear and a poor memory of my visit there in 2017. No excuse: we were there a month. Loved the place.
Kudos to Thompson for calling this out, and WEIT for amplifying it.
What horrible nonsense.
Just like the Islamiphication of Europe.
D.A.
NYC
True New Zealand does not have a First Amendment, indeed like the United Kingdom, it does not have a written constitution.
However, it does have a Bill of Rights, enacted under the Bill of Rights Act 1990. I would have thought that, so long as “encourage” is seen as some form of coercion and not just a vague suggestion, that this would be illegal under it.
[Sorry. Way too long. Deleted and will try again later.]
https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1990/0109/latest/DLM224792.html
The Bill of Rights does not invalidate any law passed by Parliament. The Attorney-General is required to notify the legislature if a proposed bill will violate the B of R but the governing majority is free to go ahead and pass the bill into an “enactment” if it wishes.
The Bill of Rights also doesn’t prohibit the establishment of a religion or the coercion of a religious observance such as public prayer if in the public interest.
>>> As we speak, Muslim immigrants in Europe are deliberately imposing their religious practices on non-Muslim populations by having their distorting loudspeakers call dozens or hundreds of faithful to prostrate themselves in prayer on public footpaths and roadways (even though nearby mosques are plentiful).
Where is this happening?
It’s not in any of the corners of Europe I find myself in.
As long as it’s optional, I don’t see a problem. People can choose whether or not to participate based on their personal beliefs.
How optional is it when the encouragement is the encouragement of a bully?
It starts out optional and private. Then Someone in Authority rumbles to the lack of uptake because few seem to be doing it, like collectively at shift-over report where collective peer pressure might productively be applied. Maori activists ask what’s the next step. The first zealot among the peons who proposes, “Why don’t we all do this aloud, together? You’ve all seen the videos, haven’t you?” will have the blessing of management to shame the holdouts. It was, after all, a management “suggestion” and some nurses sincerely believe this stuff. Management can’t very well tell the zealot who took them literally to ease up, embarrassing her in front of her peers.
Well said.
I have news for A E Thompson. It’s been going on for many years. My sister lead a team (social workers)and every morning before going out into the field they did a karakia.
Sometimes I think they needed body armour, not a prayer.
But my dear sister is an avocate of all things Maori (most of the time) and construed the practice as bond building and fortification…
I dont know wheather it was “encouraged” or not.
Eric Voegelin wrote an article on the history of scientism. It claimed that by the 19th c that Comte and Marx thought that scientism could answer all human needs. God accordingly, the ontology of Judeo- Chrstianity, the order of being. was given it hubristic death sentence. But with the sacrilisation by apppropriation of Maori cukture and its pantheism, the reverse of scientism is being imposed on science by the Marxist feminists and Marxists in the Public Service the Universities, NZLS/NZCLE the REINZ and the MSM. QED: Marxism doesn’t work economically nor spiritually either.
If you dig deeper, I suspect you will find that the health boards are doing this because they interpret that they are legally required, under New Zealand law, to “give effect to the principles the Treaty of Waitangi”.
What are these principles? Well, they are intentionally undefined in law. This means that they can be interpreted by anyone as to be whatever they want, to further whatever agenda they are tying to pursue.
David Seymour (leader of minority coalition party) has a bill to define them. He is being accused of racism (he is Māori, but the wrong kind of Māori).
This is wider than just the health sector. It happens at all levels of the public service, from council meetings to school boards.
Yep. Completely true. Health NZ is my employer. All meetings begin (and often end) with a prayer. I’ve also been to in-person workshops where everyone has to stand up and repeat the prayer. Some people *sing* it and you’re encouraged to do so.
Suffice to say I’m looking for other work.
I’m a Te Whatu Ora employee and this came through as a clickable link in an email just today (19/7/24). I don’t mind so much the acknowledgement of different cultures but a singular culture and their religion imposed on someone who does not share the worldview? And how can I tell whether they are religious if they are in Te Reo Maori which I do not speak with any competency?
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What is Karakia?
Karakia are short incantations, prayers, or blessings, traditionally spoken at the opening and closing of a hui, before eating food, and at important life events. Karakia are used to increase the spiritual goodwill of a gathering, to ensure the success of a project, and to enhance the mana and tapu of people and their environment.
Some Karakia are traditional, and some are contemporary, some are religious, and some are not. Some are chanted, some are sung, and some are shared softly. Traditional Karakia without Christian references are often used by organisations to support cultural safety.
Including Karakia at work
Karakia is part of our tikanga, and it is appropriate to include them at the beginning and end of meetings or gatherings, and before eating food.
Choose a Karakia that aligns with the Kaupapa | purpose of the meeting, for example the intention might be to connect, energise, drive, or calm and the choice of Karakia should support the intention and context of the meeting.
We encourage everyone to incorporate Karakia as part of their work practice. If you are new to using Karakia or are not feeling confident, choose a simple Karakia and practice it before you speak. Ask a friend or colleague to help you prepare.
Karakia video – to help you learn or improve
To support you to incorporate Karakia into your meetings and general workday we have created some pre-recorded videos to learn Karakia. Our resource is designed to give you some options that will enable you to learn and develop your confidence and skills.
Thanks to our kaimahi who have developed this resource for us all. We are all now kaitiaki of this taonga. We share responsibility for bringing aroha and manaaki to their use, respectful to uplift the mana of all.
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Raniera Albert Pou Tikanga ā-Motu re Te Reo Whatukura
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The ratio is enlightening!
I had the same email!