Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 61
Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds
Stop this Press - Moana Jackson no longer able to make it - Also note time is SATURDAY not Sunday as originally reported.
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| Nicky Hager |
We
are putting in a plug here for a Forum that begins at the Mahara Gallery,
Waikanae this weekend. Speaking Truth To Power runs over four
weeks and it's panels will include some of New Zealand’s most original and
independent voices. These include Mike Joy on the environment, Nicky Hager on skull-duggery in general and film maker Gaylene Preston (See list below). There is a strong Maori contingent
along with reps. from the artist, film and literary communities.
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| Mike Joy |
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| Gaylene Preston |
So if you’re hankering
to get stirred up some, the Mahara is the place to be Saturdays 1-2pm over the
next four weeks.
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| Bianca Begovich |
The
brains behind this intellectual coup is our own Bianca Begovich, in partnership
with Mahara Director Janet Bayly.
Here is Janet on the Forum.
I am very proud
that Mahara Gallery can offer this new forum series attracting some of New
Zealand's leading 'public intellectuals' - writers, artists, filmmakers,
investigative journalists and environmental leaders - to speak their minds
about things that they feel need airing and directly addressing in our
contemporary society.
Freedom of
speech - as in artistic expression - is more vital today than ever before -
including the ability to question those in positions of power. The pressing
global issues of climate warming and rising social inequality affect us as much
here as they do people in France, Kiribas, Iran and Denmark.
The forum
series has been developed by Bianca Begovich following the great public
response to our first one in 2013 mounted alongside 'Towards the Precipice,
Propaganda Posters from the Bill Sutch Collection'. Audiences told us they
wanted more of this type of stimulating public discussion.
The previous forum attracted big
crowds so our strong advice would be to get there early to claim your seat…
Participants
Gaylene
Preston (ONZM) is a leading New Zealand film maker with a
particular interest in historic and political stories told with warmth and
humour. Her feature film Home
By Christmas and feature documentary War Stories Our Mothers Never
Told Us used oral histories to tell her father's, then her mother's
experiences of war. Her other feature films include Mr Wrong; Ruby and Rata; Perfect Strangers; the mini series Bread
& Roses and Hope and Wire set in Christchurch during the
earthquakes and their aftermath.
Dr Jeffrey Sluka is
Associate Professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at Massey
University. He is the author of Hearts and Minds, Water and Fish:
Popular Support for the IRA and INLA in a Northern Irish Ghetto, and
editor of Death Squad – The Anthropology of State Terror. This book
presents eight case studies from seven countries to demonstrate the cultural
complexities and ambiguities of terror when viewed at the local level and from
the participant's point of view.
Dr
Sapna Samant is a writer and producer of Holy Cow
Media, which she set up in 2006 to tell stories across all media. She
produced The Asian Radio
Show, a contemporary and irreverent show about the Asian diaspora in
New Zealand from 2008-2012, the only such show on commercial radio. Dr Samant
was previously a freelance producer for Radio New Zealand, and on the WIFT
(Women in Film and Television) board. Dr Samant is an RMO (resident
medical officer) at various hospitals in the Wellington region.
K.Gurunathan
has been a journalist for more than 30 years, the last
18 with The Observer, Kapiti News and Beach FM covering local
government, economic development, environment, Maori issues and the arts. His
outspoken views have sometimes got him into trouble - such as during the
controversy about land around the local airport. More scarily in the past, he was told he was being watched
by the Chief of Police in Kuala Lumpur when he was the editor of The Rocket
(a publication of the Malaysian Opposition - the Democratic Action Party)
during a crackdown on the freedom of the press in 1989. Currently Guru writes a
column for the Kapiti News, and
represents the Paraparaumu Ward on the Kāpiti
Coast District Council.
Amanda Vickers is a Kapiti
resident who stood as an independent candidate in the 2014 elections to
advocate for changing the way our present monetary system is designed and to
highlight why it does not serve us. She talks about how banks create our money
as debt, and explains that most money in our economy is backed by debt. She
explains how our money supply has been privatised and how we effectively rent
it back from the banks. Amanda believes the consequences are damaging and
far reaching and claims that if the Government reclaimed our sovereign right to
issue our own money supply, this would be the single biggest factor that would
positively impact our economy, environment and society.
Ani Parata is a
Kāpiti historian and member of local iwi Te Atiawa. She grew up in
Kāpiti and was a former Kāpiti Coast District Councillor. She has been an
outspoken advocate for Indigenous rights as well as calling for transparency
and honesty in Maori-Government processes and protocols. She has been the
secretary for Te Runanga of Ati Awa Ki Whakarongotai and also acted as
chairwoman for the Takamore Trust which is responsible for the oversight and
kaitiaki of the central area of indigenous land in Waikanae, including the
Takamore Urupa (cemetery).
Alister Barry has been
making intelligent and provocative documentaries for more than three decades.
Barry's films reflect his long-time interest in how power is exercised in a
democracy, and how the decisions of the powerful impact on ordinary people's
lives. He has been described as 'one of the under-sung heroes of the New
Zealand film world'. (Graeme Tuckett, The DomPost).
Giovanni Tiso is a
Wellington-based independent researcher in cultural theory and in particular
the relationship between memory and technology. Tiso is one of the best
proponents of the art of Twitter. He has a blog on memory and technology
(Bat-Bean-Beam), has written essays on cinema and surveillance and is
particularly interested in modern surveillance at work, particularly the
reality that someone with enough resources and the appropriate agenda to
collect surveillance information can turn it into an instrument of control.
Mandy (Amanda) Hager is a multi-award winning New Zealand writer who was awarded the 2014 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship and has recently been named Waikato University's 2015 Writer in Residence. She has written for The Global Education Centre, the DARE Foundation and is the author of nine novels, as well poems, resources, scripts, blogs and articles. She is a keen follower of politics and Twitter, where her profile describes her as “Writer slash activist. Award-winning novels, trying to save the world one book
at a time!”
Tina Makereti is an
award-winning novelist, essayist and author of short stories. In 2009 she was
the recipient of the Royal Society of New Zealand Manhire
Prize for Creative Science Writing (non-fiction), and in the same year
received the Pikihuia Award for Best Short Story Written in English. Makereti
is Curator Māori for Museums Wellington and convenes a Māori & Pasifika
Creative Writing Workshop at Victoria University. She is of Ngāti Tūwharetoa,
Te Ati Awa, Ngāti Maniapoto, Pākehā and, according to family stories, Moriori
descent.
Nigel Wilson is
Kapiti’s Greater Wellington regional councillor and chair of the committee that
looks after the region’s parks, forestry and the regional water supply.
He is an outspoken advocate for the Kapiti district, with particular interest
in minimal rates increases for Kapiti through prudent financial management by
the Regional Council, getting commuter rail to Otaki and Raumati station and
leading the campaign to extend Gold Card hours. Nigel also runs a local
online newspaper KC News which highlights many Kapiti Coast stories not given
coverage in the mainstream newspapers.
Dr Mike Joy is a Senior
lecturer in Ecology and Environmental Science at Massey University, and an
outspoken advocate for environmental protection in New Zealand. He was voted
Environmental New Zealander of the Year by North and South magazine and
Person of the Year by the Manawatu Evening Standard. He delivered the
2014 Bruce Jesson lecture ‘Paradise Squandered’ and has published numerous
ecology papers and reports. It is said he ‘uses science like a weapon’
and is never far away from rejecting “bullshit” arguments.
Marian Evans is a cultural
activist who, for almost four decades, has analysed the factors that inhibit
public access to stories by and about diverse women, and experimented with
strategies for change from within legendary collectives like Kidsarus 2, The
Spiral Collective and The Women’s Gallery. Her post-doctoral Development project
about women’s filmmaking is now based at her Wellywood Woman blog
and part of a global network. As a former lawyer, now a writer, filmmaker and
emerging entrepreneur who writes about her work growing neonic-free bee-loved
flowers for distribution, she investigates ways that women’s storytelling can
benefit from media convergence on the internet.
Nicky Hager is a New
Zealand investigative
journalist who is the only New Zealand member of the International
Consortium of Investigative Journalists. With degrees in physics and philosophy, he has produced six
books since 1996, exploring intelligence networks, environmental issues and
politics. His titles include Secrets and Lies, Seeds of Distrust, The
Hollow Men and Other People’s Wars. In August 2014 he
published Dirty Politics: How attack politics is poisoning New
Zealand’s political environment, featuring leaked emails between National
Party figures and right-wing bloggers. According to Hager the book aimed to
tell the story of "how attack politics is poisoning NZ's political
environment".
Jimmy Green is the Events director for
Youth Climate Action group 'Generation Zero', which he has been involved with
since it began in 2011. He has
helped organise a series of large events including the Powershift conference to
encourage young people to get involved in climate change issues, a 700-person
ClimateVote Summit, and an Underwear Trainride to protest against the
Government’s inaction on climate change legislation. He has also worked on the 2013 '100% campaign' and speaking
tour in collaboration with 350 Aotearoa and WWF-NZ to catalyse action away from
fossil fuel dependence.
Dr. Huhana Smith (Ngāti
Tukorehe, Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga) is an artist, academic/research associate
and environmentalist. Since 2010, Huhana has been the Research Leader for
Manaaki Taha Moana: Enhancing Coastal Ecosystems for Iwi and Hapū - a
kaupapa Māori, which is an action research project for the Horowhenua coastal
case study between Hōkio and Levin. She completed her PhD thesis: Hei
Whenua Ora: Hapū and iwi approaches for reinstating valued ecosystems
within cultural landscape, in 2007. Practical action includes revegetating
local wetlands, streams, river meanders, dune lakes and streams to sea. As
one of a group of Māori specialists, she is helping redevelop the natural
environment exhibitions at Te Papa as Huhana sees contemporary
art, cultural/environmental/ecological and museum work, as interrelated.
