Māpuna for Saturday 9 December 2023

Historian Dr Aroha Harris on National Maori Action Day

Hundreds turned out to protest against the government's policies, at Ōtautahi's Bridge of Remembrance, in what has been described as National Māori Action Day on 5 December, 2023. Photo: RNZ / Niva Chittock

Dr Aroha Harris is a professor of history at Auckland University and is the author of the book Hikoi, Forty Years of Maori Protest. How does she view this week's protests against the new government's policies on Te Tiriti o Waitangi?

Whaea Esther Jessop & Ngati Ranana's sellout concert in London's West End

Whaea Esther Jessop at Ngati Ranana's Kirihimete concert in London Photo: Photo by Lara Creagh

More than sixty years ago Esther Jessop and a few other Māori in London founded a little group in the suburb of Putney, to meet and keep their language going. In the decades since, Ngāti Ranana has become a gathering point for Māori in London, meeting once a week and performing all around Europe. For decades they've put on their annual Kirihimete Concert, this year selling out a hall of more than five hundred people in London's West End. Jamie Tahana was at the performance, and he spoke to Whaea Esther Jessop who was made an officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2021 for her work with the group.