Know that New Zealand is pretty much the only place in the world that you can not actually be a New Zealander?

Whenever you fill out a form or survey in New Zealand you can tick the box to say you are Maori, Tongan, Samoan, Australian, European (or NZ born of European Decent), Asian, etc but there is no box provided to say
"Yes, I am a New Zealander and I am proud to be one"
In Australia, you can be an Australian... In fact in Australia you can be a New Zealander. Why is it that we can't be New Zealanders in our own country?
Most people are proud of their ethnicity, heritage and family origins and so will tick whichever box they feel applies to them, and they have every right to do so whether they are Maori, Pacific Islander, European etc Many of us however consider that we, and our families, have been in New Zealand for long enough now that we should be able to claim that as
who we are... regardless of where our ancestors may have come from many centuries ago or what the colour of our skin or shape of our face might indicate.

If you support us in our desire to be recognised as New Zealanders in our own country then there is only one way that this can be achieved...

On the 2006 NZ Census form, when you are asked for your ethnicity, choose the option "Other" and state your ethnicity as "New Zealander"

If we can get enough people to do this then maybe, just maybe, we can get the powers that be to sit up and recognise that we are proud of who
we are and that we want to be recognised as such, not divided into sub-categories and all treated as foreigners in our own country.

Please forward this on to as many people as you can; friends, people you work with, kiwis you know who are overseas, anyone... No, you won't receive amazing good luck by doing so but you will have the knowledge that you have done your bit to help fight for our right to be recognised as who we are in this proud and strong country of ours.

And remember... at census time... "Other - New Zealander!" (and proud of it)

I'm down with this - I don't feel that my European-ness is too important to me now. So my census form now says New Zealander.

Do they let damn Yankees like you fill in the NZ census?

Just out of curiousity, if you're fucked up after a bottle and a half of tequila and pills and a toothless woman from South Carolina is dealing to you with a strap-on BUT the dildo part of the strap-on (not the harness mind you) was manufactured in Taiwan, can you still say that you've "Got some American in you"? I've got this "friend" and ...

I prefer 'Aotearoan' or even 'Kiwi'... 'New Zealander' just sounds fuckin goofy...

I prefer 'Aotearoan' or even 'Kiwi'... 'New Zealander' just sounds fuckin goofy...

afrikans
damn dutch again
prolly worse pedophiles than the belgians

An email is circulating about the upcoming census pointing out that some
people are sick of being treated like foreigners in their own country. But if these 'proud New Zealanders' don't want to be treated like
foreigners perhaps it's time they stopped acting like foreigners? Certainly it seems unfair for someone to be treated like an unwelcome
invader in the land of their birth. By all means let's have an inclusive
sense of nationalism that recognises our shared heritage. For a start
how about we learn our national language, Te Reo Maori? Sure learning a
second language is excellent mental stimulation and English is handy as
an international trade language (although a lot harder to learn than
Esperanto). It allows us to chew the fat with our commonwealth cousins
and linguistically-impoverished countries like the USA who, lacking a
language of their own, have happily mangled the Queen's English into
Standard American.

Many people from Tangata Pasifika, Asian, European, Arabic and African
nations also speak excellent English but you won't find most of them
speaking it around the dinner table. They proudly rear their children
speaking their native tongue and teach them English for the same reason
they teach them reading and mathematics. 'Proud New Zealanders' would be
watching Maori TV at every opportunity, regularly (and accurately) using
whatever Maori words they know and supporting Te Reo in the standard
school curriculum.

Secondly, let's dispense with the practice of referring to these fair
islands as 'New Zealand'. That name was plastered onto this country like
a sold sticker on a Warehouse BBQ by a Dutch vagrant who never even set
foot here. Now there are many admirable things about the Dutch such as
their pioneering use of wind power and their federal democracy which
values individual and local sovereignty over national sovereignty,
allowing cannabis use to be legal in Amsterdam for example. But we are
not Dutch and a proud national of these lands would call them Aotearoa,
a much more poetic name ('long white cloud' beats out 'new sea land' every time) and one that had been in use for hundreds of years before
Abel Tasman wandered past claiming everything he saw for the fatherland.

That leaves us in a bit of a quandary about what to call ourselves. Somehow 'Aotearoans' and 'Aotearese' just don't have the right ring to
them as well as being a disgraceful mangling of a beautiful Maori word
(like using an 's' to pluralise Maori as in 'bloody mowris'). One of the
first things we will learn about Te Reo is the prefix 'nga', 'ngai' or
'ngati' meaning 'people of' so how about 'Ngati Aotearoa'?

For more informal use there is always the tried and true 'kiwi' (but not
'kiwis'!). Some people are embarrassed by this identification with our
national bird but I think the comparison is apt. Most of us are humble,
down-to-Earth people whose aspirations to live on the land as best we
can is constantly under attack by introduced predators (multinational
corporations, land speculators etc) while our natural heritage is
destroyed by exotic pests (unsustainable and ugly developments, toxic
chemicals, genetically modified organisms, coal mines etc).

Speaking of national symbols maybe it's time we had our own flag,
perhaps with a kiwi on it? Perhaps we could simply replace the British
Union Jack in the flag with the Tino Rangatiratanga flag, symbolising
the 'mana motuhake' of a proudly independent island population? Some
proud Ngati Aotearoa get rather upset at the idea of changing the flag
but surely even a plain black flag would be better than being
represented by the Ozzie flag with one less star? Sure I know there are
other differences but can you tell them apart a five hundred paces while
they are blowing in the winds of Whanganui a Tara? I didn't think so.

Of course such a change would be comparable to a teenage girl smearing
foundation over white heads if it didn't prompt us to have a serious
look at the woeful undemocracy of the New Zealand state. Most people I
speak to agree that politicians of whatever colour or pattern are mostly
unaccountable to the will of the people once elected and tend towards
policies that benefit the small fraction of the population that controls
most of the wealth generated by everyone's work. Our government is like
the head of one of those round-bottomed toys, always bouncing back to
the top whether you knock it left or right. Sure this is more fun the
flat-bottomed version we had before MMP when nothing really moved at all
but I'd like to think proud Ngati Aotearoa could do better.

Our country has a a Bill of Rights (Act) and a Declaration of
Independence, signed in 1835 by many Maori leaders prior to Te Tiriti o
Waitangi but 'the powers that be' continually refuse to recognise these
or be bound by their terms. The 'Maori parliament' that ratified the
Declaration recognised the importance of decision-making power
(sovereignty) being exercised at the community scale where every person
can influence decisions that will affect their lives. This too is part
of our heritage and any proud kiwi would spend at least a few hours a
week watering the seeds of true democracy - "government of the people,
for the people BY the people" or "an (without) archos (imposed
control)".

Most importantly let's take some pride in our whakapapa, our geneology. We are all 'boat people' but our forebears arrived on many different
kinds of boats and I can think of no good reason not to celebrate this
part of our shared heritage. A proud kiwi would be secure in their sense
of personal identity and be proud to tell anyone who asked about their
ethnic origins, including the census.

Serious, no category for vans or anything... they have explicitly allowed for street people here. I believe they tick other and write Sleep Rough for accomodation.

I think the first thing we need to do to make NZ work better is educate people about our true history... when people realise just how much land was swindled and stolen from the maori, and how dupliciously and blatently it was down, they'll be a lot less resentful about Te Tiriti and etc.