Before Everything Became Political

I grew up in a small rural farming community in New Zealand in the 1960s. My friends were Māori, white, Hindu Indian, and Chinese. It was not remarkable. It was simply life.

If I disliked someone, it was because I disliked them -  not because of their colour, religion, or background.
As a child, I never noticed differences between us. I did not think in terms of “us and them” or “haves and have-nots.” I simply saw my classmates.

Some of my Indian friends cooked chapatis on a piece of corrugated iron in the school playground.Some of my white friends, whose families slept on potato sacks, brought slabs of bread wrapped in newspaper for lunch. I never thought about it. I simply accepted it as part of everyday life.

Some friends announced they were going “home” to India to marry. I thought it sounded magical, like a fairy tale. Other friends lived with far less comfort than I did, yet I never judged, questioned, or felt pity. I was simply living the life of a normal little girl in my school and in my community.

We did not see each other as members of tribes, communities, or social classes. We were simply children. 

The Quiet Formation of Character

My parents shaped me long before politics ever did.

My father worked hard. My mother ran the household. We were not wealthy, but there was always food on the table, clean sheets on the beds, and blankets piled high in winter.

We never went out for dinner. The first time I ever stepped into a restaurant was on my tenth birthday.

I was served a banana boat dessert in a glass dish shaped like a boat, crowned with a tiny paper umbrella. The ice cream and cream tasted extraordinary - not because it was different, but because the moment felt magical. The waiter treated me as though I were someone special.

The next day, I took the little umbrella to school in my bag and gave it to my friend Gail -  the girl who slept on potato sacks. I told her about the banana boat, the glass dish, the waiter, the taste of it all.

I did not do it to boast. I wanted her to share the magic with me.

Looking back, I realise something important. We lived in a world of difference, but not division. We knew hardship, but not hatred.

Gail was not a symbol of poverty. She was my friend. I did not grow up feeling guilt for what I had. I did not grow up feeling gratitude. I was just left to myself to simply grow up. 

The Teacher Who Refused to Choose a Tribe

I was fortunate to have a teacher who shaped my life in ways I only understood decades later.

He never spoke about politics in the classroom. Not once.

Years later, when I met him again in his nineties, I told him how grateful I was for that. By then I was in my sixties, and I realised something extraordinary: I had no idea what his politics were.

He smiled and said simply, “Politics do not belong in a classroom. I was there to educate, not indoctrinate.”

He treated children not as members of tribes, but as minds to be formed. He did not teach us who to blame, who to resent, or who to fear. He taught us how to think, not what to think.

Looking back, I realise how rare that attitude has become.

Once, teachers stood above tribes. Today, many feel compelled to serve them. 

When Warrior Cultures Lose Their Purpose

This shift from my very human experience to ideological identity did not happen only in classrooms. It reshaped entire cultures.

As an example..... for Māori communities in New Zealand, the 28th Māori Battalion during the Second World War represented a powerful blend of old and new. Young Māori men channelled warrior heritage into discipline, honour, and national service. Tribal pride found purpose within a larger tribe.

But when the war ended, and rural life gave way to urbanisation, traditional structures weakened. Extended families, tribal authority, and communal identity eroded.

The warrior did not disappear. He was simply left without a place.

Into that void stepped gangs.

Groups like the Mongrel Mob and Black Power offered what many young men could no longer find: belonging, hierarchy, ritual, and protection. They became surrogate tribes -  but without elders, pride, or morality and honour.

Alan Duff’s Once Were Warriors captured this tragedy with brutal honesty. The haka became a battle cry once more.The warrior became a threat.

The uncomfortable truth is not that Māori gangs exist. It is that they were born out of instinct. 

A Different Kind of Tribal Revival

Yet gangs were not the only response to the loss of traditional tribal structures.

In recent years, a different kind of revival has emerged -  one that seeks to reclaim tribal strength through faith and cultural identity rather than violence.

Brian Tamaki and Destiny Church have built a movement blending Pentecostal Christianity with Māori identity, emphasising family, discipline, and moral order. For many followers, the church functions as a modern tribal community, offering hierarchy, ritual, and belonging ... echoes of the Battalion’s disciplined pride, but expressed through faith rather than warfare.

Tamaki’s recent activism has pushed this identity into the public square. Events such as the 2025 “Faith, Flag and Family” march in Auckland, protests against mass immigration, and confrontations with other religious communities have framed his followers as defenders of a unified national and cultural identity in a rapidly changing society.

To critics, these actions appear divisive or intolerant. To supporters, they represent a long-overdue assertion of values, boundaries, and back to basics stuff.

In my opinion it reveals something enduring: when traditional tribes weaken, new ones inevitably rise to take their place. 

The Aboriginal Parallel

A similar pattern can be seen in Australia.

When identity becomes a badge and a burden, something essential is lost. Pride. Honesty. Reality. Truth. 

Albanese performs comical smoking ritual while many Australian families fight to save their homes from devastating bush fires on the hottest day on record. pic.twitter.com/orSLTCoTrN

— Gipsy Del (@deargipsy) January 27, 2026

When Identity Becomes a Weapon

What troubles me today is the way modern society insists on interpreting every human experience through the language of race, grievance, and inherited blame.

Once, identity emerged naturally from family, work, and community. Now, identity is manufactured, politicised, and weaponised.

Children are taught to see difference before friendship. Schools increasingly treat students not as individuals, but as representatives of categories. History is reduced to a kind of moral theatre. Education becomes activism.

Where we once spoke of character, we now speak of identity. Where we once recognised hardship, we now assign guilt. Where we once built communities, we now organise tribes.

Something profound has changed.

What Did We Gain -  and What Did We Lose?

Sure. we gained " language for injustice." We gained " awareness of historical wounds. We gained voices for those once unheard."

But we lost the ability to see each other simply as people. We lost the moral clarity that hardship is not always oppression and success is not always theft. We lost the idea that individuals are more than the tribes they belong to.

Once, we lived together as humans. Now we are taught to see each other as factions.

The warrior still exists. The tribe still exists. But the question remains unanswered:

Who will the warrior fight for -  and who will he fight against?

And perhaps the deeper question is this:

What kind of world are we teaching our children to inherit -  a world of shared humanity, or a battlefield of competing identities?

For myself. I prefer the old way of doing things. If you like someone, like them. If you don't, you don't. It has NOTHING to do with anything other than their character... and can we leave it at that? 

Shaydee.