‘He protected the settlers from the Maori’
Settlers
Invading Maori lands
Showing no respect
Keeping no word
Breaking lore
Betraying all
‘You see your new homeland for the first time’
Which is someone else’s home
Which you were not invited to visit
Which your government took with lies and violence
You step ashore ecstatic to be alive
Ignorant of who stepped ashore before
‘The inter-tribal fighting of the Maori’
Bears no similar mention
Of the English and the Scots and the Irish
Nor the protestants and catholics
And their
Five centuries
Of brutal conflict
Just mention how ‘the natives’ broil
The starving
The poor
The war torn
The losing victims
Of Europe
Have no right of claim
Upon another’s home.
Solving a country’s economic and social problems
Must be done
In that homeland
The right of power
The moral right
Are vastly different
When we acknowledge
The right of home and
Who
Invaded
Whose
The assumption that
We
Have the right
To go where we please is
Invalid
If we also value our own
Home