July 20 2025 – On board the third Rainbow Warrior in Auckland<\/p>\n\n
I te timatanga, Ka mihi ki te moana ko Waitemat\u0101, T\u0113n\u0101 koutou\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n Ka huri t\u014dku ng\u0101kau,\u00a0 E te rangatira, Fernando Pereira. N\u014d reira\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n Ko ng\u0101 mate ki a r\u0101tou. T\u0113n\u0101 t\u0101tou katoa\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n Ki te iwi Ng\u0101ti Wh\u0101tua \u014cr\u0101kei – Ki ng\u0101 rangatira o Ng\u0101ti Kura, Ng\u0101ti Ruanui, Ngati Manuhiri\u00a0 Ki a koe e te rangatira Helen Clark, Ki a koe e te rangatira Ena Manuireva. Ki ng\u0101 hau e wh\u0101, He h\u014dnore nui t\u0113nei, ki a Greenpeace Aotearoa He kaupapa whakahirahira t\u0113nei, Ka whakap\u0101 atu ia, te mamae nui, He kaupapa whakanui hoki i t\u0113nei N\u014d reira, t\u0113n\u0101 koutou, t\u0113n\u0101 koutou, t\u0113n\u0101 koutou katoa.<\/em><\/p>\n\n Ka huri au ki te reo Ingarihi\u00a0.<\/em><\/p>\n\n In the beginning\u00a0is the void, I acknowledge the ocean, the Waitemat\u0101, and the mountains of this place.<\/p>\n\n My heart turns to acknowledge those who departed us to return to the stars. To Ng\u0101ti Wh\u0101tua \u014cr\u0101kei, the people of this land, the custodians of the mantle of Tuperiri, I acknowledge you.<\/p>\n\n And to the rangatira of Ng\u0101ti Kura, Ngati Ruanui and Ngati Manuhiri here with us as our guests.<\/p>\n\n I acknowledge you <\/strong>also.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n I warmly acknowledge you, the Rt Honourable Helen Clark and you Ena Manuireva, for being with us at this time.<\/p>\n\n To all from the four winds, I pay tribute to us all.<\/p>\n\n This is an important occasion to come together – to commemorate the time when the cold hand of tragedy reached across the oceans, to us here in New Zealand.<\/p>\n\n That hidden hand violently shook the foundations of the original Rainbow Warrior and her crew, while forever affecting the family of our friend Fernando Pereira.<\/p>\n\n We also gather today in celebration, to honour THIS ship, the current Rainbow Warrior, her captain and her crew.<\/p>\n\n Therefore, greetings once, twice, three times.<\/p>\n\n We have come together tonight, on the deck of the Rainbow Warrior, to reflect on the contemporary meaning of the bombing of the original Rainbow Warrior, 40 years after those tumultuous events. <\/p>\n\n I will make a few opening remarks, then hand over to our two special guests. We hope to have some time at the end for some questions.<\/p>\n\n Before we hear from them, let me draw two threads from the thick tapestry of this history.<\/p>\n\n For the last nearly 30 years we have lived in a Pacific which is no longer rocked and polluted by nuclear explosions. We have come to accept this as normal, as the status quo, the background to our lives. <\/p>\n\n But of course it wasn\u2019t always so, and in a different history, it wouldn\u2019t necessarily be so today. <\/p>\n\n The ending of nuclear explosions in the Pacific was the result of the work of many thousands of courageous people, and in whose debt we will always remain. <\/p>\n\n They sailed their small boats into the nuclear test zones, they rallied, they wrote letters, they declared their councils nuclear free, they lobbied politicians, they marched in the streets, here and around the world and across the Pacific. <\/p>\n\n And ultimately, thank goodness, they won.<\/p>\n\n The lesson I take is this: Ordinary people can bend the course of history for the better. <\/p>\n\n We are not prisoners of the past destined to repeat the same mistakes over and over. <\/p>\n\n We are not prisoners of those governments, and indeed corporations, who try to use their power to control the destiny of planet earth.<\/p>\n\n Collectively we have agency to make a better world.<\/p>\n\n In our current struggle for a stable climate, in our efforts to exercise our own collective rationality to keep earth habitable for our species and others, we are up against fossil fuel companies and agribusiness and their political allies. <\/p>\n\n We can draw strength from the history of the nuclear free Pacific campaign to have confidence in humanity\u2019s ability to exercise collective agency and power to achieve our common good. <\/p>\n\n Of course there are no guarantees, and we have powerful opponents, but we know that people can change the course of history for the better because it happened right here.<\/p>\n\n The second thread I\u2019d draw out of this tapestry, is the link between the struggle against colonialism and the struggle for a nuclear free Pacific. <\/p>\n\n Would the people of the Pacific willingly let the governments of the United States, Britain and France explode nuclear weapons on their islands? Of course not. <\/p>\n\n It was only possible because of the exercise of colonial power, and hence the struggle for a nuclear free Pacific was interwoven with the stuggle for self determination.<\/p>\n\n And while there have been many successful anti-colonial steps in the last decades, the shadow of colonisation still hangs heavy over us in the Pacific as well as around the world. <\/p>\n\n Sometimes it seems our climate and biodiversity challenges are further complicated by needing to address the shadow of colonialism. But as the nuclear free campaign demonstrated, the struggle to free ourselves of the legacy of colonisation can mobilise powerful people-led movements which can only help us confront other challenges, such as climate change. <\/p>\n\n I was looking recently on a wonderful photo of Father Walter Lini at the Takaparawhau occupation, Bastion Point in 1977. <\/p>\n\n Walter Lini was a leader of the movement for independence for Vanuatu, and he was there to provide solidarity to Ng\u0101ti Wh\u0101tua \u014cr\u0101kei in their struggle to regain their land, and I\u2019m sure received solidarity in his struggle for independence for Vanuatu. <\/p>\n\n And what a tremendous legacy we have today from those acts of solidarity. <\/p>\n\n Ng\u0101ti Wh\u0101tua \u014cr\u0101kei took back their land at Takaparawhau and are replanting it with forests instead of millionaire mcmansions as was planned by the right wing Muldoon government; and Walter Lini became the first Prime Minister of an independent Vanuatu – a nation that today is an outspoken advocate for action on climate change and against the commencement of deep sea mining.<\/p>\n\n The environment movement, and everyone who longs for a sustainable future for their children, are the beneficiaries of those anti-colonial struggles.<\/p>\n\n There are many other threads that I\u2019m sure our guests tonight will tease out our shared history, so I will leave you with those two thoughts.<\/p>\n\n T\u0113n\u0101 koutou, t\u0113n\u0101 koutou, t\u0113n\u0101 koutou katoa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Russel Norman speaks on the significance of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, 40 years on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":72363,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_planet4_optimize_post_is_variant":false,"_planet4_optimize_experiment_name":"","_planet4_optimize_variant_name":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[28,32],"p4-page-type":[6],"class_list":["post-72359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-greenpeace","tag-rainbow-warrior","tag-peoplepower","p4-page-type-story"],"yoast_head":"\n
Ko te kore,
Te p\u014d,
Ka puta ki te whai ao,
Ki te ao m\u0101rama,\u00a0
Tihei mauri ora!<\/em><\/p>\n\n
ki ng\u0101 maunga,\u00a0
me ng\u0101 t\u016btohu whenua, o t\u0113nei rohe.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
ki \u0101 r\u0101tou kua whet\u016brangitia.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
Piata tonu mai,\u00a0
hei kaiarahi ki runga i te wh\u0101nau Greenpeace.
Ka maumahara tonu m\u0101tou ki a koe.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n
Ko ng\u0101 ora ki a m\u0101tou.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n
t\u0101ngata whenua me ng\u0101 kaitiaki o
Te Kahu T\u014dpuni o Tuperiri,\u00a0
kei te mihi, kei te mihi<\/em><\/p>\n\n
kei te mihi, kei te mihi.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
He mihi nui, he mihi maioha ki a koe,\u00a0
i te noho tahi i a m\u0101tou.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
Kei te mihi, kei te mihi<\/em><\/p>\n\n
tena t\u0101tou katoa.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
ki te noho tahi i a koutou.\u00a0
ki te maumahara ki ng\u0101 tau wh\u0101 tekau i muri.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
hei maumahara ki te w\u0101, i toro atu
te ringaringa anuanu o \u0101itua ki a Aotearoa.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
te mamae roa, ki te wh\u0101nau \u014d
Rainbow Warrior tuatahi, ki te
wh\u0101nau hoki o t\u014d m\u0101tou hoa, ko Fernando Pereira.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
kaipuke, te K\u0101pene me te wh\u0101nau
\u014d Rainbow Warrior \u014d n\u0101ianei.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
Then darkness,
Then the world of light,
Becomes the world of enlightenment,
It is the breath of life.<\/p>\n\n
To the rangatira Fernando Pereira.
Keep shining as a guiding star above the Greenpeace family.
We remember you.
Therefore, we leave the dead to their world.
As we the living embrace ours.<\/p>\n\n