Ahiahi mārie, welcome to The Spinoff Daily. Today on The Spinoff: Wellington’s housing, Ted Cruz’s tweet and a cross-country quest to find love in a hopeless place.
“It is a beautiful object, and yet it holds something ugly. The tattered leather notebook, roughly the size of my hand, flips open to reveal a lining of silver stars on a deep blue background. Further inside is a jumble of surveyor’s notes, made in pencil: a sketch of a road cutting; a measurement set down as “South 332˚ 0 – North 201˚ 30 – arc of height”; the cost – twenty-four pounds, ten shillings and sixpence – of hiring a wagon for two months. And then, over the page, a translation, from te reo Māori to English. The translated material comes from two speeches by the prophets Tohu and Te Whiti, the leaders of the Parihaka community that peacefully resisted the theft of indigenous land in the late 19th century. The translator is someone else entirely. He will later be criticised in court for the errors in his renderings; more seriously still, he assists in the confiscation of Taranaki land, and serves as the interpreter for the invading forces when Parihaka is sacked in 1881. This translator, and sometime surveyor, is my great-great-great-uncle Charles Wilson Hursthouse. His notebook is held in the New Plymouth library, Puke Ariki, and I am seated in its reading room, turning the faded pages and pondering three intertwined questions. What led Charles Wilson, and indeed his wider family, to perform actions that we now so severely condemn? How do I absorb this inheritance of memory? And what relevance does it have, right now, amidst the rekindled debates about how settler and indigenous peoples can abide with each other?”
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 Bryn & Ku’s Singles Club – Coming soon to The Spinoff Join comedians Brynley Stent and Kura Forrester on their cross-country quest to find love in a hopeless place: Aotearoa, New Zealand. Bryn & Ku’s Singles Club is a new documentary series that follows two best friends on a road trip like no other as they connect with New Zealanders from all walks of life over matters of the heart. Will they find what they are looking for at the bottom of a beer funnel on Castle Street, or find plenty more fish in the sea off Rakiura? You’ll have to join the club to find out. Episode one premieres Tuesday February 11 on The Spinoff. Made with support from NZ On Air.
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Join us live in 2025We have four fantastic live events coming up in 2025. Join us in Auckland and Wellington for The Spinoff Live. Auckland at Q Theatre: Bryn & Ku’s Singles Club Party, February 13 and Gone by Lunchtime Live, April 9. Wellington at the Hannah Playhouse: The Fold Live, February 20 and The Spinoff Book Club, March 13.
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My ancestors were colonisers
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