Distress Signal

A nation in distress: The anti-war film In The Valley of Elah ends with the hero running the US flag up the flagpole upside down - the international signal of distress. John Key's decision to fly the Tino Rangatiratanga flag alongside the New Zealand ensign has caused many New Zealanders to wonder whether their own nation might soon be in need of rescue.

IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH is one of the best anti-war films to come out of Hollywood since America declared war on terror in 2002. In the film, Tommy Lee Jones plays the role of Hank Deerfield, a retired army investigator, who sets out to discover the fate of his missing soldier son.

As he heads out of town at the beginning of his quest, he notices the Stars and Stripes has been raised upside down outside the local high school. In a sharp exchange with the school’s indifferent Hispanic janitor, the ex-Marine asks:

"Do you know what it means when a flag flies upside down?"

"No."

"It’s an international distress signal."

"No shit?"

"No shit! It means we’re in a whole lot of trouble so come and save our asses ‘cause we ain’t got a prayer in hell of saving it ourselves."

"It says a lot …" murmurs the janitor.

"Yes, it does …" says Hank Deerfield.

　
I COULDN’T HELP RECALLING that scene when, last Monday afternoon, the Prime Minister, John Key, announced that the Cabinet had given its official sanction to the flying of the Tino Rangatiratanga flag over government buildings on Waitangi Day.

We are asked to interpret this decision as a gesture of reaffirmation toward the bi-cultural partnership enshrined in the Treaty of Waitangi.

I am extremely doubtful, however, whether a majority of New Zealanders will see it that way.

Sadly, their views will get short shrift from "Official" New Zealand.

The politicians and public officials whose business it is to align public opinion with state policy have already framed this issue in such a way that any criticism of the Government’s decision will be dismissed as "immature", or, should that label prove ineffective, be decried as "racist".

Whatever the critics are branded, the ultimate effect will be the same: the suppression of genuine public debate and the marginalisation of the Government’s opponents. All those individuals and groups in some measure dependent on the grace and favour of the state will lower their heads and shut their mouths.

The resulting silence will then be interpreted as assent.

Thus will Official New Zealand lay yet another carefully-fashioned stone in the edifice of our distress.

Thus will ordinary New Zealanders’ anger: their sense of being ignored, belittled and despised; grow and fester.

A government that plays fast and loose with the core symbols of its citizens’ national identity does so only at the gravest risk to its own survival. Mr Key’s apparent ignorance of just how important these core symbols are – especially to the people who elected him – is, therefore, deeply troubling. Like the immigrant janitor in the scene I have quoted from In The Valley of Elah, our Prime Minister does not appear to know what his country’s flag means, nor that how it is flown can send a powerful message.

The Tino Rangatiratanga flag is not a symbol of bi-cultural harmony – but its opposite.

No matter how much oil the Minister of Maori Affairs, Dr Pita Sharples, attempts to pour over the troubled waters of its history, the flag which Mr Key’s Cabinet has just authorised to be flown alongside New Zealand’s flag – "says a lot."

It declares Maori nationalism’s fervent desire to reverse the verdict of history: to re-constitute the "absolute power of the tribal chieftains" (the literal meaning of tino rangatiratanga) and to re-establish the same conditions of dual sovereignty that prevailed immediately prior to the land wars of the Nineteenth Century.

That was the last time two flags – one representing the tangata whenua, the other the tangata tiriti – flew side-by-side. And no one back then was in the slightest doubt about what those flags meant.

The two flags stood for two sovereignties. And where two sovereignties are asserted, there also will be two states. And where there are two states there will be two economies; two bureaucracies; two codes of justice; two systems of health, education and welfare; two parliaments – and two armies.

Wittingly or unwittingly, Mr Key’s Government has struck a blow against the safety of the New Zealand realm. They have signalled to the Maori Party that their cherished dream of making two states out of one will not be thwarted.

At least, not by them.

If New Zealand’s flag must fly alongside Dr Sharples’ banner – then fly it upside down.

This essay was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday, 18 December 2009.