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Articles by Thomas Tarurongo Wynne
What is the price of citizenship?
Saturday 6 May 2023 | Written by Thomas Tarurongo Wynne | Published in Editorials, Opinion
As we mark the coronation of a new King and the solemn Anzac services held across the Pacific, in Rarotonga and in Aotearoa, it is important to revisit the poignant question posed by Sir Apirana Ngata in his 1943 treatise, ‘The Price of Citizenship’, writes Thomas Tarurongo Wynne.
Thomas Tarurongo Wynne :It’s time to learn to walk in two worlds
Saturday 29 April 2023 | Written by Thomas Tarurongo Wynne | Published in Editorials, Opinion
The arrival of the Vaka Paikea to Akatokomana, Mauke, is such a good example of where we can utilise the culture of today and culture of tomorrow and use both to advance ourselves into the challenges of the world, we now live in, writes Thomas Tarurongo Wynne.
Thomas Tarurongo Wynne: Preserving our culture
Saturday 22 April 2023 | Written by Thomas Tarurongo Wynne | Published in Editorials, Opinion
It’s not enough to talk about our culture, we have to live and breathe it, says Papa Mitaera Ngatae Teatuakaro Michael Tavioni BEM. For us the question is how do we breathe life into our culture, our arts and the artists who continue to put our country and culture on the world stage, and usually at their own or someone else’s expense, writes Thomas Tarurongo Wynne.
Thomas Tarurongo Wynne: The power of Parliament
Saturday 15 April 2023 | Written by Thomas Tarurongo Wynne | Published in Editorials, Opinion
Parliament is where the needs of the country, and not a single electorate, are met, discussed and turned into law so as the people can thrive and not just survive, writes Thomas Tarurongo Wynne.
Thomas Tarurongo Wynne: Love one another and lay down our lives for each other in deep, meaningful service
Saturday 8 April 2023 | Written by Thomas Tarurongo Wynne | Published in Editorials, Opinion
If you love the words and life of Dr Martin Luther King, discover the life that influenced him – his name was Jesus, writes Thomas Tarurongo Wynne.
Thomas Tarurongo Wynne: An attitude of gratitude
Saturday 1 April 2023 | Written by Thomas Tarurongo Wynne | Published in Editorials, Opinion
Grateful - it’s such a powerful posture of the heart and I just wanted to highlight two of those reasons, writes Thomas Tarurongo Wynne.
Ten years of abuse and no one knew?
Saturday 25 March 2023 | Written by Thomas Tarurongo Wynne | Published in Editorials, Opinion
Do our young women and sometimes men need to show courage, as they do, when confronting sexual assault and rape in our communities, or is it us that need the courage? By Thomas Tarurongo Wynne.
No place for diminished views
Saturday 18 March 2023 | Written by Thomas Tarurongo Wynne | Published in Opinion
Anti-Asian rhetoric and diminished views of others based on race or prejudice has no place in our country, in our churches, across our tables or online, writes Thomas Tarurongo Wynne.
Protecting life in the high seas
Saturday 11 March 2023 | Written by Thomas Tarurongo Wynne | Published in Features, Opinion
We must find that balance to utilise and protect our environment, our seas, our land, our fish, our forests and our seabed, because this has been how we as people of the Moana have maintained and sustained ourselves for generations, writes Thomas Tarurongo Wynne.
Thomas Tarurongo Wynne: ‘We need to be better prepared’
Saturday 4 March 2023 | Written by Thomas Tarurongo Wynne | Published in Opinion
Ka anoano ia tatou kia papa no teia au ra ki mua – As the waters subside back to their usual levels and the devastation has been left bare, we are all here left with this residual feeling – a lingering awakening that we all need to be better prepared.
A heart for service
Saturday 25 February 2023 | Written by Thomas Tarurongo Wynne | Published in Features, Opinion
Aotearoa New Zealand and the Cook Islands (Avaiki Nui) are inextricably tied together and have been since our people migrated there when Vaka left its shores bound for Avaiki Tautau in and around the 12th century. Our migration story starts then and happens again on mass in the 1950s and 1960s through to today with close to 100,000 people in Aotearoa identifying themselves as Cook Islands Maori, writes Thomas Tarurongo Wynne.
The choices we make shape our experience of life
Saturday 16 April 2022 | Written by Thomas Tarurongo Wynne | Published in Opinion
Easter reminds those of us of faith that under immense stress and pressure, Jesus made a choice and one that would lead him to the Cross – this is something many of us took time and reflected on yesterday, writes Thomas Tarurongo Wynne.
Rewriting history
Friday 1 April 2022 | Written by Thomas Tarurongo Wynne | Published in Opinion
Is it time to pardon and rewrite the birth of our democracy and a man who contributed so much to who we are as a nation today?
My reo lives in my heart
Saturday 26 March 2022 | Written by Thomas Tarurongo Wynne | Published in On the Street, Opinion
I am fortunate, because for as long as I can remember Maori was spoken in our home, just never to me, although at times about me, especially when I had misbehaved, writes Thomas Tarurongo Wynne.
What dies becomes the fertiliser of our lives
Saturday 19 March 2022 | Written by Thomas Tarurongo Wynne | Published in On the Street, Opinion
If we measure our lives in season, there are those seasons when the Sun shone so brightly and others where it was grey and cold and it just seemed to rain, rain and rain, writes Thomas Tarurongo Wynne.
When the village fails the innocent
Saturday 12 March 2022 | Written by Thomas Tarurongo Wynne | Published in On the Street, Opinion
They say it takes a village to raise a child and when the village fails the innocent, and fails women, something very precious dies within us all, writes Thomas Tarurongo Wynne.
‘Ka mua, ka muri’: Walking backwards into the future
Saturday 5 March 2022 | Written by Thomas Tarurongo Wynne | Published in On the Street, Opinion
When western thinking arrived in what would soon be called the Cook Islands in 1903, Missionary advanced the way we saw the world, the way we saw ourselves and the way we saw time had already begun to unfold as we unravelled all our traditional knowledge, customs and ways of knowing and put them in a box handed to us by our colonisers with the word “etene” on it.
Never before has the word become so weaponised
Friday 25 February 2022 | Written by Thomas Tarurongo Wynne | Published in On the Street, Opinion
Listening to the flurry of news reports on the invasion of the sovereign country Ukraine by President Putin and his army, I couldn’t help but notice the comparison between other narratives of tyranny, nazification and the weaponisation of words like freedom fighters around us today.
This is not a new challenge for our island home: Wynne
Saturday 19 February 2022 | Written by Thomas Tarurongo Wynne | Published in On the Street, Opinion
We no longer sit on the beach of maybes, watching the tide roll in and out. We are now in that ocean also swimming against the tide, but slowly we make our way across, because as navigators and voyagers, this is who we are.
The battle for moral and information high ground
Saturday 5 February 2022 | Written by Thomas Tarurongo Wynne | Published in Editorials, Opinion
We must never dehumanise those who may draw the line differently to ourselves, because in that moment we inadvertently become what the other side of that argument most feared, and leave the ‘table of understanding’.