NZ Flag
The nature of a flag is that it should unite those who it proports to represent.
A debate of the New Zealand flag has raged on and off since New Zealand was first formalized. Those of most note are the national flag we all easily recognize, The United Tribes Flag of the North which was also the Maori Woman's league flag and the newer Tinorangitiratanga flag created to order only a decade ago.
Maori have had a love of flags since they first saw them on the early ships.
While I might research and go into the pros and cons of many different flags I want to just concentrate on what has been obvious this last decade as suggested possibilities and speak to my attitude to those.
The New Zealand flag as it stands at present leaves a lot of people cold seemingly because does not differentiate between NZ and Australia clearly enough and it does not hold any special and different New Zealand motif save the Southern Cross. Many see the Jack as too much of a lean on our sovereignty by the British Empire.
So many flags have been put forward and one which irks especially is the idea of promoting the silver fern, our sporting flag as our national call to arms. In a time when sport has in general far too much sway in our daily thoughts and lives, the idea of promoting the flag of the physical and professional athlete seems vacuous at best. Surely we want more of ourselves and our society and culture than to run fast and jump high. There is no doubt that the Fern stands for excellence but we are a country that is much more than this type of endeavor on the World stage. We are a place where the colonizer has become part of the colonized culture in so many ways that it stands alone in the possibility of truly merging into a nation of healed and powerful blended races. This ideal is not known yet but it is possible if we take the next fifty years as seriously we might if we expect great things of ourselves.
Some others have happy combinations of waves and or korus with the Southern cross star group.
All seem very pleased to be rid of the Jack and the cross of Saint George. I however think this is one of the key motifs for any flag going into the future. The british secular, democratic meritocracy is how we create individual rights as we may experience them and to this we owe a great debt, our daily freedom.
Some are very frightened of the New Maori flag and what it might mean to peace and equality. But there is a great love of this flag among our indigenous people and as such it should rightly be taken seriously. We have seen a governmental recognition of this recently in it flight over the Waitangi Day celebrations.
The third flag, the United Tribes Flag is also important in that Maori and many Pakeha have seen it as a symbol of sameness and unified effort and respect for years.
To choose any one of these flags seems to shut the door on the ideals and aspirations of many of our fellow countrymen but to ignore their histories and designs is also a slap in the face to those who have stood beneath them.
The status quo is always possible but if the debate is alive, and it seems to have legs, I have an opinion on how we might spend some of our thoughts when looking at a design under which we might expect us all to stand in a call to war or celebration.
The six flags here are the Aotearoaland flag, it's Army, Navy and Air Force.
The jack is kept as the basis of design but it is deformed in the nature of typical Maori pattern to represent the style and of the Tinorangitiratanga flag and more obviously the colours of the Maori flag as it is often called have been adopted and the stars are still there to set our course by.
The weight of colour though has been changed for the national flag and the fighting predominance of red and black have been saved for the army. For as sure as the Tinorangitiratanga flag is a call for strength and unity, it is our armed forces that need this powerful statement.
The navy enjoys the colour of the Old Jack which also recognizes our past history with the sea faring nation of Britain and the sky blue has always been a favorite of out air force. This recognition of the past signals is important to keep a generalized respect for the flag among all.
While I like this flag I have designed, this little chat is not about getting it adopted but about getting you all to think a little further than, "the Canadian flag looks good with the leaf, we could do that with the fern", and understand that a new flag is a possibility of making a statement of unity between us all, to help create a trust again and take down the boundaries which have sprung up between many and each of us.
It is not about being a cute design, it is about a visual language, understanding and representing both who we have all been and who we all want to become.
