New Zealand is a very unique kind of place. There is a big debate right now about changing the name of a city so that it's more faithful to the original native name which was used. The city is Wanganui... and the decision has been to change it to Whanganui. The extra "h" is significant because it effectively should change the pronunciation from a "W" sound to an "F" sound (although apparently it won't, for now).
There was a 77% vote of the citizens of the town in favor of keeping the original name. However, apparently the edict has come down from on high, that the name will be changed.
Imagine if the government of the state of Washington or the federal government of the Usa would order the city of Seattle to change its name to "Sealth" so that it is more faithful to the native name of the chief for whom the city was named.
The mayor of Wanganui (Michael Laws) has been adamantly opposed to the name change. New Zealand government policies seem to involve a lot of power vested in the federal goverment which tends to override the right for communities to have self-determination. For example, another big event happening currently is that Auckland is extending its boundaries to encompass a lot of outlying areas. Again, the citizens of those districts are not allowed to choose whether they will join Auckland or not. The federal government is making the decision for them.
I think a name change from Wanganui to Whanganui is really irrelevant when it comes to the interests of the Maori being served. If they honestly want to honour the treaty of Waitangi, the best way to do that in my view, would be to give a portion of land back to the Maori and make a separate nation - independent of New Zealand. But if you aren't going all the way and doing what needs to be done when it comes to righting the wrong of the europeans having stolen the land - I think that you need to generally honour the right of self-determination of the people who populate that area, today.
I have just found that you have removed Karmanaut's map of reddit from your site. I very much enjoyed that and wish you would put it back up or provide some alternative!
Yes, it was costing me more than most other things to host here at this website, because its populartity was draining bandwidth.
Here, I've put it up again for you at a place where bandwidth is cheaper for me: Try this.
Feel free to make a copy of it to keep on your own personal computer. That would be even easier for you to use.
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