Parihaka felt like the right place to speak about discrimination.
That’s what Dutch businessman Boyd Klap reckoned.
His visit in 2017 to the settlement that symbolises peaceful resistance was to talk about Māori involvement in the Anne Frank travelling exhibition, to show the parallels between discrimination during the war and what Māori faced in colonisation.
At question time during that Parihaka visit after his talk at a marae there one woman asked if Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl had ever been translated into te reo Māori.
The story of Anne and her family, who were hidden in an annexed apartment in Amsterdam by non-Jewish friends for three years during the Nazi occupation of Holland during World War II, has been translated into more than 70 languages and published in 60 countries.
So began his next project for the diary which has been the subject of two exhibitions, both accompanied by a focus on discrimination in the modern world.
Speak Your Mind