We review the entire country and culture of New Zealand, one thing at a time. Today, Ātea editor Leonie Hayden taste tests the new Heartland hāngi flavoured chips.

Heartland potato chips are my favourite potato chips, hands down. They’re often on sale, not too oily and are a sturdy, low-breakage chip which makes them great for dipping. The flavours are robust without being overpowering and you get a good amount in each bag. And until now I appreciated that they didn’t mess with the classic flavours too much or dress things up as ‘Sunday roast’, ‘chilli relish’, ‘smokey ribs’ or ‘Peri peri chicken’ – all of which are fancy ways of saying ‘BBQ flavour’.

They’re a South Canterbury-owned family business too, which is all lovely, salt of the earth stuff, although the family member profiles on the website are a bit vomity.

But now they have officially branched out into novelty flavour territory with a new hāngi flavour (without the macron, just sayin’).

What does hāngi taste like? It’s almost an existential question. Is it the ingredients, which can be any combination of pork, mutton, lamb, chicken, pumpkin, potato, kūmara, cabbage, carrot, onions, stuffing, or kererū (I kid! Although they do look delicious)? Is it the taste of smoke, soil and sulphur rising up through layers of damp sacking?

To me hāngi tastes like the first violet glimpse of dawn and four men in Swandris and stubbies sharing yarns around a large hole in the ground. It tastes like standing shoulder to shoulder with whānau in the hāngi assembly line: “You do the chicken; you do the kūmara.” It tastes like the 30 cups of tea it takes to get through the day because you gossiped until the wee small hours and then had to get up at daybreak. It tastes like the noise and laughter of 100 people sitting down to a meal. It tastes like happy exhaustion, comfort and togetherness.

Heartland hāngi flavoured chips taste like bacon and cabbage farts, but like, in a OK way. I mean, if you had to boil it down (ooh boil-up flavour?) to generic foodsafe flavourings then I suppose that’s as good as you’re going to get. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that they were created by some lovely kids stretching their wings into entrepreneurship and wanting to capture something uniquely from Aotearoa, but distilling an experience with so many components into one flavour is almost like trying to come up with ‘favourite sweatshirt’ flavour, or ‘that feeling you get when you’re really tired but really happy’ flavour.

Verdict: It didn’t stop me from smashing the whole bag into my face, so what do I know?

Good or Bad: Tōna pai nei.

A lot has been made of a ‘less disruptive’ and ‘protest-free’ Waitangi Day this year. It’s misguided praise, writes Miriama Kamo.

I find praise of a peaceful Waitangi Day jarring. The absence of protest is not the indicator of a successful Waitangi Day. Whether protest occurs or does not occur is not the measure of anything other than the mood of the marginalised. And if it is the measure, then it is for Māori to decide whether Waitangi celebrations were ‘successful’.

Why do we praise ‘peaceful’ Waitangi Day celebrations? It suggests that agitators behaved, that they weren’t naughty, that they toed the line to allow everyone to have a ‘nice’ day. Every year, Waitangi Day is approached with trepidation – how much protest will there be, what form will it take? National leader Bill English was spooked by it, suggesting to RNZ that his decision not to attend Waitangi last year saw marae trustees organise themselves this year to see ‘dignity restored to that event’ – read, no protest. In his view, this is why the new government received a warm reception. “I am pleased it has been a positive day … and that the unnecessary controversies which have overshadowed celebrations in previous years were not present.”

It is not for Māori to behave to make anyone feel better about justified and reasonable demands for equity. The onus is not on Māori to smooth the path for others to come into their home; a home that has been, figuratively and literally, systematically dismantled and destroyed over decades. Labour too has a lot of ground to make up, so it’s good that Jacinda Ardern spoke with verve and hope for a more equitable partnership. Her warm reception reflects the historic grassroots support by many Māori for the party, the ongoing excitement around the prime minister’s leadership, but also her pregnancy. New life is sacred, protest would have felt awkward in what is still a honeymoon period for Labour. The absence of significant protest honoured that new life.

But it did not signal some supposed maturity on the part of Māori where they have seen the light, the error of their ways, or organised themselves to be better hosts to the Crown contingent. Neither did it affirm that Labour may enjoy protest-free Waitangi Days going forward. Indeed the prime minister not only acknowledged that, but appeared to encourage it when she said to RNZ, “…we should stop striving for perfection at the commemorations of our national day. If people choose to use their voice on this day that does not mean it is a failure… it just means that we’re not complacent.”

Protest is natural and vital in a healthy democracy. A good protest should be peaceable, intelligent and passionate. Aotearoa has a proud and effective history of successful protest; the hīkoi lead by Dame Whina Cooper, the Springbok Tour, Nuclear free, Foreshore and Seabed to name just a few. We may not always like protest, protestors, or what they’re fighting for – but when they do step out, we should accept that a group has been sufficiently moved to say something. We should acknowledge when that action results in meaningful change.

I’m not suggesting that there ought to have been protest yesterday, just that its absence should not be celebrated, it should simply be objectively observed. We should not aim to set a tone of peaceful Waitangi Day celebrations into the future. Our aim should be to set a system of equity whereby protest is not needed. With that in mind, Māori are the best positioned to determine whether Waitangi Day has been ‘successful’. If Waitangi Day is not a good day for protest, when is? Don’t be afraid of protest, be afraid when, in the absence of equity, there is silence.