Morgan Godfery

Contributing writer

Morgan Godfery (Te Pahipoto, Lalomanu) is a writer and trade unionist based in Wellington. He is the author of a collection of essays, Maui Street, published by Bridget Williams Books in early 2019. Morgan was born in 1991 in Whakatāne.

Books
Apr 7, 2020

Lockdown letters #12, Morgan Godfery: Decay, domesticity and doomsday prepping

'Paint is peeling from the old truck workshop walls. Some days you can taste rust on the autumn wind, like swallowing iron and blood and pollen.'

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Books
Apr 2, 2020

Lockdown letters #7, Morgan Godfery: Thoughts from under the plum tree

On our best days, time’s passing felt like a melody, embracing every beat and delighting in every pause. But on our worst days time was a cacophony.

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Politics
Mar 28, 2020

Lockdown letters #2, Morgan Godfery: I'm never sleeping

I can’t stop. Keep posting. Keep consuming content. My frontal lobe is its own memetic economy.

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Society
Mar 13, 2020

‘They are us’ – an urgent, uncomfortable call to action

A proper reckoning with March 15 2019 demands that we take up a generations-long struggle to destroy all the exclusions that make up our society and produce the conditions we know as racism.

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Ātea
Mar 3, 2020

Māori nurses earn 25% less. And this government won’t even talk about it

And don't think Māori voters aren't going to notice.

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Ātea
Jan 20, 2020

Boycott Bali? Why the atrocities in West Papua demand your attention

It's estimated that as many as half a million Papuans have been killed at the hands of Indonesian security forces in the past 50 years.

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Books
Jan 9, 2020

Bunch of clowns: Morgan Godfery on the unfunny jesters who rule the world

For Trump, Johnson, Morrison et al, the jokester act provides the perfect political cover, writes Morgan Godfery.

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Ātea
Dec 21, 2019

The decade in the Māori world: from Taika to Tariana

Morgan Godfery tries to make sense of the last decade for Māori in te ao hurihuri, the changing world. Here he looks at the highs, the lows and the TBCs...

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Politics
Nov 25, 2019

Only one parliamentary party lacks a Māori leader. Here’s how they fix it

If Labour MPs are serious about the Treaty and its promise of power-sharing – and if the members and delegates are keen to honour their party’s special history with Māori …

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Ātea
Oct 26, 2019

Treaty settlements are a fraud

In this charged essay, Morgan Godfery takes stock of Treaty of Waitangi interpretations that pay lip service to values without honouring the core tenets of power. 

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Ātea
Jul 6, 2019

Elites always protect their own: inside the Kōhanga Reo saga

Morgan Godfery looks back at the extraordinary power plays of the 2014 Kōhanga Reo National Trust Board scandal.

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Ātea
Jun 8, 2019

What does Budget 2019 mean for Labour’s Māori seats in 2020?

Labour's Māori MPs should count their lucky stars Te Ururoa Flavell is busy doing other things, writes māui street's Morgan Godfery.

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Books
Feb 7, 2019

Waitangi Week: Morgan Godfery on the myths and stereotypes of urban Māori

"Everything we know about urban Māori is probably wrong", writes Morgan Godfery, in his review of a new study by Bradford Haami.

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Books
Feb 4, 2019

Waitangi Week: the Queen is dead, or may as well be

Morgan Godfery wonders exactly what the point is of New Zealand bowing to a monarch "of a rain-soaked island off the north-western coast of the European mainland".

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Ātea
Jan 31, 2019

The Māori Party and TOP: dream team or disaster?

The parties founded by Tariana Turia and Gareth Morgan both failed to make parliament at the last election, and now there's talk of a collaboration to turn that around.

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Ātea
Oct 5, 2018

Marama Davidson: ‘Governments shouldn’t pander to the privileged’

Self-confessed fan Morgan Godfery talks Māori politics with Green Party co-leader, Marama Davidson.

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Ātea
Sep 28, 2018

In defence of the Māori caucus’s support for Meka Whaitiri

The Māori caucus statement that it stands by Meka Whaitiri is simply tikanga in action, writes Morgan Godfery.

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Ātea
Sep 21, 2018

One year in, how have our Māori MPs and ministers rated?

Almost one year ago to the day New Zealanders went to the polls, returning a record 29 Māori MPs. māui street editor Morgan Godfery picks his faves and rates them out of 10 for performance.

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Ātea
Aug 10, 2018

The power struggle in the Māori Women’s Welfare League

Māui Street editor Morgan Godfery with an exclusive look at the internal rift threatening the Māori Women's Welfare League.

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Society
Aug 3, 2018

The alt-right racists are in town. Are you really happy to shrug your shoulders?

Detachment is a luxury only some enjoy. For women, non-whites or any of the subjects of Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern’s rants, looking the other way is rarely possible

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Ātea
Jun 28, 2018

Andrew Little: ‘Pākehā ways of engaging are so inadequate’

The 'minister for everything' on nation building and resolving Treaty settlements on 'marae time'

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Ātea
Feb 28, 2018

Is Simon Bridges our first Māori prime minister?

On some scores, the National Party is streets ahead on Māori representation. But, asks Morgan Godfery, is it progress?

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Books
Nov 12, 2017

I saw the mountain erupt: a Kawerau childhood

Morgan Godfery was born to a teenage mother and gang father in Kawerau, New Zealand's poorest town. He recounts the experience in this essay from the newly published Journal of Urgent Writing, 2017.

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Politics
Oct 19, 2017

Change is here. But is it the kind you hoped for?

In retrospect, it seems obvious that New Zealand First would never have chosen National. Now forward-looking Labour and Greens will need to learn to work with a party that would love to turn the clock back 40 years.

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Politics
Sep 30, 2017

The end of ‘neither left nor right, but Māori’

Morgan Godfery looks back at the four term history of the parliamentary Māori party, 2005-2017.

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Politics
Sep 3, 2017

Please don’t tell Don Brash, but the Māori Party could decide the next government

The party led by Te Ururoa Flavell and Marama Fox is at once clinging by a thread and on the brink of the balance of power. Morgan Godfery examines the crucial battlegrounds in the Māori seats

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