Playing the Anzac card

If dollars talk, Anzac is shouting from the roof whilst Waitangi sits quietly on the floor. In New Zealand, people are generally familiar with the key differences between two of the nation’s biggest commemorative days. We start the year with the challenging, ‘radical’ politics of Waitangi Day on February 6th and a few months later we join in with the sombre demands of Anzac Day come April 25th. As our project has uncovered, the media does most of the storytelling on these days and their versions of events come without any accountability for privileging the experiences and emotions of one of these days over the other. Through our research, we have been exploring the choreography of the days and the influence different people, social norms and practices have in perpetuating the importance attached to both of these days. There is no denying that both days symbolise loss and coming together for different people across Aotearoa. While we agree that both days solidify important events in New Zealand history, we wanted to investigate why such strong and different emotions were attached to these days. This led me to wonder if Government funding of events on these days might play a role in maintaining these differences