An indigenous uprising has been planned to hit the Galatos on Friday the 31st, when Aboriginal hip hop crews Local Knowledge, Gudabah, and free.B, along with Maori hip hop revolutionaries Upper Hutt Posse and assorted comrades take to the stage to celebrate indigenous resistance to colonisation.

"As the warmongering against indigenous peoples continues, and as our perspectives and ideas are continually trivialised by pakeha, events like this are happening for us to celebrate our existence, for us to strengthen the resolve to end racism and to end oppression, to end this bullshit democractic capitalist system which only benefits greed and money hunger". Dean Hapeta (aka D Word, aka Te Kupu) of the Upper Hutt Posse

The gig is spearheaded by organisers Te Kawau Maro and has an indigenous conscious kaupapa, acting as a cultural and political exchange between Aboriginal and Mâori hip hop artists. It’s ‘an opportunity to focus energies on indigenous peoples down under, therefore it is a kaupapa gig, politically focused and motivated by political people’ explains Tauni Ngatai-Sinclair of Te Kawau Maro. The gig celebrates indigenous resistance to colonisation, coinciding with the anniversary week of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1835 at Waitangi. The Declaration gave Maori sovereignty over their land and declared Aotearoa an independent country.

Where? - Bodega (Poneke) on the 30th Oct
&
Galatos (Tamaki) on the 31 Oct

How much? - $15 on the door

What others are saying:

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Im a fan of concious hiphop, its a roots thang. Yes kids, hiphop wasn't always about 'bitches and guns' or about the meanderings of MTV piss-pot-popstars, indeed every genre of music that has slapped the acceptable face of society ( name it, punk, reggae, jazz, ....)
has its roots in the disaffection, and struggles of the marginalised and oppressed, whether its Brixton, Kingston, Harlem or the back blocks of Upper Hutt.

Such is the roots of aotearoa hiphop iconised by the UpperHuttPosse, influenced by the politics of Maori resistance a tradition itself rooted in conflicts over the Treaty of Waitangi, inspired by Prophet-Warriors, land occupations, foreshores. Groups like the Posse occupy that uncomfortable space between mainstream society and dissent forcing the mainstream to face its own contradictions thru a lyrical onslaught of rap, rhyme and break-beats. Hiphop was a vehicle for people to speak out against racism, money-hunger, oppression, for aotearoa hiphop to grow its gotta dig deep into those roots, get conscious, and give NZ a good kick in the nuts.

from beyond the blingbling -Southside Sam

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I caught up with some of the aboriginal hiphop realists at an activist convergence last year in Sydney, interesting little shingdig which ended in riots outside a venue where rich men were meeting to push more Mc-colonisation onto the masses - yeah american as apple pie man!. We got talking about racism, police abuse, history and indigenous pride, lotsa common ground between us and them I found.

Hey they even had a land rights march like we did, as Warrick (Wok) Wright one of the members of Local Knowledge said "One of my proudest memories is when I was about five years old and carried the Aboriginal flag leading a land rights march,". They shot from the hip and were straight up, something that gets lotsa mileage on lotsa marae. Their aim, to teach people about Aboriginal issues through intelligent rap, as Local Knowledge put it we're gonna "tell it like it was, how it is and how it should be".

See ya on the barricades! -Molotov Joe