The hui with DJ Netsky took place on Wednesday 21 April. OUSA President Michaela Waite-Harvey said the hui with Belgian DJ Netsky and Te Roōpu Māori went well, with “good vibes only” ahead of his concert last Thursday at Union Hall.
“A decent group,” estimated by Michaela at around 20, attended the hui. At the event, “We did a mihi whakatau, introduced ourselves to each other, had a discussion about what had happened and how that made our tauira feel, and then we just had a kai.”
Overall, she said that “everyone understood each other really well, and everyone understood all of the effort that each of them put in, and everyone’s happy and ready for the concert tonight … We wanted to respect everyone’s mana, and it was a place for discussion and productivity, and negativity was left at the door.”
The hui was arranged in the wake of Netsky sharing a video on Instagram showing people mocking the pūkana at an post-America’s Cup celebration party. The video, since taken down, showed multiple non-Māori doing pūkana, some with drinks in hand, to laughter and whooping from the crowd. It was called “disgraceful” by Māori Party co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, who slammed the actions of people who do “not at all respect who we are and what it is that we’ve been able to give them.”
Michaela resisted calls for OUSA to pull Netsky from the line-up, saying at the time that Netsky’s team had “shown immediate remorse and understanding of the severity of the situation,” and “a willingness and eagerness to engage in honest and open conversations with our Māori students.”
Since the pūkana incident, Netsky’s social media pages have been silent, with no posts on Facebook or Instagram. His only public social media activity was a single Twitter retweet on March 27, promoting DJ Flava D’s remix of his song “Memory Lane”.
“It was really good. I think everyone understood each other really well, and everyone understood all of the effort that each of them put in, and everyone’s happy and ready for the concert tonight. It was a decent group but not too many, I wouldn’t say more than 20. The whare is small. So we did a mihi whakatau, introduced ourselves to each other, had a discussion about what had happened and how that made our tauira feel, and then we just had a kai. There were positive feelings throughout. No, we wanted to respect everyone’s mana and it was a place for discussion and productivity and negativity was left at the door.”
“Good vibes only.”
“Yeah.”