Daily Prayer - December 13, 2022

Having sailed east from Tasmania, Abel Taman caught sight of the South Island of New Zealand on December 13, 1642. This is the first recorded sighting by a European even though he was there one day and gone the next. He named it Staten Landt but this name was changed by Dutch cartographers to Nieuw Zeeland a year later.

James Cook changed this to New Zealand. Māori, who had discovered the country centuries earlier, used the name Aotearoa for the North Island but today it references the whole country.

 

Loving God,

Tasman’s contact with Māori was brief but sadly violent as encounters between first peoples and later arrivals have often been.

We ask forgiveness for the fact that the existence of indigenous people as people was not recognised nor were their rights.

We pray for the future of indigenous people and for the survival of their way of life, their languages and cultures.

Amen

 

By Fr Pat O'Shea - Lower Hutt

 

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