The administrators of Auckland’s public parks, sensitive to the sensitivities of indigenous persons, have cancelled a popular junior running race at a public park.
According to the NZ Herald, the reason for the cancellation is that local iwi raised concerns about events on “sensitive land”.
It’s not the first time these sensitivities have constrained activities in the park.
An Auckland Council spokesman said the council was taking a consistent approach on the issue and three such running or orienteering events had been affected in the past three months.
The snag seems to be that this sort of activity involves people running over the land, presumably causing extreme cultural discomfort to the indigenous persons of the city, although sheep run across the same land, even though they are not indigenous creatures and are not too fussy about where they pee and crap.