The pounamu laws reveal a racist system hiding in plain sight

I was casually browsing the Otago Daily Times when a headline stopped me in my tracks. A 26-year-old Dunedin man had allegedly been found with 820 kilograms of stolen pounamu. Nearly a tonne. Whākn’ wild. However, the more I read, the more something else stood out. It was not the alleged theft itself, it was the rules surrounding pounamu that revealed j…