On Tuesday evening I witnessed an extraordinary confession.
It was at the launch of Dr John Robinson’s explosive new book Corruption of New Zealand Democracy — A Treaty Overview.
This book is a smoking musket that exposes how the New Zealand state is prepared to lie in order to con the public into believing that its Treaty guilt trip is real and the grievance gravy train justified.
Author Dr John Robinson, a socialist, confessed that, much to his shame, he once caved in to an ultimatum by his state agency clients to doctor his findings on the cause of Maori 19th century depopulation to fit the government’s politically-correct pro-Maori, anti-Pakeha, Brit-bashing myth.
If he did not comply, he would not be paid for his work.
If you’re pressed for time or hungry for the meat, zoom down to the paragraph just below the graph.
Otherwise, let me tell you a bit about the author…
Dr John Robinson is no ordinary doctor. He earned his doctorate at MIT. (The one in Massachusetts, not Manakau.)
He’s got two Master of Science degrees – in mathematics and physics.
He’s lectured at several universities.
As an interdisciplinary research scientist, he’s penned reports for all manner of respected, if acronymically-challenged, outfits, from the DSIR and OECD to the UNEP, UNU and UNESCO.
He’s researched and written books and papers on social science, energy, agriculture, business, transport, capital, the future, and the history of Wellington’s south coast.
He’s become a sought-after expert on Maori history, most recently writing a book on the Battles of Tapu Te Ranga (the island in Island Bay).
Lest you suspect his European ancestry may prejudice him against Maori, the book is full of evidence that Dr Robinson is a committed lefty, with a history of what the Left smugly call ‘heart politics’.
An example:
As a student in Boston and a lecturer in Rhode Island I travelled to Washington to join in a massive civil rights demonstration… Back in New Zealand I joined in the struggle for equal pay for women.
Not the sort of backstory that suggests racism, I think you’ll agree.
In fact, he seems to me to be a dangerous apologist for Maori gangs, perhaps even worthy of Lenin’s ‘useful idiot’ tag, coined for those who cuddle up to evil in the vain hope of reforming it:
When in the 1980s I interviewed the leader of Black Power in Auckland, he described how they were working to keep their children from a similar way of life, by building a thriving set of businesses to provide useful employment.
I believe the current equivalents are called P labs, John.
The gang problem runs deep, and has been created by successive governments, which … have so demonised these groups of young people that they have increasingly turned to antisocial and criminal activities.
The poor wee things — victims of demonic democrats. Yeah right.
Anyone who believes bureaucrats and MPs are the root cause of these ‘young people’ becoming thugs and drug dealers is asking to be called all sorts of things. But anti-Maori surely isn’t one of them.
Yet this thug-hugging liberal does not mince words when describing life in pre-colonial Aotearoa:
Maori culture was not just dysfunctional but mad, criminally insane.
The consequences of those decades of killing, social disruption, destruction of crops, infanticide, fear and uncertainty was a society in shock.
There was widespread desolation and devastation among Maori communities.
I say it again: this was before 1840, not after 1984.
(Though the author also has much to say about the effect of what he calls ‘voodoo economics’ on Maori in recent times.)
But back to the good doctor’s CV.
Dr Robinson has been hired to research and report on matters Maori by the following:
- the Faculty of Business Studies at Massey University
- the Royal Commission on Social Policy
- the Ministry of Maori Affairs
- Te Puni Kokiri
- the Wellington South Coast Historical Society
- the Treaty of Waitangi Unit at the Department of Justice
- the Treaty of Waitangi Research Unit at Victoria University
- the Crown Forestry Rental Trust.
And it’s the last of these organisations that he’s referring to when he says:
I was ordered to emphasise a catastrophic social experience that was contrary to the data.
The Crown Forestry Rental Trust was the funder. The client was the Treaty of Waitangi Research Unit at Victoria University.
Dr Robinson picks up the story (extra paragraph spacing by me for ease of reading):
Considerable sums are spent on employing academics and researchers to write reports supporting claims before the Waitangi Tribunal.
The Crown Foresty Rental Trust assists Maori to prepare, present and negotiate claims against the Crown, including funding research that is required to support the claimant’s argument.
Total assistance from the Trust to claimants in 2010 was $34.5 million. This is seriously big money and has a considerable impact on the direction of research into Maori history…
…Such directed efforts have a decided effect on the development and viability of university departments, and on the vision of the past that is told to the public and taught at schools and universities.
The subsequent emphasis then influences political debate and the direction of common law in New Zealand
I have worked in that industry.
In 2000 I analysed Maori demographic and land information for the northern South Island.
The data told a simple story. There was no correlation between land holdings and demography.
In other words, contrary to what his state paymasters wanted him to pretend, the decline in Maori population in the late 1800s was not caused by Maori losing their land.
Neither, surprisingly, did introduced European diseases have a lot to do with it.
There is no evidence that disease was a main cause of that decline, although it no doubt contributed.
By far the major cause, says Dr Robinson, was the lack of breeding stock caused by the slaughter of tens of thousands of young Maori males in the Musket Wars of the 1820s and 30s.
So Tariana Turia was right: there was a holocaust in New Zealand. It wiped out around half the population. Its perpetrators made the Rwandan Tutsi-butchers look like conscientious objectors.
But those perpetrators were Maori, not Pakeha.
An interesting and tragic irony was that even after this worldbeating orgy of ethnic cleansing, the male population still outnumbered the female. How could this be?
Seems it was also the custom of Maori to slaughter their daughters — for meat.
They stopped when they found the settlers valued their daughters more highly than they did – as prostitutes. Maori adapted quickly to commerce.
Graph: John Robinson. Red captions: John Ansell.
But this next bit is what really made me sit up…
My report was emphatically rejected by the Crown Forestry Trust. They claimed that it would obscure the true nature of the supposed “cataclysm” which afflicted Te Tau iwi between 1850 and 1900.
However, the data showed that there had been no such cataclysm. In fact, a demographic recovery was evident…
…But before I was paid, I was required to rewrite my report, to argue a deleterious impact from land loss during that period; that message had to be written in.
Extraordinary. Not so much that state standover tactics occur. (I’m told it’s rampant.) But that Dr Robinson has been brave enough to admit his reluctant compliance, on the record, in print.
Needless to say, I am not proud of that work, when I adapted the analysis away from the facts to fit the client’s requirements.
I hope you’re proud of yourself now, Dr Robinson. Because your revelation will, like the Climategate emails, change the way we view our supposedly non-corrupt state.
Significantly, I was not instructed to look further at what the numbers had to say. I continue now with the analysis that would have been followed by anyone free to search for the truth.
And he goes on to detail not just the true cause of Maori depopulation, but a catalogue of the corruption of language, education, politics and the law by the relentless Maorification movement.
And that movement most certainly includes the present Key/Finlayson regime. I’ll be telling you much more about them in upcoming posts.
As a plain English crusader, I particularly appreciate Dr Robinson’s exposé of the state’s deliberate, reprehensible misuse of language:
a lack of clarity and unbiased research has hindered the development of suitable and adequate policy, and continues across what remains of science in current New Zealand.
(And not just New Zealand, if recent climate science skullduggery is any guide.)
I found this sentence about Chris Finlayson’s deliberate obfuscation particularly chilling:
The National-Maori government has rewritten the foreshore and seabed legislation. I wish to be thorough and so tried to understand the text. I failed.
Now bear in mind this is no high school dropout scratching his empty head over the muddle-headed meanderings of some cardigan-clad clerk.
This is a doctor from MIT speaking about legislation crafted by the supposedly Honourable Christopher Finlayson MP, an avowed champion of plain English law.
(So much so that he compered the last Writemark Plain English Awards. I know — I recommended him for the job. I was friends with him. I used to believe he cared about New Zealand, not just Aotearoa. I was wrong.)
So how is it that in Finlayson’s law, according to Dr Robinson:
key words have many meanings and the operative meanings will be defined later by claimants.
That’s right, folks, by claimants. How sneaky is that?
It shows that Finlayson is every bit as naive or as biased (almost certainly the latter) as that other notable white Maori separatist, Doug Graham.
Dr Robinson cites what Graham had to say about legal linguistic precision in his day:
Treaty legislation has long been deliberately unclear. Former Treaty Minister Doug Graham stated in 1997 that this lack of clarity was no accident or inadvertence on the part of Parliament. Parliament has handed over the task of writing law to the courts.
And so it remains fourteen years later. The judges make our laws, and entrench the Maorification of Everything.
To allow them to do so, the Activist-General, formerly known as the Attorney-General, creates the foggiest legislation he can get away with.
He does this so his fellow-activist judicial mates can have free reign when called upon to clarify the confusion.
We’re being conned by a confusion conspiracy, and it’s time it was blown wide open.
Dr Robinson sums up our predicament well:
Modern society is founded on the concept of equality before the law. That principle has been established through centuries of struggle. It is stated in Article 3 of the Treaty and brought freedom to Maori slaves after 1840.
He reminds us that the British did not just end British slavery in 1833. They also ended Maori slavery in 1840.
The advent of law and order also put an end to centuries of Maori cannibalism and decades of utu-based slaughter.
The Jews may have invented the saying ’an eye for an eye’. But it took Maori chiefs — or should that be chefs? — to make it a culinary reality.
When a tribe had shot and hacked its way to victory over its neighbour, the triumphant chief would go cannibalistic. And it was his rival’s eyes that were the first items on the menu.
But back to the book.
Final word to Dr Robinson:
But New Zealand is spinning wildly away from equality to race-based privilege and separate development. That terrible evolution must stop.
The book is called The Corruption of New Zealand Democracy — A Treaty Overview by John Robinson. It’s only $20 and you can read it in an evening.
Once you’ve read it, you’ll never believe the government spin on the Treaty and Maorification again.
My apologies for not getting this post done by yesterday, as I intended. Needed the time to get it right.
HOw do I buy a copy of this book.
From a book shop. I know it’s in Unity, Wellington at least. Otherwise write to trosspublishing@hotmail.co.nz.
UPDATE: The publisher tells me it’s not yet in Unity (as someone had told me), but will be any day. It’s in Parsons and, I think, Capital Books, among others.
Fascinating post John. I salute you for giving this matter the airtime it deserves
I’ve only just begun. I’m not stopping until all racism has been expunged from government policy. This country is mediocre enough, without the millstone of Maorification round its neck.
A big first step is to let those who feel guilty know that they need not – that they’ve been conned. Pass it on!
Well done that man. We’ve all been royally screwed.
Oh my goodness….
That stuff on canabalism, I already knew. What I didn’t know is that daughters were on the menu as well. That makes the myth of Maori valuing their children, and having no child abuse pre-European times a total myth.
I guess sons were too tough — in more ways than one.
Great work. Will be picking this book up.
More the merrier. Been saying this stuff for years but not pc. Sooner it is the better.
Ha Lucia, opening of your eyes eh.
It’s not what we say, it’s how we say it. And where.
Sometimes the only way to open the door to understanding is with a sledgehammer. That’s why I say Maorification and not something softer.
[...] Anyway, it seems John Ansell has found another white lie, quite a big one in fact with many serious implications. [...]
Watch the Murris run for cover. Especially the elite ones. The ones that used to eat the eyes.
looking at the pro’s and con’s of the littlewood treaty the status quo team who support the feb3 draft over the feb 4 draft (littlewood) sem to be stretching the truth too. The arrogance to actually think that Rev Henry Williams who had been living amongst Maori and was a confidante of Hongi Hika could make linguistic inaccuracies as blatant as leaving out forests and fisheries is contemptible. Besides, Henry Williams had his son help him in the translation. His son being recognised as equal in proficiency of the language as any Maori.
Reading te tiriti actually reveals that all the moral outrage at mispronunciation is merely bluster… look at the word wenua, today we have the Fijianised version Whenua pronounced fenua. The missionaries are quite clear that there was no F in the Maori language in 1830s. English writers had an F available to them, they would have used an F if the sound was made.
Tell all that to Christowher Whinlayson, Mort. I’d be interested to learn more about the first part of your comment if you feel like emailing me: john@johnansell.co.nz.
[...] ‘TREATY CORRUPTION CONFESSION: researcher forced to rewrite report to fit official anti-Pakeha myth On Tuesday evening I witnessed an extraordinary confession. It was at the launch of Dr John Robinson’s explosive new book Corruption of New Zealand Democracy — A Treaty Overview. This book is a smoking musket that exposes how the New Zealand state is prepared to lie in order to con the public into believing that its Treaty guilt trip is real and the grievance gravy train justified. Author Dr John Robinson, a socialist, confessed that, much to his shame, he once caved in to an ultimatum by his state agency clients to doctor his findings on the cause of Maori 19th century depopulation to fit the government’s politically-correct pro-Maori, anti-Pakeha, Brit-bashing myth. If he did not comply, he would not be paid for his work…’ (Thanks to Oswald Bastable for the heads-up) This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. ← Islamic extremists set up Sharia law controlled zones in British cities [...]
Hi John
Thought you might interested in this defamatory commment about you published on Trade me this morning.
[quote]
John Ansell.. one of the leaders of NZ’s redneck brigade that inspired Norway’s mass killing…[Unquote]
mikey853nz (150 ) 8:43 am, Fri 29 Jul #6
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Community/MessageBoard/Messages.aspx?id=774609&topic=7
Thanks Jim. I’m on to it. I’m going to find him and sue him.
Whats REALLY scary to me John (as person who already knew much of what you reveal above) is that most of the citizens of this country don’t seem too worried about where we are going.
The Dompost yesterday published an article showing major election issues and the degree of public concern about them. Sadly “Maori issues” was way down the list… about fourth of fifth I think. Although I would very much like to think otherwise, I believe Don Brash will not hit anything like the chord with voters that he did in 2005.
The reason? People have become conditioned – bit by bit, like the frog in the gradually warming beaker – to accept more and more crap. We will all wake up one day to find we live in a different country, and those of us who don’t like the values of a stone age brutish “culture” will be told we can go back “where we came from”….and they wont mean – in my case – Gisborne.
Those who know are horrified, David. The rest don’t know because the evidence has never been put to them bluntly enough for them to notice. That’s what I want to do – and keep doing it till they do notice.
And the very best of luck to you John…I will nail my colours to the mast for the first time.
As the father of mixed race children (albeit Tongan rather than Maori) I despair for where we are going, not least because my beautiful children may end up in the crossfire; hopefully not literally.
I do not what to live in a country with “Maori values”… a view shared by my wife, who much prefers first world New Zealand to her native land…Not that she is not proud to be Tongan, it is rather that she sees the advantages our society has to offer.
This Dr Robinson is not the first academic to call pre- European life in NZ criminally insane and dysfunctional. Dr Paul Moon, an academic at AUT and a Maori himself (by his own defintion) has said very simillar things in his book “This horrid practice” which examines maori cannabilism pre and post European settlement.
Despite being clearly a learned man – the author of several scholarly works on aspects of NZ history – Moon is derided and mocked by the Maori elite and their supporters….in my view because he “tells it like it was” rather than repeating some saccharine version of our history that claims pre European maori life was all aroha and stick games, with constant warfare and cannabilism merely a footnote..
Thanks David. Good on you for talking straight – though I’m sure it’s not the first time you’ve nailed your colours to a mast
. Your beautiful children can be proud of you for that.
Some conservatives write to me suggesting I tone down my language.
But I think it’s vital we reclaim the right to tell the truth in this country. Thanks to decades of socialism, tribalism and feminism, lies rule.
We must be free to call things what they are. In the beginning, the truth may hurt a bit. And the people it will hurt most are those who’ve been brought up on a diet of lies.
I can’t help that.
But by exposure to daylight, the blunt truth will come to be seen for what it is – the truth.
My enemies are those who use euphemism, gobbledygook and flat-out lies to hide the truth.
There are a lot of academics in that category, a lot of judges, and of course a heap of politicians.
By the time I’ve finished exposing Finlayson and the rest of the Maorification scammers, they’ll have nowhere to hide, and no fancy words to hide behind.
It may cost me big-time, but I will have performed a valuable service.
The trademe reference above posted by mikey853 or whatever, was removed by the trademe communitiy. So even that bottomless “thinktank” has restored for itself a modicum of decency.
I’m given them an incentive to turn him in: 10% of any profit I make after suing him.
[...] Ansell as an itneresting post, and by interesting i mean that every single New Zealander should be REQUIRED to [...]
Reply to Wedge.
The use of the term “thinktank” when describing the TradeMe opinions forum is paradox of oxymoronism .
It appears the offending mikey853nz from trademe as been dealt to by the administration Daleks…he has been terminated !
John, Unity books don’t have the book! Just a heads up…
No, just heard that Jay. Was misinformed. Apparently they’re getting it any day. The publisher tells me it’s in Parson’s Bookshop. Sorry to have misled you.
Jim the correct term is “exterminated”.
..and that e-mail address for tross publishing (with and wiithout the space) bounces back as undeliverable/…please advise where we can get a copy John
Tell you what lets just petition the government to put a couple in every single school library.
[...] Just had a coffee with John McLean, the publisher of Dr John Robinson’ s superb 118 page paperback The Corruption of New Zealand Democracy — A Treaty Overview. [...]
I’m saving this blog to bookmarks. Great to see there is still some sanity (hidden away) in this once-great country. I shall purchase two copies- one for myself, one for a mate. Wages permitting… Thanks
whats the bet that even it goes to reprint it won’t be allowed to make the top 10 list…
Good on you John I havent read anything yet that I didnt in essence already know
I dont think many New Zealanders realise how deep the problem is though and straight talkers like you are what is needed to wake them up Slip up with one fact though and watch the whole of your message get discredited
Graeme, if I do slip up with a fact, I will simply admit it and correct that error. I will not let nitpickers use it as their chance to divert me from the essential truth.
Hopefully I don’t slip up. I’m using info from people I think I can trust to get the facts right.
But if I do make a cock-up, by far the best strategy is to be honest about it.
(I told a bunch of Labour politicians that once, but they just looked at me funny.)
Anyone let Ian Wishart know about this…?
[...] Dr John Robinson is far from the only academic to voice alarm at the Treaty brownwashing scam. [...]
Thanks Mr Ansell for carefully laying out the credentials of the good Doctor. But his impressive credentials don’t preclude him from making mistakes. This idea that young women were culled as a source of food (‘daughter-slaughter’, as you so prettily put it) just seems absurd. Potatoes were abundant by the 1820s, wild pigs had by then been swarming across NZ for fifty years, Maori could also hunt birds more effectively with muskets, other food sources were arriving with traders.
Could Maori have been eating their own young females in sufficient numbers to actually create a dramatic gender imbalance? No way.
I don’t think the eating was that widespread, Patu. At least I hope not.
What caused the gender imbalance was female infanticide – killing baby girls – which of course remains common even today in some Asian countries where girls are not valued highly.
According to the book, “infanticide was practised as revenge by a mother on a wandering husband or as a means of matching the population to the food supply.”
Have all the major bookstores banned it yet?
It’s their democratic right, you know.
I dunno Patu….In our day and age in China.India etc girl baby’s are aborted and used in terrible ways as males are more highly prized….is it really so out there that Maori killed and eat their less valued females?
Patu is either ashamed of his own history or has failed to research the truth properly.
At this point we will give him the benefit of the doubt and say he has just failed his history exam. BUT,he has a second chance once he has done his research properly.
This is exactly what happened at Child Youth & Family in 2007, where the data analysis and research outcomes for the Pay & Equity Audit clearly showed no gender bias in CYF pay or employment practices. Of course, this wasn’t acceptable to the Labour Party masters, so false conclusions had to be drawn so that further funding from the Department of Labour could be sought for a deeper pay investigation to be undertaken.
Doing research properly? Please. I’d love to know Robinson’s sources for his claims. That graph is crazy. Contemporary sources put the Maori population at over 100,000 in 1840, about the same as what Cook thought it was in 1769. Others say 70-90,000. It doesn’t matter whether or not you can imagine people practicing widespread extermination, you need to have the data to say that it did – although it’s a stretch to imagine that female infanticide (which contemporaries couldn’t agree on whether or not it happened) outstripped supposedly massive casualties of war. Robinson is neither the first nor the most qualified person to have asked that question – it was the subject of first year university history assignments nearly two decades ago. He’s also not the first, by a century or so, to use it as a political argument to claim Western civilisation’s superiority over others. It’s just his lucky day there are a few desperadoes willing to give him more credit than he’s due for their own purposes.
I’d have thought a mathematician would be pretty familiar with the concept of finding good data, wouldn’t you?
Also I’ve heard that book reviewers tend to be more credible when they’ve actually read the books they’re reviewing. Just a thought.
My British ancestors as well as my Roman ones also engaged in some really bad stuff by our standards of today….but that’s history so why get all bent out of shape over it? Maori did some bad stuff…..why hide it and pretend it was all a bed of roses?
T2, read the book and you’ll find them. The information here is focused on heavily in the book and forms a good argument for his conclusions.
Surely someone who’s read it can summarise, if they know enough to judge it a “good argument”. Where does he get his figures from? Cook? Dieffenbach? Demographers who’ve looked at the primary sources since then like Pool? For all I know, he could have been forced to rewrite his reports because they were rubbish Having a maths doctorate doesn’t make you a good historian – they’re completely different disciplines. If there are problems with his scholarship, then that blows the “censored for telling an unpalatable truth” theory out of the water.
And who are Tross Publishing? They’re not in the Companies Register and don’t have a website, and seem to have published exactly three books, all by Act associates who regularly feature on the NZCPR. Objective? Sure.
T2, I’m happy to expose any alleged fact that you can show is not true. I know your alleged fact ‘three books, all by ACT associates’ certainly isn’t.
Hugh Barr has told me he’s probably left of centre politically. And it’s obvious reading John Robinson’s book (and my blog post, for that matter) that he’s a raging lefty.
So how about playing the ball, not the man?
Fair enough, on further looking, I only found the Barr one. I called him an Act associate because he regularly writes on former Act MP Muriel Newman’s NZCPR site about foreshore issues. I’d be happy to revise that to Newman associate. I had thought David Williams’ Simple Nullity book might have also been Tross work, but I now see it’s Auckland University Press. So only two books.
I don’t care whether anyone’s left or right, whatever those terms mean when we’re looking at history, but I do know that the graph you and Robinson published doesn’t agree with the historical record as I understand it, according to people writing in the 1840s and later. I’d like to know how Robinson reached his conclusion, which is far more interesting than which political party he belongs to. The burden of proof is on the person making the assertion (that massive Maori depopulation before 1840 existed and is a result of warfare and cannibalism and female infanticide), not on the person pointing out it doesn’t agree with all the evidence we know about. Mathematical proof is a totally different beast to historical evidence. I think we can assume both professional historians and mathematicians can tell the difference between 114,000 and 70,000.
Thanks Mr Ansell for carefully laying out the credentials of the good Doctor. But his impressive credentials don’t preclude him from making mistakes. This idea that young women were culled as a source of food (‘daughter-slaughter’, as you so prettily put it) just seems absurd. Potatoes were abundant by the 1820s, wild pigs had by then been swarming across NZ for fifty years, Maori could also hunt birds more effectively with muskets, other food sources were arriving with traders.pdf editor mac.This is exactly what happened at Child Youth & Family in 2007, where the data analysis and research outcomes for the Pay & Equity Audit clearly showed no gender bias in CYF pay or employment practices. Of course, this wasn’t acceptable to the Labour Party masters, so false conclusions had to be drawn so that further funding from the Department of Labour could be sought for a deeper pay investigation to be undertaken.
[...] Interest is building in Dr John Robinson’s excellent little book The Corruption of New Zealand Democracy — A Treaty Overview. [...]
[...] the words of Dr John Robinson in his book The Corruption of New Zealand Democracy — A Treaty Overview: Mr Finlayson has made an offer for a Treaty settlement to Ngati Toa, which includes a payment of [...]
You can browse early NZ books on-line to read the observations of visitors to NZ pre 1840.
http://www.enzb.auckland.ac.nz/browse.php
Hi there folks,
Have any of you had a look at the articles suggested by jh. http://www.enzb.auckland.ac.nz/browse.php
What interesting reading! Thank you jh. I am particularly enjoying the one titled ‘Old New Zealand’ by Fredrick Maning 1863.
JA: Thanks for the steer, Trina. I did start sampling them, and could have kept going till Christmas, not really sure where to turn next. What a treasure trove. Should have thanked you before, jh – too busy reading!
I’ve also been at the Porirua Library, where their Maori section is very good – possibly better than Wellington Central. Been immersed in Ross Baker’s recommendation, The Realms of King Tawhiao – Dick Craig’s book with an interesting view of who started the Taranaki Land Wars.
Copy of an article published in the New Zealand Herald, Wednesday 17 November 1999.
A14 N Z Herald Wednesday, November 17, 1999.
Judge queries ethics of treaty demands
Researchers ‘pressured to change findings’
WELLINGTON – Some Treaty of Waitangi claimants have asked researchers to change findings that would be unhelpful to their cases says the chairman of the Waitangi Tribunal.
Justice Durie said also that some tribes had even tried to make the payments of researchers conditional on findings being altered.
He said the issue – and several others – had raised questions about the need for a code of ethics for researchers claims lodged under the Treaty.
The comments were in a paper, Ethics and Values, released on the Indigenous people and Law website.
Justice Durie said some groups had required commissioned researchers to remove material unhelpful to the claimant’s cases or amend their conclusions.
Sometimes this was a condition of the researchers being paid.
Some also presented biased claims, omitting evidence against their argument that should be presented.
“There are also complaints from researchers of instructions not to consult with certain persons, or only those approved by the claimant groups,” said Justice Durie.
While codes of Ethics had caused problems with indigenous claims overseas, he believed they were a good idea.
Tribunal Director, Morrie Love believed the problem raised had occurred with contracted researchers.
The Tribunal had had problems with some claimant’s reports but this was now rare.
It now had a wide historical overview of issues covered by the claims around the country and was able to pick up any of the discrepancies quickly.
Claimants could obviously say what the wanted.
“At the end of the day, a claimants claim is a claimants claim”.
But claims were heavily scrutinized. Once submitted, the Crown case was also put followed by an independent tribunal report.
A code of ethics was probably a good idea, but ultimately it was up to researchers to fulfil their ethical responsibilities.
Justice Durie said other issues which, could be covered by a code were:
· A view by some claimants that kaumatua opinions and recollections should not be challenged or cross-examined.
· Whether all evidence presented to the tribunal should be publicly available.
“The Tribunal is able to restrict the publication and availability of material, but blanket restrictions give the appearance of secrecy and undermine public confidence in the process”.
Final statements as a result of the claim process so far (1999) total more than $530 million
NZPA
Wow. I’m a history graduate and the “facts” you people are throwing round are all either totally out of context or unsubstantiated nonsense. I’ve studied pre-Colonial Maori culture, and while I would not claim to be an expert, I know more than enough to be sure that, if the quotes taken from John Robinson’s book are representative, he has no idea at all what he is talking about. So what, he graduated from MIT – even an education from one of the most prestigious universities in the world is no guarantee of clear, unclouded judgement – nor of a generous heart.
Regardless, what’s most important here is what it says about New Zealand society that people such as yourselves feel drawn to this sort of dehumanising, enraged beliefs. To me it says a lot about the insecurity and uncertainty of white culture in New Zealand – it makes sense a society with extremely shallow roots and dubious claims to cultural dominance would feel worried about threats to its position – the scared dog is most likely to bite.
But I didn’t know it was this bad. The depth of virulent hatred espoused here… all I can say is that I feel really, truly sorry people like you who buy into this ideal. Your hearts are diseased.
Emma…another victim of dumbing down state education….sigh.
Emma, it doesn’t say much for you that your criticism of “facts” did not contain one fact of your own.
You denigrate a well-qualified man who took the trouble to write a book about a scandal that affects all New Zealanders.
In that book, he confessed to having been required to alter his honest findings if he wanted to get paid by his Waitangi Tribunal masters.
What does that suggest to you about their interest in “facts”?
Why is it not OK to stick up for our British ancestors in the face of such deliberate distortion of our history?
Now put up or shut up: give us your facts.
Or is emotion all you’ve got?
John
Okay, let me give it a shot. You portray yourself as a reasonable man, John, so let’s see if you are willing to consider this reasonably.
This idea of “daughter-sacrifice” is totally unsupported. I have never read nor heard a single reference to such a practice. Unless there is some conspiracy of silence which stretches all the way back to the writings of the first Europeans to live amongst the Maori, as far as I can tell the concept was invented to justify this vision of pre-contact Maori society as deranged. As if before European contact Maori had no human values, and lived in a land of insanity and inhumane slaughter. I’ll put it simply: such an idea is a myth, a fabrication wholy unsupported by balanced, careful research into traditional Maori society.
Yes, traditional Maori society was very different from the European society of the time, and from current New Zealand society (both Pakeha and contemporary Maori). But Maori were still human beings, and while they had a very different way of looking at the world from us moderns, they still valued and cared about things that we cared about – they would have loved their beautiful daughters just as you and I would.
The idea that they wantonly killed and ate their daughters is not only totally unsupported, it’s crazy. It is in our basic human nature to protect our offspring. Such a natural impulse is genetically advantageous, and after millions of years of concerted natural selection among mammals for the protection of offspring, there is no rational basis for this wild idea that Maori killed their daughters willy-nilly.
Of course, that is not how you have used this idea. You’ve used it to paint a picture of traditional Maori society as inhuman, irrational and insane. By raising spectres of cannibalism, slavery and tribal warfare, you appeal to modern ignorance to portray Maori New Zealand as a land of darkness and blood.
Right. At this point in my argument, you will probably expect me to declare that there was no cannibalism, slavery, warfare, disease, starvation, etc, in traditional Maori society. You’ll expect me to extol the harmony and beauty of traditional Maori society. I expect that you are hoping that I’ll fit your hated “fuzzy-headed liberal” stereotype, so you can laugh at my ridiculous naivety.
But, unluckily for you, I’m a higher class of thinker than what you’re expecting. So, yes: cannibalism, slavery, tribal warfare, food insecurity and limited medical knowledge were features of traditional Maori society. This is clear on researching the period. But, like I said, Maori had a very different way of looking at the world than we do. When someone became a slave, they lost all of their mana and were in a state of less-than-death. Thus their captors were free to do with them as they liked: there was no reason to care about the feelings or life of someone in such a state. Similarly with cannibalism: to desecrate the body of an enemy was the ultimate insult to their mana, to eat parts of their body was to absorb that mana into yourself.
These elements of traditional Maori society are, on surface impressions, shocking and distasteful to us moderns. And yes, they run absolutely contrary to the social values of modern New Zealand. However: just because they are contrary to what we think of as good and true does NOT mean that Maori society was inherently broken. This may sound like an argument for cultural relativism – i.e. all cultures are equal, nothing is good or bad – but it is not. It is a call for careful, balanced consideration of traditional Maori culture within a full and proper context. It is a call for a careful acknowledgement of our own cultural position.
Such a careful exploration of context is not easy, which is why so many discussions of pre-European vs. modern New Zealand dissolve into polemic and mythistory. This runs both ways: there is your side of the coin, wherein aggrieved Pakeha cultural nationalists feel the need to break the stifling oppression of political correctness, and defend what you see as a constant stream of assaults on your country and culture. I understand why you feel this necessity. It must be hard to be told in so many ways that your ancestors, your language, your culture, your pride, is guilty and does not belong. After all, you have been born in New Zealand, whether you like it or not, and you will never be able to reverse that. So of course you are insecure.
So yes, I think I understand your anger. Then there is of course the other side of the coin: those who feel that malevolent, hateful Pakeha settlers have destroyed a beautiful, harmonious indigenous culture and stolen a nation from its rightful inhabitants. This is the view espoused in Ranginui Walker’s “Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou”, and is the basic gut feeling of many politically motivated modern Maori, and many guilt-stricken Pakeha liberals too. It has been at the core of post 1960s action to rehabilitate Maori cultural integrity.
Now, I can see the appeal of this point of view too. The breakdown of traditional society and the drowning-out of Maori by waves of Pakeha must have been extremely hard, and its impacts must still be extremely painful. The fact is, promises were broken. The friendship and bonds of affection that existed between Maori and Pakeha in the early days were betrayed. Personally, I regret this. It is even worse in other colonial nations: Australia and the United States are the most heartbreaking examples of indigenous peoples pushed aside and broken down and reduced to alien status in their own homes. No wonder the communities that remain are beset by drug abuse and suicide. And the callous, dismissive caricatures of the problems afflicting indigenous communities is probably the single most shameful feature of modern colonial societies.
Anyway, I am getting off topic. What I was going to say is this: while the anti-Pakeha viewpoint is appealing, it creates some problems because it too encourages stereotypes and dehumanisation. Pakeha settlers were people too. They did not act as a single horde seeking one goal. There are other problems: namely, that modern Maori and pro-Maori Pakeha activists, in championing the normalcy and rationalism of tradiitional Maori society, do so of course from a -modern- standpoint. Modern Maori live in a world much changed from their traditional society. They almost certainly struggle with the ideas of cannibalism and slavery and other features of traditional society – these concepts have are heavy features of the European denigration and othering of non-Western cultures, and modern Maori have been influenced by these cultural tropes.
Now, a rational, balanced discussion of traditional Maori society would approach these features of the times carefully. It would look at them in their social and cultural context: when did cannibalism occur? who was eaten? why? how did people feel about it? Such a discussion would inevitably find that cannibalism made sense within the context of New Zealand: a relatively large landmass, but completely isolated, well-populated but divided into tribal regions, heavy competition between tribes and limited territory and resources – and of course the total absence of Western attitudes and values, and the radically different Maori idea of the nature of the world and the place of humans within it. Basically, it would find traditional Maori society was not some sort of continuous social holocaust where everyone ran around butchering and eating each other, where people lived in terror – Robinson’s so-called “society in shock”. No. My impression is that on the whole people lived good, rich lives, in connected, fuliflling communities. Sometimes bad things happened and sometimes good things happened. But social roles and expectations were clear. If you lost in battle, expect to be enslaved, or hope to be killed and possibly eaten. Despite how ghastly we might find the outcomes, actually civil and fulfilling society is perfectly possible under such conditions – it is only when expectations and boundaries break down and uncertainty permeates social outcomes that people really become miserable (also, let’s not forget the violence and struggle featured in our own cultural roots, either.)
Anyway, the point is this: because surface impressions of this time are distasteful to moderns, including modern Maori, and because discussions of traditional Maori society are often made in the context of a heated political contest, such balanced discussions are few and far between. There is a pressure, in other words, to avoid and minimise these initially distasteful features of the times, because they engender such a biased, emotional reaction in people that they are almost impossible to bring up within a debate without instantly being shouted down and losing whatever point you were trying to make in the first place.
So John, what I am trying to say is this: it is easy and alluring to take an emotional, polemical position in debates such as this. This is true not just for your side, though your side is the most egregious example in this case. But such positions are not, and never will be, constructive. We are all people. We have all wound up living in this country. None of us made it single-handedly. But it is what we have wound up with and we are going to have to make do, like it or not.
Now, there is much to frustrate and inflame us, and the faster we jump to the conclusions the more anger we will feel. But anger will never solve anything. What we need is understanding and reason from everyone – what we need really is something for our entire society to stand for, to work together for. Now, unfortunately for people like you, Pakeha culture has eclipsed Maori culture, and, yes, the onus is greater on the culturally dominant to reach out and make amends with the other side.
It is not easy, of course, to be told that you need to apologise for who you are, or that you need to apologise when you feel like you have been apologising for your entire life already. But that exactly what needs to happen here. You don’t say sorry because you think your culture is shit and worthless. No. That’s not what apologising is about. You say sorry because you are sorry, truly sorry that things have become so messed up between Pakeha and Maori. You say sorry because you want things to be better, because you want to live in a society that is better than the one we live in today. No, a politically correct government trying to make it illegal to express offensive opinions will not accomplish this. But neither will the acid espoused in articles such as this. You sound like a reasonable man John, so I hope that you can understand what I am saying, that you can see that this bigger than just trying to win an argument. This is our society, for all of us, like it or not – so what can we do to make it better?
Seems it was also the custom of Maori to slaughter their daughters — for meat.
I find that a bit hard to swallow. Does Paul Moon substantiate that in his book on canibalism? infanticide (due to being on the breadline ) yes.
– Earle, A. A Narrative of a Nine Months’ Residence in New Zealand, in 1827
“I have heard so much said about the great impropriety of the white settlers admitting the native females into their society, so much of the scandalous conduct of captains of ships suffering their men to have sweethearts during their stay in port, and so much urged in justification of the indignation shown by the missionaries when this subject is touched on by them, that I feel it necessary
to state one decided benefit which has resulted from that intercourse, and which, in my opinion, far more than counterbalances the evil against which there has been raised so loud an outcry.
Before our intercourse took place with the New Zealanders, a universal and unnatural custom existed amongst them, which was that of destroying most of their female children in infancy; their excuse being, that they were quite as much trouble to rear, and consumed just as much food, as a male child, and yet, when grown up, they were not fit to go to war as their boys were. The strength and pride of a chief then consisted in the number of his sons; while the few females who had been suffered to live were invariably looked down upon by all with the utmost contempt. They led a life of misery and degradation. The difference now is most remarkable. The natives, seeing with what admiration strangers beheld their fine young women, and what handsome presents were made to them, by which their families were benefited; feeling also that their influence was so powerful over the white men; have been latterly as anxious to cherish and protect their infant girls as they were formerly cruelly bent on destroying them. Therefore, if one sin has been, to a certain degree, encouraged, a much greater one has been annihilated. Infanticide, the former curse of this country, and the cause of its scanty population, a crime every way calculated to make men bloody-minded and ferocious, and to stifle every benevolent and tender feeling, has totally disappeared wherever an intercourse has taken place between the the natives and the crews of European vessels. The New Zealand method of “courtship and matrimony” is a most extraordinary one; so much so, that an observer could never imagine any affection existed between the parties. etc
http://www.enzb.auckland.ac.nz/document?wid=302&page=0&action=null
Thank you for responding so fully, Emma – I enjoyed reading where you’re coming from, and your attempts to understand where I’m coming from.
I suppose you think I glory in being able to depict nineteenth century Maori as savages, which they undoubtedly were. But I’m also aware that my European ancestors displayed the same ferocity and inhumanity for most of their history.
I’m not religious – indeed I see religions as very much part of the problem. But to be fair to Christianity, Protestantism and its associated work ethic was also very much part of the solution that dragged the British away from brutality, and towards industry and civilisation.
At the Kohimarama Conference called by Governor Gore-Browne in 1860, 200 Maori chiefs spoke effusively of their gratitude at having been so well-treated by the Crown, and of the great benefits their people had obtained from British Christianity and British law.
Did you know about the Kohimarama Conference? It confirmed that 90% of tribes were opposed to the King movement and its plans for civil war.
I’m still trying to get clear about the so-called Treaty breaches committed in the 1860s, but it seems clear that at least some of them were caused by the breaking of promises by people like WIremu Kingi and Wiremu Tamihana.
(How was the Governor supposed to react when Tamihana said he would butcher every man, woman and child in Auckland if he won?)
It seems a bit rich for modern day neo-Maoris to complain about land confiscations when their forefathers would have confiscated a damned sight more than just land if they had won the day.
Comments by Apirana Ngata in the 1920s suggest that the chiefs of the time knew and accepted their losses as the inevitable consequences of losing a war.
When I read the transcript of the Kohimarama Conference, I was struck by the contrast between the gratitude of men like Tamati Waka Nene and the ingratitude of the latter day landgrubbers who claim to represent the Maori of today.
I don’t say that there are no legitimate grievances which need to be settled. I simply don’t know enough about all the various claims to comment.
But I do agree with John Robinson that it is totally unjustifiable to pay Ngati Toa $10 million for the loss of their ‘maritime empire’ – a fancy term for the loss of this tribe’s (exiles from Taranaki who had not long since slaughtered the resident Ngati Ira to claim tangata whenua status) to cross Cook Strait and torture, kill and eat their Ngai Tahu enemies.
It is also not on, in my view, to name a sports stadium after Ngati Toa chief Te Rauparaha, perhaps New Zealand’s worst cannibal, who at the battle of Kaiapoi cut open a pregnant woman while she was still alive, ripped out her foetus, roasted it on a spit and ate it.
Just as they don’t have a Pol Pot Ping Pong Palace in Phnom Penh or an Adolf Hitlerstrasse in Berlin, I don’t expect there to be a Te Rauparaha Arena in Porirua just because he’s the best example of historical leadership the local iwi could come up with.
But now I come to my main point, which you may like to answer:
Why on earth should non-Maori apologise for reluctantly agreeing to colonise New Zealand, saving Maori from themselves and the spectre of the French (and lawless Brits), abolishing Maori slavery and cannibalism, vastly improving their standard of living and population numbers, and allowing them, via British law, to be endlessly re-compensated for supposed Treaty breaches which were settled fully and finally – to the stated satisfaction of the iwi – by 1947?
Why?
As to the implication that John Robinson is making up his claims about female infanticide, all I know is that John is a card-carrying leftie with a strong social conscience.
John was one of the political elite’s tame academics, like Claudia Orange, Dame Anne Salmond and the rest. The Waitangi Tribunal research group at Vic thought they could trust him to come up with the conclusions they, and for a while he did just that.
I admire him for his very public confession. You don’t mention that, I don’t think. I think it shows him to be an honest man, albeit having at first done their bidding in order to earn a living.
In other words, I don’t think he’s the type to just make stuff up.
As a final point, it used to really upset me the way I seemed to have carved out a reputation as a poster boy for racism. Now it doesn’t. Like Margaret Thatcher, I know that when my opponents abuse me it just means they’ve run out of ideas.
When I see people like Willie Jackson and Margaret Mutu and Hone Harawira in action (how tragic that Maori are led by these types and not the Ngatas and Bucks and Pomares of yore), I think most people can see who the real racists are.
My impression is that *on the whole people lived good, rich lives, in connected, fuliflling communities*. Sometimes bad things happened and sometimes good things happened. But social roles and expectations were clear. If you lost in battle, expect to be enslaved, or hope to be killed and possibly eaten. Despite how ghastly we might find the outcomes, actually *civil and fulfilling society is perfectly possible under such conditions* – it is only when expectations and boundaries break down and uncertainty permeates social outcomes that people really become miserable (also, let’s not forget the violence and struggle featured in our own cultural roots, either.)
………….
You’re saying slaves didn’t dream of changing the world; they accepted things as in “that’s life”!
On entering a village, a stranger instantly discovers which portion of its inhabitants are the slaves, though both the complexion and the dresses of all are alike. The free Zealander is a joyous, good-humoured looking man, full of laughter and vivacity, and is chattering incessantly; but the slaves have invariably a squalid dejected look; they are never seen to smile, and appear literally half starved. The beauties characteristic of a New Zealander are his teeth and hair: the latter,
in particular, is his pride and study; but the slaves have their heads half shorn. The male slave is not allowed to marry; and any intercourse with a female, if discovered, is generally punished by death. Never was there a body of men so completely cut off from all society as these poor slaves; they never can count, with certainty, on a single moment of life, as the savage caprice of their master may instantly deprive them of it. If, by chance, a slave should belong to a kind and good master, an accident happening to him, or any of his family, will probably prove equally fatal to the slave, as some are generally sacrificed on the death of a chief.
Thus these poor slaves are deprived of every hope and stimulus by which all other classes and individuals are animated; no good conduct of theirs towards their master, no attachment to his person or family, no fidelity or long service can ensure kind treatment. If the slave effect his escape to his own part of the country, he is there treated with contempt; and when he dies (if a natural death), his body is dragged to the outside of the village, there to be made sport of by the children, or to furnish food for the dogs! but more frequently his fate is to receive a fatal blow in a fit of passion, and then be devoured by his brutal master! Even the female slaves who, if pretty, are frequently taken as wives by their conquerors, have not a much greater chance of happiness, all being dependent upon the caprice of their owners.
http://www.enzb.auckland.ac.nz/document?wid=300&page=0&action=null
jh’s comment supports John Robinson’s claim that Maori stopped killing their daughters at birth when they saw they could turn a profit as prostitutes.
Of course my crime is to state the fact so bluntly.
Tough.
I’ve got to say, I drive through Kumara past Richard John Seddons store and I’m reminded that it was only 1890′s that women were considered as being usefully capable of casting a vote in a general election. Should we see the times prior to that as just as good but different?
Just as the West is polluted with apologists for Islamic brutality to women, Emma is yet one more example of an apologist for pre-European Maori brutality.
Why do they so resist the obvious truth?
Presumably because they are so repelled by it that they feel they must immediately deny it. As Emma did by shooting the messenger John Robinson for saying something that conflicted with her favourable view of Maori.
The truth is, as Al Gore would say, inconvenient.
Socialist do it, I imagine, because the truth gets in the way of their vision – their heartfelt desire – for universal equality.
But the evidence of our senses tells us that people are not equal. Societies mature (come upon ideas) at different times.
There are times when one’s own culture is ahead of the game, and times when it is behind. To make progress, it’s vital that we are able to recognise and acknowledge the truth, wherever it may fall.
In the case of Maori v British, it has become the norm for nice, non-confrontational British-descended New Zealanders to dump on their own forefathers rather than admit any fault of the Maori.
They do this regardless of historical truth. They do it because they don’t want the more aggressive Maori to give them any trouble.
I have a name for these wimpy whites: cowards. If it comes to civil war (which one day it may), that word will have to be revised to traitors.
A wise man asked me the other day, “Do you think the truth still matters to New Zealanders?”
I was too stunned by the question to answer him.
He made me realise that the truth – acknowledgement of the evidence of our senses – has become a very unfashionable concept all over the Western world. (It is already obsolete in more corrupt countries.)
Sadly, the answer to that ultimate question is probably, “No.”
John
1) Documents from early travellers to New Zealand must be read carefully because they are rife with the cultural assumptions of ~1800s Europe. Just quoting a large block of text does not prove anything. It’s sort of like me going into a small rural community and writing a big monologue about how disgusting and cultureless the people there are, about how they’re crude and smallminded, and all they care about is dirtbikes and woodstocks, and then you taking a chunk of my monologue and saying “See! These people aren’t even human!” It’s reality filtered through misunderstanding and bias twice and trumped up as evidence. So while I congratulate you on your interest and exploration of early New Zealand writings, I think you should approach these texts more carefully, and try and hold off on judgement. If your first response to reading them is to start cutting out passages that support your gut biases, you are not going to learn anything of value from the exercise.
2) I think you are conflating your imagining of traditional Maori society with your idea of slavery re: antebellum USA. There was no slave “class” in Maori society like there was in America. In America slaves were negroes from Africa. At the time people generally thought that they were less human than whites and less deserving of sympathy; thus their enslavement was socially acceptable. We now think that is a terrible thing and condemn their ignorance, but that is our take on a society which was not like ours in many respects.
Slavery in Maori society was different. Slaves could be anyone from any position in society, their only unifying feature that they had been defeated, captured and disgraced. Actually, I explained this, so I’m not sure why you’re confused – perhaps you didn’t read what I wrote carefully enough – but I’ll explain it again. Once you were enslaved, you had lost your mana. Your life was worthless and you could expect to die at any time. Generally slaves were disposable and often killed on a whim. But there was no slave class: the Maori did not maintain a distinct class of slaves. Before they were enslaved, they were just normal Maoris. Like I said, the expectations re: slavery were clear. Just don’t get enslaved in the first place.
Yes, to us this is reprehensible – but to say that because of this Maori society as a whole was dysfunctional is to manifest the classic “enormous condescension of posterity”, because it judges a prior society by our modern values without stopping to properly evaluate the context. Without properly accounting for our modern biases, we will never be able to do good history. You think slavery is a heinous thing. But, assuming that is true, how were Maori of this period supposed to know that? Did they have access to the same canon of political philosophy that has been instrumental in shaping the culture which in turn has shaped your belief in slavery being an absolute evil? How can you judge people for not aligning with your values when there was no way on earth that they could have at this point in time?
Also, on the subject of slavery, let’s turn to our own cultural lineage for a second. Hmm, are there any historical Western societies that have been extremely influential on political thought, and whose ornaments and philosophies have been self-consciously adopted repeatedly by modern Western nations, and yet endorsed and even embraced slavery as a totally normal and acceptable condition of society?
Oh yeah. It’s called ancient Rome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome
Woops, I thought jh was John and responded to his comment. Ah well. Seeing as you didn’t actually respond to any of the points I made John, and instead just launched into a grandiose call to moral truth, that you concede. If you want to respond to my actual arguments, by all means do so, and I will in turn read and consider your thoughts.
Anyway, I would like to redirect to jh my encouragement to continue reading, though with perhaps more care and discernment, through the fantastic resources of the ENZB.
I don’t think people care so much about what Maori did in the past except that they promote their modern culture as derived from their past and as being a paradigm of virtue.
“Anyway, I would like to redirect to jh my encouragement to continue reading, though with perhaps more care and discernment, through the fantastic resources of the ENZB.”
…….
and if I read on I’ll find Augustus Earle and F.E. Manning were exagerating, telling porkies? Or perhaps it would be due to biased judgement on my part?
“Slavery in Maori society was different.”….
That’s the cultural relativity argument I think?
Apology accepted, Emma.
Oh, silly me, you didn’t apologise – you just stayed on your high horse and abused me afresh. (Note to self: learn not to expect humility from lefties.)
You confessed that you were not an expert, but went on to say, “This idea of “daughter-sacrifice” is totally unsupported. I have never read nor heard a single reference to such a practice.
“Unless there is some conspiracy of silence which stretches all the way back to the writings of the first Europeans to live amongst the Maori, as far as I can tell the concept was invented to justify this vision of pre-contact Maori society as deranged.”
So jh, who had earlier doubted that claims of infanticide were true, went and found an 1827 account of Maori slavery and infanticide from none other than one of those ‘first Europeans’.
But did you thank jh for enlightening you?
No.
Despite being furnished with the evidence you lacked, which backed up what MIT doctor John Robinson, whom you initially disparaged, had said in his book, you then replied:
“Documents from early travellers to New Zealand must be read carefully because they are rife with the cultural assumptions of ~1800s Europe. Just quoting a large block of text does not prove anything.”
What, then, would it take to convince you: a time machine so you can visit your idyllic Maori society yourself?
Of course, nothing would convince you. You are simply not in the market for being convinced of anything that doesn’t fit your ideal vision.
Just as A. A. Earle’s account can be diminished because his documents are ‘rife with cultural assumptions of 1800s Europe’ (whatever that means), so John Robinson’s book can be dismissed as a pack of lies for, no doubt, being rife with the cultural assumptions of 2010s Anglo-New Zealand.
Nothing will allow truth to get in the way of your version of events.
You say the Romans also had slaves. And so they did. They were a bloodthirsty bunch, too.
But along with all their killing and maiming, they also managed to invent a few things that we still use today. Like concrete, paved roads, aqueducts, drainage, and the Latin that underpins much of English.
Not so Maori. Their culture seems to me to specialise in various forms of violence.
If there are any technological achievements I’ve missed (especially those likely to last two thousand years), do feel free to list them.
Meanwhile, you haven’t answered my question…
Why should we apologise to Maori when all the benefits (and I’m not just talking welfare, but all European technological and philosophical marvels from the wheel, shoes, writing, religion and laws to sanitation, cars, fridges, TVs – everything they now take for granted that they had not a hope in hell of developing without British colonisation) have flowed largely in their direction?
Then when you’ve done that, I’d be fascinated to know about the wrongs you believe were committed that need to be put right.
I’m genuine when I say that – there may well be some, and I’m all ears.
But I also know that many of the so-called grievances are the fraudulent claims of greedy neo-Maori corporatists who can’t believe their luck as they play the dumb Pakeha for suckers – and win.
Emma, great to learn you are a History graduate and congratulations on your achievement.
Now if I may ask two questions.
1. When you were a student how were you taught to read historical documents?
2. How were you taught to determine/identify bias documentation versus non – bias?
Sorry Emma, just to elaborate further to my above questions.
What I am trying to understand from my first question is if you were permitted to make any interpretation of the historical documentation at all.
Educating Emma!
Here are a few accounts of behaviour amongst Maoris before 1840. I have no reason to doubt their essential accuracy and even if one or two are uncertain, that cannot be said of the general picture.
If you have been to the Tasman memorial in Golden Bay, then you will have read the plaque which says that the tribe which confronted him, the Tumata-kokiri, is extinct’. If so, you may have wondered why. Well, the answer is that they were exterminated by other Maori tribes. Their last stand was against a combined force of Ngatiapa and Kaitahu in the Paparoas about 1800.
Kaitahu almost managed to annihilate Katimamoe, their predecessors in the South Island, overwhelming one of their pas at Goat Island off the Otago Peninsula. Katimamoe had almost done the same to the peaceful Waitaha before them though Barry Brailsford did manage to find some survivors and record their story – see ‘Song of waitaha’, ISBN 0-9583378-1-0.
In due course, Kaitahu turned on themselves in Canterbury in the Kai Huaka feud. (Note that as a southerner myself, I use the southern spelling in preference to the politically correct versions.)
Kaitahu in their turn were attacked by Te Rauparaha and his lot, with enormous slaughter at Kaikoura, Kaiapohia and Onawe. Nobody was counting the numbers killed and eaten but they numbered several thousand. Earlier he had attacked the tribes in the north of the South Island, leaving some districts depopulated. He subjugated Rangitane who became known as the ‘slave tribe’. (For much of this see, W J Elvy, ‘Kei Puta te Wairau, Cadsonbury.)
According to scholar, Jean Jackson, many southern Maoris gave or sold their daughters to whites to save them from slaughter by other Maoris and many, if not most present-day Kaitahu are descendants from such unions. Another of te Rauparaha’s exploits was to trick Tema Hairanui (there are variant spellings of his name) and is daughter abord a British trader, with the aid of an unscrupulous captain. he stragled his own duaghter to avoid her being subjected to unspeakable cruelties by their Maori captors who took him back to their North Island haunts and tirtured him to death.
There were certainly deaths of Maoris from diseases introduced by Europeans – I knew of some personally myself – that was how it was for all in those days, Go to the Linwood or Fitzgerald Avenue cemeteries in Christchurch and see the gravestones, if they still stand of whole families of European colonists.
One way or another, Kaitahu had been reduced to about 1050 individuals by the time of the 1845 census, the remaining full-bloods living in a few squalid coastal villages – see the account of their friend and helper, missionary Wohlers, in Trans N Z Inst, May 1882. It is one of their descendents, Charles Croft, who now says that to restoring to them what they consider rightfully theirs would ‘bankrupt the country. What he is talking about is what Taiaroa and Gullida and their other chiefs sold freely in the years after 1840 and for which they received an additional ‘full and final settlement’ in 1944, just in case the earlier payment was not quite enough. Now they have had millons more from a ‘Waitangi settlement’ and expect more in future.
All this is just about the South Island. The scale in the North was much greater than this.
Boy! Are the rest of us being played for suckers or what???
Bruce
There was infanticide, but babies were NOT killed for eating. John slipped up when he said “Seems it was also the custom of Maori to slaughter their daughters — for meat” and there is no such comment in my book.
There is considerable evidennce, from both European and Maori sources, of female infanticide.
The best estimate of the 1840 Maori population is from demographer Ian Pool, 70,000 to 80,000 (the latter probably the nearest the truth). We should appreciate the good work he has done, and at the same time criticise and correct his denial of infanticide and the impact of war deaths. What matters is facts not voice of authority.
Hi Emma,
I’ve worked for several years as a reader-writer for university students during their exams, as well as a note-taker, sitting in on their lectures.
In the classes or lecture theatres, I meticulously record exactly what the professors say, as those concepts and interpretations of historical events are what the students will be examined on.
During the examination process, any failure on the part of the student to dutifully parrot the lecturer’s interpretation and conclusions means a wrong answer.
In the subjects of Sociology, History (including NZ History and the Treaty of Waitangi), Cross Cultural Communication or Social Anthropology etc., Marxist-laced propaganda is all-too-often injected into the mix to colour and influence all final interpretations of events.
I sit there astonished sometimes as I mechanically jot down the transparent perjury, aware that there are often huge sins of omission in what’s being presented.
The students are invariably being steered towards politically-expedient conclusions, with only a part of the essential information that they need in order to make realistic, definitive and correct judgments.
Anything inconvenient to the premeditated, manufactured outcome is conspicuous by its absence.
In many cases, what I experience is students being subjected to, what can only be described as, Marxist indoctrination, despite the fact that they’ve paid out huge sums of money to be in attendance and could probably get a more balanced point-of-view off Wikipedia.
I would suggest, Emma, that you, undoubtedly, need to deprogramme yourself to a large degree and read some of the old history books (you know the ones … those labelled as Eurocentric or Ethnocentric by your professors and never on the reading list … the books that were written while the defining events of NZ history were unfolding … the ones containing eye-witness accounts, where participants on both sides of the conflict were interviewed for a truly balanced view).
At the moment you’re coming across, largely, as a “university educated idiot” spouting cultural relativism.
A lot of what you’ve been learning is, undoubtedly, the sort of material that Dr. John Robinson, Dr Giselle Byrnes and many others have been “forced” to write, in order to survive as NZ historians … and not commit career-suicide.
I’d suggest that you biff the superficial, James Belich nonsense in the bin where it belongs and read James Cowan as an alternative.
Instead of spouting suitably “doctored” history, put some of those newly acquired investigative skills you’re supposed to have learned into practice and look at the “documented” history (that is : directly from original documents and not someone’s twisted interpretation).
You might be very surprised at what you find once you start digging beneath the avalanche of Marxist propaganda that has descended upon and smothered our institutions of higher learning in recent decades.
See if you can evolve into being part of the “solution” and not just another clone perpetuating of the ongoing “problem”.
Thanks Bruce, Martin and John.
John: thanks for pointing out my error. I must have misinterpreted something I read.
I’ll note the error in the body of my post rather than correct it, as some commenters refer to it.
On January 13, 2012 at 8:57 pm Trina said:
Emma, great to learn you are a History graduate and congratulations on your achievement.
Now if I may ask two questions.
1. When you were a student how were you taught to read historical documents?
2. How were you taught to determine/identify bias documentation versus non – bias?
I would like to open the above questions to John Robinson and Martin Doutre if I may.
It is so great to have both your input on J. Ansells blogs
Further avenues of research for Emma could be reading about Tupaea,the Tahitian on Cooks Endeavour voyage and his
thoughts on Maori culture and practises as witnessed by him
Maori who met Tupaea revered him He could hardly be considered
Eurocentric or 19th century biased Or perhaps also read accounts of
what the mission ship Herald found on being the first european vessel
to enter Tauranga Harbour in 1828 OOPs sorry eurocentric and 19th century so doesnt count in Emmas book cant possibly be true
Hi Trina,
When researching a particular historical topic and using pertinent, original documents or documented quotes, contemporary to the event, I tend to accept the accounts or information contained therein at face value.
With New Zealand history especially, few, if any, people had any reason to lie about what they experienced and the information, whether coming from Maori or European sources, is generally free of any real bias or exaggeration and simply states factual, witnessed observations or happenings that are, generally, quite reliable and accurate.
It’s wonderful to have several corroborating sources of information or observations for the same event to cross-check.
Maori oral traditions, for example, covering descriptions of the pre-Maori people called Patu-paiarehe, Turehu and a wide assortment of other names, are very consistent in the accounts given by all iwi throughout New Zealand.
Everyone it seems, despite vast distances of geographical separation and, conceivably, little or no contact, relates very similar descriptions of those people and their eventual fate.
Sometimes it’s essential to track the entire pedigree of an historical document, especially if the document itself raises controversial issues and consequences that are seen as threatening or inconvenient to the status-quo.
A good example of this is the “Littlewood” document, which was found in Pukekohe in 1989 amidst the papers of Ethel Littlewood’s deceased estate.
By September 1992 our top historians were seriously speculating on the fact that this could be the “lost” Final Draft of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, or, in other words, the long sought-after mother document in English from which Te Tiriti was created … but then the historians went totally silent on the issue and denied expectant New Zealanders any further information.
For the document to qualify as the Final Draft in English (known to be lost in about February 1840) it had to satisfy certain very stringent criteria:
• It had to be in the handwriting of James Busby (it is!).
• Line by line, it had to mirror the Maori language text (it does!).
• It had to be on paper that pre-dated 1840 (it is! … W. Tucker 1833 … in use by one of the Bay of Islands’ treaty drafting participants).
• It had to be dated the 4th of February 1840 … the date when the Final English Draft was handed to Rev. Henry Williams for translation into Maori (it is!).
• It had to have an impeccable pedigree from the Littlewood family all the way back to Captain William Hobson (it does!).
Despite the fact that the document qualifies in every respect as being the lost, Final English Draft, our politically-aligned historians are either in denial (without any documentation to back them up) or remain eternally silent and obtuse on the issue.
If the true facts about the Littlewood document were publicly known, they would utterly destroy the credibility, arguments, twisted interpretations, false-history and guilt-trips of the grievance-industry, which have been foisted on the rest of us, and increasingly crammed down our throats, since 1975.
See: http://www.celticnz.org/TreatyBook/Precis.htm
Boy, what a lot of discussion to catch up on!
Firstly, John, I would like to apologise for missing you earlier comment beginning “Thank you for responding so fully…” – I missed it scrolling through all the comments. I’m sorry if it seemed I was not acknowledging or responding to what you said. However, you have packed a lot of brash assertions into a short space, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I beg leave not to respond point by point to you. My energies are not infinite.
I think the best way I can sum up my response is this: you are committing the cardinal error of historical assessments – declaring that the modern, Westernised world is Good and the pre-modern, non-Westernised world is bad. As if humans have existed in horrible, lawless, immoral societies for thousands of years, then suddenly, BAM, modernity arrived, and finally humans came out of the darkness and found the right way to live and now everything is great.
But that view is bullshit, sorry. Humans throughout history were not idiots, or insane, or immoral. They too, like us, were born into worlds and lives that were as real and vital and encompassing as ours. They saw things growing up and were given explanations for the world just like us. They struggled against things which seemed bad and rejoiced in things which seemed good. Their views of their worlds were shaped by the information they could access and by the opinions that seemed common of those around them.
Every person in the course of history has lived in a world just as engrossing and concrete as the world we live in. All of them have had ideas about what the past was, ideas about where they came from, about what humans were and what they were doing, ideas about how humans should act, love, and die. And they too all had ideas about what might happen after they died, and some shape of hopes for how things might continue. Europeans from 1800 lived in a world vastly different from ours, and had ideas about the past, ideas about the role of humans, and hopes for the future, vastly different from ours. Much, if not most, of our modern society they would find shocking and probably disappointing. Similarly, people 200 years in the future will almost certainly look back upon our society and shake their heads at the things we took for granted. And the world they live in may be nothing like the world we might hope for.
But that is the nature, and beauty, of history. Time always passes, and no one can ever predict or guarantee what will come to pass. The more I study the subject, the more I realise this fundamental truth. So I once again encourage you John to continue reading and thinking about the history of the human race. Although I think you would do well to try and take stock of your cultural and emotional biases and try to think about history in a more open-minded manner.
To continue on to some of the other comments…
1) To return to infanticide: I don’t dispute the occurrence of this practice. I dispute two things: 1) that Maoris “slaughtered” their daughters wantonly just because they felt like doing so (i.e. that it was irrational and evil) and 2) that infanticide was practised because Maori wanted to eat their daughters.
Those two claims are fallacious. Outside of that, yes, infanticide occurred. But infanticide, along with various other population control methods, are common features of many indigenous societies – features in fact of all societies which were able to live sustainably at stable population levels within geographically constrained areas for long periods of time (something which our society is doing very poorly at).
Let’s think about this carefully: imagine that you are a Maori chief. Your tribe is surrounded by other tribes, all enviously eyeing your territory. You know that if you cannot maintain military parity with those around you, your people will be killed and disappear forever. This means a) keeping your levels of fighting-fit males high and b) keeping your population level at the right point – not too high (or you will have to many mouths to feed, and probably deplete your territorial resources beyond their capacity to replenish) and not too low (or you will not have enough males). If you let all children live, you will end up with too many women, and not enough males. Your enemies are wise about this – they kill off many of their girl children and keep their level of males high.
So what do you do?
You have two options:
First, you can kill girl children and keep your males high, so that you will not be overtaken and destroyed by the tribes around you, and so survive.
Or second, you can say “Hey wait a minute guys, what if, several hundred years in the future, people from a land across the seas will look back and call us savage and insane because our pragmatic decisions do not seem justifiable to them on surface impressions, and they don’t face the same decisions on account of their totally different economic and social structures? Man, maybe this is all actually horribly evil and we should change it!” Then you can go and try and convince your neighbouring chiefs to reform their wicked ways, and then they will laugh their asses off and kill and eat your entire tribe.
What would you do?
John, re: your comment “Of course, nothing would convince you. You are simply not in the market for being convinced of anything that doesn’t fit your ideal vision.”
I think that describes you, not me. I am very patiently explaining to you why your ideas about pre-European Maori society are distorted, but it just doesn’t seem to be sinking in. So, what would it take to convince you of anything that doesn’t fit your ideal vision – or are you just not in the market for reconsidering your assumptions?
PS I will post verbatim a comment I just made on Facebook which should help you understand the perspective of Maori on why they might not feel so keen to thank Europeans for “all European technological and philosophical marvels from the wheel, shoes, writing, religion and laws to sanitation, cars, fridges, TVs.” It’s a bit lyrical, so I don’t really expect it to make much of an impact on you, but here it is:
“Imagine that you and your people have lived in a land for as long as you could remember. The place where you live and your identity are almost one and the same. Then, one day, a new type of people come who speak a totally alien language and dress strangely, and they come and tell you that your culture is sick and savage and needs to be changed, needs to be like theirs to be good. This surprises you – you have lived happily and life has been good for you – how could this life you live be evil and wrong? But these new people are powerful and seem to have strong gods, and you hope to learn and gain from them, so you welcome them into your home and give them food and gifts. And at first they return your generosity, and things seem good.
But then things start to change. More and more of the new people come. They begin to ignore your offers of friendship and disrespect you. Things change faster and faster, and suddenly the new people are all around you. You are told to leave the lands you live – these are now the new people’s. Everywhere around you the old ways are breaking up and your words and your language drowned out in the rising roar of the alien language. You are told that this is no longer your country – that indeed you should be thankful for what the new people have done to you. If you don’t like it, you are told that you are a criminal, told to stop complaining. When you look around you and see the lands of your people being polluted and disfigured, and your heart breaks at the cruelty, and you cry out, you are told to shut up. You are told that you should be happy to live in the most advanced, enlightened society humans have ever known. You are told to hurry up and get with the program, and join in with those doing the butchering, and enjoy the fruits of the death of your land. And when you feel like there is nothing you can do, and want to give up, you are laughed at and told to stop being so lazy and stupid and bad-mannered.
Because you live in the most advanced, enlightened society humans have ever known.”
““Imagine that you and your people have lived in a land for as long as you could remember. The place where you live and your identity are almost one and the same.”
……….
Being Maori isn’t about blood it is a matter of cultural identity.
I had an Uncle who fought at Galipolli but I don’t go around pretending it was me.
Hi Trina, thanks for the questions and the compliment on my education.
As far as intrepretation of sources and detection of bias, that is the majority of what we are taught. Studying history is not a process of being told a bunch of facts so you know how things happened – it’s much more about developing the mental architecture to interrogate claims made about history. This is quite an involved process, and it’s hard to distill the learning of 3+ years, but I’ll try to convey some of what it’s about.
For example, let’s think about how to read a text written say by a missionary in the Bay of Islands in 1821. Now, if you put this text in front of me and ask me what I can say for sure about it, I’d go like this:
1) Is this a real or forged document?
2) If this is a real document, is it really written when it says it was written, and written by who it says it was written by?
3) Is this the original document, or has it been reproduced? If it has been reproduced, can I tell if there might be any difference between the original document and this reproduction (errors, say, or “corrections” by over-eager editors)
So if I can be fairly confident that the document in front of is what it presents itself as, and has not been altered from the original transcript, then I can be fairly confident of this: that the words in front of me were written in 1821 by a missionary in the Bay of Islands.
That is the starting point for reading the text.
Next, it gets more complicated. So I read the text from top to bottom. Okay. Some questions.
1) What does the missionary write?
– What does he talk about? How does he describe things? What sort of things does he seem to imply? What sort of language does he use? What sort of tone is there to the text? What value judgements does he make?
2) What drove him to write what he writes?
– Is the missionary trying to prove a point? Is he just describing things he finds interesting? Is he writing out of disgust, or delight, or shock, or weariness? Etc etc.
3) Who was he writing for?
-A missionary writing in a private journal might describe things in a very different manner than how he might describe them in a letter to an official ecclesiastical authority.
Things get even more complicated next. This is not a complete list of all the considerations that need to go into the careful and critical reading of a historical document, but it’s a start.
1) What could we expect the missionary to know of Maori society?
– A missionary might see, for example, a Maori killing a baby girl. Could we expect the missionary to understand the military and economic pressures which might explain the rational basis for infanticide? Probably not.
2) What interpretative framework might the missionary use to explain the things he sees around him?
– Our missionary would certainly see things very differently from how a native Maori might see them. If we are to understand the full cultural context and the underlying assumptions which colour and shape his descriptions of events, we will have to do quite a lot of research. What is the missionaries social background? What sort of religious society has he experienced? What can we know of his interpretation of his religious education? Missionaries of the Christian Missionary Society, a Protestant missionary organisation from England, for example, saw Maori society as heathen, as the product of the corruption of Satan, as the product of a people unreached by the gospel. They saw the Maori as existing in a moral void, and they thought Maori society was in dire need of the enlightenment of the gospel – which they could provide. But they had a positive, upbeat attitude – anyone could realise the error of their ways, and change to the better path. They were hopeful in their ability to save and transform the Maori into good Christians – however to do so they would have to convince them that much of their culture was evil and misguided – things such as polygamy, slavery, cannibalism, etc.
Of course, that’s quite general. Different missionaries differed. To really know what our missionary is saying what he’s saying, we’re going to have to read through a lot of his other writings, to try and understand his way of looking at things as clearly as we can.
Okay. Now once we’ve done all that, things get even MORE complicated. Bear with me!
The next thing to do is ask where WE are coming from. Such questions as:
1) Why am I reading this text?
2) What am I looking to understand?
3) What questions am I asking of it?
4) Do I have an agenda I am interested in fulfilling?
You yourself reading the text are also worthy of interrogation. The missionary has his way of looking at things – what is mine? What are the underlying assumptions of my culture? How can I untangle my ideas from the relative ideas of the time?
Say I believe that modern New Zealand, with its individualistic, sceptical rationalist culture is a Good Thing. If I don’t properly account for these features of my cultural background, I might look at the missionary and judge him on those grounds, without even knowing it – leading to bad history.
Anyway, I’m going to leave it there – that’s a brief overview of some of the questions that go into reading historical texts. As you can see, it’s not simple, but that’s why people like spend years learning how to do it well. The fact is that it is a very complicated thing to do properly, and it takes a heck of a lot of time to learn how to do it well. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to grasp this without going through some of the process yourself – which is why people like John, who don’t understand the academic process, think that the failure of academic writing to conform to their gut intuitions is a product of some vast intellectual conspiracy. Oh well. Thanks for your questions Trina!
Bruce, in regards to your descriptions of traditional Maori warfare, I’d like to make two points which I think are important.
Firstly, I want to note (as I’m pretty sure I’ve noted at least once) that I do not disagree at all with the assertion that traditional Maori society was one characterised by inter-tribal warfare. There is plenty of evidence of that. The only reason I might be tentative to weigh in on such issues is because I have not researched the issue in much depth, and am thus loath to make assertions (this is another thing they teach you in academia – to learn the limits of your knowledge and watch you tongue when you are at them.)
Anyway, two points are pertinent here.
1) It is a mistake to think of traditional Maori society as a single cultural entity. It is better to imagine New Zealand in this period as being a little like Europe. Each tribe was like a nation state. While the linguistic and cultural diversity was lower than Europe (due I would suppose to the significantly smaller size of the New Zealand landmass) the feeling of distinctive identity and competitiveness between tribes was the same. It might be helpful to you guys if I just mention this: the term “Maori” itself is a neologism invented post-1820. Notice that early writings about New Zealand refer to Maori always as “New Zealanders.” The term Maori is Te Reo for “normal”. It came into being when traditional Maori society came into contact with Europeans, and the various Maori tribes needed a way to distinguish themselves and those like them from the new people they met. Before that, there was no single term which bound together the various tribes. This is because the tribes saw themselves as separate peoples. So if you were Nga Puhi you would, from what I can tell, see yourself as separate and distinct from Ngati Awa or Ngati Maniapoto and so forth. You defined yourself in relation to different ancestors, to different features of the land. Those of other tribes were not your people.
And yes, they were competitive. New Zealand was a relatively small landmass, and it was occupied largely to the extent of its natural capacity. There was not much elbow room. Each tribe was striving to survive against constant threats from those around them. This sort of dynamic is of course not unique to traditional Maori society – it is true to every human society ever, except for some minor exceptions. If you think traditional Maori society was dysfunctional because population growth and limited natural resources led to competition and warfare, then you also must think that nature as a whole is dysfunctional. In this case, I suggest that you go and learn some basic biology and physics and come back to considering human societies when you can see them in a rational context.
2) When reading descriptions of Maori society by Europeans from the period of 1820-1840, you need to keep in mind one crucial fact: Maori society was radically disrupted by the introduction of the musket by Europeans. What Europeans witnessed was a society in upheaval due to a sudden introduction of destabilising technology.
Before European contact, Maori society was, as far as we can tell, pretty stable. Territories and population levels were pretty well fixed, with a bit of shifting with the changing of fortunes, and warfare was limited to a relatively small period during summer when excess food production made warfare possible (it takes a lot of extra food to feed warriors going out on battle marches, and doubly so when those warriors are taking time off from helping with growing food and other duties.)
Now, when muskets were introduced by Europeans, they upset this balance tremendously. Muskets were almost instantly recognised by various Maori chiefs, such as Hongi Hika, as being powerful and desirable weapons, and the chiefs who realised this immediately set about doing everything they could to acquire muskets before their enemies. With the new weapons in hand, chiefs such as Hika set about settling a backlog of Utu grudges. The new weapons were nigh unstoppable, and Hika’s tribe, Nga Puhi, went on a very long and wildly successful campaign, winning battle after battle, and sending opposing tribes fleeing.
This period of NZ history is known as the Musket Wars, and was basically a short and bloody arms race as shockwaves from the new technology rippled over Maori society. Yes, it featured the wholesale destruction of some tribes, and mass migrations and a large redistribution of territory and resources. Some tribes benefitted, some suffered. It is still a touchy issue today among Iwi (a Nga Puhi spokesman might consider Hongi Hika a glorious leader, someone from one of the tribes that suffered at his hands might consider him a vicious criminal – this is a good example of how tribal distinctions can lead to multiple interpretations of history among modern Maori).
Eventually of course, the dust settled down, new fighting strategies evolved, muskets became widespread, and society became rebalanced. But this was a period of social upheaval, and did leave many Maori shocked and dismayed. But so was WWI – none of the European powers had any idea how radically warfare would be changed by the development of machine guns, trench warfare and chemical weapons, and the disruption caused by these new technologies had a comparable effect of shocking and upsetting society – our culture bears the imprint of WWI’s horror in the young men who came back suffering from crippling emotional damage, men who struggled to return to normal life and build healthy families.
Just as Europeans were not expecting the disruption of new technology in WWI, and struggled to come to terms with it, Maori were not expecting the disruption of muskets in the 1820s, and struggled to come to terms with it. So it is very important to remember that what European observers at the time saw was a society in which the balance of things had just been wildly upset. Again, an example of the importance of properly considering the context of historical sources.
Re: Martin: I think I am going to have to disagree with you on your impression of the standards academic climate. While I cannot speak to the situation at all universities and all history departments, I can speak to the situation at mine, as I get along well with my professors and have a huge amount of respect for their intelligence and opinions. I am totally free to argue any case I want, even if it is a case they might find distasteful to consider. As long as I can muster evidence and make a solid argument, they will consider it.
I can argue that the individualism and consumerism that characterises modern New Zealand is socially corrosive and manifests in high suicide and depression if I want – that might go against their political inclinations to value individualism, but they will consider my argument if it is sound. I could attempt to argue that traditional Maori society was dysfunctional, and as long as I could make a convincing argument, they would consider it. The only reason I would hesitate to do so is because as far as I know there is no evidence to suggest any such thing. If I was to claim that due to a high incidence of inter-tribal warfare, cannibalism, slavery et al that it must have been so, I think they would rightly question whether I was projecting my own feelings about such matters onto the psycho-social world of a people totally removed from my existence.
Anyway, I think you are making a bit of a mistake here. You say you’ve attended undergraduate lectures as a note-taker and marked undergraduate exam essays. You say that if students deviate from a regurgitation of what the lecturer said, they are penalised. You take this as evidence that academia does not tolerate free-thinking.
Well, I have experience from the other side of the fence – I have taken undergraduate papers, written essays, sat exams, talked to lecturers about how and why I have been marked, and discussed the same with my classmates. Here’s how I see it:
An undergraduate humanities degree is actually the very first steps for most people for learning how to think carefully and critically. Some people learn this because they have great parents, but most undergraduates do not really know how to think clearly. So the undergraduate degree structure is designed to help young people learn how to begin to organise their thoughts properly.
What does this translate into? Well, at first, it means going through the motions. The lecturer explains the main critical issues of the paper, and in your 100 and 200-level papers you are supposed to have a go at this style of thinking. Most people are not very good at it at first. So generally, when they try and stray off the dotted lines, they tend to fall on their faces. In the large class sizes of modern universities, there’s really no way around this: to get undergraduates thinking, you need to guide them through some basic critical problems, and they really need to go through the motions you lay out for them.
With a bit of practice, undergrads learn the basics and start to develop some confidence. Their writing and thinking skills start to improve and they are capable of thinking a bit more independently. By this point they are getting into 300-level papers, which are much less prescriptive and coax undergrads into starting to display a bit of independence. By 300-level, a good student should have found their feet, and the process accelerates, At the honours level (which, by the way, I am at), students write are supervised by faculty and write an independent piece of research. I can tell you for a fact that the professors in my department are delighted to see students start to display real independence and ask challenging questions at this point. Want to question the very intellectual foundations of modern Western society? Hell yeah! Go for it!
I think what you’re doing is analogous to something like this: learning to think properly is like learning to ride a bike. It’s not easy at first. In fact, for a 6 or 7 year old child, it’s almost impossible. At first they need trikes, and then bikes with training wheels. They need to potter about, and of course they’re not -really- riding a bicycle properly. They’re just learning how to sit on one and peddle and steer it. Then when they’ve done that for a bit it’s time for the training wheels to come off, but parents still need to run alongside them, help them pick up speed a bit, then catch them when they topple over. But hey, give it a bit, and soon enough they’re getting the hang of it, then Bingo! They can get on a bike, push off, and balance. Maybe they’re still a bit wobbly at first, but by the time they’re 11, they’re hooning around, going down banks, doing skids, like they’ve been doing it their whole life.
What you’ve seen at universities is like a slice of this, when the training wheels is still on. And what you’re claiming is like someone saying “That’s not real bike riding! Parents are trying to keep their kids helpless and unable to ride a bike!” But you haven’t seen the next stages – when students and professors begin to meet and interact and discuss together, when the training wheels come off, and when students really learn how to ride/think for themselves. Then soon enough they’re flying!
Now, maybe, maybe, there is some vast intellectual conspiracy to fool young people like me into swallowing liberal/leftie dogma, or whatever it is exactly that you find so frustrating. Or maybe you’re just wrong. Maybe your way of looking at the world is uneducated and muddle-headed. Maybe when you learn how to think carefully and critically, there are certain things which you can see are true and things which are false. Arguments like yours remind me of the sort of stuff spouted by climate change deniers. Sure, maybe there is a vast leftie conspiracy to pull the wool over the world’s eyes by fabricating evidence for climate change, to advance some vague political agenda. Or maybe the data are clear, the rational basis for such changes solid, and any educated, reasonable person can see climate change is an inarguable fact.
Basically, sometimes there is no conspiracy. Sometimes, the shit you believe in is just plain wrong.
Re: JH: “Being Maori isn’t about blood it is a matter of cultural identity.
I had an Uncle who fought at Galipolli but I don’t go around pretending it was me.”
Well actually that’s a good example of you projecting a feature of your cultural makeup in a way which is totally inaccurate and misleading.
The traditional Maori conception of the self was very, very different from our modern Western concept. I don’t have the article on hand which I would like to quote in this instance, but I’ll try and sum up the gist of the matter.
Essentially, in traditional Maori society, the line between you and your ancestors was highly permeable. You almost thought of yourself and your ancestors as the same person. The past and the present coexisted, the actions and spirits of your ancestors were still living and present in the world around you and in you.
Traditional Maori cosmology is truly fascinating. Genealogies intermingle with creation stories. There is a sequence from you to your immediate ancestors, to legendary ancestors further back in time, who crafted the land around you, going back to the original gods/atua who shaped the world, and back to Rangi, the sky-father, and Papa, the earth-mother. The story of progression from these two, who coupled and gave birth to the first humans, the legendary ancestors, coming all the way down to those living today, who were in a sense still the embodiment of these ancestors, is stunningly beautiful to learn about.
It is too easy, too easy by far, to read about these stories and just think “huh cute stories” as if they were some trivial detail of Maori life. But they were not, they were rich oral narratives built up over hundreds of years, interpretative frameworks that shaped and conditioned the Maori perspective of everything around them. There was a total connection between you, your hapu, your ancestral land, the natural world, your ancestors, and the origins of the very world itself.
Another fascinating feature of the traditional Maori cosmology was the lack of distinction Maori made between humans, animals, and the natural world. Us moderns tend to either see humans as fundamentally separate and different from animals, and there to be no connection at all between humans and the physical environment. At best, the scientifically informed amongst us recognise the fundamental relatedness in the genes and biology of all living things, and can at least appreciate the flows of atoms and molecules between our bodies and the natural environment.
The Maori, however, saw everything as totally connected. Everything was descended from Rangi and Papa. Some of their children became humans, some became birds, insects, fish, some became trees and flowers, some became rocks, some the waves, some air. Everything was infused with the same spirit. A rock or the sea was alive just like a human, though it was a different manifestation of the same spirit.
This is why, when Maori took natural resources, it was customary to offer a prayer of thanks or karakia. The first fish of a catch was returned to Tangaroa, the ocean. An especially humble karakia was offered before the felling of a large totara tree.
You might also be interested to know, while we are on the subject of the environment, about the careful manner in which tribes managed their environmental resources. A couple of factors are necessary to understand how this worked:
(NB: this discussion relates to the stable Maori society which developed after an extended period of settlement in which certain resources, namely moa, were taken beyond replenishment rate).
1) Iwi possessed constrained, limited territories, territories with deep ancestral connections. Generally land did not change hands unless by conquest.
2) Within their territories, resources were limited. If you cut down all your totara, or fished too much, or killed all your huia for feathers, or took too many birds, they would be all gone. Within these small territories, there was a clear connection between what you took and what remained.
3) It was necessary to strike a balance. If you took too little from the environment, you might not be able to sustain yourself against your neighbours, and might be overrun. But if you took too much, eventually your resources would run out, and while you might get a temporary boost, you would lose the long-term game and your people would be destroyed just as surely. There is a natural limit at which resources replenish, and if you outstripped the capacity
So you had various peoples inhabitating firmly delineated ancestral territories, aware of a clear connection between taking and depleting, and needing to strike a careful balance between short-term survival and long-term resource availability – a game in which the clear result of failure was destruction.
Now, the Maori tribes were not stupid. Supported by a intricately-wrought cosmology, they managed their tribal resources very carefully. Rangatira, or people of power, would control the taking of resources by alternately declaring certain resource tapu, or forbidden, when the resource was becoming low, and then noa, or open to taking, when the resource was recovering.
Huia feathers are a good example of this. Huia feathers were especially valued for chiefly ornament. In pre-European contact times, Tohunga, or tribal elders, would declare tapu regions of their tribal forests when huia numbers were becoming low. So the huia did not go extinct.
The huia went extinct when the radical social disruption of European contact broke down the system of Rangatira authority and tapu restrictions. Note: I am not saying the -Europeans- were responsible, directly, for the extinction of the huia. I am saying that it was the result of the social disruption caused by European contact. Captain Cook didn’t rub his hands together with glee and chuckle and say “Boy, I can’t wait to initiate a sequence of social disruption which will cause the extinction of a beautiful bird species which up until now has been protected by an intricate system of social resource control.”
This is another important point about history: it is hard to see the roots of your beliefs and actions, the causes that led to the world you inhabit, and it is equally hard to predict the consequences of your actions. Generally, people aren’t evil masterminds. Pakeha settlers were not necessarily plotting the disintegration of traditional Maori society. It’s just the kind of thing that can happen when two peoples from radically divergent paths of humanity suddenly come into contact. Which is basically the story of the age of globalisation… but that’s a story for another day.
Anyway. The reason why I think it is important to think about these things, and to build up a clear, comprehensive knowledge of traditional Maori society, and to compare that society to the one we live in now, is because much of what has changed from then to now matters. How well do we guard the environment? How well do we manage resources? How well do we plan for the future? How connected do we feel to the land and the people around us? How well do we understand ourselves, how well do we understand what it is to be human, and how humans should act? In this chaotic, churning modern world, do we even know, and if we don’t know, can we admit that to ourselves?
Here is the modern, 2012 definition of academic history: history is the study of the causes and consequences of social change. History in 2012 is the most crucial subject to know because we are riding the crest of a wave of social change unlike anything ever seen before in the history of the world. We live in the a world totally transformed by the developments and events of the last 500 years – and this process of transformation is getting faster and faster.
What sort of society do we live in today? Is it a good one, where people are happy, and things seem to have a good future? Where might we be heading? Are we happy about what might happen? If we are not happy, is there anything we can do about it?
These are questions that are only answerable if you understand history. If you dismiss or ignore or attack history, you will never understand the world you live in, you will never understand yourself, and you will live your life burning up in frustration, in hatred, in fear, you will never know what is like to live with a clear, calm, resolved heart, and you will die having wasted the most precious gift there is: consciousness.
And that, essentially, is why I study history.
You might also be interested to know, while we are on the subject of the environment, about the careful manner in which tribes managed their environmental resources. A couple of factors are necessary to understand how this worked: (NB: this discussion relates to the stable Maori society which developed after an extended period of settlement in which certain resources, namely moa, were taken beyond replenishment rate).
…….
So after Maori destroyed [blitzkrieged] the mega fauna and burnt the forests they developed a new culture?
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/moa/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101213151417.htm
I think while you talk about seeing history in the context of the times it is also important to see it in the politics of the present time. You (Emma) are sounding like the Maori PR department.
Oh my god! Emma, what a long-winded diatribe you’ve provided for us to agonize our way through.
Why don’t you leave home while you still know everything?
I’ve scanned through it all trying to find something tangible and meaningful amidst the deluge of airy-fairy, nebulous, cultural-relativism gushing forth. Franz Boas would be so proud of you.
But this is the fork in the road where we part company, as others of us don’t “do” history using your Marxist, social-anthropological approach and formula, which can never seem to arrive at “warts & all” truth or establish facts with any reasonable degree of clarity.
While you’re focused upon drawing us all into a sympathetic understanding of the whys & wherefores of such diabolical practices as “infanticide” and acting as an apologist for Maori, my only focus is:
Did Maori practice infanticide?
Was that practice the major contributing factor for the decline in population numbers within particular iwi?
Were there other significant contributing factors?
And that’s about it really … just the cold, hard, clinical facts, based upon sound, original documentation, sufficient to arrive at a well-informed conclusion.
But in the case of Dr. John Robinson, when he applied this dispassionate, scientific-approach to his work, his documented findings were deemed to be “inconvenient”, as white-New Zealanders could not be implicated.
Dr. Robinson was, therefore told to fudge or fraudulently-tamper with his clinically arrived at findings, such that an altogether different, utterly-false conclusion could be drawn
… where blame could be apportioned to white-New Zealanders
… where they could act as the scapegoats
… where there could be the usual call for future compensation to be extorted from them, due to the sins of their ancestors.
You also attempt to put yourself on a pedestal or into an exclusive zone, where only you have the right to decide what nuances of meaning are truly contained within a document.
You state:
‘As you can see, it’s not simple, but that’s why people like [Emma] spend years learning how to do it well. The fact is that it is a very complicated thing to do properly, and it takes a heck of a lot of time to learn how to do it well. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to grasp this without going through some of the process yourself – which is why people like John, who don’t understand the academic process, think that the failure of academic writing to conform to their gut intuitions is a product of some vast intellectual conspiracy.’
The fact of the matter is, Emma, that, for the most-part, any, reasonable, rational English speaker can read a 19th century letter, publication or official document, in English and thoroughly understand it.
There are those rare instances where a much deeper forensic probe is necessary, but that’s certainly the exception rather than the general rule.
The process of decipherment and milking out a correct understanding of historic-document content is generally quite easy, once one is familiar with such things as the handwriting style.
With all the modern enhancement techniques available, the process is made all the more simple.
Instead of pulling out the “racist” or “conspiracy-nut” cards and waving them aloft, or pathetically trying to “pull rank” on everyone, why not show us your metal by taking on some of the major distortions of New Zealand history and rectifying them for the benefit of all?
Amongst the many big-porkies that make me cringe as I’m sitting there in the university lectures, is that oft-repeated one about how white-New Zealanders “would not let Maori pupils speak Maori at school and punished them if they did … in a deliberate, cruel Eurocentric campaign to destroy the Maori language”, etc.
In the several years I’ve heard this propaganda recounted (along with observing the guilt-trips white-students in attendance are subjected to), I’ve never once heard the other, more-telling half of the story mentioned by the professors
… how this incentive was Maori-led and enforced, by Maori leaders themselves, who had converged on Parliament in large delegations to have the strict ruling imposed.
Their petition before parliament stated: “it was to be, English only at school and Maori at home or on the Marae”.
So, what Marxist-spin can you provide us with on that piece of NZ history Emma, to keep white-New Zealanders locked into a state of perpetual shame?
I’ve said enough on this blog. I am confident that any level-headed person reading through these comments will see who is arguing with reason and clarity and who is arguing with irrational emotion. John and co., good luck fighting those commie/marxist/liberal/intellectual/treehugger reptilians, or whoever it is you think is persecuting you. Everyone else, thanks for your time, and let me just say that I hope you have found this discussion enlightening. Keep thinking carefully, and don’t settle for easy answers to tricky cultural and intellectual questions!
Dear Emma,
I think I can speak for most of the rational beings who have contributed herewith, when I say we have got sick of you too! What a brain-washed chick you are! Dream on!
My kind regards,fellow-New Zealander.
He iwi tahi tatou!
Well Emma you have enlightened me somewhat I now have some
inkling as to how a simple document like the treaty which was asked for
and signed by many chiefs and designed to unite all citizens under a single sovereign and law can be subverted and used to divide us
Separate laws separate ownership of public resources like mountains, lakes, rivers, foreshores, seabeds,forests fisheries, education, justice,have I left any out? I see it now if your views are rife in academia
Thank you Emma and Martin for giving your time responding to my questions. Sorry I have taken so long to return.
Boy, you have certainly provided a lot of information to get through amongst all your responses Emma. What I have taken in so far has been interesting. Although I am going to have to go back through it a few times to take it all in when I am not so hassled by my little ‘offspring‘!
I am not fully educated in New Zealand history or the Maori mythologies. I have only dabbled around the literature. I was amused to see in one of your responses you asked the reader to imagine themselves in the Maori tribe position. I have done this myself a few times.
It is a very effective exercise asking yourself how you would feel and think of another race of people moving in on your back yard speaking a strange language and changing your way of life!
Additionally, considering the changes and persecutions Europeans have had to cope with over their ancestral lineage is also very helpful in understanding how the Maori feel about their ancestral past.
I like to question if some where in our own psyche lies these ancient memories of those times and they communicate with us through our emotions – triggered when we hear the bag pipes and Celtic music, or watch ‘Brave Heart’ or learn of the many mythologies and Kings and Queens. The land invasions, the war’s, religious and political and medieval ages where ‘witches’ were cruelly tortured and executed.
Maybe our resistance, anger and frustrations to the current Maori/Political movement is rooted deeper in our psyche than we have ever thought to consider. Maybe it is because our most ancient memories are recognizing something and telling us we have been here before
It has been said to me that Europeans are such a mongrel mix it prevents us from knowing our true blood lines. This may be true, however spiritually I believe, with some research, each of us can identify ourselves with the race/culture of our most ancient ancestors just through recognizing our individual belief systems and what we hold sacred.
I was interested to read your explanation of how Maori connect themselves with the earth and their ancestral lines. The Celts were similar.
As I learn of our most ancient ancestors, the depth of their belief systems and how they connected themselves spiritually to their world I am in awe of how they adapted to the change‘s. Over the centuries we have been taken over and swept along with the waves of change that followed each political and religious conquering. Much has been lost, however, thankfully, through the work of Historians and archeologists/anthropologists we have been able to rebuild some sort of picture of what we once were and some of us, myself included find much pleasure in exploring and practicing the spiritual aspects of the old ways.
We once were tribal warriors, and we are able to stand on this earth today because our ancestors adapted and survived the land invasions, the wars, the oppression of our indigenous spirituality and political systems over all the centuries. As a ‘race’ of people our ancestors have been through a lot. Yet (to my current knowledge) not one of our people today has received a monetary windfall from a country or church for historical/ancestral grievances.
Why is that I wonder?
I think, Trina, that’s because technologically-superior conquerors down the ages tended to be a damn sight more brutal than the British who opted to colonise New Zealand with the pen rather than the sword.
As a result of their compassion and their obsession with the rule of law, their increasingly cowardly descendants are now being conned out of their country by the ungrateful colonisees.
Had the British adopted the Maori colonisation methods of the time, there would be no Maori left. Indeed, if the British had not imposed the rule of law on tribes bent on killing and eating each other, there would have been no Maori race after about 1860.
That’s why I said publicly that, rather than moan about the holocaust of colonisation and other such nonsense, the more appropriate response for all the wonderful benefits that the greatest civilisation on earth brought Maori would be a heartfelt ‘thank you’.
Fat chance, of course. Ingratitude seems to be as embedded in the modern Maori mind as their other major contribution to New Zealand society: violence.
Very true Trina and John
Emma and her Ilk are having a big effect on what is put out publicly though Just last night on Prime News we were told that Maori shrunken heads were being returned by France These heads were taken from maori 200 years ago in colonial times
Colonial times ? in 1812? The fact is europeans of that time were very interested in bizarre artifacts and Maori were only too willing to sell them the heads from their collections and probably made to order as well I would be interested to know if that carried on after British law was accepted after 1840 It wont be long before we are told that europeans slaughtered Maori, decapitated and cured the heads
themselves The misinformation grievance gravy train is alive and well
and is growing
I read on NZCPR today that they are considering reviving the practise of preserving heads.
I have been reading alot of articles in Papers Past – that is a treasure trove of information. After reading some of the articles I am pleased I was not raised in those times or be a woman at home with kids to protect while the husband was away.
I came across this poem that a Taranaki woman wrote to the papers which gives some insight of what it was like for the settlers.
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz
Wellington Independant, Volume XVI, Issue 1507
22 March, 1861, Page 4
The Taranaki Mothers Lament
(From the New Zealander)
Farewell to my cottage, farewell to my home
‘Midst strangers and houseless my children must roam,
The trees in the forest are burning and fall
Our dwelling is burning and we’ve lost our all;
The garden is trampled, and the orchard is gone,
And once more, sad pilgrimes, we’re breadless and lone.
O! where shall we wander, and where shall we lie,
For no friendly Maori now cries “Haremai!”
Our faithful horse “Ranger” is driven away,
The poultry quite frantic are flying astray,
Dear “Tommy” the poney has met a sad lot,
He sav’d his poor master – himself has been shot,
The sheep are all stolen with “Daisy” the cow,
And none are so hapless as we are just now.
Perhaps by tomorrow by hatchets we die
And no friendly Maori now call “Haremai”.
Loud booming of cannon and rifles we hear,
And yells of defiance convulse us with fear,
Our trembling young children, scarce able to stand,
Keep asking for why they were brought to this land.
They hear that their father must leave them and fight
And who shall protect the poor lone ones at night?
O! tell us dear mother danger is nigh,
Will no friendly Maori exclaim “Haremai!”
Say when shall we welcome sweet tidings of peace,
And when shall these battles these butcheries cease,
Shall we ever return to yonder lov’d farm,
And know that the Natives will do us no harm;
That they are forgiven, and they too forgive,
And once more good friends and good neighbours we live.
Most joyful the day when the Maori shall cry
In true Christian love my friends “Haremai!”
“O! tell us dear mother [when] danger is nigh,”
A poignant reminder that many settlers suffered grievously at the hands of Maori.
The first act of the Taranaki Wars was the butchering of a family just like this one.
Also not widely known is that the government confiscated settler land long before they confiscated any Maori land.
The only difference was that the Maori land was taken for a justifiable reason, as Sir Apirana Ngata confirmed in 1922:
“Some have said these confiscations were wrong and that they contravened the Treaty of Waitangi.
“But the chiefs placed in the hands of the Queen of England the Sovereignty and authority to make laws.
“Some sections of the Maori people violated that authority, war arose, and blood was spilled.
“The law came into operation and land was taken in payment.
“This in itself is Maori custom – revenge – plunder to avenge a wrong.
“It was their chiefs who ceded that right to the Queen.
“The confiscations cannot therefore be objected to in the light of the Treaty.”
Who would you believe: Apirana Ngata or Hone Harawira?
The politically correct often blame the White settlers for the lawlessness that prevailed in our country prior to our Tiriti signing, but could you believe a handful of lawless Europeans could be compared to the following, page 8, Maori statistic in “The Realms of King Tawhiao,” by Dick Craig?
Total Maori population was estimated at 150,000 when Hongi Hika returned from London, around July 1821. During this voyage, he traded gifts from Britain in Australia for 300 muskets and on arrival in New Zealand went on a killing frenzy recorded as the “Maori Musket Wars.” This resulted in other tribes doing everything they could to prevent extinction by procuring much needed muskets any way they might. Muskets made the difference between survival or extinction of tribes.
Estimated Maori population at the signing of our Treaty was only 50,000, 100,000 of the them massacred/cannibaliased.
An example of Maori day to day living, fearful of another tribe appearing from the bush. Watch the birds eating bread in your garden, always frightened, constantly looking over their shoulder, any loss of attention results in the loss of bread to another bird with always the threat of a falcon hovering above or cats eyes hidden in the hedge.
Here you go Martin! Just a few articles to show that maybe, just maybe the shit you believe in isn’t so wrong.
A whole lot of articles found in the Papers Past that mention Pre-Maori relics. Nothing confirmational but enough to prove you are not a stupid fool pursuing a stupid fantasy.
You are going to have to scroll down the page quite a way to find the bits that mention ‘Pre-maori’ stuff on some of these articles, especially the ones near the end of the links.
All the best you Martin – with big hugs
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=EP19270411.2.59&srpos=2&e=——-10–1—-0PreZz-Maori+–
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=EP19310316.2.100&srpos=3&e=——-10–1—-0PreZz-Maori+–
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=PBH19160718.2.51&srpos=4&e=——-10–1—-0PreZz-Maori+–
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=EP19370615.2.108&srpos=7&e=——-10–1—-0PreZz-Maori+–
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=EP19210511.2.16&srpos=9&e=——-10–1—-0PreZz-Maori+–
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=EP19270406.2.117&srpos=10&e=——-10–1—-0PreZz-Maori+–
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=EP19261230.2.10&srpos=6&e=——-10–1—-0PreZz-Maori+–
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=EP19210628.2.54&srpos=8&e=——-10–1—-0PreZz-Maori+–
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=NOT18740421.2.16&srpos=11&e=——-10–11—-0PreZz-Maori+–
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=NEM19030131.2.10&srpos=18&e=——-10–11—-0PreZz-Maori+–
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=NA19200817.2.2&srpos=21&e=——-10–21—-0PreZz-Maori+–
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=EP19270203.2.38&srpos=22&e=——-10–21—-0PreZz-Maori+–
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=EP19271209.2.36&srpos=23&e=——-10–21—-0PreZz-Maori+–
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=EP19040326.2.62&srpos=24&e=——-10–21—-0PreZz-Maori+–
Many thanks Trina … some very interesting snippets in there.
The fact of the matter is that the now “unmentionable history”, related to the existence of pre-Maori peoples, might rate as the “worst-kept” secret in town.
My parent’s generation and those before them spoke openly about it, as did generations of Maori kaumatuas. The information is scattered throughout our older history books, as well as within the oral-traditions of every iwi in New Zealand.
The evidence is also scattered all over our landscape.
It’s only since about the mid-1970s that this history has been increasingly suppressed.
In the mid 1800s, when Maori were lining up to sell land to the government, anyone claiming ownership had to prove their tenure (keeping the fires burning on the land) before the court.
A prospective seller would quote their whakapapa and also give an account of the history of the location. Very often, these orators would mention the Turehu and Patu-paiarehe or whatever the local name was for the Tangata-whenua … (the pre-Maori groups) who were the former (now vanquished) occupiers.
This rich source of history is recorded in the Native Land Court Minute Books and, as I recall, for the Kaipara District alone there are about 70 large volumes to wade through.
New Zealand was certainly not some undiscovered little backwater at the very ends of the Earth, but was continuously occupied by many different ethnic and racial groups, for thousands of years before the advent of the Polynesian-Melanesian Maori.
See: http://www.celticnz.co.nz