If you’re wondering why so many of my posts are about media coverage, that’s because I’m still very much in the fundraising stage of the Treatygate/Colourblind State campaign.
I want to prove to potential funders that the snowball that elocal magazine set in motion with its Treatygate story can build into an avalanche capable of terrifying the government into obeying the will of the people.
So the campaign proper has yet to begin.
But here’s a taste of the sort of historical detail I’ll be revealing.
It’s from a letter written by Governor Sir George Grey to the rebel Waikato chiefs in 1863.
There’s masses more where this came from.
This letter proves that the Waikato Chiefs were viewed as rebels by Govenor George Grey. Something which everyone already knows.
[JA: Eye patch off, Joe. What it proves is that they were warned they'd lose their land if they went ahead and waged war against the Queen. Which I suspect hardly anyone knows.]
Anakereiti: thank you for proving my point that there was a whole nother side to the story.
Will you be cutting and pasting the whole of Wikipedia, or just most of it?
To put threats of confiscation of lands in a better context, go back to mid 1863 when isolated settlers, men, women and children were being murdered as close in to Auckland as Howick, Papakura and Franklin County. If that happened today imagine the uproar, therefore why are we surprised that every able bodied male in Auckland and surrounding areas belonged to the Militia or to the Auckland Rifle Volunteers. Why be surprised that 13 Blockhouses were built to give Aucklanders some measure of security handy to Auckland and further out a string of Redoubts from Miranda across to Tuakau.
Governor Grey gave Maori a choice, allegiance to Queen Victoria and the Crown or go South and cross the Maungatawhiri Line.
Some people with Maori ancestry maintain that the Crown broke the Treaty. In fact those Maori who created mischief in the Bay of Islands 1n 1845 and later in South Auckland 1863 under tribal leaders surely must have broken the Treaty. Governor Grey may have done us all a favour if he had abrogated the Treaty in 1863 instead of threatening confiscation.
Who is this anakereiti?
john have you had a chance to check out organising a petion via the change.org site
cheers paul
Anakereiti we need more hard facts and examples rather than statements so that the source can be checked. Thanks.