NOT the Scottish Thread

[Banditbandit]

I just assumed that the whole point of this was to show how the evil settlers stole from the maori and now we all owe you guys heaps, ie preferential treatment. But if all you wanted to do was prove you see things differently, then goal acheived!

So . if you can see that, then what is the way forward? We need to listen to each other ... and we don't.

I want to say that we've been listening to you for two centuries ... when do you listen to us ? But part of me recognises that's a provocative statement ...

I see attitudes hardening on both sides - hell, we are only human ... and the radical voices of Te Ao Māori piss off our Pākehā friends and relations - while the hard line rightwing voices of the Pākehā world piss off us ... how do we move forward together ?

[White trash]

There were something like 56 species of birds that my ancestors hunted to extinction before Europeans arrived ... there's no getting away from such realities .. but they had no idea what was happening - no-one counted the bird populations ... if they had known they would not have killed them off ... (at least I hope they wouldn't have)

No one is perfect - we are all human beings ...

Can't blame Maori for extinction anyway, there's thousands of species all over the globe extinct without being a food source. Changes to habitat/climate change, christ there's heaps of reasons.

Banditbandit, you seem to have a very frim grasp on your heritage and ancestory. Is this something you've researched extensively or information passed on to you by your elders?

[Banditbandit]

Can't blame Maori for extinction anyway, there's thousands of species all over the globe extinct without being a food source. Changes to habitat/climate change, christ there's heaps of reasons.

Banditbandit, you seem to have a very frim grasp on your heritage and ancestory. Is this something you've researched extensively or information passed on to you by your elders?

A bit of both - stories that are still told around the iwi - some books ... I've lived in this country for 55 years now - and just pick up and remember things about it's people and history ... also being a teacher/academic helps .. got the time to read and research ...

I can also trace the other side too - back to Sunderland and the Highland Land clearances ... and the bastard ruling class who kicked the people off the land ... stories still told in that part of my family (who when they get drunk sing Flower of Scotland and The Rising of the Moon ... )

It's all whakapapa ... stories about the past that makes us who we are today ...

[MSTRS:Me]

It's all whakapapa ... stories about the past that makes us who we are today ...

Yep. Stories. Not always the truth, either. Depends who's telling them, eh?
We are defined by our pasts. But do we really need to be controlled by our pasts? Which is what I see happening with the grievance industry.

[Banditbandit]

Gee thanks for pointing that out. We may be white, but that doesn't necessarily mean we're stupid.

So, if you claim you are not stupid - why do you continue to do things that put down your friends and relations?

Don't forget the white guys did figure out how to scam land and the seabed off the natives for a few blankets and some guns

And you think making a joke of it will make it all go away? (By the way, we knew that land shook itself to bits every so often - we'd been here a while - So it might not have been such a great scam on your part after all ...)

But seriously ... I think some people do need to hear that the jokes they make are hurtful to other people and continue to perpetrate the divisions between people in this country ...

[Banditbandit]

Yep. Stories. Not always the truth, either. Depends who's telling them, eh?
We are defined by our pasts. But do we really need to be controlled by our pasts? Which is what I see happening with the grievance industry.

I agree. The only people who profit from the grienvance industry, as has been pointed out before, are lawyers.

However, the point is that the economic base was taken from us. An acknowledgement of that is important and a small gesture in return. Look at Ngai Tahu - took their settlement and within three years had doubled their money - now they are using it for the benefit of the iwi in the new world - education, health, housing ...

You may say "millions of dollars is not a small gesture ..." In terms of the losses it is, and in terms of today's world ? In the early 21st Century Telecom's profits for one year were $700 million - more than the total amount given to iwi in Treaty Settlements all up at that date ... At that level the settlements are small amounts.

Give us the ability to improve ourselves and we will ...

[bogan]

I see attitudes hardening on both sides - hell, we are only human ... and the radical voices of Te Ao Māori piss off our Pākehā friends and relations - while the hard line rightwing voices of the Pākehā world piss off us ... how do we move forward together ?

Remove any preferential treatment, scrap the maori seats in parliament, and perhaps the maori party too, I mean we can't be together if we are treated differently can we?

[phill-k]

Banditbandit I appreciate and respect you for the time you have spend recording this piece of history.

However with this respect, I also have some contempt as Maori like all the other NZer's have benefited from our colonising these lands, for you to determine that we are responsible for the Maori issues of the day, is to admit you take no responsibility for your extended family, we as a country have acknowledged past atrocities and for a small country have in that acknowledgement given over much of NZ's wealth for you to begin to right the pain, leaving the distribution to your peoples, this action of asking for compensation creates a division, how can we be one people when part of the partnership continually demands the country pays for its past mistakes, you in fact create the division. I don't have the answers and I'm not sure you have either, different interpretations of history are just that, to-day our future is important, history but explains a little of what we are made off.

Be strong.

[Banditbandit]

Banditbandit I appreciate and respect you for the time you have spend recording this piece of history.

However with this respect, I also have some contempt as Maori like all the other NZer's have benefited from our colonising these lands, for you to determine that we are responsible for the Maori issues of the day, is to admit you take no responsibility for your extended family, we as a country have acknowledged past atrocities and for a small country have in that acknowledgement given over much of NZ's wealth for you to begin to right the pain, leaving the distribution to your peoples, this action of asking for compensation creates a division, how can we be one people when part of the partnership continually demands the country pays for its past mistakes, you in fact create the division. I don't have the answers and I'm not sure you have either, different interpretations of history are just that, to-day our future is important, history but explains a little of what we are made off.

Be strong.

Thank you for taking the time to read my posts. I need to go now. You raise some very important issues. Let me respond tomorrow.

For those of you reading all this tonite, I'm not only line until tomorrow around 9am .. so please bear with me and don't expect the quick responses I have given today.

[White trash]

Thank you for taking the time to read my posts. I need to go now. You raise some very important issues. Let me respond tomorrow.

For those of you reading all this tonite, I'm not only line until tomorrow around 9am .. so please bear with me and don't expect the quick responses I have given today.

It intrigues me that there is only one (+ Dean) poster in this thread with the knowledge and literacy means to present the point of Maori history.

[Bald Eagle]

Or ... only one that can bothered.

[martybabe]

Banditbandit , I commend you for your work in this thread but I confess to being saddened by the overall tone. Much as you profess to wanting a utopian future where we all march on as one Nation in harmony (me too) your viewpoint/Perspective was quite clearly a defensive and accusatory one.

Who is this 'You' you frequently allude to, 'You gave us a nail' 'you gave us VD' 'you took from us'. You seem very biased and separatist in your opinions, you quote facts but in reality they are facts as you see them or as you have heard them.You weren't there and neither was anyone else alive Today.In all honesty, if I was in your place, I too would be fighting to be heard and probably fighting to right the injustices of the past but in the real world, the world where we all have a future together, constantly playing the game of blame will only hold any real unification of peoples back.

I'm English, I recently lost a German friend, I never asked but his Father could have been among the ones that occupied/stole my country from me, his uncle could have been amongst the ones that imprisoned my uncle in a POW camp for 5 years his brother could be responsible for bombing the crap out of my Nana's Street. I didn't blame, accuse or ram 'facts' of oppression and injustice down his throat. He wasn't to blame, he owed me no apology, he wasn't there, he wasn't born.


I can't and wont justify the actions of the people that came before me but equally I will not be held accountable for those actions either. I see huge division between the viewpoints of Maori and other New Zealanders, more than I had ever imagined before I came here, it's a sad state of affairs and whilst people continue to be as one sided as you (not just you, the opposition as well) I don't see any truly united NZ in my Crystal ball, sadly.

[MSTRS:Me]

I can't and wont justify the actions of the people that came before me but equally I will not be held accountable for those actions either.

That is as it should be.
The world over, for all of man's history, civilisations/cultures have arisen, only to be destroyed by an invader, who was often as not, conquered in his turn.
It might not be palatable, but to the victor goes the spoils. NZ might have been the first time a colonising power entered into some sort of 'joint venture' with the inhabitants of a land, but the fact remains that the British presence here spelled the end of Maori as they were. Taking land etc is always what an usurping power does/did. That's their prime reason for being there in the first place.

[scumdog]

A

I can also trace the other side too - back to Sunderland and the Highland Land clearances ... and the bastard ruling class who kicked the people off the land ... stories still told in that part of my family (who when they get drunk sing Flower of Scotland and The Rising of the Moon ... )

It's all whakapapa ... stories about the past that makes us who we are today ...

Being Scots I can relate to that - but I don't dwell on it, I just get on with my life...

[Banditbandit]

Ata marie

Let me start - and after some thoughts overnight ... I've mixed a few quotes as starting points ... I'm not picking on anyone, or arguing with the person who wrote what I quote .. it's just a starting point for my own thoughts ...

Nice story.

I'm not going to agree or disagree with any of your points, as they are obviously your own truths.

We all have our own histories, and our own different versions of the same history. I expect that even the most "anti-Maori" commentators would agree that some pretty bad things were done to Maori over the years(as well as some good). Of course, the questions now are, are those injustices relevant today, and if so, what should be done about them?

I don't claim to have any answers, but at least some of the people involved are talking about it and trying to find a solution. (trouble is, the 4 million people in NZ will probably have 4 million slightly different answers!) Whilst we may not always agree, surely it's better to talk about our problems, as someone said, "jaw jaw is better than war war"

[/QUOTE]


Yes. Exactly. We hold our own truths about history .. But the "truths" we believe have a huge influence on how we see each other. What I am trying to show is that the truths for Māori are different ... to many people think there is just one "truth" and in many ways that goes with the definition of the word) but we keep getting fronted with different "truths" and told this is fact - such as we killed and ate the Mori ori who were here first - that the Europeans came to save us and we have benefited hugely from their prescence ... this is a very common narrative thread in discussions such as this one ...

No-one asked them to come - they came from a sense of superiority coupled with duty (Cecil Rhodes and the White Man's Burden for instance) ... from our perspective they were different but not superior ...

The world has certainly benefited from European science and knowledge - but who does that belong to? Should every country pay Italy for Marconi's invention? Should we all pay the USA for developing silicone chips? The intellectual history of the world is too mixed up to separate like that.

And who says we benefited? Many of my radical mates would disagree. Māori have not benefited as much as other groups from the wealth creation of the industrial revolution . we were given the low paid jobs (as were Pākehā) ... and now are usually the first out the door in a recession .. Māori unemployment rates have always exceeded Pākehā rates .... maybe that's because many of us are not as educated and qualified as our Pākehā friends and colleagues - and I can head backwards down the chain to say why ... I won't because it's now up to us to do something about it ... and we are. The problem is that it's taken a couple of hundred years to get to where we are .. adn the solution is not an overnght one, and it will take a couple of generations to start seeing results ...

And we can only see those results if our Pākehā friends help us. I don't mean more money, or time - I mean changing the public expressions of Māori put-downs and commetns which affect our young people - turnign them into angry rebels, gang memebrs, drug users ... People do become what we say they are ... and our angry young men turn to gangs, to violence, to drugs ...

We can help them, you can help us by nothing simpler than stopping some of the things you do and say ...

I doubt that anyone not raised in the 'Maori way' would ever understand the Haka and the challenge on entering a marae as anything other than a direct, real and present threat to one's physical well-being. It is the same as the horn blowing you mentioned. Without knowing the meaning, one would tend to respond in kind, and therefore 'you' would view them as being the aggressor. I've lived here all my life, I've been on a marae a couple of times, but I've never had a moko'd spear-waving 'savage' come bounding towards me making threatening gestures - should that ever happen, chances are I'd be wanting to defend myself by dealing to him before he dealt to me. Quelle insult, to Maori - simple preservation to me. And I'm not so different to most non-Maori.

I can understand that. The recent incident in the Far North was a little on the extreme end of the scale, and I must admit that if I was standing on the marae in front of that wero I would not have known whether I was safe or not .. and might have reacted the way you suggest ... That, I suspect, would be quite amusing, as the moko'ed warrior may well not have known what to do next, (except lie on the ground unconscious) nor his companions, as they probably have been taught how to do a wero as part of a welcome - and not been taught what to do if the visitors respond in a different way than just standing there waiting to pick up the taki ...

Yep. Stories. Not always the truth, either. Depends who's telling them, eh?
We are defined by our pasts. But do we really need to be controlled by our pasts? Which is what I see happening with the grievance industry.

We do not need to be controlled by our past (just how possible that is is another interesting discussion).

For Māori, Pākehā are trying to define us by defining our past - but their "Māori past" is not our "Māori past" ... Just as we in some ways, define Pākehā by our versions of their past ..

Remove any preferential treatment, scrap the maori seats in parliament, and perhaps the maori party too, I mean we can't be together if we are treated differently can we?

Love to. Absolutely love to. I hope we can get to the point where they are not necessary ... At this moment in time they are necessary. In some ways they are more necessary as part of the internal Māori processes, of restoring a sense of personal identity ... and also gainign a sense of political power ... not to be the ones in power but to share power with our friends and relations.

But in a worst case senario, if the population trends continue and by around 2050 the majority population of this country will be Polynesian-based (Māori and Pasifika) then it may well be that there is a demand for specific "Pākehā" seats ... I won't be around to see it - but I would hate a reversal like that ... it's not moving forward ...

I do see a change in the young peopel tho' ... to many of them the diffrerences between Māori and Pākehā are not relevent ... it's not part of the world they live in and it's a good sign ...

Banditbandit I appreciate and respect you for the time you have spend recording this piece of history.

However with this respect, I also have some contempt as Maori like all the other NZer's have benefited from our colonising these lands,

Hmmm ... we did not ask to be colonised, and the benefits are by your definition. We also suffered all the negative effects of colonisation, and for many of our people these far outway the benefits - such as poor health, poor education, drug and alcohol abuse, violence .. and on and on ...

for you to determine that we are responsible for the Maori issues of the day,

The European colonizers are responsible. Yes, the major colonization happened in the past - however the colonizerd are still present and still acting like colonizers.

In a small example, I have a friend with twin daughters. One looks Pākehā and the other Māori - because they look different they were treated differnetly at primary school - and a couple of teachers refused to accept they were sister, let alone twins. Why, in the 21st Century are teachers in our schools treating Māori and Pākehā children differently ? That does place some responsibility on Pākehā for our issues .. and a responsibility for them to change ...

is to admit you take no responsibility for your extended family,

Recognising the origins of the problems determine the ways forward. As above, there needs to be change in the Pākehā world in relation to Māori - we are not responsible for making that change happen ... Pākehā are

There are things that we can do - and are doing - I have worked in education in the Māori world for the last 18 years, working to improve our people . I haven't been an active protestor for something like 30 years - as there is a role for such action, but it is very frustrating and in the end, I can achieve more "at the coal face" ... we are taking responsibility and working to move forward ... it's a slow and frustrating process at times ... just as frustrating for us as for you ... maybe more so for us because our own people can drive us to dispair ...

we as a country have acknowledged past atrocities and for a small country have in that acknowledgement given over much of NZ's wealth

Much of this nation's wealth ? I agree that the settlements are occuring, but as a quantum ? From the early 1990s to today (say over 14 years) the treaty settlements total less the One Billion Dollars. (about $700million) To put that in some kind of context (because, let's face it, to most of us One Billion Dollars is a huge amount of money) NZ's GDP in 2009 was around 132 billion dollars ... the treaty settlements have cost less than one percent of one year's GDP ...

for you to begin to right the pain, leaving the distribution to your peoples, this action of asking for compensation creates a division, how can we be one people when part of the partnership continually demands the country pays for its past mistakes, you in fact create the division.

Yes - I can see that. I have no idea what to do about it, except keep talking to each other ... I've frequently been involved in a similar argument .. I've come to the conclusion that its an argument because we have different ideas of what is "fair" ... not different as Māori and Pākehā, but as human beings - a different ideology - that's why some of us vote National, some Labour, some Greens and some Māori Party.

We do not ask that the country continually pays for its past mistakes ... (Yeah, OK, some of us seem to .. I argue with them as well ...) we ask for a place as equals with our Pāehā friends and relations - not as the violent, criminal, drug addicts of society ... not as the dumb ones who will not suceed in schools because we are lacking something ... who are destined to be manual labourers, shearers, prisoners ..

Having an economic base to work from is important ... money is important in today's world ...

I don't have the answers and I'm not sure you have either, different interpretations of history are just that, to-day our future is important, history but explains a little of what we are made off.

Be strong.

I believe history explains a lot of what we are made of today ... Pākehā New Zealand seems to forget it's history to easily ... possibly because the history of White New ZEaland is one of the shortest in the world - and people have been disassociated physically from their own past. But the slightly rebellious, anti-authoritian streak in NZ society coupled with a near classless society can be traced back to Europe, and the rejection of those social constructions by the white immigrants ...

The old "Colonial Cringe" came straight from that history ... as did the Tall Poppy syndrome ...

History influences today .. and the future .. we can only be free of that if we undertand that ..