Re: [pf] effects of colonisation in New Zealand

At 15:08 6/9/2000 -0700, I (David Mac) wrote, to: Positive Futures list :-
>· Here's an example of the sort of political debate a State can have if
>some form of Proportional Representation is used.  
>
>... the political debate on our Associate Mäori Affairs Minister Tariana
Turia's comments ...

[ followed by the two Peace Movement Aotearoa posts on her comments.]

· I value a knowledgable historical view. I make a major distinction
between observations, and interpretations or explanations. I distrust the
latter.

· When I was growing up in the late 1940s, here in NZ, I remember that the
common attitude to Mäori was indeed: "The neglect of a people who were seen
as losers in the schema of human evolution ...".

· Other excerpts:
  "The Te Atiawa conquest of the Chatham Islands in 1835 proved to be every
bit a holocaust to the Moriori tangata whenua [the people who are currently
part of the land of their ancestors]. The Chathams annexation was pure
conquest and genocide for the purpose of colonisation. Te Atiawa even used
the pakeha court system to formally legitimate their conquest.
   The British colonisation of New Zealand was quite different from the
Taranaki conquest of the Chathams."
      D.

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At 11:51 8/9/2000 +1200, Christiaan Briggs sent on to GreenViews-NZ list,
Subject: [GV] Conquest and Trauma in our Archipelago :-

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0009/S00030.htm
  is:

Keith Rankin's Thursday Column;  7 September 2000

Conquest and Trauma in our Archipelago

Tariana Turia's controversial comments about Maori being victims of
"post-colonial traumatic stress disorder" and her analogy between the
holocaust and the fate of Taranaki Maori raise a number of issues and
deserve to be taken seriously.

Problems today relating to domestic violence, child abuse, mental illness
and pregnancy outside of a stable relationship are all overrepresented
among Maori. Low socioeconomic status is not enough of an explanation.
Further, such an explanation begs the question of why Maori should be
economically disadvantaged.

Before considering The Associate Minister of Maori Affairs' psychological
theory, it is necessary to put her views on Aotearoa history into perspective.

The years 1820-1840 were years of genocide, ethnic cleansing and conquest
in our archipelago. The best known culprits were Ngati Toa (led, from
Kawhia, by Te Rauparaha) and Te Atiawa (Taranaki). Their victims were the
indigenous iwi of the coastal areas from Manawatu to Wellington to Banks
Peninsula (especially the Horowhenua iwi, Muaupoko) and of the Chatham
Islands (Moriori). Pakeha were unwitting accessories to these conquests,
supplying guns and ships.

In another important but little known episode, Taranaki women and children
committed mass suicide by jumping from the steep cliffs of Pukerangiora
(Waitara) in 1831, 30 years before that site became a battleground in the
Taranaki Wars of the early 1860s. Defeated by the Waikato iwi, the Taranaki
women faced a choice between death and slavery. They chose death.

Pukerangiora probably doesn't qualify as a holocaust. There are parallels
with 'The Holocaust' though. The Jewish survivors of the Nazis responded by
annexing Palestine, someone else's turangawaewae. Likewise Taranaki Maori.
Having migrated to Horowhenua and found themselves in conflict with another
group of immigrants (Te Rauparaha's blood allies, Ngati Raukawa), Te Atiawa
looked further afield.

The Te Atiawa conquest of the Chatham Islands in 1835 proved to be every
bit a holocaust to the Moriori tangata whenua. The Chathams annexation was
pure conquest and genocide for the purpose of colonisation. Te Atiawa even
used the pakeha court system to formally legitimate their conquest.

The British colonisation of New Zealand was quite different to the Taranaki
conquest of the Chathams. Globalisation had begun with Magellan over 300
years before. Eventually our archipelago would be drawn in. The process
could have been much more traumatic than it turned out to be. Indeed, as
James Belich points out, even as late as the 1860s, the 'kupapa'
("friendly") Maori thought that the British and the settler militias were
supporting them in their wars.

The reality was that the British colonisation of New Zealand was a process
of settlement by a more numerous people - a settlement for the most part
not opposed by Maori - and not a process of conquest. Furthermore, the
fellow traveller of colonisation - disease - affected Maori less than
almost all other peoples not previously exposed to the microbes of Europe,
Asia or Africa.

It is true that pakeha settlers brought with them a version of Darwinism
that seems crude to us today. Not understanding that it was the relative
lack of immunity to disease that led to the decimation of indigenous
peoples, Europeans tended to see what was happening as a superior "race"
having selective advantages over "primitive" peoples. (Europeans chose to
ignore their own argument when it became obvious that African slaves had a
greater immunity to disease than Europeans.)

The neglect of a people who were seen as losers in the schema of human
evolution is not a holocaust, is not genocide. Nevertheless, the numerical
majority tends to determine the dominant political culture. Maori have been
expected to adapt to an alien British culture, a culture that emphasises
individual over collective responsibility; a culture that regulates through
exit rather than through voice.

So Tariana Turia's main point is valid, and important. Pity then about the
references to Maori as victims of holocaust and conquest.

The high rates of Maori child abuse, domestic violence, self abuse, mental
illness, unplanned pregnancy etc. are a consequence of what might be called
'cultural colonisation'. There is real anger, real trauma out there in many
Maori families.

We need to listen to Maori anger, rather than patronise it. Pakeha culture
does impose poverty traps, and sets contradictory expectations. We expect
men to be providers, but run the economy in such a way as to deny many the
opportunity to contribute other than through paid work. We make individuals
accountable for social problems. We try to 'solve' problems by removing the
individuals deemed guilty of causing them. One way or another, we separate
many Maori fathers from their children while pretending they are still
responsible for their children when they pay Child Support levies not to
the mothers or the children but to the government. We push them into crimes
- like burglary or cannabis dealing - as the only way to get out of their
debt-exacerbated poverty traps. And when the violence continues unabated,
we respond by trying harder to root out even greater numbers of guilty
individuals.

The individualisation of social problems affects pakeha too. But pakeha
better understand and adapt to the rules of individualism and exit. Pakeha
created that kind of value system. Exited pakeha tend to move on, and start
new lives.

Just as the pakeha culture embraced a form of two-faced Darwinism, it also
expresses double standards with respect to voice. When women commit crimes
of violence, there are always excuses voiced. When men commit such crimes,
there is never an excuse. The man has simply made a choice. We don't want
to know about his anger. He must simply suppress his anger.

This all makes the present situation very interesting. The most recent
appalling acts of violence on children have been committed by Maori women.
We still blame the men though, preferring to hark back to James Whakaruru
who, unlike most victims of child abuse, was abused by his natural father.
We seem unable to understand that the exit of angry fathers creates spaces
in children's and mothers' lives that will be filled by angry boyfriends,
girlfriends, uncles, aunties, grandparents and step-parents.

Ms Turia's strategy is to treat Maori men and Maori women the same. Both
are presented as victims as well as perpetrators of violence. She's
absolutely right. The problem won't go away if we deny Maori women voice by
making them accountable in the 'no excuses' way we make men accountable. Of
course she's not excusing Maori domestic violence. Nevertheless, in her own
way, she is trying to give Maori - all Maori - voice. There are deep-seated
social, economic and historical traumas that lie behind Maori behaviour today.

Taranaki Maori abandoned the Chatham Islands in the late 1860s, although
they did not give up their imperial rights of conquest. Te Atiawa
consolidated in the 1870s in their homeland, at Parihaka. They adopted
passive resistance to pakeha appropriation of their Taranaki lands. And
they adopted the Moriori 'white feather' emblem. Indeed they continued to
use the Chathams as an economic resource, even using pacifism to intimidate
the islands' now mainly pakeha population, a situation that Michael King
describes as "redolent with irony". The most important lesson though, is
that a violent and traumatised group of Maori changed in a comparatively
short time, when living at Parihaka under conditions of inclusiveness and
collective responsibility.

The stories of colonisation and conquest in these islands have no goodies
and baddies. Tariana Turia is wrong to give the impression that Maori do
bad things because wicked pakeha conquered beneficent Maori. But she is
right to note that Maori today live in an alien social environment; in a
society whose expectations reduce to a kind of multi-choice test in which
all of the answers are wrong. We know the anger is there because violence
towards children cannot take place without some deep-seated anger. A
willingness to listen to and acknowledge such anger is not the same as
justifying it. We cannot ignore child abuse. Nevertheless anger cannot be
defused if we do not even try to understand its social origins.

We - Maori and pakeha - are social beings, who need to contribute to the
creation of something of social value. The answers lie in the economy, but
outside the market economy.

© 2000 Keith Rankin
Thursday Column Archive (2000): http://pl.net/~keithr/thursday2000.html
 
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sent to the Positive Futures discussion list by David.
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
http://www.emucities.com.au/member/davd/index.html#top
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