A retired Canterbury University Professorial Board member, Bruce has been deeply engaged in studying New Zealand History in his retirement. In his working life Bruce has been a rocket scientist in the UK and Australia, a fellow of the UK Institute of Physics, a director of the Canterbury University Computer Centre, a national President of the NZ Computer Society, an Honorary Fellow of the New Zealand Institute Information Technology Professionals, an officer in the Naval Reserve and he was the first person to install a computer in a New Zealand university.
Bruce is the author of "Real Treaty; False Treaty - The True Waitangi Story".
Also "New Zealand The Fair Colony" > second edition, August 2020, which gives much factual information about New Zealand’s history and exposes fake accounts which are widely current. For more information, enquire from charlton@farmside.co.nz
The truth must be told again!
When Hobson arrived in New Zealand on 29th January 1840, equipped with a 4200-word brief from Colonial Secretary Lord Normanby, he knew what he had to do. If the Maori chiefs wanted the protection of the Queen they had one choice: to sign a document ceding all their rights of sovereignty, whatever they were, to the Queen.
As Hobson took pains to explain to them in due course: “as the law of England gives no civil powers to Her Majesty out of her dominions, her efforts to do you good will be futile unless you consent.”[1] Moreover, all Maoris were to be offered in due course by Article Third of the Treaty, all the rights and duties of the people of England; remarkable for its generosity in its day.
Yet today we have Jacinta Ruru and Jacobi Kohu-Morris of the University of Otago talking of[2] “concept(s) .. imposed over the top of existing indigenous nations and legal systems”, an extraordinary extrapolation from the actual articles of the treaty. The sheer absurdity of this sort of statement in the New Zealand context must surely be obvious to everybody except of course those who are determined not to see. There was neither nation nor legal system nor anything indigenous in anything Maori. They were a collection of independent tribes often in brutal conflict with each other.
Hobson set to work forthwith to make the first essential step: to draft a version in English of the requisite document. As a straightforward and experienced sailor he knew well how to make a plain language statement – often at sea, men’s live might depend on it. His obvious assistant was his personal secretary, James Freeman, appointed by Governor Gipps of New South Wales, anxious to rid himself of a number of incompetents.[3] Freeman, a product of Eton and Oxford, had a headful of the pretentious language used in European diplomatic exchanges. After two days of producing incompatible drafts which still exist in our archives, Hobson dismissed Freeman and sought the help of Busby who succeeded on 3rd February in producing an initial draft for Hobson’s attention.
Thereupon, the following day, at the spacious home of James Clendon, a British subject and American consul, with Busby as scribe and Clendon in attendance and providing paper from his own private stock not used officially elsewhere, Hobson proceeded to produce a document in English, duly dated 4th February, for translation into the Maori language.
This done by mid-afternoon, Hobson proceeded the short distance across the water to the mission station at Paihia and requested Henry Williams, the Head of the Mission, to translate it and provide for him by the following morning a text in Maori. With the aid of his son, Edward Marsh Williams, who was very competent in that language, Williams did so. This text, with one word changed when reviewed the next morning, was of course the text known to all as “The Treaty of Waitangi”, signed by rather more than forty chiefs over the next few days.
Meanwhile, Freeman, sidelined by Hobson from the work of treaty preparation, and with no authority to do so, set to work to write what he thought a proper English version and succeeded in getting it away to Governor Gipps in Sydney by the storeship “Samuel Winter” on 8th February.
Clendon, for his part, made a copy of Hobson’s genuine text on paper from the same stock as the 4th February document was written, and with minor adjustments – correcting Busby’s spelling mistake: “Sovreignty” and with “6th February”, the actual date on which the signing took place − in his capacity as US Consul, sent it on 20th February to the US Secretary of State, John Forsyth.
Then on 30th March, US explorer Charles Wilkes arrived in the Bay of Islands in his storm-battered ship, USS Vincennes and in his own words proceeded “to inquire into the actual state of these islands”. From Administrator Shortland via Consul Clendon he was provided with the actual final text of 4th February which his writer proceeded to copy exactly, Busby’s mistakes included, and making a few of his own![4] Both documents exist today in US archives.
This done, Clendon never returned the final text and in due course amongst his private papers it came into the hands of his solicitor, Henry Littlewood and disappeared from public view until 1989 when it was found amongst her mother’s effects by Beryl Needham, a descendant of Littlewood.
Dubbed by some official “the Littlewood Treaty”, establishment figures have done all that they can to discredit it. The official line is that expressed in response to a questioner by Hon. Margaret Wilson, the then Associate Minister of Justice, on 27th July 2004: “A written treaty ... has no validity unless signed by both parties. The “Littlewood” Treaty was not signed”. ... While the “Littlewood Treaty” may be of historical interest, it has no official status.”
This was the line taken in the Treaty-2-U caravan which was taken around the country in 2006 to promulgate the official treaty story. So this flimsy dodge avoids the fact that it was the version in English whose composition was a vital step in the production of the actual treaty. Nobody pretends that it was an executable document in its own right but its historical importance is vital because it says precisely in English what is said in the treaty in Maori and, as can be seen from it, the steps Hobson took to observe his mandate from Lord Normanby.
In only one significant way, does the substance of the treaty differ from Hobson’s 4th February English version. Between “tangata” and ‘katoa” in Article third, Williams inserted “maori” on whom specifically the rights of the people of England were to be conferred. Since existing British subjects had such rights already and it was not desired to include foreigners, this was appropriate. This is further and indeed compelling evidence that the document dated 4h February was not a translation of the Treaty document in Maori but preceded it. It can only have been written on 4th February and is correctly dated. There is no evidence to the contrary.
The critical importance of all this is that, given the well-established authenticity of the inaccurately dubbed “Littlewood Treaty”, the document in English from which the treaty was translated, any translation of the treaty itself to English is entirely unnecessary and can be, at least, twice removed from the actual document in English which was read out at Waitangi on 5th February 1840.
So what actually happened at Waitangi?
It is clear that when a large number of chiefs assembled at Waitangi on that fateful couple of days that they meant business and that they grasped the nature of that business. Their words at Waitangi on 5/2/1840, clearly those of articulate speakers, recorded at the time by Colenso, leave not the slightest doubt that they knew what they were doing. Very few commentators ever note this fact.
There were barely twenty four hours between Hobson’s presentation to the chiefs and their near-unanimous acceptance of his proposals. They did not seek explanations of fine points of meaning. Those who were bilingual did not quibble about differences between Hobson’s English text of 4th and the Williams’ text in Maori. Apart from some clarification of religious matters, few questions were asked. When the chiefs adjourned to Tii marae to debate the matter, there is no report of any of them referring back to him for clarification of what he proposed. Next morning more than forty were ready to sign and did so.
Subsequently their decision was emphatically endorsed by about five hundred chiefs around the country who added their signatures.
So what was actually agreed at Waitangi?
(1) The chiefs ceded such sovereignty as each possessed to the Queen on the most generous terms for any native race in the history of colonisation.
In the absence of any word in classic Maori for “sovereignty”, the Williams in their translation chose “kawanatanga”, a synthetic word obviously comprising a transliteration of “governor” with a suffix meaning “-ship”. Time after time, commentators claim that this meant that only “government” and not sovereignty was ceded to the Queen. This is false and superficial reasoning because translation is not the same as derivation. Many examples could be given. The words of chiefs recorded at Waitangi and elsewhere leave no doubt that they knew that by signing they would become subordinate to the Queen. They knew they would cede sovereignty; that is the tribal autonomy of each, not the sovereign authority of a non-existent nation – and they did!
(2) By Article third all Maoris (tangata maori katoa [sic]) received the protection of the Queen and the same rights and duties as the people of England. “Rights” was translated by the Williams as “tikanga”. Note that this referred to the rights of English people, not whatever “tikanga” meant in a Maori context. It included protection from any foreign power, in particular the French of whom Maoris wore mortally afraid.
In essence, remarkable indeed in their generosity those terms are, that is all! However, the essentially redundant[5] Article Second is the one which has been mercifully exploited with glaring omissions and half-truths (or less) by our legion of treaty-twisters!!! Here is how.
This article assured all the people of New Zealand − tangata katoa o Nu Tirani − that is all, of the possession − tino rangatiratanga − of their homes and personal property − “taonga”. Herein lie two plausible though false chinks in the translation which the treaty-twisters exploit to the full.
(1) The first is that Maoris had no real conception of a right enjoyed by the people of England, now granted to them: possessions of private property – of which they could be deprived at whim by chiefs and others of senior status, such as rangatiras, in the very hierarchical Maori tribal society. In this way the Williams sought to extend to all of them what had hitherto been only a right of Maori chiefs. Nevertheless, it needs to be said again since the treaty-twisters so flagrantly ignore it, Article second applied to all the people of New Zealand.
More and more today, do we see part-Maori radicals waving a black, white and red flag which they call the “tino rangatiratanga” flag, claiming that those two words in the Treaty somehow mean that there is something called “maori sovereignty” which continues to exist. Nothing could be further from the truth. No such thing ever existed as a unified concept.
(2) The word for “property” used appropriately by the Williams was “taonga”. It had first been defined by Hongi Hika in assisting Lee and Kendall in compiling the first Maori dictionary in 1820 as “property procured by the spear” – “tao”. It had been broadened by 1831 when thirteen Ngapuhi chiefs wrote to King William seeking his protection of themselves and their property which was “nothing but timber, flax, pork and potatoes” - the latter two of course, courtesy of Europeans. Its meaning expanded to include the great variety of European material goods but nevertheless William Williams in his 1844 dictionary still defined it simply as “property”. That was still its meaning in P.M. Ryan’s 1974 dictionary.
Since then part-Maori opportunists have unashamedly expanded its meaning to include anything their greedy minds aspire to acquire. One notorious example was when a feeble old man was claimed to be a “taonga”. Gullible white men thereupon allowed him to jump the queue for a major operation and within a few months he was dead from other natural causes.
More sweeping is their claim that the electromagnetic spectrum – barely known in 1840 – is another “taonga” and officialdom continues meekly to award very valuable and extensive rights to it to part-Maori interests. There is every sign that they are now making similar spurious claims with respect to natural water. If other New Zealanders are stupid enough to give in to these spurious claims, then they will inevitably pay for the consequences.
And at Cabinet Level
With the rigid denial of the authenticity of the so-called “Littlewood Treaty” which, as the primary source in English, would be superior to any translation, officialdom in consequence needs an “official translation” of the actual Treaty. The first such translation was made by T.E. Young of the Native Department in 1869 but Cabinet decided to adopt a 1989 translation by Sir Hugh Kawharu.
All well and good, you may say, considering his distinguished academic record. This does not exempt it from a further critical look since it is taken to be authoritative in all cabinet considerations concerning the Treaty of Waitangi and any implications of it. These are perhaps more extensive today than at any previous time in its 182 year history – a truly astonishing situation which, surely, is matched by few other purported treaties of anything like its great age! [6]
Kawharu offered a number of footnotes to his translation but most of them do not ring true in the light of our earlier commentary. Most flagrant is his “footnote” about “taonga” thus:
“As submissions to the Waitangi Tribunal concerning the Maori language have made clear, ‘taonga’ refers to all dimensions of a tribal group’s estate, material and non-material – heirlooms and wahi tapu (sacred places), ancestral lore and whakapapa (genealogies), etc.”
In the first place, Kawharu could hardly have done worse than refer to proceedings of the Waitangi Tribunal as his ultimate authority. As veteran newspaperman, Brian Priestley who sat in on Tribunal proceedings for three months observed: “it would be hard to imagine any public body less well organised to get at the truth” (Sunday Star-Times, 30 May 2010).
Yet even worse, in using a modern meaning of a word in translating a document written in 1840 when its meaning was quite different, he commits a gross error, quite unforgivable in any academic, let alone one of his exalted standing.
So there we all are, with Cabinet allowing itself to be grossly deceived by a flagrant distortion of the meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi, held so dear by so many, with the loss of major assets of the people of New Zealand on spurious grounds to a racially defined group, almost all of whom are direct descendants of colonists from Britain to whom they direct their hatred today and whose tribal ancestors might have been killed in the incessant tribal wars, had not British colonisation saved them from themselves.
There are more plain truths:
1. A “Treaty Partnership” is a fake
2. “Treaty Principles” are a fake
3. The legislated “Treaty in English” is a fake.
We shall have more to say on these sorry realities.
Footnotes:
[1] Colenso’s account, checked at the time by Busby. (full reference available).
[2] Atea Otago, 2 February 2022. which states: “This content was created in paid partnership with the University of Otago ... a vibrant contributor to Maori development and the realisaton of Maori aspirations, through our Maori Strategic framework and world-class researchers and teachers.”
[3] As recorded by Buick (reference available)
[4] C.Wilkes, USS Vincennes letter book, copy of despatch Number 64, Microfilm 1262 University of Auckland Library pp 163-4, original at Kansas Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas.
[5] Apart from the provision for sale of Maori land which soon became unworkable, Article second guaranteed rights to Maoris implicit in Article third and to other British subjects who had those rights already.
[6] Coincidentally, it was in mid-March of the same year that the so-called “Littlewood” Treaty was found by Beryl Needham among the effects of Ethel Littlewood, her recently deceased mother.
Courtesy > https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2022/04/bruce-moon-truth-must-be-told-again.html
O’MALLEY’S RANGIAOWHIA PUT STRAIGHT
Yet again, that hydra-headed monster, the false tale of the burning of a church or “whare karakia” at Rangiaowhia, has reared an ugly head from the pen of Vincent O’Malley.(1)
The very name of his book, “Voices from the New Zealand Wars” should be enough to alert the reader for the plain reason that, with the cessation by 1840 of the ferocious “Musket Wars” amongst the Maori tribes there was never again a war in New Zealand, not even a civil war. There were of course a number of tribal rebellions, that of some Waikato tribes in the 1860s being perhaps the most serious,(2) with both Ngapuhi and Arawa offering warriors to assist in its suppression.
As O’Malley notes, Rangiaowhia had been nominated as a safe place for women, children and old men but he omits mentioning that as the primary food source for the rebels holding the strong fort of Paterangi, this had been totally compromised by its being actively engaged in the rebellion.
It may be, as claimed by O’Malley, that to the rebels “the assault on Rangiaowhia was an almost incomprehensible act of treachery. They had complied with requests to remove their families out of harm’s way, only for the troops to deliberately target them in the most horrific manner possible. In their eyes, those killed in the attack were not victims of war: they were non-combatants who had been brutally murdered.” As one might truly remark in today’s vernacular “yeah right!”
What O’Malley claims here treats the real facts with contempt. In fact, in deciding to occupy Rangiaowhia in a surprise move at dawn, the humanitarian General Cameron(3) planned to do so with minimal casualties on both sides. When the troops arrived, the first move was Captain Wilson’s call to the women and children to move out of harm’s way and most did just that, by an escape to the nearby property of Thomas Power and his wife, Rahapa Te Hauata where a white flag was raised and they were not touched any further.
With the cavalry proceeding to enter the village and contrary to O’Malley’s claim that it was “essentially undefended” they encountered small arms fire from the Catholic church where a considerable number of rebels had gathered but the latter, finding that its thin weatherboard walls gave no protection against musket balls, retreated quickly and took no further part in the action. It might all have ended there, just as General Cameron had hoped, with just two rebels shot by musket fire but alas that was not to be!
It was then that Captain Wilson’s attention was drawn to a “slab hut”(4) from which a woman, a boy and a “large Maori” emerged when called upon to do so, the latter made prisoner by Corporal Little.(5) On being informed that some Maoris remained inside the hut. Captain Wilson ordered Sergeant McHale, the only Australian in his force, to enter the hut and call on its occupants to surrender.
When McHale obeyed, he was immediately shot dead by the hut’s principal occupant, “Hoani Papita” (“John the Baptist”), grandfather of Potatau. In the rapid escalation of fire which followed the hut was set ablaze, possibly by the troops, several of whom fell, including the mortally wounded Colonel Nixon. Then, knowing that all was lost, an old man emerged waving a white blanket in, no doubt, a futile gesture to word off the musket fire – alleged to be a “white flag” in a tale told at the Te Awamutu museum today. Despite their officers’ orders to hold their fire, in the heat of the battle, he fell to a volley from the troops as did two more who followed him.
When the action had ceased, the troops who entered the remains of the hut found several bodies, charred almost beyond recognition, including that of McHale and two women, said to be daughters of Kereopa Te Rau, notorious for swallowing the eyes of missionary Volkner and drinking his blood from his skull.(6)
After the action, the troops retired to Otawhao, now Te Awamutu, taking a number of prisoners with them, some wounded, and some women and children. Tents were pitched for their use. There was a total of seventeen deaths from the action, twelve rebels, all but two at the slab hut, and five of the troops of whom Colonel Nixon died later from his wounds.
As historian Chris Pugsley has observed, this was the decisive action of the entire conflict, a major blow to the morale of the kingitanga, so that the end of armed resistance was only a matter of time and peace returned to this troubled corner of New Zealand.
Sadly, however, it was not the end of the story as Captain Wilson found out at the great meeting at Kopua some months afterwards. There he was informed by two Wesleyan ministers that “there was one thing the natives were sore about, namely the kohuru [murder] at Rangiaohia” [sic].
It was the rebels themselves, furious at being so outwitted, who concocted the colossal lie of the burning of a church full of women and children, the reported “anguish” about this festering in Ngati Apakura to the present day.(7) The 1991 hearsay of a man, one Mac Burt, about it all and the tale of an old Maori woman described by him in O’Malley’s tale should be seen in this light. We have heard O’Malley’s “ring of authenticity” from others before him!( 8)
It was noted rebel leader, Wiremi Kingi, who told the truth: “There was only one house burnt; that was the house where the Maoris died. I went there and saw it.”
So why, I ask, are so many New Zealanders today(9), so ready to blacken the record of our colonial past, humane by any standard of history and one which indeed, saved war-torn, slave-holding, cannibal Maori society from itself?
That, gentle readers, is not a rhetorical question!!!
Bruce Moon,
Nelson,
11 December 2021
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1 V. O’Malley, “Voices from the New Zealand Wars”, Bridget Williams Books, 2021
2 At one stage they planned to attack Auckland with wholesale slaughter of its inhabitants.
3 Whose “commendable humanitarianism” is described by military chaplain, Frank Glen in “Australians at War in New Zealand”, ISBN978-1-87742-739-8, p2011, p.146
4 Of various descriptions of this edifice, this appears to be the most accurate!
5 They were in fact the boy Potatau who later gave a most detailed account of his experiences, with his mother and father.
6 M. A.Tagg, “The Martyr’s Crown”, ISBN 0-473-11187-X, 2006
7 As reported in “Waikato Times” for 9/12/17.
8 In the report of the Waitangi Tribunal in favour of the swindle which was the Ngai Tahu claim accepted by it and the Bolger government. (For a careful analysis, works by A. Everton, M. Butler and D. Hampton may be cited.)
9 by Tommy Wilson in the “Bay of Plenty Times”, 12/8/09; in Eraka’s Blog in Tainui News, 7/5/14, by JOC Phillips on air, 2/4/16, by Susan Devoy in the “Bay of Plenty Times”. 4/1/17, by Vincent O’Malley in “The Listener”, 25/2/17, by deceived children of Otorohanga College, by Leah Bell at Fairfield College, Hamilton, to students of seven schools, at the invitation of principal, Richard Crawford, by Bishop Lowe of Hamilton, preaching in March 2021
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BRUCE MOON WRITES TO THE SCHOOL PRINCIPLES RE RANGIOAWHIA
Dear School Principal,
As reported in Stuff, a few days ago students from your school attended an address at Fairfield College by Leah Bell, a Research Consultant with Vincent O’Malley. The principal topic of her address was an alleged account of events at Rangiaowhia on 21st February 1864.
It is with deep concern that I advise you that while this account has been around for a long time and indeed it continues to get much publicity today, it is entirely false – a gross distortion of events on that day and a slander on General Cameron and his troops.
I enclose with this letter a short critique of the reported account by Ms Bell to substantiate what I say here. To the email copy of this letter, I attach also a full account of what actually occurred there, based on the words of some who took part, with extensive references.
The damage to the minds of your students from the tale that they heard needs no emphasis from me.
Like school Principals in New Zealand, I much favour the teaching of New Zealand history in our schools, but you must surely agree that accuracy and truth in its contents are of paramount importance. There are however, significant indications that this is not likely to be the case, and that, for instance, the topic of the Treaty of Waitangi will not be presented accurately. This must surely be of much concern to you as it is to me.
I have recently published a collection of my essays on topics in New Zealand’s history, originally prepared for the History Teachers’ Conference at Waitangi in July last year, to which I was personally invited, but which was regrettably cancelled owing to the outbreak of Covid. I commend it to you. Enquire from charlton@farmside.co.nz to obtain copies.
My compliments,
Bruce Moon, Nelson
To the principals of:
Fairfield College Hamilton, Girls’ High School Waikato, Diocesan School Sacred Heart,
St Paul’s Collegiate, Fraser High School Rotorua, Girls’ High School Otorohanga College
and others
Bruce’s ‘short letter of critique’ – can be read here > https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LPHjvpuS4ktDdiok-2wtOrnPdTGpdJMCplQBa21BBHA/edit?usp=sharing
Bruce’s ‘ full account of what actually occurred’ – can be read here > https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Szg0vCm8b_2IcnMG1ZXamngNnwhq5cr0makvqvi0Q30/edit?usp=sharing
A link to the Stuff article here > https://www.stuff.co.nz/pou-tiaki/124709414/the-new-zealand-wars-affect-everyone-speakers-at-hamilton-high-school-stress-importance-of-learning-history
ROTORUA BOYS’ HIGH SCHOOL IN THE NEWS
In recent days, for three reasons, Rotorua Boys’ High School has been in the news.
1. It has been awarded “Apple Distinguished School” status.
2. In a “first” it has appointed a woman of Maori descent as Deputy Principal.
3. It has disposed of the portraits of four distinguished Englishmen because, as research by the boys is said to have found out, they had links with slavery.
Let us take these events one-by-one.
1. “Apple Distinguished School” status.
Rotorua Boys’ High School has received this award because it shares Apple’s vision for education.
We congratulate the school for this distinction. It joins 534 other schools in 32 countries.
2. In a “first” it has appointed a woman of Maori descent as Deputy Principal.
We congratulate Rie Morris upon her appointment and wish her well in it. Her descent, she says, is from the Te Arawa, Ngati Rangi and Ngati Whakaue tribes.
3. It has disposed of the portraits of four distinguished English seamen because, as research by the boys is said to have found out, they had links with slavery
Well, let us say at the outset: slavery is one of the most abhorrent of all human abuses upon their fellows. Some general observations are:
Slavery is and has been widespread throughout history, practised by every race, in every culture, country and civilization the world has known – possibly some minor and remote tribes excepted.
In many parts of the world. slavery, in one shape or form, continues to exist today.
It is to the clear credit of “Western Civilization”, of the “white race” on this earth, that slavery has been abolished amongst them and they continue to be pre-eminent in its suppression......
Read on here > https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2020/11/bruce-moon-rotorua-boys-high-school-in.html
It is reported in ‘newsroom” for 11/11/20 that the leaders of the Maori Party have said:
"From seeking to rebuild their communities – South Taranaki and eastern Bay of Plenty – from the ravages of land alienation. From lived memories of the brutal seizures in Taranaki, that the Waitangi Tribunal and former Māori Party co-leader Dame Tariana Turia called a holocaust, memories that still cut very deep."
This statement is such a distortion of the truth that it is all too reminiscent of the words of Nazi propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels – those Nazis actually responsible for the real holocaust. “Tell a big enough lie often enough,” said Hitler “and people will believe it.”
Of the true situation in Taranaki, missionary Samuel Ironside wrote in 1862:
“I have lived twenty years in New Zealand in the capacity of a Wesleyan Methodist Missionary, am tolerably conversant with the language and habits of the natives, was in and out among the poor people during many of their wars, and yield to none in a sincere desire for their welfare. ... Not an acre of land has ever been purchased from the natives except at their own repeated request, and by the free consent, as far as could be ascertained, of every individual owner.... They have now millions of acres of land unappropriated, not one tithe of which they can ever cultivate. This land has been a fruitful source of quarrel, bloodshed and violence, among themselves.”
And only a year or two earlier rebels had destroyed 177 settler farms and homesteads acquired in legitimate land transactions.
The Taranaki Maoris had more to fear from the Waikato tribes, about 1200 of them dying in the ovens of the Waikato for a cannibal feast when Pukerangiora fell in 1831. Now that was something like a “holocaust”!
And then in 1834 the “Harriet” was wrecked on the South Taranaki shore, fourteen of the crew being cooked and eaten with Mrs Guard, a survivor, offered the cooked flesh of her own brother. Even after 1840 cannibalism did not cease, with Titokowaru in his rebellion eating Maori and white victims alike.
And in the Eastern Bay of Plenty – the Opotiki area to be precise – missionary Volkner was murdered by Hau Hau rebels in 1865, his eyes being swallowed by Kereopa Te Rau who also drank Volkner’s blood from his skull in his own pulpit. Lovely people! Yet that man has now been pardoned by one of your predecessors. Every other murderer in New Zealand’s history ought to be pardoned by that standard!
And “land seizures”? Most of the land, mostly wilderness and of very little value to them, was sold eagerly by tribe after tribe in order to obtain European trading goods. There are registered records in Sydney of 179 pre-treaty land sales in the South Island alone, much of that being returned to former Maori owners in Hobson’s review after 1840. The story was much the same in the North. As you yourself have said: “roughly 80% of Maori freehold land was underutilised or underproductive”. And that is today! Imagine it in the 1860s!
It was of course in the so-called Musket Wars of 1807-1837 that slaughter, cannibalism and slavery of Maoris by Maoris reached unprecedented heights by any standards. Amongst “ravages” in the Eastern Bay of Plenty were the raid in 1818 by Ngapuhi and Ngarti Maru of Thames, reaching as far as Hicks Bay. Hongi returned to the Bay of Islands in January 1819 with a very large number of prisoners, as many as 2000 by one estimate, including many chiefs and many preserved heads of the slain. The prisoners were shared out as slaves to the families of the Ngapuhi victors. “Brutal seizures?” “Holocaust?” Come on, now. How dare any body compare colonial behaviour in Taranaki with that? Why not ask Rawiiri Waititi to tell you about all this, Jacinda – or has he somehow forgotten? And while he is at it, he could tell you about another Ngapuhi raid in 1823 led by Pomare when many Ngati Pukeko and Whakatohea were slaughtered – or has he forgotten that too?.
* * * * *
Since in general in major land purchases, Maoris villages, gardens and graveyards were reserved to them, the land which was sold was undeveloped, virtually unproductive. and much of it virtually worthless.
Yet we have Sacha McMeeking of Ngai Tahu: saying: “the value of [its] dispossessed lands lay between $12 and $15 billion.”
We have Margaret Mutu saying “thanks to a subsequent barrage of questionable land purchases and wholesale confiscations of vast tracts of New Zealand, ... the Maori lost approximately 95% of their territories.”
We have Marama Fox saying “Over the past 160 years ... 95% of our land was lost either by force or stealth.”
We have Nuk Korako writing of the “wrong” which was “the Crown’s massive theft of Maori land”.
We have Mark Solomon saying “Ngai Tahu lost 12 billion dollars worth of assets.”
We have Joshua Hitchcock claiming that “the total value of the loss suffered by Ngai Tahu amounted to $16 billion.”
“Tell a big enough lie often enough,” said Hitler “and people will believe it.”
* * * * *
Prime Minister, I am sick and tired of the perpetual lies being told by such people, many of whom have substantial more European than Maori ancestry. Many of them note their tribal affiliations but do not mention their British forebears - in some notable cases a father or grandparents! I wonder why?
I am sick and tired of fraudulent claims being accepted at face value by the corrupt Waitangi Tribunal.
I am sick and tired of government after government paying up on such a basis in transactions which amount to the robbery of other citizens of New Zealand.
I am sick and tired of the racist hatred stirred up by false claims about our colonial past and the destruction it causes in our once happy little country of New Zealand.
I thought it proper to inform you.
My compliments,
Bruce Moon
Nelson,
15 November 2020
(Note: I can of course provide full references to the quotations in this text. BM)
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THE TALL TALES OF NGATIAPA
And now we have Ngatiapa, a Nelson area tribe which, according to its cultural advisor, Kiely Nepia, (i) was "almost wiped off the face of the earth", “marginalised to a degree, ... largely without language, ... landless” and “had suffered from colonisation”.
Well now that certainly seems a sad state to be in but if indeed it “had suffered from colonisation”, why is it that, judging from the white faces of many of its members, it is largely a product of that colonization? And with a fat “Treaty Settlement” for its 846 members in 2014 of $28.374 million from its own white relatives and others, together with a substantial amount of “cultural redress”, (ii) it would appear to have done rather well at the expense of the New Zealand taxpayer.
And landless? Well a careful perusal of Jean Jackson’s lengthy and painstaking compilation of South Island land purchases in the early colonial period, (iii) records purchases from Ngatitoa, Ngatiawa, Ngatirarua, Ngatikuia, Ngatitama and Ngatikoata, a subtribe of Ngatitoa, in the supposed Ngatiapa areas but none involving Ngatiapa. A rare reference reports the Waitangi Tribunal saying there were “no Ngatiapa left in Nelson” though there were a few with eleven reported to be residing in Gore Bay. (iv)
So a reasonable conclusion must be that by the colonial period, Ngatiapa were landless and had been “almost wiped off the face of the earth", as Nepia says, but that this was the work of other Maori tribes before the British arrived!
And so it becomes appropriate to ascertain just what the history of this tribe might have been in the pre-colonial era.
Veiled in the mists of time as they may be, there are certainly accounts of people who were not Polynesian who lived in the Nelson area before any Maori arrived, variously known as Turehu, Patu-pai-arehe and Rapuwai and some physical evidence exists of their presence. (v) (vi)
Successive waves of Maori tribes wrested the land from them though a few were said to have survived in remote areas. By the time of Tasman’s arrival in Golden Bay, the land was held by Ngaitapa and Tumatakokori, who slaughtered one of Tasman’s boat’s crews. They in turn were driven from the land by Ngatikuia and Ngatiapa, Tumatakokori being extinguished as a tribe in a battle against Ngai Tahu and Ngatiapa in the Pararoa Ranges about 1810. (vii) By the 1820s Ngatiapa occupied most of the Tasman Bay area.
With continual inter-tribal warfare of one sort and another, in 1828 Ngatiapa, led by a chief Tute-perangi or Tutu joined an unsuccessful attack by a consortium of southern tribes on Kapiti Island, thus incurring the enduring wrath of Te Rauparaha. (viii) Tutu, captured, bargained for his life, saying “If I am spared, my people will give up their land to you.” Forthwith Te Rauparaha assembled an invading force of Ngatitoa, Ngatiawa and Ngatitama, all armed with muskets, and invaded the South Island. They took the Ngatiapa lands with Ngatitama and Ngatiawa becoming the dominant tribes of the Nelson area. They in turn, and on very favourable terms to themselves, sold the bulk of the land to the Colonial Government authorities. (ix)
And so, while Ngatiapa may be undergoing a “cultural revitalisation" (x) it is a gross falsehood to claim that they “had suffered from colonisation”, whatever any apology from a craven and ill-informed Government of the day may have stated. The real reason that the Ngatiapa tribe was “almost wiped off the face of the earth ... marginalised to a degree, ... largely without language, ... landless" (xi) was its participation in the interminable inter-tribal warfare of the precolonial era in which by confronting the mighty Te Rauparaha they were the losers.
If they are appealing to other New Zealanders for sympathy and material assistance in their marae-building (xii) and other current projects, they should be honest enough to say so. It was truly colonization which saved them and their 2014 “Waitangi settlement” was a rich receipt from very benevolent New Zealand taxpayers.
i K.Nepia, RNZ, 13 October 2020
ii J.Robinson et.al., “Twisting the Treaty”, 4th Ed., Appendix Six, Tross Publishing, 2018, ISBN 1-872970-33-8
iii J.Jackson, “Mistaken Maori Land Claims”, Book Seven, Treaty Series, Vol.2, Bracken Woods Projects Ltd, 2002
iv Ibid, pp 91-2
v B.Brailsford, “Song of Waitaha”, Wharariki Publishing Ltd, 2002 and W.J.Elvy, ‘Kei Puta te Wairau” 1957, reprinted by Cadsonbury Press. It has been deduced by Martin Doutré that Split Apple Rock in Golden Bay is not a natural feature but must, by some means, have been placed there by human endeavour. (Reference available from the author)
vi See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLRrUNuLC4Y&feature=youtu.be
vii Though one survivor, Kehu, accompanied Brunner on his first exploration from Nelson in 1846, while Kehu, a friend and their wives accompanied Brunner on his second, epic journey.
viii W.J.Elvy, op.cit., p 54 ff.
ix J.Jackson, op.cit. P 30 ff
x K.Nepia, op.cit.
xi In Nepia’s words
xii This should be facilitated somewhat by the $100 million dished out four days before the election by the Ardern Government for Marae projects.
MAORI AND THE ONE 1840 TREATY
WHO IS MAORI?
To the profound question of “Who is a Maori”, the official definition, as far as I can make out, is “anybody who feels like a Maori”. Apart from anything else, to define something in terms of itself is a piece of logical nonsense, a fake definition and it is surely somewhat of a sobering thought that many millions of dollars of our money have been and will be dished out by a succession of governments on the basis of a fake definition. (You may laugh or cry at that — your choice!)
ONLY ONE TREATY
Some people refer to “the Maori version of the Treaty of Waitangi”. Well, no, in actual fact there is no “Maori version”, simply one Treaty of Waitangi and that is in the Ngapuhi dialect, modified of necessity by the inclusion of some important missionary-defined words owing to the total lack in the said dialect — or any other of the many dialects spoken by various Maori tribes of words to express the concepts which it was necessary to state.
In particular, one of these (a pair to be more exact) was “tino rangatiratanga”, with capitalization by said author who must have felt that was necessary to emphasise its importance! Now we do not need at all to accept his/her suggestion to “start a conversation about what Tino Rangatiratanga might mean now instead of patronising attempts to use Māori language to continue denying it”, because it simply meant in 1840 “full possession” of property guaranteed to “tangata katoa o Nu Tirani” that is “all the people of New Zealand”, in an article which was actually redundant, because Article third guaranteed it to all Maoris and existing British subjects had that right already.
TREATY TWISTING AND THE WAITANGI TRIBUNAL
Moreover, the Treaty fell out of use shortly afterwards, until revived by our modern treaty-twisters with an entirely new alleged meaning to suit their political game-playing.
Then we get the suggestion “Maybe we should adopt not just a language but a way of thinking that’s indigenous to this country”. If this means the sort of manipulation of language and history practised by the corrupt Waitangi Tribunal, then just imagine the pigsty in which we should all land if we took it seriously. If we don’t call a halt to all the treaty-twisting and maorification of everything very soon, we shall need more than one Hercules to clean out the stables and everything else around us.
https://waikanaewatch.org/2020/10/14/maori-and-the-one-1840-treaty/
WHAT IS HAPPENING TO DEMOCRACY IN NELSON? (25/9/20)
Nelson is generally considered to be one of the more congenial cities in New Zealand and perhaps in the world – the climate mild and the people relaxed. As is to be expected, there are rather less residents of part-Maori descent than in most North Island towns. They are well integrated into the community, at least as noted by this observer, and follow a variety of trades and other occupations. Nelson also has a good record in welcoming refugees and settlers from other parts of the world, Bhutanese of Nepalese descent being just one example. The children of both newly settled and old play together happily at kindergarten, all well on the way to becoming good citizens of their town and country. (1)
People being what they are, some years ago a move was initiated to confer more political power on those of part Maori descent, giving them a special Maori ward on the Nelson City Council. In a ratepayer-initiated poll in May 2012, 79% of voters rejected this move. The result was abundantly clear – Nelson did not want such racist privilege.
And so councillors elected in 2019 were surely well aware of the wishes of those they were to represent.
But in New Zealand, racism never sleeps. At its meeting on 22 September, the Nelson City Council “voted not to pursue a Maori ward”, citing “discriminatory laws” as a reason. (2)
Well now, just by what twisted line of reasoning does our worthy Council consider that legislation is “discriminatory” - in the reported words of Mayor Rachel Reese (3) - when it protects us against flagrant racism which would give more power to one section of the community? Moreover, she is to write to the Local Government Minister, asking for a change to the 2001 Local Electoral Act to remove this protection of what she calls, inexplicably a “discriminatory piece of legislation” which is there to thwart racist discrimination!
To all this, Ngati Rarua spokesman Shane Graham comments “All we want is a voice at the table, ... to partner with our partners”. Well, what other special interest group would not likewise want “a voice at the table”? Nice work if you can get it. And of course he trots out the fake “partnership”, now a basic article of faith to Governor-General Patsy Reddy (4) and through all ranks of government.
Labour Party member Brian McGurk is quoted as saying ”the racists and bigots will be in full cry” if another poll were to be conducted. Racists and bigots, Brian? Surely not those people who oppose the special privilege of racist representation? Perhaps you could look in the mirror to see what a real racist looks like!
And to teenage councillor Rohan O’Neill-Stevens, the recommendation did not go far enough to condemn the “disgraceful and racist law regarding Maori wards”. Well no, Rohan, the present law is there precisely to protect us against any disgraceful and racist provision for special Maori wards.
Chiming in to support him, councillor Pete Rainey calls the absence of an elected Maori voice a “dark scar on local government”.
Well, no, worthy councillors. You appear to have forgotten the people you are there to represent and 79% of them do not want any section of the community to have any council members chosen by a racist process.
In concluding Mayor Rachel Reese claims that “the legislation is poor” and that “to say nothing ... is not representative of the partnership we have with iwi”. Such a “partnership” may be her delusion. It is not shared by 79% of those Nelson people who expressed their views. As she received less than 30% of the valid votes for mayor cast at the 2019 Council election, she may care to reflect on how limited is her support amongst the people of the city of Nelson and to temper her actions accordingly.
1 For several months I was a volunteer storyteller at Nelson South kindergarten and so speak from personal experience.
2 Tim Newman, ‘stuff’, 22/9/20
3 Ibid, as are further quotations.
4 In her acceptance speech
*****************************
RACIAL PRIVILEGE AT OTAGO UNIVERSITY
“Ethnicity is not shaped in the womb but in the head.”
- David Miles, The Tribes of Britain, 2005, p.178
The current active discussion on policy for selection of entrants to the University of Otago Medical School reveals much of the accelerating racism which blights our once fair democracy of New Zealand.
That policy as it stands grants preferential entry to students who claim Maori or Pasifica ancestry and the first question that it raises is just what in fact that qualification may be?
Who, in short, is a Maori?
I recall seeing in the fairly recent past a photograph of a group of Otago graduates in medicine at a special graduation ceremony for students of Maori descent. (Why they should have been granted this privilege by such a racist criterion is another question to address.) All had names from the British Isles. Several were blondes. Typically Maori features were hard to distinguish in any of them. That outcomes are better for people of more significant Maori descent from treatment by such practitioners rather than those with no Maori ancestry is at best, I suggest, a very dubious conclusion though no doubt there are people who claim it to be true......
https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2020/09/bruce-moon-racial-privilege-at-otago.html
REPLY TO CAROLINE PUKEROA-MCKINNEY’S “NORTHLAND AGE” LETTER OF 17/3/20.
The lengthy letter from Caroline Pukeroa-McKinney in the “Age” is grossly flawed and misleading with substantial but falsely presumptive criticism of me. It requires a considered response.
Let us take these topics one at a time.
She quotes selectively from the 1831 letter in both English and Maori from 13 Ngapuhi chiefs to King William, omitting the following:
i) ‘We are a people without possessions (“taonga” in the Maori text). We have nothing but timber, flax, pork and potatoes.’ Now that’s very different from what Professor Sir Hugh Kawharu and other treaty-twisters have said since. In his translation he claimed that: ‘As submissions to the Waitangi Tribunal have made clear, “taonga” refers to all dimensions of a tribal group’s estate, material and non-material – heirlooms and wahi tapu sacred places), ancestral lore and whakapapa (genealogies), etc.’ This very senior professor ignored academic standards, a fundamental principle being that in interpreting an 1840 document only the 1840 situation and meanings of words applied.
ii) ‘It is only thy land which is liberal towards us.’ Compare that with recent claims such as that of Moana Jackson of ‘Violent invasion of Māori land’ (reported by Rosslyn Beeby, 18/3/20), just one example of today’s history-twisting epidemic.
iii) ‘we pray thee to become our friend ... lest the teasing of other tribes should come near us’. ‘Teasing’ was a very mild word to describe the slaughter, treachery and cannibalism of the day in which Ngapuhi had reason to fear retribution from other tribes for the brutality of the Musket Wars which they had started.
She proceeds with the usual treaty-twisters’ false claim that ‘the chiefs agreed to kawanatanga, so the British had governance over all their (British) people and all those ... who came later, while the chiefs retained rangatiratanga/chieftainship over their tribal regions and people.’ The plain truth is that the chiefs agreed to cede sovereignty - ‘kawanatanga’ - to the Queen, completely and for ever, as clearly understood by the chiefs who spoke at Waitangi on 5th February 1840 and unequivocally confirmed at their great meeting at Kohimarama in 1860. ‘Rangatiratanga’, possession of property, was guaranteed not only to rangatira but to ‘tangata katoa o Nu Tirani’, that is ‘all the people of New Zealand’ irrespective of their origins, another point ignored by the treaty-twisters whose false accounts she accepts.
Then she talks of ‘the ambiguity ... between the Maori and English Treaty versions’, accepting again the treaty-twisters’ tales. There is no ‘English version’ of the treaty, though it is claimed at all levels that a fake treaty written by Hobson’s secretary, Freeman, to send to dignitaries overseas is such. One defective copy was indeed used for an overflow of signatures at Waikato Heads but the treaty twisters never ask why on a unique occasion an apparent ‘treaty in English’ was signed. It was but the second page of a single document, whose first page was a printed copy of the real treaty in the Ngapuhi dialect with the first few signatures on it.
Thus Contra Preferentum which she brings up is irrelevant.
At this point she introduces the false name ‘Aotearoa’ for our country, unaware apparently that it was first given to the South Island alone by Waitaha but later appropriated by Northerners as one of several names of the North Island. Our country has been New Zealand for 377 years. In the Treaty it is transliterated as ‘Nu Tirani’ and ‘Aotearoa’ is nowhere. Had it been in use, the Williams, residents in New Zealand for 17 years and very competent in the language, would undoubtedly have used it but nobody, simply nobody, objected to ‘Nu Tirani’! Only in the 1890s did a couple of colonial writers use ‘Ao Tea Roa’ in their stories.
She then asserts in apparent innocence “that every claim taken to the Tribunal is thoroughly researched”. The topic it too great to introduce here, but it may be fairly claimed that the Waitangi Tribunal is the most corrupt body ever established in New Zealand with taxpayers’ money and its ‘findings’, uncritically accepted in official and parliamentary circles, are a stain on the integrity of all those concerned.
The flaws in Ms Pukeroa-McKinney’s narrative continue in her unresearched presumption that I am not fit to criticise Tom Roa’s statements. A simple google search would have revealed my personal credentials. See for example www.kiwifrontline.com His response to my open letter to him was that I was “deceitful” and advanced “a racist political agenda”. Is this really maintenance of the highest ethical standards and accountability for a university as prescribed in section 161 of the Education Act 1989? Is this an appropriate response to public scrutiny? It is saddening that they both misunderstand and misconstrue the turbulent, often tragic, social, political and economic mores of the tribal warrior culture of the Polynesian people of pre-European NZ.
With reference to their ocean navigation, I am familiar with the impressive work of David Lewis. I have some experience of it myself.
Moreover, her account of the ocean travels of Polynesians also shows conclusively that the Maoris, here for only a few hundred years before Tasman, are plainly not indigenous in New Zealand.
I am all for racial harmony but promulgating lies about our history is no way to achieve it.
BRUCE MOON, Nelson.
THE HYPOCRISY OF NGATI TOA
In a few years before 1840, Ngati Toa under Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata carried out a ruthless campaign of bloodshed, treachery and cannibalism amongst other Maori tribes from Kawhia to Kaiapohia, exterminating Ngatikuia of the Pelorus on the way, the few miserable survivors kept in slavery.
In an armed clash with settlers at the Wairau on 17th June 1843, now termed an "affray", in a dispute over land which might have been settled peacefully, four Maoris and twenty-two Europeans were killed, a dozen of the latter being helpless prisoners ferociously executed by Te Rangihaeata, one of whose wives had been accidentally shot. Governor Fitzroy, powerless to act effectively, took no action over this brutal murder.
Yet now (Stuff, 13/3/20), Kiri Naik of part-Ngati Toa and part European descent claims that it was a "traumatic event for Ngati Toa" and "It was and still is a huge hurt to the Ngati Toa people." What colossal hypocrisy!
The article Bruce is referring to here > https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/stage-and-theatre/119861285/historic-armed-clash-steps-into-the-limelight
DOUBLESPEAK IS ALL AROUND US.
With reference to the admittedly provocative but entirely legitimate comments of Andrew Hollis exercising his right of free speech, "Te Ao Maori" reports on 22/10/19 (1) that: 'Tenby Powell said he would not tolerate the “demonising” of certain sectors of society. "I can categorically tell you there will be no place for racism in our council chambers."'
Well, tell me, pray, just what are the strange mental processes of retired colonel Powell, if he thinks that "burning" an ancient document in any way remotely "demonises" any sector of society or in some tortuous and twisted way is racist? Of course others such as Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon (2) and Buddy Mikaere (3) jump on his bandwagon with similar and wildly inaccurate remarks bordering on the hysteria which increasingly surrounds it.
May I remind all and everyone that by this pseudo-treaty all that in effect was agreed was that the chiefs would cede such sovereignty as they possessed, all the maori (small 'm') people of New Zealand received the rights and privileges of British subjects and the property rights of all the people of New Zealand were assured. May I remind you too that it is successive governments who have flagrantly breached those agreements by having parliament after parliament pass act after act giving preferential treatment to part-Maoris and that there is increasing concern that private property rights are being breached by government kowtowing to aggressive tribal interests.
Thus, John Robinson (4) has identified no less than 98 items of legislation in the period 1974-2017 almost all of which confer special benefits upon various Maori interest groups. If this is not total contempt for Article third of the agreement known as the Treaty of Waitangi, then, pray, what is it?
On one hand we have a multitude of interested parties in government (5,6)and elsewhere twisting the plain words of a simple 179-year-old document utterly beyond its meaning and intent at the time it was executed and on the other, much the same people holding its plain provisions in contempt.
This my friends, is the situation into which democracy in New Zealand has degenerated today and there are clear signs that in educational institutions and elsewhere this perverted trend accelerates.
To quote Robinson again: ‘[This year, 2019] the Governor-General, Patsy Reddy, and the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, ... proclaimed that “we are one people”. They were lying.’ (7) The palpable evidence supports Robinson entirely. We ignore it at our peril.
1 T. Powell, "Te Ao Maori", 22nd October 2011
2 M. Shand, "Stuff", 21 October 2019
3 B. Mikaere, with T.Powell, op.cit..
4 J. Robinson, "Dividing a Nation — the Return to Tikanga", Tross, 2019, ISBN 9781872970664,pp 182ff.
5 Cabinet Office Circular, CO(19)%, Te Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi Guidance, 22 October 2019
6 Treaty of Waitangi Guidance for government policy makers, NZ Law Society 23rd October 2019,
7 Robinson, op. cit., p.5
LOOKING AT LAND
Among the subjects on which the history-twisting power-seekers who infest New Zealand today would whip up the emotions of their supporters the major one would certainly be land. The most recent example is of course that of Ihumatao. There we have the self-appointed protest leader, Pania Newton reported as saying: “we are challenging the notion that the government can simply wash its hands of the confiscation of lands that happened in the 1860s, and the devastating effects of this.”[i]
Green Party Co-leader Marama Davidson chimes in, claiming that the dispute represents a: “continuation of colonisation”.[ii] The protesters’ ‘facebook” page claims that: “we protect this waahi tapu at Ihumaatao”,[iii] By contrast, tribal leaders “point out that claims that the land is on ancient burial grounds and is wahi tapu, are deliberately misleading [and that] the land to be built on was used for growing wheat”![iv]
These agitators echo the wild claims of such as Sacha McMeeking, Peter Dey and Potonga Neilson – of which more will be said in this article, of Marama Fox, an MP at the time, claiming "Over the past 160 years ... 95% of our land was lost either by force or stealth.”[v], of National list MP, Nuk Korako who writes of the “wrong” which was “the Crown’s massive theft of Maori land”[vi] and of Joshua Hitchcock who chimes in with “the Crown’s own research ... indicated that the total value of the loss suffered by Ngāi Tahu amounted to $16 billion. The price of relativity is little more than a drop in the bucket when compared to the actual loss suffered by Māori.”[vii] The actual truth is that these billions are the present value of that land, owed almost entirely to the hard labour and investment of its owners since. These brazen distortions of the truth by such persons in positions of influence are all-too-typical of the fake history with which our country is awash today. Not one acre was confiscated from Ngai Tahu!
We look a little more deeply into the true history of our topic......
https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2019/10/bruce-moon-looking-at-land.html
DEATH SHIP COMMENT AND RESPONSE
Bruce Moon Response:
It would be hard to find more distorted and alarming rhetoric than the reaction of Dr Arama Rata, a senior research fellow at Waikato University, to the impending arrival of the replica of Cook’s ship, HMB “Endeavour”; of her description of it as a “death ship” and brazen claim that the “mentality that Cook brought over, and the project here was to really eliminate Maori, to dispossess Maori, and to replace Maori with Pakeha settlers”. (“Stuff”, 27/9/19). (I omit the redundant macrons which liberally bestrew the that report.)
It would be more enlightening to address the nature of the society Cook and other early explorers found on their landfall in New Zealand – a brutal and savage Stone Age society with cannibalism,[1] slavery and infanticide rampant. The real “death ships” were the canoes of the invaders from eastern Polynesia a few centuries earlier who proceeded ruthlessly to eliminate the genuinely indigenous people whom they found here.[2].......
Read full article here > https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2019/10/bruce-moon-death-ship-comment-and.html
LET THE PAST BE THE PAST
It is sometimes said that half the truth is worse than a lie and indeed in any formal oath, the whole truth is required. Anything less may lead to false conclusions and inappropriate action.
So why does Dover Samuels, as reported by Radio NZ on 3rd September say “the Crown” should apologise to Maoris who had been beaten as children for speaking in Maori at school and that this “had been a deliberate policy on the part of the Crown to disempower his generation” without giving the full story?
And why does MP and Minister, Kelvin Davis add his support, saying “that the issue of ... discrimination against Māori children is a significant one” with nothing to back that statement?.......
Continue reading here > https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2019/09/bruce-moon-let-past-be-past.html
An Open Letter to Associate Professor Maria Bargh
27th April 2019
Dear Associate Professor Bargh,
You are reported by Bob Edlin in “Breaking Views” on 19th April[1] as having written recently, “Te Tiriti o Waitangi reaffirmed Māori tino rangatiratanga and allowed for Crown kawanatanga. This partnership approach has been noted as one of the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi by the Crown, the courts and the Waitangi Tribunal.
Te Tiriti o Waitangi creates obligations, including for the Crown to actively protect Māori rights and interests and to uphold the Treaty partnership. Ensuring that Māori are a key part of decision-making in local government is one of the ways that the Crown can uphold their obligations.”
Well now ... “allowed for Crown kawanatanga”. Well, yes, “kawanatanga” was indeed the missionary-coined word for “sovereignty” used in default of any classic Maori word for the concept. There can be no doubt that that was how it was understood at Waitangi on those fateful days in February 1840. You are surely aware of the recorded words of the chiefs who initially opposed signing that to do so would rank them below the Governor and hence, a fortiori, beneath the Queen. They would cede sovereignty, as they did, and as Sir Apirana Ngata explained very clearly in his 1922 book of which again you are surely aware.
Now, there are some people who claim that because “kawanatanga” is derived from a maorification of “governor” with a Maori suffix meaning “the property of” that somehow its meaning is “only” “governorship”. There are actually some people, such as Associate Professor Sandy Morrison of the University of Waikato who would have us believe that “The chiefs do allow the Queen to have kawanatanga, a nominal and delegated authority so that she can control her people”.[2] Well, fancy that! A bunch of petty chiefs “allow” the Queen of the greatest empire the world had ever seen to have “a nominal and delegated authority so that she can control her people” - and that is presumably what she tells innocent students. Can you really imagine anything more ridiculous?
Her whole argument has a fundamental flaw because translation is not the same as derivation and I could give you examples from several languages which make this clear. So without a shadow of doubt, the translation of “kawanatanga” is “sovereignty” and everybody at Waitangi and indeed on other signing occasions knew this. It was why Te Heu Heu refused to sign, his reason being that it would “place the mana of Te Heu Heu beneath the feet of a woman.” But he was one of very few as more that 500 chiefs did sign, thus giving Hobson more than ample assurance that establishing the Queen's sovereignty was accepted by the vast majority.
So why do you make the statement that Te Tiriti “allowed for Crown kawanatanga”? In view of the obfuscation which is all-too-common elsewhere – and there are sadly too many others who would agree with Morrison – why did you not say “By Te Tiriti the chiefs agreed to cede sovereignty completely and for ever to the Queen”, because that is what it actually said?
In the very same sentence you say: “Te Tiriti o Waitangi reaffirmed Māori tino rangatiratanga”. Now that. Professor Bargh, tells much less than the whole truth. To quote Hobson’s final draft of 4thFebruary, what Article second actually said is that “The Queen of England confirms and guarantees to the chiefs & tribes and to all the people of New Zealand the possession of their lands, dwellings and all their property”. That was very accurately translated overnight by Williams, father and son, the bit I have underlined being “tangata katoa o Nu Tirani te tino rangatiratanga o ratou wenua o ratou kainga me o ratou taonga katoa”. It is abundantly clear that the guarantee was to all the people, “tangata katoa”, not just Maoris who are not specifically mentioned at all in the article. So your statement, by a very serious act of omission, states very much less than the whole truth – that’s not very creditable for a senior academic, is it?
And by the way, lest you are uncertain, there can be no reasonable doubt that Hobson’s final draft of 4th February is what it purports to be, albeit officialdom hired one Dr Donald Loveridge to discredit it. He failed – abjectly. Moreover, within a few weeks. copies of it were dispatched on two occasions by American authorities here to their superiors in the United States.[3] Do you know if this? Claudia Orange didn’t.
And then you go on: “This partnership approach has been noted as one of the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi by the Crown, the courts and the Waitangi Tribunal. “. Well, now, dear lady, kindly quote to me the exact words in the Treaty document which establish any “partnership approach”. It is irrelevant what any of those bodies you mention have said. As you should know, an argument from authority is a bogus argument. As David Lange is reported to have said in 1990: “Did Queen Victoria for a moment think of forming a partnership with a number of thumb prints and 500 people. Queen Victoria was not that sort of person”. The answer is obvious. The whole idea is utterly absurd, so much so that we must seriously question the mindset and indeed the motives of all those who claim that any sort of “partnership” has ever existed. It is surely within the role of any serious academic to challenge such absurdities, not to accept them as you have done.
And so you go on: “Te Tiriti o Waitangi creates obligations”. Well, of course it did; those of all citizens to obey the law of the land and of the “Crown” to protect them from foreign invasions and maintain civil peace.
But such obligations of the Crown simply do not include as you claim “for the Crown to actively protect Māori rights and interests and to uphold the Treaty partnership” except insofar as their “rights and interests” are those of all citizens, while “to uphold the Treaty partnership” is a modern manufactured idiocy which defies rational acceptance. So why do you, as a presumably intelligent and informed academic in a senior position, make such a statement?
And so we come to your final sentence: “Ensuring that Māori are a key part of decision-making in local government is one of the ways that the Crown can uphold their obligations.” Since the “Crown obligations” you cite are palpably bogus, your deduction from them that “Ensuring that Māori are a key part of decision-making in local government” is not an “obligation” on “the Crown” or on anyone. Any citizen, whether of part-Maori descent or any other has as much right as the next person to offer to participate in such activities. To judge by the Hastings example, several successful councillors of Maori descent are active in this way. Any more favoured treatment is a plain abuse of democracy, indeed it is flagrant racism. It is cause for deep concern that it is evidently supported by senior academics.
And finally, Maria, we have Te Ururoa Flavell, also reported by Bob Edlin, saying, “I think that Māori as tangata whenua bring that unique perspective – and you can talk about it as a Treaty right – to the decision-making table.” Noting first that nowhere in the Treaty are Maoris referred to as “tangata whenua” and that his claim that they have a “unique perspective” is no more than presumptuous politicking, it is sheer nonsense to talk about it as a “treaty right”. Given that typical activities of district councils are maintaining roads, collecting rubbish and rates, perhaps you could suggest to me how their alleged “unique perspective” could be useful to them.
With my compliments,
Bruce Moon, Nelson
[1] B. Edlin, “The prickly issue of Treaty rights and governance”, “Breaking Views”, 19th April 2019
[2] S Morrison, “Waikato Times”, 1st December 2017
[3] M. Doutré, “The Littlewood Treaty”. Dé Danann Publishers, 2015. ISBN 0-473-10140-8, p 77ff & 92ff.
Via https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2019/05/bruce-moon-open-letter-to-associate.html#more
AN OPEN LETTER TO TWO ASSOCIATE PROFESSORS AT WAIKATO UNIVERSITY
Dear Associate Professor Leonie Pihama and Associate Professor Tom Roa,
You have both seized the opportunity you perceive in the recent appalling tragedy in Christchurch to present what one of you calls “colonial terror and violence since 1642”[1] with the other saying “Maori had been victims to acts of terrorism in Aotearoa in the past”.[2] And Police Deputy Commissioner of Maori and Ethnic Services Wally Haumaha chimes in, about “historical killings of Maori at different times and across the country during early colonisation”.[3]
Well, now, perhaps it is timely for us to look with care at these allegations........
Read Bruce's well researched look into Pihama's and Roa's allegations > https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2019/03/bruce-moon-open-letter-to-two-associate.html
**************************
COUNTERING THE TREATY-TWISTERS (26/2/19)
The treaty-twisters general line of argument is:
1. To claim that the derivations of the words ‘rangatiratanga” and “kawanatanga” are the same as their meanings. This is false because translation is not the same as derivation. I give examples below. Of course, if one needs a new word, it has to be derived from something! This was a problem that the Williams faced in introducing words for concepts little understood by Maoris.
2. To switch next to Freeman’s fake “treaty in English”, thereby ignoring the inconvenient facts that
(a) Article Two of the treaty included “tangata katoa o Nu Tirani”, “all the people of New Zealand” which Freeman omits,
(b) what Freeman says is guaranteed to Maoris includes “forests and fisheries” which the real treaty does not mention
3. To use the modern meaning of “taonga” instead of the 1840 meaning which was simple “property” i,e, ordinary chattels. This is fundamentally dishonest. Kawharu provides an example.
4. To ignore the recorded words of almost all chiefs who spoke at Waitangi on 5th February 1840 and subsequently, which establish beyond doubt that they knew that by signing they would become subordinate to the Governor and thus to the Queen.
5. To claim that the treaty establishes a “partnership” between “The Crown” and Maoris” which is
(a) fundamentally ridiculous and
(b) not in any way or form implied by a rational reading of what the treaty actually says. Note that the present governor-general is guilty of this twisting of the truth and has thereby compromised her position as the representative of our Queen.
The following example by matthew@lizardnews.net on 25th February 2019 illustrates most of these points. I have put his most flagrantly false statements in bold type.
A link in my previous email shows there are, in fact, humans with 100% Maori DNA alive today - contrary to the assertion in Don's speech text.
That aside, tino rangatiratanga is a Māori language term that can be interpreted as 'absolute sovereignty'. (Note One) It appears in the Māori version of the Treaty of Waitangi, signed by the British Crown and Māori chiefs (rangatira) in 1840. It has become one of the most contentious phrases in retrospective analyses of the Treaty, amid debate surrounding the obligations agreed to by each signatory. The phrase features in current historical and political discourse on race relations in New Zealand, and is widely used by Māori advocacy groups. A flag based on tino rangatiratanga was designed in 1990, and has become accepted as a national flag for Māori groups across New Zealand.
A rangatira is a chief, the nominalising suffix -tanga makes the word an abstract noun referring to the quality or attributes of chieftainship, and the addition of intensifier tino in this context means the phrase can be translated as 'highest chieftainship' (Kawharu, 1989, p. 314), the intention of which was to 'emphasize to a chief the Queen's intention to give the complete control according to their customs' (ibid., p. 319). The term's closest English translation is 'absolute sovereignty', although many also refer to it as self-determination, autonomy, or Māori independence.
Tino: Essentially, 'self, reality'
Rangatiratanga: Evidence of breeding and greatness
The emphasis on tino rangatiratanga draws from an inconsistency arising between Article 1 and Article 2 of the Treaty of Waitangi:
In the English text of Article 1 of the Treaty, the Māori signatories cede their sovereignty to the British Crown. For the Māori text, since there was no direct Māori translation for the idea, the missionary neologism 'kawanatanga' (= 'governorship') was used to represent the concept of sovereignty. That word was based on the transliteration "Kawana" (= 'governor'), which had been invented by Bible translators to explain Pontius Pilate's authority in Judaea. Kawana had also been used prior to 1840 to describe the Governor of New South Wales.
In the English text of Article 2, signatories are assured that the full exclusive and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates Forests Fisheries and other properties (Note Two) would remain for so long as they chose. In the Māori text, signatories are assured that their tino rangatiratanga will remain undisturbed over their lands, kainga and other taonga (te tino rangatiratanga o ratou wenua o ratou kainga me o ratou taonga katoa, literally the absolute chieftainship of your lands, your homes, and all your treasures/taonga).(Note three)
Based on the Māori text alone, in Article 1, the signatories appear to be ceding kawanatanga or governorship, and in Article 2, the signatories are promised that their tino rangatiratanga or highest chieftainship would remain undisturbed. The apparent inconsistency has led to much debate as to whether the Māori signatories intended to cede their sovereignty to the British Crown at all.
Aside from the legal controversy, many Māori see the Treaty as a charter to choose their own way of life within the framework of law, free of external interference in taonga like language and culture.(Note four)
In summary, it seems fairer to agree that it is a confusing picture and certainly not the absolute situation as portrayed in the arguably myopic opinion provided.(Note five).
Note One: “Tino Rangatiratanga” was a missionary neologism, chosen in their translation by the Williams, father and son, for “full possession” in the absence of any adequate Maori language term. It never became common currency at the time and fell out of use for more than a century until modern activists revived it. The rest of what he says about the term, including Kawharu’s distorted statement, looks very learned but is no more than waffle.
Note Two: He has switched here from the actual treaty text to Freeman’s fake treaty. Article two of the real treaty referred to “all the people of New Zealand”, not just “signatories” and nowhere does it mention “Forests, Fisheries”. This flagrant bit of twisting is a very common trick!
Note Three: In 1840” taonga meant simple “property. It is fundamentally dishonest to use its asserted modern meaning as here. Once again this is a very common dirty trick.
His following paragraph illustrates the confusion that their dishonest tricks have created. His “debate as to whether the Maori signatories intended to cede their sovereignty to the British Crown at all” is a bogus one which ignores the recorded statements of the chiefs at Waitangi and Hobson’s patient explanation to them of the issues involved.
Note Four: The “Treaty” was not a “charter” but a preliminary agreement. All today’s part-Maori people have the privileges of citizenship of all New Zealanders – they are entitled to no less but no more – as assured by Article third of the ToW.
Note Five: The truth of the matter is absolutely clear and gives no grounds for a “confusing situation” engendered by the myopic fake opinions of Matthew. Hobson stated the issues well. They were accepted by the chiefs, who ceded sovereignty, with all the ordinary people (including the many slaves living in abject conditions) receiving the rights of the people of England, Article two simply reassuring them of the rights of property ownership guaranteed by Article three.
Matthew presents the typical fake arguments of the treaty-twisters. Above I state the truth of what was really agreed. The task is now to alert all the people of New Zealand to the truth and of how they have been misled and cheated by politicians and part-Maori activists for far too long.
DERIVATION IS NOT TRANSLATION!
I present below some illustrative examples.
English, derived from Norse which means
stool stol chair
murky mørke dark
gangway gangvei footpath
English ” French which means
demand demand ask
mutton mouton sheep
Bislama ” English meaning
kwiktaem quick time fast
mo more and
tumas too much very
bagarap ??? broken
puskat pussycat female
genitals
Maori ” English meaning
kawanatanga governorship sovereignty
tino rangatiratanga ** full possession
kete wananga library literally
“wisdom basket”***
** a neologism based on a composition of Maori words
*** Christchurch City Council version!
****************************************
BRUCE MOON RESPONDS TO ‘SPINOFF’ FALSE PROPAGANDA
Anybody at all who chooses to comment in the public media surely has some responsibility to be accurate and factual but Joshua Hitchcock commenting in the “Bulletin” of “Spinoff’ on 5th March 2019 chooses to treat this obligation with contempt.
1.Thus, he speaks of “widespread theft of land”. This is flagrantly false – a big mistruth which is repeated and repeated. Maori chiefs from one end of the country to another sold land eagerly or exchanged it for trade goods the ships and settlers brought. They had in any case abut ten times as much land as they could ever use effectively. The British actually took vigorous steps to protect Maori landowners from speculators. Theft?
2. He speaks of “the thriving and prosperous economy of the early 19th Century”. This was the period of intertribal slaughter, cannibalism and slave-taking on a colossal scale, one third of the population being killed. So much of the breeding stock was destroyed that it took many decades of comparative peace in the early colonial period for it to recover. Thriving and prosperous?
3. He speaks of the “desecration of language”, ignoring the fact that several petitions to Parliament of Maori parents and elders sought to have English only used in native schools. It was even requested that the teachers should have no knowledge of the Maori language. Desecration? By whom?
4. He speaks of “the aim of providing land and workers to support the insatiable financial appetite of London.” Perhaps it has never occurred to her that the early colonists from Britain and their descendants came to this country determined to work hard and build themselves a prosperous future. London they had left behind on the other side of the world.
5. He quotes figures for relative current wealth which may be correct. Most of us have made a big effort to get an appropriate education from a state system which is, at least nominally, free; have worked hard to support ourselves and our families to achieve the modest wealth and standard of living which we enjoy and paid our taxes, much of which go to support member of society who have not done so.
The perpetuation of such travesties of the truth is never going to help anybody in New Zealand, least of all those who have never chosen to work hard for the sake of themselves and their families.
The Spinoff Bulletin that Bruce responds to here > https://thespinoff.co.nz/atea/05-03-2019/the-50-billion-maori-economy-is-nowhere-big-enough/
REFLECTIONS ON NGATAPA
We must surely agree that when the rebel fort at Ngatapa was captured in January 1869, more than 85 prisoners should not have been killed — but judging that event fairly must be in the context of its time and place.
Summary execution of defeated rebels was commonplace worldwide. By contrast, for example, at Rangiaowhia, General Cameron planned carefully to minimise casualties; when the Kingite rebellion was quashed, and excepting convicted murderers, its leaders were required only to swear loyalty to the Queen.
And rebels the Rongowhakaata at Ngatapa certainly were — major participants in Te Kooti’s prolonged rebellion. Whatever his grievances may have been, there was no excuse for the atrocities committed by his followers.
Nor were unarmed settler families the only victims. In Te Kooti’s brutal midnight raid on Matawhero in November 1868 around half of those mercilessly slaughtered were Maori. At Mohaka, seven settlers, three of them children under eight, and 40 Maori were butchered. It was not only Maori against European but, with equal ferocity, Maori against Maori.
And so loyal Maori responded. More than half of the troops who captured Ngatapa were Ngati Porou commanded by Major Rapata Wahawaha who had already won the New Zealand Cross for gallantry.
It was he who had been captured as a child by Rongowhakaata, enduring many years of slavery by a tribe treating the provisions of the Treaty of Waitangi with contempt.
Escaping as a teenager, he was soon in the thick of the fight against them and the prisoner slaughter at Ngatapa was his act of revenge. As Sorenson has commented, this would have been in accordance with traditional Maori treatment of prisoners but inappropriate for a soldier of the Queen, understandable though it may have been.
Do those such as Tariana Turia who let the tears fall fast in Parliament for the fate of those who fell at Ngatapa, or the Waitangi Tribunal who so arrogantly stated that it was a demonstration of the thin veneer of civilisation of the colonial troops, ever refer to the atrocities inflicted by the rebels on innocent people, settler and Maori alike. I think not!
Whatever any of the raw colonial troops may have said in the stress of the moment, our settlers from Britain were predominantly humble and hard-working people. Excepting relative newcomers we are almost all, Maori and others alike, their descendants. We should be thankful that they provided the solid foundation for our nation of New Zealand today.
Published in the Gisborne Herald > http://gisborneherald.co.nz/opinion/3914953-135/reflections-on-ngatapa
THE RANGIAOWHIA INCIDENT
There must be few events in New Zealand’s history which have been the subject of more brazen lying than the occupation of Rangiaowhia by government troops on 21st February 1864.[1]
In particular the gross falsehood of the burning of a church full of women and children has been repeated time and again, and recently, for example:
- by Tommy Wilson in the “Bay of Plenty Times”, 12/8/09
- in Eraka’s Blog in Tainui News, 7/5/14
- by JOC Phillips on air, 2/4/16
- by Susan Devoy in the “Bay of Plenty Times”. 4/1/17
- by Vincent O’Malley in “The Listener”, 25/2/17
- by members of Ngati Apakura in “Waikato Times”, 9/12/17
- by deceived children of Otorohanga College
The great irony of it all is that the Rangiaowhia affray was what military chaplain Frank Glen has called “commendable humanitarianism”[2] by General Cameron who wanted to avoid a “set piece” confrontation with the Waikato rebels at their massively strong fort at Paterangi. In this he was brilliantly successful but the rebels, furious at being so outwitted by him, soon started spreading the foul lie of the church-burning and that has blazed up again and again with all these so-called “historians” and their like joining the chorus today.
And now we have Arini Loader on “Twitter”, 6/11/18, talking of the “massacre at Rangiaowhia”, “the site where the people say upwards of 100 Māori villagers died on 21 February 1864. Terrorism. Mayhem.” Yes, well actually the number of rebels killed was twelve, almost all in the whare where an old fool, Hoani Papita, shot and killed Sergeant McHale at point-blank range when invited to surrender. Notwithstanding that Loader is a university lecturer, expected to obey a high standard of research, she prefers to write what “people say”, old wives’ tales, those of Hazel Warner for example[3] in preference to doing some sound research of the historical evidence so the lie rolls on and on.[4] By contrast, even prominent rebel leader, Wiremu Kingi said “There was only one house burnt; that was the house where the Maoris died. I went there and saw it.”
Far from being the haven of peace which these people would have us believe, Rangiaowhia was the principal source of food for the rebels in their strong fort at Paterangi and therefore fully involved in the rebellion. And let us remember that that was no small affair, advanced plans for the destruction of the town of Auckland being considered seriously by the rebels at one stage.
It was General Cameron’s plan to take possession by surprise of this food basket of the rebels, forcing them to surrender without a frontal attack on their fort which would have led to serious loss of life on both sides. He took good care to invite all the women and children to escape unharmed and nearly all of them did so but then spasmodic musket fire erupted from within the village, notably from one of the churches. Rapidly the troops took control, just two rebels being killed at this stage and a few wounded with substantial quantities of arms being found on the dwellings being searched.
At one whare, fashioned as a gunpit with a sunken floor, the occupants were called upon to come out and one man, his wife and small son[5]did so safely. Then Sergeant McHale, an Australian, was directed to enter the whare and call on those remaining to surrender but in response Hoani shot him dead. A sharp and furious encounter followed, the whare being set alight, possibly by the discharges of the occupants’ guns but maybe in an attack by the troops and Colonel Nixon and several soldiers fell. Blinded by smoke, Hoani staggered out, waving his blanket in no more, it is likely, than a reflex gesture to ward off the fire of the troops. Indeed the officers called on the men to hold their fire but in the heat of battle a volley cut him down. This incident should be seen in the light of the circumstances and not his surrender, still less as his waving a white flag, the tale told in Te Awamutu today.*
The slain were buried and about thirty prisoners taken back to the mission station at Otawhao, the wounded being treated kindly.
So ended the capture of Rangiaowhia, but for one exception the almost bloodless outcome which General Cameron desired. It was a most significant event after which the end of the rebellion and restoration of peace were only a matter of time. Both churches remained standing for many years afterwards in mute testimony to his success.
The point to be stressed is that it was not the actions of the benevolent Cameron and his troops which are responsible for the reported anguish of Ngati Apakura but the lies nurtured by their own people from then to this day.
If they will not accept the truth let them get an archaeological examination done by professionals to remove the doubt for ever.
https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2018/11/bruce-moon-rangiaowhia-incident.html
BRUTAL CENSORSHIP - Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNWNMvCMij0
NGAI TAHU’S CROOKED PATH FROM RAGS TO RICHES
Weakened by their own “Eat Relation” feud, continually outwitted and savagely defeated by the wily Te Rauparaha, most Ngai Tahu by 1840 were a desperate lot. A mere two thousand or so were eking out a living in a few squalid villages.
Even in the extreme south which escaped such ravages “They were altogether a dejected people.[i] ... [F]or every child born, from three to four persons died. No wonder that they had lost heart and felt as if there were no spirit of life left in them”.[ii] And cannibalism persisted, even that late.[iii]
They had already sold nearly all the land which was nominally theirs, 135 records of sales south of Kaikoura being registered in Sydney.[iv] By 1840 of course, there were several whaling stations established at or near a Maori “kaik”.[v] Many of the whalers were not exactly “plaster saints” but most took Maori wives, adopting a more or less regular existence. Of “about forty [at Waikouaiti] ... nearly thirty were living with Maori women as their wives”.[vi] In this practice, missionary Wohlers noted much improvement. “Maori women ... when joined to a Pakeha husband, had plenty of healthy children”.[vii] Thus: “Tame Haereroa Parata[viii] was born on Ruapuke Island in Foveaux Strait, probably between 1832 and 1838. His father, Captain Trapp, ... was an American whaler from Massachusetts. His mother was Koroteke, a woman of aristocratic descent of Ngati Huirapa, a hapu of Ngai Tahu.”[ix]
Moving to Karitane, the former Waikouaiti “kaik”, the family changed its name to “Pratt”, later Maorified to “Parata”. On 24th June 1914, “Henare Parata, or Henry Pratt” sold a four-acre block there to my own grandfather.[x] It was not the first sale. With most of their pre-treaty sales nullified by Hobson’s proclamation of 30th January 1840, eager selling by tribal members continued apace, more than 38 million acres of South Island land of no commercial value and almost worthless to the owners was sold between 1844 and 1860 plus Stewart Island in 1864.[xi] Despite this eagerness to sell, Government officers showed clear restraint. An offer “to sell off the residue of Maori land lying south of the Molyneux towards Foveaux Strait ... to the White men for Ever” was declined with a firm but courteous refusal.[xii]
Yet today, National list MP, Nuk Korako, writes of the “wrong” which was “the Crown’s massive theft of Maori land”[xiii] and pale-faced red-headed Sacha McMeeking, Ngai Tahu appointee on the University of Canterbury Council, speaks of “the value of dispossessed lands ... between $12 and $13 billion.”[xiv] And Joshua Hitchcock[xv] chimes in with “the Crown’s own research ... indicated that the total value of the loss suffered by Ngāi Tahu amounted to $16 billion. The price of relativity is little more than a drop in the bucket when compared to the actual loss suffered by Māori.” The actual truth is that these billions are the present value of that land, owed entirely to the hard labour and investment of its owners since. These brazen distortions of the truth by such persons in positions of influence are all-too-typical of the fake history with which our country is awash today. Ignorance is no excuse. They fail in their clear responsibility to acquaint themselves properly with the true facts of our history.
The tribe soon found out that complaining brought them rich pickings. The first was when land purchase officer Henry Kemp, in making a major purchase in 1848, had failed to set out the reserves which they had been promised. The reason was simply that it was winter, the rivers were high, the bush trackless and surveying impossible. Kemp was dismissed and his successor, Mantell finished the job. Complaint followed complaint and yet more land and cash were allocated to Ngai Tahu. In 1969 their fourth “full and final” settlement was negotiated. As the then Southern Maori MP, Whetu Tregerthen-Sullivan reported, at as many as 80 tribal meetings, 109 formal resolutions were passed accepting the offer. In Parliament, she rejected an argument that their claims had not been fully and finally settled.
Now most people would surely think that that was that – that these people of predominantly white ancestry had been more than adequately compensated for any wrongs their brown ancestors had allegedly suffered. But no! Along came the Waitangi Tribunal, with its flawed procedures and distorted outlook, presenting an opportunity for a try-on too good to miss. It worked! On a claim thoroughly analysed by Alan Everton,[xvi] described by him as a swindle and a fraud, in which Denis Hampton’s[xvii] study concurred, the Tribunal gave a favourable report. On that basis, the compliant government of Jim Bolger, backed by Doug Graham,[xviii] gave them in 1998 a settlement worth $170 million, or about $80,000 for each 1840 member of the tribe. They also asked for and got a so-called “relativity clause” for top-ups in due course, and so another $180 million in December 2017– our money and tax-free.
And we, the rest of the people of New Zealand, in our ignorance, apathy and lethargy, let all this happen under our very noses. What a collection of mugs we are – cash cows for Ngai Tahu and similarly avaricious tribes such as Tainui around the country. Nor should we think even that is the end of the matter. “That is not the Maori way”, as reportedly said by the son of an Irish father, one-sixteenth Ngai Tahu, Steve O’Regan. Perhaps now is the time to tell him and his ilk that there is also another way.
ENDS
https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com.au/2018/02/bruce-moon-ngai-tahus-crooked-path-from.html
[i] Tuhawaiki, known as “Bloody Jack”, sadly drowned in 1844, was a notable exception
[ii] JFH Wohlers, “Conversion and Civilisation of the Maories of the Far South of New Zealand”, Trans. NZ Inst., XIV,1881, p. 126
[iii] J Christie, “History of Waikouaiti”, Christchurch Press Co. Ltd, 1927, p.129
[iv] I have details, by courtesy of Jean Jackson
[v] J Christie, op.cit., e.g. p.74.
[vi] Ibid., p. 38
[vii] JFH Wohlers, op. cit., p. 128
[viii] Probably actually Thomas Pratt
[ix] Dictionary of New Zealand Biography
[x] The certificate of title is in my possession.
[xi] For details, see M Butler, “Twisting the Treaty”, ISBN 1-872970-33-8, 2013, pp. 139ff
[xii] JL Stokes, Captain HMS “Acheron”, to the would-be sellers, 19/12/1850, quoted by S Natusch, “Rugged Shores”, ISBN 0-9582140-6-9, pp. 90-1
[xiii] N Korako, letter to H Moseley, 22/9/16
[xiv] S McMeeking, “The Press”, 2/7/11, p. C5
[xv] J Hitchcock, “The Spinoff”, 25/1/18
[xvi] A Everton, “Ngai Tahu’s Tangled Web”, Free Radical, Nos. 26-8, August- December 1996
[xvii] D Hampton, “Evening Post”, 3/4/98
[xviii] Subsequently convicted for unrelated financial irregularities
TWISTING TAONGA
It is a pretty obvious fact that the meanings of words may change over time – even if we discount the argot of the young – you know - “a cool chick”, “a joint”. New ideas, new technology, need words to describe them. So picture the Maoris of New Zealand, eastern Polynesians isolated for millennia in a Stone Age culture, when they observed the diversity of material wealth of the Europeans who came to our shores. They needed words for it. And so: Taonga:
In 1820: “property procured by the spear” - Hongi Hika in Lee and Kendall’s Maori dictionary – from “tao” - a spear.
In 1831: “possessions/property” - “nothing but timber, flax, pork and potatoes”[i] - 13 Ngapuhi chiefs writing to King William.
About 1840: “goods, property” - Frederick E Maning[ii].
In 1844: “property” - William Williams - “A dictionary of the Language of New Zealand”[iii].
!n 1957: Williams’ dictionary, 6th edition: “property; anything highly prized”.
In 1992: “the Maori language (te reo Maori) was a ... treasure (taonga) - Robin Cooke, Court of Appeal judgment. Cooke also said the Crown [guaranteed] undisturbed possession of the language to Maori” (!!)[iv]
In 1994: “the treaty word taonga meant ‘treasures’, that the Maori language was one such treasure” - Privy Council[v].
In 1997: Hugh Kawharu: “As submissions to the Waitangi Tribunal concerning the Maori language have made clear, ‘taonga’ refers to all dimensions of a tribal group’s estate, material and non-material – heirlooms and wahi tapu (sacred places), ancestral lore and whakapapa (genealogies) etc.”[vi]
Note the remorseless widening of meaning over the years – BUT ONLY ITS 1840 MEANING APPLIES IN THE TREATY. As Wikipedia states: “The current definition differs from the historical definition.”
It was an entirely natural extension of the meaning of “taonga” in the few years before 1840 to include European material goods such as blankets, iron cooking pots and steel knives, collectively chattels or ordinary property as indeed recorded by Williams in 1844. It was certainly not before 1852 that any extension of its meaning was recorded and even one hundred years later it did not include “treasure”. That has not stopped all manner of people claiming in the free-for-all since the Waitangi Tribunal was set up that its meaning is “treasure”, including within that everything “material and non-material” for which they might claim some financial benefit or other advantage. When they succeed, the taxpayers of New Zealand are defrauded.
A flagrant case was when a sick old Maori man was declined an organ transplant on medical grounds since his feeble state of general health made it unlikely that he would get any benefit from it. His family and associates thereupon jumped up and down, claiming that he was a “taonga” which the treaty promised to protect and therefore that it was obligatory upon the hospital to make the transplant. Weakly the authorities caved in, he received the transplant and within a few months he was dead of other causes. Of course, the consequence was that another patient to whom the transplant would have given a real benefit was denied it.
Another demand was for a share of the electromagnetic spectrum – and Maori broadcasting rights – notwithstanding that it had not even been discovered in 1840. It was asserted that as Polynesian navigators had found their way using the stars which did indeed emit rays from a section of the spectrum, it was indeed a prized possession – a “taonga”. Whether any 1840 Maori could have used stellar navigation was beside the point.
One Ngahiwi Apanui of the Maori Language Commission claims[vii]that: “In fact, [the Maori language] is a taonga protected by article two of the Treaty of Waitangi because that is exactly what the Maori Language Act 2016 (section 8 (g)) says it is.” This is a flagrant example of retrospective legislation which grossly distorts the meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi.
Examples such as these would be laughable in any society except the bemused state of New Zealand today, with greedy opportunists capitalizing on Government weakness and ignorance and taxpayer apathy. This pantomime continues with noisy claims to water. Rebuffed on that one, tribal activists have now got a share in water management through the flagrantly racist provisions of the amended Resource Management Act with, no doubt, handsome emoluments for self-appointed tribal bigwigs.
The presence of the magical word “taonga” in the Treaty of Waitangi is immediately chanted to justify any claim and it almost always works. This is flagrant abuse of the provision of the Treaty in which Article second assured rights to property to “tangata katoa o Nu Tirani”, that is “all the people of New Zealand”, without distinction.
In its report on Wai262, the Tribunal said: “A list of taonga species was prepared, but this did no more than record all of the species for which claims of special relationship were made. We accepted for the purposes of our inquiry that taonga species are what claimant communities say they are.”[viii] Well, the Tribunal can prepare any list of “taonga species” it likes but this has nothing to do with the Treaty.
THERE IS A FUNDAMENTAL FLAW. The only valid interpretation of any aged document is that made USING THE MEANING OF WORDS AT THE TIME IT WAS EXECUTED. Any claim to alleged “taonga” except one based on its 1840 meaning of ordinary domestic property is false, often fraudulent......
Continue reading Bruce Moon’s informative well researched article here > http://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.co.nz/2018/01/bruce-moon-twisting-taonga.html
SOME TIPS ABOUT TE REO
And so, how did things develop in New Zealand? First we know that the rugged topography and heavy native bush of New Zealand meant that the settlements of at most somewhat over 120,000[ii] in pre-European times were often widely separated. Given the tribal organization, endemic warfare and cannibalism between the tribes, normal social contact between them will have been even less than geographic barriers dictated though news was said to travel fast. The conditions were tailor-made for language divergence.
So what actually happened? First we note that in pre-European times language was solely oral and there is simply no way of knowing how it actually sounded. Interested Europeans recorded in writing the speech they heard and it would be a weak argument today to claim that they were wrong. One of the very first was Georg Forster, naturalist on Cook’s first voyage. In the brief encounter with the Katimamoe remnant of Dusky Sound before they were, all but one young woman, killed and eaten by a Kai Tahu war party, Forster recorded a couple of dozen of their words, mostly names for birds.[iii] However, even though something of the language of Queen Charlotte Sound was understood by Cook, to others in the “Endeavour” more adept at language who had spent some time in Tahiti, that of Dusky Sound was virtually unintelligible to them.
Even in less isolated areas of Southland, Europeans who understood northern dialects well enough could not understand the language of resident Kai Tahu.[iv]
Now first, be it noted, the sounds in any two languages are never quite the same. Hence we detect a “foreign accent” in the English of a non-native speaker and even within countries. A Yorkshireman, a Scot and a Northern Irishman speaking English sound recognizably different from a BBC announcer. Having grown up in Bluff, I have been identified by my speech as a Southlander.
Second, we should note that in New Zealand, missionaries and others writing down what they heard could differ amongst themselves when they heard different speakers and depending on their own language experience. There was no “correct” spelling. Thus when JL Nicholas in 1817 wrote “rungateeda” and missionaries chose “rangatira” one would have been as good as the other.
Quite a number of the early missionaries were from the English social class which dropped its “h’s” thus Maoris learning English would naturally imitate them. Hone (or John) Heke was said to be one of them.
Third, be it noted, written Maori was a construct of Europeans, not Maoris. SO NO MAORI EITHER THEN OR TODAY HAS ANY BETTER AUTHORITY TO PROCLAIM THE SPELLING OF ANY MAORI WORD THAN ANYBODY ELSE.
By the year 1840, northern missionaries had developed a reasonably consistent spelling of the speech of northern Maoris amongst whom they worked.[v] When the highly experienced and competent Henry and Edward Williams[vi] translated Hobson’s final English draft of 4thFebruary that was the spelling they used. It is instructive to look at their text of the actual treaty document which, it appears, remarkably few people who claim to be experts actually do.......
Read Bruce Moon’s very informative and interesting article here > https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com.au/2018/01/bruce-moon-some-tips-about-te-reo.html
New Zealand history falsehoods laid bare
The distortion of the history of New Zealand by racists for political and financial advantage continues at a relentless pace. This has never been more so than in the events preceding a “so-called “Land Wars Day” on 28th October 2017.
On 21st February 1864, in a brilliant and humane action at dawn, designed to minimise loss of life on both sides, troops under General Sir Duncan Cameron occupied Rangiaowhia, breadbasket of the Waikato rebels on which their dominant pa at Paterangi depended. With this setback, it was not long before the rebellion was quelled.
Furious at being so outwitted, the rebels soon concocted the odious lie that a church full of women and children had been burned to the ground and other atrocities committed. Nurtured as “oral history” by the Ngati Apakura tribe, this travesty of the truth remains active to this day, being related at length by one Vincent O’Malley in the “NZ Listener” for 25th February 2017. By contrast, with access to accounts of actual observers, one a Maori lad at the time, there is my own description of the real events in the March 2017 issue of New Zealand Voice”.
Others, notably Dame Susan Devoy (i) and historian Jock Phillips (ii) have likewise repeated the lie of the church-burning.
A party of students from Otorohanga College having visited the site and been fed the false tales of the locals, a petition for a “Land Wars Day” was organised by teacher Mariana Papa and presented to Parliament by students Leah Bell and Waimarama Anderson. Parliament failed to investigate the validity of this petition which was accepted without question and so 28th October 2017 became “Land Wars Day”.
On this occasion appeared a report, authored by Martin Johnston, senior reporter of the NZ Herald, (iii) who had evidently interviewed student Bell, now at university, teacher Papa and historian O’Malley. While it makes no direct accusation of any church-burning it is riddled with gross falsehoods about many aspects of New Zealand’s history including the Rangiaowhia affray.
It is despicable that school students should have been made the vehicle for the spreading of such false tales but it is doubly despicable because the truth was known in Otorohanga College nearly two years ago. Principal Timoti Harris had received from me an accurate account of events at Rangiaowhia (iv), enclosed with my letter to him of 3rd December 2015. I wrote again on 11th December 2015 and having no reply, again on 3rd January and 27th March 2016. His belated reply subsequently was received after he had retired as school principal.
I wrote also to the Te Awamutu RSA who responded with total silence and the Library whose reply was short but informative. Tony Membery, Principal of Te Awamutu College briefly acknowledged my second letter to him, concluding: “I believe this will put an end to our correspondence on this matter.” Other enquiries elicited that at Tony Member’s school, discussion of Rangiaowhia was avoided though a tale was current there that what was an old rebel’s white blanket had metamorphosed into a white flag of surrender!
And so the tales continue to fester as so clearly shown by journalist Johnston’s report. Thus:
No. 1: ”College students' shock at the burning to death of residents of a Waikato village is at the heart of the annual day to remember the New Zealand Wars.”
IA: The burning to death of seven rebels was their own fault. They fired first.
1B: There were no “New Zealand Wars”. There were tribal rebellions.
No. 2: “the invasion of Rangiaowhia”
2: Rangiaowhia was British sovereign territory. Any action to recover it from rebels was entirely legitimate and it is a travesty to call it an “invasion”.
No. 3: “the largely undefended village of Rangiaowhia”.
3: As events proved, there was a substantial number of armed rebels in the village and caches of arms were discovered in whares after the occupation.
No. 4: “[It] was attacked by British forces on February 21, 1864”.
4: Shots were only returned to rebel fire. Rebels attacked first.
No. 5: “Buildings were burned with people inside them.”
5: Only one building was burned with people inside. This was the whare, fashioned as a gunpit, from which old fool Hoani Papita/John the Baptist, shot and killed Sergeant McHale at point blank range when called on to surrender. In the subsequent exchange, the hut made of dry vegetation probably caught alight from the discharge of rebels’ or troops’ firearms. Nobody could be sure.
No. 6: ”The Great War for New Zealand, Waikato 1800-2000”
6A: This reported title of O’Malley’s book is grossly misleading. There were inter-tribal wars before Europeans arrived. These intensified after 1807 when the tribes acquired guns, with Maori victims killed and eaten on a colossal scale. This was New Zealand’s “Great War”.
6B: “1800-2000” is a gross exaggeration. Tribal rebellions started with the Kawiti/Heke rebellion in Northland, 1843-5; mostly a sequence of skirmishes until their attack on Kororareka/Russell which was suppressed largely by Maori forces loyal to the Crown. Other rebellions spanned the period 1859-1880. What does O’Malley date of 2000 imply? (Note: The Taranaki Museum made a similar allusion in its falsehood-filled exhibition in 2011-3.)
No. 7: “Rangiaowhia was a refuge for women, children and the elderly.”
7: The amount of firing by rebels when Cameron’s force was discovered refutes the lie that in any sense it was a “refuge”. In fact, before any action commenced, Captain Wilson of the cavalry gave women and children an opportunity to evacuate which they took. None were killed or wounded except two daughters of missionary murderer Kereopa, who remained in the burning whare. The village was actively engaged in growing food supplies for the rebels and as such a legitimate objective for government forces.
No. 8: O’Malley: "I argue in my book that the evidence that people were deliberately torched to death is clear and unambiguous."
8: There is not a skerrick of genuine evidence for this false claim which should demolish for ever O’Malley’s reputation as a credible historian.
No. 9: Bell: “the British forces broke the rules of engagement. ... the grief was still very real”
9: Given the lies fed to poor Leah, this is so but in truth the troops acted with much restraint, particularly towards women and children, in an action which, but for the recklessness of one old fool rebel chief, would have been almost bloodless. The grief might be real but responsibility for it lies squarely with those outwitted and furious rebels 150 years ago. That is their legacy to their people.
No.10: “The wars were fought in Marlborough, ... .”
10: No “wars” but rebellions; only one incident in Marlborough, the Wairau massacre of 1843 when a posse of Nelson settlers greatly underestimated the fighting strength of Ngati Toa with whom they were in dispute, with many butchered in consequence.
No. 11: “It has been estimated that more than 3000 people died, but O'Malley believes the toll, although hard to calculate accurately, was probably higher.”
11: Cowan’s careful figures for deaths are: troops, loyal Maoris and civilians:745; rebels:2154; total 2899. (v)Some commentators consider that he over-estimated rebel deaths. There are other compilations but none aggregating a total of more than 3000. Enough said?
No. 12: O’Malley: “World War I, considered the country's ‘greatest bloodbath’.”
12: Why would he ignore the elephant in the room: the intertribal “Musket Wars of 1807-37 when by a careful estimate, 35,400 Maoris were killed by other Maoris with almost unimaginable brutality in 602 battles – about one third of the total population? (vi)
No.13: O’Malley again; “generations of Maori were condemned to landlessness and poverty.”
13: In the years before 1840, registered in the Sydney land office were 179 sales of land in the South Island alone by willing Maori sellers (vii), many of whom had travelled personally to Sydney to secure their sales, with reserves set aside for tribal occupants according to rank from 73 acres for chiefs, rather less for free men but zero for slaves, the latter indeed in the days of “tikanga” or Maori practice “condemned to landlessness and poverty”.
Moreover, in accordance with Hobson’s proclamation immediately on his arrival, all such sales were reduced to a maximum of 2560 acres and many voided entirely.
Of those who retained land, in 1848 some Kaiapoi Ngai Tahu were running just two sheep and their lambs on 1000 acres yet one year later a chief wrote to complain that his reserve was not big enough. In 1896 the tribe was cultivating a mere 857.5 of their 45,000-odd acres with one stock unit per seven acres. In 1872, missionary Stack had reported that “Though very fond of milk and butter, there is not one [Maori] household that provides itself with these things, everyone shirks the trouble.” (viii)
Moreover, for released landless slaves, work was available in road-building, other public works and as farm labourers. Except in times of depression which affected all, settler and Maori alike, none who were willing to work needed to be in poverty. It was not O’Malley’s “landlessness” of some Maoris “condemned to ... poverty” but their own work-shy behaviour.
Given the foregoing litany attributable to O’Malley, should his speculations be taken seriously?
More appropriate are the words of late military chaplain Frank Glen: "Cameron, with commendable humanitarianism, wanted to avoid a set piece military confrontation because the likely casualties ... would be severe on both sides. ... Under the cover of darkness, ... with the minimal loss of life, he captured Rangiaohai [sic].” (ix)
Bruce Moon, Nelson
13th November 2017
************************************************************
REFERENCES
i S. Devoy, “Bay of Plenty Times”, Guest Editorial, 4th February 2017
ii J.O.C. Phillips, "Mediaworks", 2nd April 2016
iii M. Johnson, Senior Journalist, “NZ Herald”, 28th October 2017
iv B. Moon, for an augmented account, see “NZ Voice”, March 2017, pp.40ff.
v J. Cowan, “The New Zealand Wars”, 1922-3
vi J. Robinson, “When two cultures meet, the New Zealand experience, ISBN 1-872970-31-1, 2012, p.64
vii J. Jackson, detailed list of transactions provided, 26th June 2017
viii A. Everton, “Nga Tahu’s Tangled Web”, Free Radical, Nos. 26-8, August-December 1997
ix F. Glen, "Australians at War in New Zealand", ISBN 987-1-87742-739-8. 2011, p.146
Our reversion to tribalism
"The intense tribalism we are seeing, domestically and internationally, does suggest that we may be approaching a point of true planetary peril."
So asserted commentator Robert Wright in writing "Why do we fight and can we stop?" in "The Atlantic Magazine" for November 2013.
"People", he says, meaning all of us, "magnify their grievances and do the reverse with their rivals ... you forget your sins and remember your grievances. ... We're not aware of the information [our] biases exclude. ... The world's gravest conflicts are not over ethical principles or disputed values but over disputed facts. … We seem designed to twist moral discourse to selfish or tribal ends."
A challenging insight, is it not?
And does it ring true in New Zealand today, where false accounts of our history keep appearing in our news media almost every day and expression of fraudulent tribal grievances is actively and continually fostered by the corrupt Waitangi Tribunal?……
Read Bruce Moon’s 12 falsehoods here > breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com.au/2017/11/bruce-moon-our-reversion-to-tribalism.html
Before 1840
By Bruce Moon (Published in the Northland Age 26/2/15)
It is a curious fact that there are many part-Maoris today (though certainly not all) who have remarkably good memories about their alleged sufferings since 1840 but completely blank minds about what happened to them any earlier. It is not hard to work out why this should be but more helpful perhaps to assist them in remembering a bit more about their earlier days.
When Europeans first arrived in New Zealand, Maoris were an aggressive warrior race, ready to attack for the slightest reason, as Tasman found out quickly to his cost.1
This happened again when, just over a couple of years after Captain Cook, Marion du Fresne arrived off our shores. While fishing innocently in calm waters, as he thought, he broke a tapu unknown to him and his fate was sealed. He and 26 of his crew were massacred and eaten forthwith.2 As Lieutenant Roux, one of Marion's officers, noted in his diary, the chiefs "declare war upon the slightest pretext, which wars are very bloody; they generally kill any prisoners they may capture".
Not content with dispatching Marion, about 1500 tribesmen assembled to attack the hospital the French had set up on Moturua Island. Greatly out-numbered, the French defended themselves valiantly, using their firearms of course, and, with no further losses, killed about 250 of the attackers including many chiefs who were very conspicuous amongst them.
From this episode, the tribes quickly learnt two lessons. The first was an enduring mortal fear of the "tribe of Marion", confirmed ninety years later by Rev. John Warren.3 It was one reason of many chiefs for signing the Treaty of Waitangi though to terminate the carnage of the Musket Wars which followed was another.
The second lesson was of the vast superiority of European firearms over their traditional weapons, so that bargaining for firearms with visiting ships became a highly important activity. The culmination was Hongi Hika's return from a visit to England with several hundred muskets, many exchanged in Sydney for gifts he had received, and soon followed by the most intense slaughter of the so-called Musket Wars amongst the tribes.
Hongi's party returning from England reached the Bay of Islands on 11 July 1821 and, shortly afterwards, he began to prepare for his campaign. On 5 September, 2000 Ngapuhi, armed with 1000 muskets, laid siege to Mauinaina pa at Tamaki. It was taken with great slaughter – Te Hinaki and 2000 of his men, as well as many women and children, being killed. The victorious force remained on the battlefield eating the vanquished until they were driven off by the smell of decaying bodies. It has been noted that "deaths in this one action during the inter-tribal Musket Wars outnumber all deaths in 25 years of the sporadic New Zealand Wars."4 (Our emphasis)
In December 1921 Hongi attacked but failed to take the Ngati-Maru pa Te Totara. Upon an idea said to be from his blind and bloodthirsty wife, Turi, he decided upon treachery. A large party of Ngapuhi chiefs went to the pa to offer peace which was accepted and they received two meres from the Ngati-Maru to seal the deal. In the night, Ngapuhi returned to the unguarded pa, slew those within except the sons of the senior chiefs who were taken prisoners, Hongi drinking the blood of one while he was still alive.
Proceeding thence to the Waikato pa of Matakitaki, Ngapuhi attacked it with withering musket fire. Even though led by chief Te Whero Whero, with only four muskets the Waikato were virtually defenceless. Trying to escape, many hundreds were trampled to death in the deep ditch surrounding the pa or by Ngapuhi firing down upon them until tired of reloading.
Hongi's opponent, Te Waharoa of Ngatihaua, was equally bloodthirsty. He is reputed to have been the equal of Hongi, to have terrified Te Rauparaha and even Te Whero Whero. Concluding an uneasy peace with the Ngati-Maru chief, Takurua, Te Waharoa and his tribe arose at midnight and massacred in cold blood the too-confiding Takurua and nearly every man of his tribe. Their bodies were devoured, and their wives and property were shared by the ruthless Ngatihauas.
Te Whero Whero for his part deciding to make war in Taranaki, attacked the formidable pa of Pukerangiora. When the starving defenders broke and ran Waikato attacked It is said at least 200 escapees died immediately, with Te Whero Whero killing 150 single-handedly with blows to the head. It was only when his arm grew tired and swollen he was forced to stop. Those captives with finely tattooed faces were beheaded carefully on a wooden block so their heads could be preserved. Later, dozens of slaves were dragged away, carrying the heads of their relatives to be hung as war trophies in the Waikato villages in the north. It is thought that as many as 1200 Te Ati Awa people lost their lives at Pukerangiora.
Those that stayed behind in the pa watched the awful fate of their whanau unfold before them.
The scene that followed was terrible, with huge numbers of the dead gutted and spit-roasted over fires. Some Waikato warriors indulged in a feast of such gluttony that they died.
Te Rauparaha, sometimes called the "Maori Napoleon" but more accurately perhaps the "Maori Genghiz Khan" perceived that the Waikato were probably too strong for his Ngatitoa tribe so commenced a long migration south inflicting heavy slaughter upon Rangitane on the way. Establishing himself on Kapiti Island, Te Rauparaha commenced an invasion of the South Island, almost exterminating the northern tribes and then falling upon the Ngai Tahu, first at Kaikoura, then Kaiapohia and in 1832 upon Onawe with bloody massacres, cannibalism and slavery in each. The Ngai Tahu had already been weakened by their own "Kai Huaka' or "eat relation" feud.
These are but a sample of incidents from almost continuous warfare amongst Maori tribes in the decades before 1840. By John Robinson's careful estimates, 35,400 were killed in a population numbering around 127,000 in 1800 with more dying from wounds.5 The social impact must have been profound. Paul Moon refers to the "pervasive sense that communities faced the threat of destruction at the hands of their foes", the "heightened state of fear that dominated most if not all Maori communities" and the "relentless and intense social stresses" and suggests that the consequences may still be felt today.6
It becomes clear that it is high time that this important part of our history should be recognized, faced squarely, and borne in mind when facing the substantial social problems which confront New Zealand society today.
Perhaps, for a start, a substantial part of the massive "treaty settlement" which Ngapuhi will undoubtedly be expecting could be allocated instead to those other tribes which they harmed so grievously?
1 Tu-mata-kokiri who confronted Tasman in turn got their comeuppance, being exterminated by Ngai Tahu and Ngatiapa, the last battle being in the Paparoas about 1800.
2 For a good account of this episode, read Ian Wishart's "The Great Divide", 2012, ISBN 978-0-9876573-6-7.
3 See T.L.Buick, "The Treaty of Waitangi", 1914
4 Many of the details in this account are taken from "The Encyclopedia of New Zealand" and other sources, easily obtained by "googling". Much is summarised by Pember Reeves in "The Long White Cloud, 1898, republished as ISBN 0-85558-293-6
5 "When Two Cultures Meet", 2012, pp64-65, ISBN1-872970-31-1
6 "This Horrid Practice", 2008, pp151-3, ISBN 978-0-14-300671-8
No more fantasies please - it is time to tell the truth.
There are far too many fantasies floating around in the New Zealand air today, based mostly on false interpretations of the Treaty of Waitangi and the pretence that supposed modern meanings of words were what they meant in 1840.
The essence of the Treaty is that by this document in the Ngapuhi dialect, the chiefs ceded sovereignty to the Queen completely and for ever. In return, all Maoris, including the many slaves of other Maoris, became British subjects with their full rights and privileges - a magnificent gift. It was a done deal - that was that. Whatever perceived wrongs the Maoris have experienced since have been far outweighed by the benefits British civilization brought to them - cessation of brutal tribal conflict, better food, better housing, better clothing, better transport, a written language and so on.
Claims today that the chiefs never ceded sovereignty to the Queen show contempt for the truth. It was accepted at Waitangi by numerous English-speaking chiefs that the word "kawanatanga" used for "sovereignty" in the Treaty meant exactly that. Claims to the contrary today are based on the false idea that translation is the same as derivation. It is not.
Hobson's brief was "to treat with the aborigines of New Zealand in the recognition of Her Majesty's sovereign authority over the whole or any part of those islands which they may be willing to place under Her Majesty's dominion" but only with "the free intelligent consent of the natives"(1). Without it, he would have sailed away and who knows what the outcome would have been?
The written record of events at Waitangi on 6th February 1840 is totally clear. The chiefs ceded sovereignty completely and for ever to the Queen and knew that they were doing so(2). This was confirmed fully by the chiefs' own words at the Kohimarama Conference in 1860(3) and corroborated by missionary Samuel Warren who worked subsequently amongst the northern tribes for fifteen years(4). It was confirmed yet again by outstanding Maori scholar, Sir Apirana Ngata on 1920(5).
It is an appalling fact that the taxpayer-funded Waitangi Tribunal ignores all this evidence and states that the northern tribes never ceded sovereignty. By rights it should be abolished forthwith.
By Article third of the Treaty, all Maoris - "tangata Maori, katoa o Nu Tirani" - received full citizen's rights and this included the many slaves of other Maoris, most being held in abject conditions and often the victims of cannibal feasts. Descendants of those slaves today should be singing the praises of the British for their liberation but we never hear a word. Many chiefs dishonoured the Treaty of Waitangi by being very slow to release their slaves, often taking years.
It is Article second of the Treaty which perhaps has been most twisted in recent times by racists and revisionists. Yet in essence this article is redundant since all it does is guarantee the right of citizens to own private property - land, dwellings and chattels - and British subjects have these rights anyway. Looking more closely at it, some things stand out. First, the guarantee is made to all the people of New Zealand - "tangata katoa o Nu Tirani" - in clear distinction to Article third which applied only to Maoris - and "all" means "all".
The vital point to note before we even look at the meanings of words such as "rangatiratanga" and "taonga" is that rights of ownership were guaranteed to all - equality of rights is a fundamental aspect of the Treaty in which we should all rejoice, not make spurious claims based on ancestry or sometimes a very small part of it. Since, in pre-Treaty days, Maori property was only what could be held by force of arms and then only by few people except chiefs, for Maori citizens to own property in their own right, with assurances of permanence and inheritance, was a considerable boon.
Nevertheless, "tino rangatiratanga" propaganda continues unabated with the flagrantly false idea that it applies only to those with some Maori blood. The words were hardly ever used by anybody for decades after 1840, Parkinson(6) noting "a single late and remarkable exception" being "tino rangatira" as one title amongst many by which Queen Victoria was addressed in a petition by some Rotorua Maori residents. As Parkinson has also said, "Kawharu's mistranslation of 'tino rangatiratanga' as 'the unqualified exercise of chieftainship' is not merely erroneous but preposterous".
Two things are certain: Article first of the Treaty stating that the chiefs ceded sovereignty, neither Hobson nor anybody else would have imagined that it was contradicted a few lines later in Article second, so whatever the meaning of "tino rangatiratanga", it was nothing like "sovereignty". "Full possession" is the only meaning which makes sense in context.
So Maori "aspirations for tino rangatiratanga" which Gareth Morgan says(7) will never be over, are all modern day-dreaming about fantasies of the past with no existence except in their imagination.
Even more abused than this is the meaning of "taonga". In 1820, Hongi Hika asserted that it meant "property procured by the spear".(8) When 13 Ngapuh chiefs wrote to King William in 1831, they stated that their only possessions were "timber, flax, pork and potatoes" and the word used for "possessions" was "taonga". With the range of European material goods such as iron cooking pots, steel knives and so on becoming available to the tribes, it was natural that the meaning of "taonga" be extended to include them but it still only meant "property" in William Williams' 1844 dictionary, i.e. after the Treaty was signed.
Given that some ten years later its meaning was again extended to include "treasure" it is as equally preposterous as misuse of the meaning of "tino rangatiratanga" to claim that that was its meaning in 1840. Yet, ignoring the genuine meaning of Article second today, the claims are rampart that part- Maoris are somehow entitled to natural water, the electromagnetic spectrum, special treatment by health authorities, and indeed special fishing quotas (which are not mentioned in the Treaty) and almost anything else that greedy eyes alight on.
More and more are compliant government departments, local bodies, educational institutes and hospital boards kowtowing before this onslaught, the rights of most New Zealanders being swamped in a sea of political correctness.
And, finally, let us note that New Zealand was never called "Aotearoa" in the Treaty of Waitangi. or by anybody else at the time. This was only a fantasy of a couple of English writers in the 1890s. As an unfounded upstart all references to it should be struck out decisively today.
It is high time that all New Zealanders of whatever ethnic origin or mixed race put the Treaty back in 1840 where it belongs as one step in our progress towards nationhood, and moved forward in harmony as equals in a democratic state with no racist privileges of any kind for anybody.
1 Hobson's brief from Lord Normanby, 14th August 1839
2 W Colenso, "The authentic and genuine history of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi". He was there!
3 Proceedings of the Kohimarama Conference, available from Victoria University of Wellington.
4 TL Buick, "The Treaty of Waitangi", 1914, pp281-2
5 A. Ngata, "The Treaty of Waitangi, an Explanation", 1922
6 P. Parkinson, "Preserved in the Archives of the Colony"
7 NZ Herald, 8th January 2015
8 Kendall and Lee, "A Grammer and Vocabulary of the language of New Zealand" 1820
Ngapuhi did cede sovereignty
The “Declaration of Independence” which Harawira and other Ngapuhi refer to frequently was concocted by James Busby as was his “Confederation of Tribes”. This fell apart within two years of the “Declaration” being signed – Ngapuhi began fighting among themselves and Chief Titore was killed. The “Declaration” was a short-lived and long-dead paper tiger. It is absurd that Ngapuhi should try to resurrect it now.....
The full informative blog - click > HERE
Treaty gurus teach guilt
A certain class of gurus has grown up in New Zealand in recent years who, somewhat like the soothsayers of old, seem to feel that they are especially qualified to teach us about what the Treaty of Waitangi really means. This is the first part of a two-part series on these merchants of guilt who target somewhat naïve, well-meaning people to tell them how their wicked white coloniser forebears wronged noble-savage Maori.
In reality, the treaty is a simple and succinct document whose actual meaning can be explained in about five minutes to anybody who wants to know. I take a few minutes of your time to do just that here and now, noting as I do that there is only one treaty, a document in the Ngapuhi dialect of the Maori language of 1840.....
Read the full blog of part one - click > HERE
Second part "Gross errors in 'guilt guru' claims" - click > HERE
Ngai Tahu as they were
The sheer effrontery of Sacha McMeeking’s statement, that Ngai Tahu settled cheaply by accepting $170-million for “dispossessed lands” valued between $12 and $15 billion, is astonishing. Note the use of the emotional term "dispossessed lands" for most of which they had only the slenderest of rights to claim as their own in the first place and for which they were paid in most cases twice over.
Even more barefaced is the implication that the present value of that land is somehow relevant when this is not even remotely the case ─ that $12-billion to $15-billion is due almost in its entirety to the capital, blood, sweat and tears invested in it over the years by the early settlers and their descendants.
This article is the first of a three-part series. Part 2, titled "Ngai Tahu’s river of cash" will be published here next week.
Read the full blog of part one - click > HERE
Second part "Ngai Tahu’s river of cash" - click > HERE
Third part "Ngai Tahu claim not questioned" - click > HERE
Finlayson's 'father' a tribesman!
Treaty Negotiations Minister Christopher Finlayson said Ngati Porou chairman Apirana Mahuika is one of his “fathers” in the settlement field and someone he could always talk to. "One of the great heroes of the treaty settlement era" was how Mr Finlayson described Dr Mahuika at the signing of an accord in Gisborne on April 24, 2014.
The accord provides for an annual summit between Ngati Porou and the Crown "to create an enduring relationship between the two".
Before his political career unfolded, Mr Finlayson spent years fighting for super-rich South Island tribe Ngai Tahu against the Government, pursuing its treaty claims through a series of high-profile court battles.
"I used to love going to the office in the morning when we were suing the Crown", Finlayson said in a speech in 2009. "Ngai Tahu mastered the art of aggressive litigation. . . It was 'take no prisoners' and it resulted in a good settlement" (for Ngai Tahu).....
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