National MP Paul Goldsmith says that on balance colonisation has been good for Maori.
But his colleagues and leader equivocate.
Chris Luxon says the opposite. "Colonisation was not good for Māori as we saw with breaches of the Treaty and we saw with Land Wars as well."
But wait.
Goldsmith has found at least one ally in the house in ACT Party leader David Seymour.
"I think there was always going to be an impact when New Zealand reconnected with the world," Seymour said. "That's not saying that it's justified, it's about balancing everything that's happened.
"The question is on balance, has colonisation been a good thing, and the answer is yes, because New Zealand is one of the most successful societies in human history to grow up in today," he said.
When asked how Māori dying seven years younger than non-Māori was good for them, he said it did need to be improved, but framing everything in light of colonisation was not going to solve it.
On that last point colonisation is apparently an ongoing process. If it is so bad for Maori how come their life expectancy has risen dramatically and faster than non-Maori?
6 comments:
Not unbelievable to me. Those politicians generate statements and even beliefs based on what's popular not what's true!
Besides, Maoris were not colonised. At first they had pet white people such as Missionaries and Whalers, guarding them jealously as human capital. Then, they went on with their own parallel lives living my their own culture. More recently, The Second Great Migration, as Norman Kirk called it. The Maoris departed their rural lives and joined the cities that the Settlers had built and of their own free will.
We used to be perfectly aware of that but there has been historical revisionism in the past generation or two.
Ref. http://ahnz.anarkiwi.co.nz/1960s-the-second-great-migration/
National lost my party vote last election. If someone as historically and sociologically ignorant as Luxon appears to be is the future of National, it won’t come back.
On the issue of whether or not colonisation was good for Maori, I think the litmus test is to ask: “What would pre-colonisation Maori have chosen for their ancestors?”
This presupposes that pre-colonisation Maori would have been able to comprehend and understand and accept that life would be very different in a post colonisation future, and that they could be lead to understand the positives and the negatives.
I think if you compare life expectancy, security/safety, health care, housing, technology etc it is apparent that Maori of today are vastly better off than pre-colonisation Maori.
But perhaps that is the way my culture looks at what is important, and the Maori culture would view other things as more important?
It would be a very good idea if 1. Todd Muller learned to read and listen, and then 2. Left parliament to find a job better suited to his talents. The rest of the woke Nats should also listen carefully to what Goldsmith said and to what National voters are saying. Colonization stopped Maori from wiping themselves out and, by being British, stopped the French and the Germans coming in. On balance they did OK and in absolute terms a great deal better than if Hobson and Busby and co had been turned away at the border.
My wife who grew up in a home with a dirt floor, has had a successful life and career in her chosen fields of endeavor.
To several of her extended whanau who have not been as fortunate and with a degree of derision , she is known as The Spud.
"Spud," brown on the outside, white on the inside.
My Warrior Woman believes she owes her good fortune to the best influences from both of the worlds she lives in.
New Zealand was going to have white colonists. In that day and age, it was a foregone conclusion.
Maori did pretty well, actually.
If it hadnt been the Poms, it would have been one of the other major players of the era - The French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese...
I venture to suggest that any of those powers setting up camp would not have generated a happy event.
And as I said elsewhere, I cant think of anywhere else where theres been such a melding of two races and cultures as willingly occurred in New Zealand, for the last thousand years or so.
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