Maori in New Zealand

[Saorsa]

(I didn't want to derail the West Papua thread, and I thought people might find this interesting)


But the ethnic cleansing and genocide in that part of the world is covered up and ignored so bad in general, including the genocide of aboriginal Australians and Maoris.

I don't want to downplay the effects of colonisation on the Maori people whatsoever, but to put it in the same category as what happened to the Australian aborigines is innacurate. It wasn't nearly that bad. There were never any attempts to wipe out the Maori population, and in fact European leaders encouraged intermarriage and breeding between Maori and Pakeha (Te Reo Maori word for white people) because this could lead to a super race with the savage physical strength of the Maori plus the intelligence and morality of the Europeans. In European racist ideology at the time, Maori were seen as being just below Anglo-Saxons, and above even many white 'races' like Eastern European and Slavic people.

There was actually a compromise of sorts reached with the Maori here, in the form of the Treaty of Waitangi. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Waitangi) While it was very much a treaty of conquest the terms of which (Maori ownership of lands etc) were widely ignored, it is incredibly different to what took place in Australia, where the colonists just massacred and raped the aboriginal population virtually out of existence.

The New Zealand ruling class today actively promotes multi-culturalism and the ToW. It's hypocrisy, of course - capitalism and the oppression of Maori people are completely entwined, but this is still worth noting. The ideology of the ruling class today is based on supposedly making up for past wrongs. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of forests, land and so on have been 'handed back' to iwi (tribes), which in reality of course means handed back to capitalist firms which happen to have brown CEOs and use the names of Maori tribes.

The NZ ruling class is actually incredibly PC. My sister is currently studying to become a teacher, and countless questions in her textbooks are things like 'how does the treaty of waitangi lay a foundation for your approach to teaching?" or "how can we challenge racism and promote a multi-cultural society by studying the treaty of waitangi" etc. The ruling class has realised that if it wants to prevent the emergence of a radical, anti-capitalist Maori liberation like we began to see in the late 70s, they need to create and incorporate a Maori bourgeoisie and they need to embrace the ideas of multi-culturalism and racial equality. New Zealand now has a Maori Party which gets into parliament using the Maori seats, half a dozen seats in which only ethnic Maori can vote. The Maori Party is currently in coalition with the National Party, our version of the Tories.

There was no Maori genocide. I'm no expert on NZ history, but I'd say this comes down to two factors. Firstly - the Maori had guns. They used this to butcher each other in the Musket Wars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musket_Wars) that followed the sale of firearms to the northern tribes (who then marched south killing everything in their path), so there was never much in the way of effective united resistance to colonialisation, but the fact remains that the Maori were better armed and better organised than their Australian counterparts. Despite the destructive effects of the Musket Wars, they also trained Maori warriors in musket warfare, notably in how to construct pas (Maori fortress villages) designed to be defended against musket wielding armies.

Secondly, various Maori tribes had actually begun to develop capitalism. There were Maori run mills, plantations and so on, and Maori traders sold goods to the Europeans in Australia and even as far afield as Europe.

Maori (along with Pacific Islanders, Asians etc) remain racially oppressed in New Zealand today. They die earlier, they have higher rates of everything from unemployment to incarceration, and they get a harder time in court than white people. A recent case that springs to mind and sums it all up is the case of Bruce Emery (http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3203809/Tagger-killer-Bruce-Emery-to-be-freed). Emery is a middle aged white guy, who caught a 15 year old Maori kid tagging his fence, chased him down an alleyway and stabbed him to death with a kitchen knife. He received four years in jail, and was released after only one.

Try to picture that happening if a working class Maori man stabbed to death a 15 year old white kid :rolleyes:

Anyway, I'll cut this short, but the point I wanted to make is that colonisation proceeded differently in New Zealand to how it did in many other countries, and the oppression of Maori in New Zealand is very different to the oppression of aborigines in Australia or similar cases elsewhere. Maori people were dispossessed from their land, colonialist soldiers broke any resistance to settler encroachment in a series of Maori-Pakeha wars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Wars), but to describe what took place in New Zealand as genocide is historically inaccurate.

If you're interested in reading more about Maori oppression and how it is masked and distorted by modern New Zealand capitalism, this article from the late 90s (http://workersparty.org.nz/resources/study-material/equality-bigger-than-iwi/) is still extremely relevant. And this recent Workers Party article (http://workersparty.org.nz/2010/04/27/whanau-ora-and-modern-maori/) sheds a lot of light on the current situation as well.

[scarletghoul]

Ah, thanks a lot. Always just assumed it was the same as Australia..

[merdeka]

I don't completely agree with everything here. In australia indigenous people were classified as 'native fauna' and shot for sport, so it was definitely better than that in nz but this is nz's national myth, we're a multicultural paradise compared with australia. kids learn to count to 4 in te reo but they don't learn the unpleasant aspects of history
the ruling class don't promote tikanga maori, they just co-opt symbols of maori culture.

interbreeding with maori women was meant to breed out the inferior race, at the time they assumed maori would naturally go extinct and europeans would inherit the title of native new zealanders. These days white nzers claim there is no such thing as a 'pure full-blooded' maori, we're all interbred so therefore there's no such thing as racism, nothing belongs to maori and the past doesn't matter - which isn't true btw, there are 'full bloods' but it isn't relevant because tribe isn't a race.

It's probably true the English probably signed the treaty of waitangi because maori had guns. the Maori translation guaranteed sovereignty, they didn't realise they were being colonised so they didn't resist until it was too late. Actually Paul Moon thinks the maori version was what the english originally intended, his book is pretty interesting. But neither the maori or english version were ever honoured. the majority of the public oppose it even today.

The maori party was formed in 2004 because that year the labour government passed legislation to confiscate the foreshore and seabed, which previous governments had forgotten to officially confiscate. Maori weren't allowed to claim but pakeha owners of private beaches were allowed to keep their property. The maori mps quit the labour party in protest so there's no way they could have made an alliance with labour. National promised action but I'm sceptical, we'll see what happens. but National have finally signed the UN indigenous rights agreement Labour refused to sign. true the maori party does represent maori interests, not the international proletariat or anything

About the maori seats they were introduced originally because maori outnumbered pakeha, if they were allowed 1 man 1 vote maori could have had real political power and this was unacceptable. so they were restricted to 4 seats.

At first in nz only landowners could vote, maori weren't able to vote at all because they owned land collectively. When the pakeha wanted to take away maori land, the land courts were created to break up collective ownership individualize land titles - if nobody claimed individual ownership the land was taken away and sold to settlers.BTW this was the way most of the land was lost. the individual plots were not useful by themselves, or the individual owners were too poor to keep them by themselves and were forced to sell. In a way this is nicer than just killing people and driving them off like they did in australia, using the legal system to legally take the land isn't stealing. it allows nzers to justify their history and blame maori for their fecklessness. it is really difficult to get white nzers to accept that any injustices took place because it wasn't genocide like tasmania.

Anyway as a result of this plan some maori became landowners and were allowed to vote, the government worried their votes would count because they outnumbered white landowners in some areas, so they were given 4 maori seats and forbidden to vote in white electorates. NOW maori use these seats to advantage - so now suddenly people are concerned they're undemocratic - the original intention was not to represent maori interests.

I would post links but I can't - wikipedia is not reliable on this topic!

I didn't learn all this at highschool in nz, I learnt the myth of peaceful settlement and racial harmony disrupted suddenly by tama iti for no reason.
I agree it is true nzers aren't as bad as australians. :-)

[Saorsa]

In australia indigenous people were classified as 'native fauna' and shot for sport, so it was definitely better than that in nz but this is nz's national myth, we're a multicultural paradise compared with australia.

Agreed. Clean, green New Zealand, where the police are nice (unlike in Australia and America, tut tut) and the government is here to help. Whatever problems we have, at least we're not as bad as * insert neighboring country here*


The maori party was formed in 2004 because that year the labour government passed legislation to confiscate the foreshore and seabed, which previous governments had forgotten to officially confiscate. Maori weren't allowed to claim but pakeha owners of private beaches were allowed to keep their property. The maori mps quit the labour party in protest so there's no way they could have made an alliance with labour. National promised action but I'm sceptical, we'll see what happens. but National have finally signed the UN indigenous rights agreement Labour refused to sign. true the maori party does represent maori interests, not the international proletariat or anything

The seabed and foreshore issue is complicated... I don't see its seizure by the state as being a progressive act, and I certainly don't think New Zealand workers will benefit from the seizure. But at the same time as that, should brown skinned capitalists be allowed to keep people off the beaches or be granted exclusive monopoly on fishing rights etc? Most Maori in this country are not affiliated to any particular iwi, and the wealth generated by the iwi corporations like Ngai Tahu (which makes around 80 million dollars profit a year) certainly doesn't trickle down to most working class Maori.

I don't really see why 'Maori ownership' i.e. brown skinned capitalist ownership of the seabed and foreshore should be defended.