Pakeha, own your own history - Lynley Tulloch and Paul Judge

Waitangi Day has generated a range of views in media which indicate our race relations are not quite as fabulous as we like to tell ourselves.

In general, the dominant narrative in Aotearoa/New Zealand is that of ‘one people/one nation’; a mixing together, if you will, of Maori and Pakeha so that we are all ‘just New Zealanders’.

But are we all really just a big pile of mainly white mashed potato? And what exactly does being a New Zealander actually amount to? Call me a cynic (or a far left loony or a snowflake or insert any other similarly dismissive term to silence me) but for many it simply means being white and using Maori culture in a tokenistic sense to give us a ‘point of difference’ from the rest of the world.

One of the most common myths that is currently being recirculated in media is encapsulated in the letter to the editor by Glenn Stanton (NZ Herald 7.2.17); “There is no other country on earth where the occupying colonial population treat the indigenous people so fairly. And this should be held up as an example”

This not only implies that the power imbalance of the colonisation process is acceptable but also assumes that we are still in a colonial situation. Actually, time has ticked on since the British clumsily scrambled off boats and onto this country’s sandy shores in search of a better life. We are now in the post-colonial era, and it’s time to get with the programme.

1975 saw the Waitangi Tribunal established, the beginning of the long process to address the many injustices done to Maori by the English colonists and their descendants. The list is long and bloody. I will let history speak for itself.

After the treaty was signed there were decades of abuse of the trust that this document was meant to set up. In short, the Treaty was not honoured. And as a culture, it seems, we have suffered social amnesia (as academic Kay Harrison calls it) ever since.

There is a huge gap in our history that white New Zealanders struggle to acknowledge. We uphold this treaty and call it the foundation of our nation - in reality, it did not stop the colonists from dominating and abusing their powers over Maori.

There were military invasions, land grabs and corrupt purchases and other atrocities including mass forced imprisonment (Parihaka), rape and murder, not to mention the environmental damage that is still occurring.

In addition, there was cultural genocide - an example being the banning of Maori language in schools right up until the 1960s. Children were strapped for speaking their native tongue! Later educational policy focused on assimilating Maori into the mainstream white culture.

In a recent Herald article (6.2.2017) Ted Dawe drew attention to how Europeans exploited the fact that Maori did not have a concept of private ownership. Land was collectively cared for in a guardianship model (kaitiakitanga). The notion of owning land is a Western concept and the 19thCentury land courts imposed a rule that Maori had to name specific chiefs in order for land to be purchased. Once the land was ‘owned’ it could be sold, and the increasingly smaller numbers of individuals deemed as ‘owners’ could be targeted by unscrupulous land sharks.

So, come on Pakeha. Get to know your history of treachery and own it. Until then no honest progress in race relations can ever be made.

Lynley Tulloch is an educator and independent writer
Paul Judge is a documentary filmmaker and writer on environmental issues.

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