Politics NZ anniversary: Country divided over Cook’s landing

What's the preferred alternative then, have them wallow in shame?

I guess what really pisses me off about phony debates such as this is the willfull ignorance towards fundamental truths in human history: as if no nation or culture of non-European extraction had ever invaded another country!

As if the Polynesians had never set foot on foreign lands and claimed them for themselves.
 
What's the preferred alternative then, have them wallow in shame?

I guess what really pisses me off about phony debates such as this is the willfull ignorance towards fundamental truths in human history: as if no nation or culture of non-European extraction had ever invaded another country!

As if the Polynesians had never set foot on foreign lands and claimed them for themselves.
The irony is that the maori were expansionist tribes prone to annihilate neighbours.
As shown once they got muskets
 
they just need to get back to carving sticks for the tourists :oops:
god only knows why we express regret - I didn't ask our government to do this - its history

"After only being here for two hours, Cook and his crew had trespassed, terrorised, killed and stolen from us."
unlucky - that's life - I don't see them inventing anything to hold Mr Cook at bay
and by the way can we have that sentence in Maori as they have stolen our language.................

'Civilization' arrived and hit you straight between the eyes - no point in moaning about it now

English rugby team should get a Captain Cook memorial shirt printed;)
 
An interviewer whom is normally shall I say a kiwi version of a US democrat huggy and inclusive asked a never Cooker if there was any benefit for her that colonialism created. She was clearly baffled.
I though of an analogy of her living in remote highlands of New Guinea would shift some comparitive wisdom into her head. A new TV reality show and they can move there and see how resource sharing and tribal diplomacy works out like the good old days. Like that survivor show without prizes.
 
Would agree with every responses so far, it’s human nature innit? Then the British were ruling the world and pretty much owned large chunk of our planet and wanted to explore more. As did the French, Spaniards, Portuguese to an extent too.

We literally built empires around the globe, of course it hasn’t been pretty and slaves were employed, killings and pillaging occurred, and so forth.

But now, to depict Maori, or the US natives, whoever else as poor victims is going a tad too far. I have empathy, but if these people have had the manpower and war machines we had then, and if Europe had been still Neanderthals with sticks, I doubt our fate would have been so much better.

Empathy and being compassionate I can agree with, just not claiming « poor man » 250 years later.
 
An interviewer whom is normally shall I say a kiwi version of a US democrat huggy and inclusive asked a never Cooker if there was any benefit for her that colonialism created. She was clearly baffled.
I though of an analogy of her living in remote highlands of New Guinea would shift some comparitive wisdom into her head. A new TV reality show and they can move there and see how resource sharing and tribal diplomacy works out like the good old days. Like that survivor show without prizes.
do they get to eat the contestants?
 
Would agree with every responses so far, it’s human nature innit? Then the British were ruling the world and pretty much owned large chunk of our planet and wanted to explore more. As did the French, Spaniards, Portuguese to an extent too.

We literally built empires around the globe, of course it hasn’t been pretty and slaves were employed, killings and pillaging occurred, and so forth.

But now, to depict Maori, or the US natives, whoever else as poor victims is going a tad too far. I have empathy, but if these people have had the manpower and war machines we had then, and if Europe had been still Neanderthals with sticks, I doubt our fate would have been so much better.

Empathy and being compassionate I can agree with, just not claiming « poor man » 250 years later.
we don't bang in about the Romans invading us - pity they did not leave a bit of money behind to keep the wall in good order(Y)
 
we don't bang in about the Romans invading us - pity they did not leave a bit of money behind to keep the wall in good order(Y)

Be grateful for the Channel which nobody ever « dried up ». It has saved you on multiple occasions since Napoléon, Hitler and The Third Worlders in Calais. ;)
 
To be fair, they do actually have some historical grievences associated with colonialism that are just.

The British Crown signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 with the various Maori tribes - the treaty made the crown responsible for protecting Maori land and usage rights in exchange for British sovreignty over NZ.

The Crown then delegated this task to a bunch of dodgy MoFo's who went around confiscating and compulsarily acquiring all the best land for their chums and ignoring any responsibilities they were supposed to take care of. And when the tribes got tired of that and rebelled, more land confiscation followed. And this was a pattern that went on for 150 years.

So while the Maori got better treatment than (say) Australia's aboriginals, they still got the short and sh*tty end of the stick.
 
Well, Cook didn't land in New Zealand to bring magnetic resonance imaging to the Maori. The argument that colonialism did have a positive effect in the long run can be made, but it doesn't strike me as a particularly good one.

The issue which I have with that load of nonsense is the ahistorical reinterpretation of historic events to suit a political narrative.

It's futile and idiotic to see historic events through a modern lense. Only a contemporary and attainable point of reference makes any sense at all, and this is the only accepted scientific point of view. Even the left does not dispute it (as long as it suits their political ends).

For example, no one in their right mind would call the Maori met by Cook backward and underdeveloped only due to their lack of technology and human development compared to other civilizations of the era. They simply didn't have the access to the scientific, economical and social innovations of those. In other words, they lived up to their potential, and fared stunningly well for hundreds and hundreds of years.

But it also means that we have to accept that none of his contemporaries – not even the Maori of the 18th century – believed that taking another territory by force was immoral or illegal.

The fact is that there is not one nation or ethnicity on this planet that never stole from another. And some of the peoples colonialized by Europeans (e.g. the Zulu) had actually waged so much war against others that they relegate the eighty wars that the English have fought in recorded history to what ought to be called a mediocre feat.

I did´nt know there were such issues in New Zealand...


Correct me if I'm wrong, but there really weren't any until rather recently. New Zealand is not Australia. The fact that European and indigenous citizens could perform a Haka together tells us everything we need to know.

It only goes to show the power of leftist identity politics to divide people.
 
In NZ's case, the legal mistreatment of Maori and their property extended through into the 1970's/early 1980's (and to a much lesser degree even beyond then).

For an example, in 1942 land was compulsarily acquired in the seaside town of Raglan for an airbase and radar station from local Maori as it was nice and flat. Post war and with the airbase/radar station no longer needed the law requires that the government offer the original owners the chance to buy back the land at the selling price. Instead it was sold cheap to become a golf course. This was fairly typical of the approach right up until the 1980's.

As another example, a group of landowners wanted to aquire some more farmland in the fertile Hauraki plains. The local tribe refused to sell it, so the landowners got the government to compulsarily aquire land for a road. A road 20 miles wide on each side.
 
To be fair, they do actually have some historical grievences associated with colonialism that are just.

The British Crown signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 with the various Maori tribes - the treaty made the crown responsible for protecting Maori land and usage rights in exchange for British sovreignty over NZ.

The Crown then delegated this task to a bunch of dodgy MoFo's who went around confiscating and compulsarily acquiring all the best land for their chums and ignoring any responsibilities they were supposed to take care of. And when the tribes got tired of that and rebelled, more land confiscation followed. And this was a pattern that went on for 150 years.

So while the Maori got better treatment than (say) Australia's aboriginals, they still got the short and sh*tty end of the stick.
this is what happens when you outsource running things :oops:
 
@TheKiwi

I don't want to be an arsehole here, but that sounds just like the usual degree of governmental skullduggery.
 
To a degree you're right. Some of the behaviour could be written off as BAU. Siezing land from rebels and/or losers in wars was pretty standard European behaviour at the time (c.f. Prussia/Germany and Denmark/France).

Some of it however was very different from the standards of the time applied to non-Maori landowners (the 40 mile wide road was a particularly egregious example).

In short, in my mind some of the whining is justified, some of it is not.
 
Perhaps I'd be more sympathetic if my government hadn't seized some of my family's land in order to build some sort of ornithological lookout in 1990, which has been visited by like 2 ⅝ tourists since. The point being, by your response alone it didn't become obvious this governmental misconduct and abuse of power was purely motivated by the fact its victims were Maori.

Well, I don't doubt the Maori have legitimate grievances.

But I'm highly skeptical of this recent trend in Western politics to pretend the situation of once-disenfranchised demographics hasn't improved drastically. What is more, I'm disgusted by the iconoclastic riots the left and its pawns within those communities have embarked on. All those festivities, statues, traditions we're supposed to axe, and the words we're not supposed to use anymore…

They distrust their own fellow citizens' intellectual capacity to be aware of the full scope of consequences set in motion by a historical event such as Cook's landing. And they've just determined no one must arrive at the conclusion Cook's landing could be an event worthy of celebration even though it also caused suffering That's paternalistic to the highest degree.

Yet still it was an incredible feat of seafaring and the single most important event in the history of the modern state of New Zealand, for without it there would be no modern state of New Zealand.
 
In the early years many believed the Maori were going to be extinct through rampant European diseases and interbreeding which was a bit pompous given them shooting up the various militias and British Army. Their descendants now make up the major part of the contingent of most pro rugby and league teams. A very healthy come-back.
 
...

But I'm highly skeptical of this recent trend in Western politics to pretend the situation of once-disenfranchised demographics hasn't improved drastically. What is more, I'm disgusted by the iconoclastic riots the left and its pawns within those communities have embarked on. All those festivities, statues, traditions we're supposed to axe, and the words we're not supposed to use anymore…
...

Well Maori do make up a much larger proportion of the prison population than their numbers would suggest in the general population. Likewise their health statistics in general have poorer outcomes than the general population.

However some Maori have done exceeding well out of the change in culture towards repayment/reparations for the crap things done over the last 150 years. They tend to make up the loudest part who blame all ills on "colonialism" - and why wouldn't they, it's been the golden goose as far as they're concerned.
 
Just remember the Treaty was signed nearly 60 years after the beloved US Constitution, and we did in fact declare our own independence in 1835.

And total settlements to date over the last 30 yrs equal 12 weeks of the government paying superanuation.
 

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