You may disagree with their motives and argue that Māori didn’t need or ask for the Christian faith. Photo: Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington Ref:G-618 Maori chiefs Hongi Hika and Waikato meet with Missionary Thomas Kendall. And what’s more, they had come to New Zealand in order to serve Māori rather than get rich and famous themselves. They knew they were guests in this land, dependent on the grace and favour of their Māori hosts, under the protection of the local chief, reliant on the hapu for food, shelter and survival. The missionaries had no doubt about that, which is the first comparison they have to offer us today. And although the Treaty had been signed and the Crown thought they’d secured sovereignty, it was Māori, all 80,000 of them, who were really in charge. But the ones that provided the most powerful role models were European missionaries – Anglican, Catholic, Wesleyan.īy 1840 there were about 300 of them in the country, out of a total Pakeha population of around 2000. Some of the earliest were sealers and whalers, ships’ crews, traders and shopkeepers. Pakeha people have to reach a long way back in our history because so much of it is lopsided, especially since the NZ Wars of the 1860s, where the seeds of Māori poverty and dispossession were first planted.īut there is a period before that, understudied and stereotyped by historians, where Pakeha men and women lived as a minority alongside Māori and made the first steps in shaping a partnership that we take for granted today. So how do we do that without continuing to abuse or ignore each other in the process? Where do we look for role models and stories of how justice and restoration can be found, piece by piece, and how real bicultural partnership can be achieved? Somehow in this early 21 st century, we have to find a way of justice and restoration through that divide. If your forebears had their land confiscated and were plunged into poverty and disease, that inheritance is catastrophic. If your settler forebears won land and a livelihood from that history then you got lucky. With the slow return of the Treaty of Waitangi to centre stage and a groundswell of Māori renaissance, we’ve all had to rethink our colonial past and refocus on what a mixed bag it is. No one with half an eye on what’s happening in Aotearoa since the ’70s should be surprised by any of this. You have the Pakeha deniers on one end who can’t see there’s a problem and even if there is we should just get over it and on the other end are Māori leaders who call Hamilton a “murderous arsehole”, Cook a “syphilitic bastard” and the Government’s treaty settlers “Clowns from the Crown.”ĭetail of poster from late 1970s expressing the frustration of the Māori land-rights movement. Just about as polarised as the climate change debate. I choose that image deliberately because it is an explosive time. How we teach this history to our children is equally under the gun. The place names that shape that legacy – Auckland, Hastings, Napier and the statues of Hamilton, Grey, Wakefield, Cook, Tasman and Nixon are all under fire, some of them already tucked away in cold storage. What used to give us a place to stand and a way to belong here has now become a slippery and sometimes volatile description of who we are: the New Zealanders who are not Māori but have no other place to call home.Īnd the legacy that defines a Pakeha, namely a history that stretches back for 150 years and more, is suddenly up for grabs. This is a strange time to be a Pakeha New Zealander, even for those who resist that label. Detail of James Cook's map of New Zealand Photo: Archives NZ My friend the missionary Chapter One
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