Author John Robinson, a former university lecturer and research scientist with an MSc degree in maths and physics from Auckland University, and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, knows all about the findings-falsification business because he worked for the government for 16 years, from 1986 to 2002, crunching numbers concerning Maori life expectancy, infant mortality, health, education, offending, imprisonment.
In 2000, his employer the Crown Forestry Rental Trust told him to rewrite his demographic research that undermined treaty orthodoxy or not get paid. Robinson says he can only speak out freely as an independent now because he is past the end of his career and no longer needs to satisfy the demands of an employer. His publisher also works outside the mainstream.
His earlier book “The Corruption of New Zealand Democracy”, published last year, provided extensive evidence to disprove the orthodox view that colonisation killed Maori. He shows that Maori killed Maori by the tens of thousands between 1800 and 1842, causing a population decline from a projected 120,000 (projected back from censuses in 1858 and 1871 using a model detailed in the book) to 70,000 in 1840. He shows that the Maori population gradually recovered as colonization ended war, slavery and infanticide, and brought better nutrition and healthcare, which contrasts with the current orthodoxy that Maori were living in paradise before the wicked colonizer came along and wrecked everything.
This book takes in those findings and re-tells history, capturing the carnage of the inter-tribal “musket wars” from 1840, shows how chiefs welcomed the Treaty of Waitangi to bring personal protection, details the difficulties from 1845 to 1860 that brought sporadic armed conflict, describes the slights and blundering that escalated into the Taranaki and Waikato wars, and fighting involving Pai Marire Hauhaus and Te Kooti to 1872. He discusses the contribution of Sir Apirana Ngata, James Carroll, and others, shows how urban drift benefited Maori, then details how Maori sovereignty activists since 1968 have re-written history in a grab for money and political power.
The statistics prove that integration was a success story, he concludes, writing “Maori life expectancy at birth, which had been around 25 years before contact, had improved somewhat to 30 years for women and 35 years for men in 1901. It then increased at an almost constant rate to 73 years for women and 68 years for men in 1990, and then at a slower rate to 75.1 years for women and 70.4 years for men in 2005-07 (coming towards but still lagging the values for the total population of 82.2 years for women and 78 years for men)”.
Robinson takes special aim at the rewriting of history by negotiation that takes place in treaty settlements. This false history, that is being force fed through schools and universities, is contradicted by the wealth of information recorded by the numerous literate settlers and is freely available in libraries, in government archives, and at the end of a Google search to those who want to know what really went on until historical revisionism took off in the 1970s.
He goes back to these sources, especially journalist-historian James Cowan, who wrote over 30 detailed and precisely sourced books, many on the pioneering period and the wars. Cowan, who grew up on a confiscation land farm with a father who fought in the Waikato War, wrote a two-volume history, published in 1922, that is disappearing from libraries, while the works of those who started writing in the 1970s are taken as gospel.
Robinson the mathematician notes widespread numerical illiteracy among this new generation of historians, who tend to take wild stabs at statistics, using this conjured-up data to bolster their beliefs.
“The new apartheid society” chapter launches into a withering criticism of Prime Minister John Key’s deal with the race-based Maori Party that only benefits the neo-tribal elite, the policy U-turn in the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011 that gave special privileges to tribal groups, treaty settlements based on secret deals and circumventing parliamentary procedure, “Maori science”, “Maori medicine” which both revive old superstitions, the constitutional review which could achieve the Maori nationalist aim of a re-written constitution based on the treaty.
After discussing Tame Iti’s weapons camps in the Ureweras, Robinson concludes that “the rewriting of history – with Maori presented as passive victims of massive British wrongdoing, and the glorification of murderous rebels – together with funding of a substantial industry to seek out and amplify an ever-growing list of grievances, have provided the intellectual and ideological platform for armed insurrection.”
Read it and weep. How many more government-funded academics are too frightened to present their research without fear or favour? This book is a must for anyone with a care or an interest in what is going on in New Zealand right now.
When two cultures meet – the New Zealand experience, John Robinson, Tross Publishing, Wellington. 280 pages, illustrated, $40p&p. Available from P.O. Box 22 143, Khandallah, Wellington 6441
11 comments:
Well, citizens, this Treaty nonsense is going to continue if or until enough of us vote for Parties who will halt it.
We can't trust the politicians and it seems that we can't trust some academics to publish accurate history.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels absolutely helpless as the politicians and the Maori vested interest groups rip of the mainstream citizens.
As I mentioned on other posts Swiss style Direct Democracy would at least put a brake on this farce if not stopping it dead in its tracks.
All great stuff, and the small minority who read this information are not at all surprised. The problem is, as with all truth about the treaty and maori, it will not be seen by the majority of voters, who will just plod along in ignorance, until they, and we, become serfs to maori, as their new "slaves". Full circle, a backward step in civilisation.
I can remember as a child hearing the myth of Maui and how the two brothers, once they had fished the gleaming North island from the ocean, raced greedily across it slashing at it with their weapons. And that was how the landscape became ridden with all the mountain ranges and valleys. Go to a library now and you will find the myth now written to the effect [that when the great fish (island) appeared, there were the villages with the wahines siting out front of the whares weaving flax to make baskets and skirts, while the warriors were out in the bush hunting wild pigs!!! This is a blatant lie! There were no pigs in the country until Captain Cook introduced them on his second voyage for the Maori to breed as a food source in order to try to get them to refrain from the ghastly cannibalism they practised. It must be remembered too that it was only from Cook's first encounter with the Maori that any records were written as accurate history for the very first time, apart from Able Tasman's fatal encounter 127 years earlier at 'Murderer's Bay' Changed subsequently to PC 'Golden Bay' (While in this part of the country there is another shocking episode that befell some of the crew of the 'Adventure' Cook's sister ship under the command of Captain Furneaux while in Queen Charlotte sound) All this is quietly forgotten 'culcha'!
Great article....Maybe John Robinson could join up with David Round and Mike Butler and other credible, like minded people and organisations to expose these revisionist lies/myths because, on their own anyone can be ignored.
Our weakness is that we are fragmented and the other side generally is not.
We need clout and we desparately need a new vehicle...
Unfortunately I believe that ACT has not only shot itself in both feet but its legs are gone as well...(and I was once a supporter).
Thats why we need a new organisation. I know people want it and it would get support as we are all disillusioned and so tired of watching our country go down the toilet.
If we dont unify we are doomed....that should be clear by now.
United we stand....but divided we WILL fall.
In the book "Destruction of NZ Democracy" Maori scientists would like Maori science to be incorporated into Western Science, so I wrote to the Royal Society to ask whether there was a possibility that this would happen, seeing that even some well-educated Maori still believe in taniwha. as described in the book. That accepting such beliefs would not sit well with the tradition of Western Science which was built up over centuries into a truly international organisation with high standards etc.
No answer,no acknowledgement.
I am third generation NZer. Both my Father and Grandfather fought in WW1 and WW2 alongside all their countrymen. Maori and European and whatever else. I am one of three family. My brother, wife and 2 girls had enough and left NZ 26 years ago. My sister, husband and four daughters left in 1988. They had had enough and saw writing on the wall. My husband and I and 2 sons and 1 daughter remained to take care of parents.
One of my sons left age 20, he is now 39, he did not return.
Second son left at 24, now 41, he did not return.
Daughter left at 24 also, she did not return.
My father has since passed away. My Mum is 90 and well cared for in a rest home.
We leave for Australia in November.
We lose a large amount of savings due to exchange rate. We have savings due to hard work and not wasting our money.
When my Mum passes away that is the end of our family in NZ.
The 9 children in total, some have married and have children, some have not.
The loss to NZ is in total as of today 44 people. In November it will be 46. All hard workers and Tax payers on Australia. All purchased homes etc and adding to economy of Australia.
Why? They had a gutful of everywhere they went and every bit of education involved the Treaty of Waitangi.
TheTreaty lies, successive weak Governments and now the Wet soppy John Key have done nothing to keep our kids here in NZ with us.
You know where it's going, all down hill until we are bled dry. Not me, I'm sick of the lies and deceit and special treatment for Maori.
I'm sad I will not die here but watching it Happen and I can't see a way to stop it is more than I'm prepared to put up with any more.
We are typical of our friends and family members.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only sane NZer left who shares these views, but I also suspect there are most likely many others.
I agree we need a new political party to stand up and tell the truth even though there is now the risk of a real civil war since thousands are firmly convinced that by being (part) Maori gives them special privileges and rights denied to the rest of us Kiwis.
We have kids and their parents who have been brainwashed into the new thinking that is being taught in all our educational facility's.
There will one day be an awakening by the rest of us 90% but by then will it be too late.
Surely there must be a political party and leader out there with enough backbone to put a stop to this on behalf of all New Zealanders?
We had NZ friends who left for the UK 14 years ago.
On a visit to NZ recently I learnt that a big part of their decision to leave was all the Maori - treaty of Waitangi rubbish that was going on back then.
Maybe this is what they mean when they say that in so many years (I think the figure was 50 years) the population will be 50/50 Maori/other.
Have the powers that be already predicted the non-Iwi exodus out of New Zealand?
Rather than a conspiracy (Cowans books leaving library shelves) perhaps one might consider that published in 1922 the bloody things are falling apart!!!
The two-volume Cowan history that disappeared from the Hastings public library was not falling apart.
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