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Tuesday, October 1, 2019

Bruce Moon: Death Ship Comment and Response


Stuff article: Waikato academic calls Endeavour a “death ship”

A Waikato University academic has labelled Captain James Cook's HMB Endeavour a "death ship".

Dr Arama Rata, a senior research fellow, said the arrival of the replica Endeavour represents a re-enactment of the invasion of Māori land.

The appearance of the HMB Endeavour, which arrived in Tauranga on Friday, is part of Tuia - Encounters 250, a programme of events to commemorate 250 years since the first onshore meetings between Māori and Europeans. Tuia 250 also celebrates the voyaging heritage of Pacific people and will include voyaging waka.

Rata, speaking at a panel discussion on Thursday to discuss the future of Hamilton, said October's local government elections are being played out against a backdrop of rising anxieties.

We've got young people tomorrow [Friday] striking for climate action, we've got mana whenua at Ihumātao occupying the land there, we've got ... a lot of momentum building around the 'Hands off our tamariki movement ...and the replica death ship, the replica of the Endeavour, is literally on the horizon and will be arriving any day now to re-enact the invasion of Māori whenua."

Turning her attention to Hamilton, Rata said population projections indicate Hamilton will become more ethnically diverse in the coming decades.

These projections show the overall percentage of Māori, Pasifika and Asian in the population will increase.

Rata said "white people" may become anxious at the thought of no longer being the country's major ethnic group.

"I've heard ministers do this, add up all these categories and think that white people will be outnumbered in New Zealand, but that's not the way it works.

"So you can rest assured that you will still be in the majority, Pākehā. In 2038, you'll be 57 per cent of the population. But I should also note that you shouldn't be anxious even if you're not the majority because white people have never needed to be the majority to oppress other people."

To ensure Hamilton can prosper as a diverse, growing city, there needs to be equitable representation on councils, Rata said.

Many key decisions impacting Māori are made at the local government level.

A range of measures could be used to improve Māori engagement and representation, including replacing the current First Past the Post voting system with Single Transferable Voting. Online voting and lowering the voting age could also improve voter engagement.

Councils adopting Māori wards could also help lift Māori engagement, Rata said.

"We certainly don't need referendums on whether or not we should have Māori wards because the majority will never vote in favour of more Māori representation."
Rata said what's ultimately required is for radical constitutional transformation in New Zealand as the current foundations of society are based on "settler colonial ideology".

"This mentality that Cook brought over, and the project here was to really eliminate Māori, to dispossess Māori, and to replace Māori with Pākehā settlers".
The panel discussion "What could Hamilton Look Like in the Future" was the final of three events hosted by Waikato University to coincide with the local body elections.

Professor Iain White and Dr Jeremy Mayall also spoke at Thursday's event.
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Bruce Moon Response

It would be hard to find more distorted and alarming rhetoric than the reaction of Dr Arama Rata, a senior research fellow at Waikato University, to the impending arrival of the replica of Cook’s ship, HMB “Endeavour”; of her description of it as a “death ship” and brazen claim that the “mentality that Cook brought over, and the project here was to really eliminate Maori, to dispossess Maori, and to replace Maori with Pakeha settlers”.  (“Stuff”, 27/9/19).  (I omit the redundant macrons which liberally bestrew the that report.)

It would be more enlightening to address the nature of the society Cook and other early explorers found on their landfall in New Zealand – a brutal and savage Stone Age society with cannibalism,[1] slavery and infanticide rampant.  The real “death ships” were the canoes of the invaders from eastern Polynesia a few centuries earlier who proceeded ruthlessly to eliminate the genuinely indigenous people whom they found here.[2]

The slaughter of one of Tasman’s boat’s crew in their first encounter with Europeans is well known.  Less so is the experience of Frenchman, Marion du Fresne, just a couple of years after Cook, who, with twenty-six of his crew, innocently fishing, was slaughtered without mercy, their bodies consumed in a cannibal feast.[3]  While the crew of the “Endeavour” were more fortunate, not so was a boat’s crew of HMS “Adventure”, second ship on Cook’s second visit. A round dozen of them were killed, cooked and eaten at Queen Charlotte Sound.

These were real events in New Zealand’s history which any competent “senior research fellow” should be expected to know but clearly it did not suit Rata’s agenda to acknowledge them.

But more significant even than these isolated examples of Maori behaviour were the inter-tribal “Musket Wars” of 1807-1837 in which one third of the Maori population was slaughtered by their own kind with cannibalism on a colossal scale.  Indeed, as the careful analysis of John Robinson[4] has shown, the breeding population was slaughtered on such a scale that this alone accounts for the decline in the Maori population in the early colonial decades.  Colonization saved the Maoris from themselves.  This again, a competent “senior research fellow” would be expected to know, but says Rata “the project here was to really eliminate Maori”. 

So whether or not “the current foundations of our society are based on ‘settler colonial ideology’” as Rata claims, they are infinitely preferable to that which they replaced and surely and self-evidently vastly better than the “radical constitutional transformation” with which Rata would replace them.

It bodes ill for our country that somebody such this is a “senior research fellow” in one of our universities.  We ignore the warning signs at our peril.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] For a thorough study of Maori cannibalism, see P. Moon, “This Horrid Practice”, ISBN 978-0-14-300671-8, 2008 and for the 1835 cannibal practices of the invaders of the Chatham Islands, see M. King, “Moriori”, ISBN 0-670- 082655-3, 1989
[2] For some evidence of who these people were, see “In search of our Tangata Whenua; Wairau Bar”, “New Zealand Voice”, 4, December 2017,  pp 6-11.  Again, stunning evidence in the Poukawa volcanic ash deposits of Hawkes Bay of human presence about 7170 years ago is strictly concealed from us by officialdom which clearly does not want us to know.  I have a recent full comprehensive report available on request.
[3] For a lucid account of this episode, refer to I Wishart, “The Great Divide”, ISBN 978-0-9876573-6-7, chapter 3.
[4] J. Robinson, “When Two Cultures Meet”, ISBN 1-872970-31-1

Bruce Moon is a retired computer pioneer who wrote "Real Treaty; False Treaty - The True Waitangi Story".

9 comments:

Andy Espersen said...

The blatantly anti-European sentiment we meet with these days is very saddening. It is also completely irrational. The way peoples' migrations have occurred over the last 8,000 years all over the world cannot be "blamed" on anybody hundreds of years later. Historical events just happen - we later generations are not to be blamed, of course. And the result of peoples' migrations is always that genetic mixing will occur - and that the strongest, most advanced culture (including its language) will prevail. And there is nothing, but nothing, anybody can do to prevent that happening.

We are now to get more NZ history taught in our secondary schools. I am all for that - but to me it has sinister implications that Education Minister Chris Hipkins, when announcing this blatantly stated that the new curriculum would be written after consulting with "educators, students and their parents and whanau, Pacific communities, etc.". Such advisers are precisely who we do NOT want to have input to our school history curriculum - because then, of course, this would be tainted and corrupted by current P/C opinions. The Politbureau in the former Soviet Union very successfully wrote their school history curricula (also branched into biology curricula, by the way!).
We do not want political noses poking into writing our history curriculum. This task must be left to established and proven academic historians. Political interference here is an abomination.

Geoffrey said...

It is really hard to have anyone worse than Rata purporting to represent history

Anonymous said...

It seems strange that the Maori colonisation of New Zealand, and what became of the indigenous peoples, always seems to get skipped. Did this really happen ? Could this be an early example of "fake news"?
World history is full of colonisations, the Spanish in South America, Greeks and Romans across Europe and into Asia, the French and Dutch in Africa, the British into the Americas and South Pacific, Russia into Central Europe. Most are marked by their brutality to and subjugation of the existing peoples. I can only think of one colonisation where the colonised people were offered a treaty which granted them the same rights and privileges, i.e. equality, with the colonialists. I wonder what the Aztecs, Zulus or Cheyenne would have thought of such a deal.
If any New Zealander wants to learn about being colonised just ask a Brit. The Romans could be reasonable unless their authority was challenged, the Anglo Saxons were just murderous and brutal, the French were unforgiving, removing the English language from common use for nearly 300 years. It's difficult to imagine what colonisation would have looked like had things have gone wrong in the early 1940's. I can't imagine that the Nazis would have been very receptive to demands about water rights, foreshore rights or British seats in the Bundestag.

Owen Stuart said...

It is very easy to see where the New Zealand history that will likely be mandatory in New Zealand schools in the near future will be coming from.

Geoffrey said...

If it were not for the Anonymi(?) among us stating the truth from time to time, we would be left by the toxic twaddle spouted by Rata. Well said that person.

Bruce S said...

What a bitter ungrateful woman. With Maori leaders like this, it is no wonder that so many young Maori have attitudes that lead them to a life of theft and thuggery.

Thomas said...

Thomas ---- Bruce Moon has nailed it precisely. The problem we have in this country is rampant appeasement and PC governance on the part of the Govt. Politicians are scared witless in standing up to trouble and mischief makers like Rata and cohorts for fear of being branded " racist "
The Treaty is clear we area all one people . Queen Victoria honored the Treaty in Keeping Maori safe and protected all these years. Why cant Maori be grateful for living in such a generous peaceful and benevolent country like NZ instead of this endless bitching and whinging that goes on. If NZ had not been colonized as it was then Maori folk would have nearly wiped themselves out in continuing the musket wars. Make no mistake Britain was a reluctant " coloniser" after just recently going through the agony of losing the USA. If they wanted to swiftly conquer MAori they could have easily done so ... but just sent an intermediary instead... James Busby ... hardly a Caesar like colonising conquering hero!!! All credit to him and Capt Hobson.

Geoffrey said...

Thank you Thomas - and Bruce of course. The terror in the breasts of the pollies at the thought of disbanding the gangs is nothing compared with the sheer audacity and raw courage required of standing up to a mouthy pseudo academic wailing about how hard one of her ancestors and future generations of intermarried successors were done by the bestowal of British citizenship.

I am coming to the view that a policy of tolerance for Rata’s extremism is no longer tenable. Call it the way it is, sedition. Or, to use a more topical term, hate speech.

Bud JonesQSM said...

@Geoffrey
Bruce Moon in his usual accurate finger on the pulse style has covered this subject perfectly here, but the question begs."Would the maoris have preferred another like Spain, since somebody was coming, regardless? Where Queen Isabella would have received a requisition for one musket ball per maori. And "that as they say, would be that".End of the line, finish no more history except what you can find in the Espana history journals below the South America chapters.
Bud Jones QSM

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