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Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Bruce Moon: “At Last Bygones Were Bygones”

So said a headline on page 33 of the New Zealand Herald Centennial Record for 13 November 1963.  Hmmm!  I wonder what that was about?

I looked further to read under this bold headline dated January 20, 1882: “Tawhiao, the Maori King, was given an enthusiastic welcome when he arrived in Auckland yesterday as the guest of the Mayor and citizens. ... the great demonstration of public goodwill was a pledge that the people desire bygones to be bygones, and that they wish well to the whole Maori people. It was the formal conclusion of all hostilities between the races, the healing of old wounds, the closing of a bloody chapter in the history of New Zealand.” ...

“At the banquet given in his honour ... Tawhiao said: ‘Great have been the evils in our country, but I say. Let them be forgotten, let them be trampled underfoot.’ ...

“During the evening Tawhiao viewed a great fireworks display from a steamer anchored in the harbour.   Tawhiao repeatedly expressed his gratification and surprise, he himself ... letting off several Roman candles and burning blue and red flares.”

Rangiriri, Rangiaowhia, Orakau were to be forgotten or at least to become no more than chapters in our history books.  Even Te Kooti’s 1868 midnight massacre of settlers and Maoris alike at Matawhero that “Made Settlers’ Blood Run Cold”, as the Herald’s page 17 headline declared, was to “be trampled underfoot” as a part of the deal which Tawhiao applauded.

So there we are, friends.  Bygones were to be bygones and while there were odd hiccups in race relations in the subsequent decades, interracial harmony, not least in evidence in much interracial breeding, became very much aspects of New Zealand society.  Yet today, in an era initiated by the flagrantly racist Treaty of Waitangi Act of 1975 sponsored by Matt Rata of the Northern Maori electorate, grossly distorted accounts of that bygone era flood the media with accelerating demands by strident voices amongst Maori MPs and their henchmen for more and more rights, privileges and hard cash to be surrendered to them by their fellow countrymen and women on a scale never dreamt of by the rebel warriors of our bygone history.

It is high time for New Zealanders to say: “Hold, enough”!

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

4 comments:

Anna Mouse said...

The Treaty of Waitangi Act begat the Waitangi Tribunal which begat the rewriting of all history and the development of the grievance industry on a scale now at industrial levels.

The rest as they say, is history (as long as it is written by the Waitangi Tribunal).......

God truely needs to defend New Zealand.

Anonymous said...

Amen to that Anna. I would just add, and so do all patriotic kiwis need to unite and defend our gods own New Zealand before it's to late.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Bruce and to the commentators, indeed we do! Bring on the elections.

Rod Kane said...

I think we are all waiting with baited breath to see what happens in October. The country can either wake up and start to pull back and end the racist bias in this country by successive politicians and MSM, or it will fall into the cesspit forever.