The previous Kapiti District Mayor has taken up the mantle of Stuffer Joel Maxwell in writing dishonest pro-Maori articles for The Post and other Stuff papers.
“In What Maori need more than their own Parliament is a Maori Economy” (The Post Monday 10 June 2024), Guru promotes Catherine Comyn’s book The Financial Colonisation of Aotearoa. (In pre-colonial times the Natives never had a concept of New Zealand as one nation, and the Maori never had called the country Aotearoa until the late 20th century.)
The East India Company (EIC) and from 1858 the British authorities wanted to have a monopoly over salt production and discourage local manufacture which where it happened was heavily taxed. It also discouraged self–sufficiency, Indian industries and promoted colonial exploitation of the local economy. He also maintains that the plight of the poor worsened. He compares the New Zealand Company (NZC) with the EIC, but the NZC was not the government of the country and although the Wakefields did help develop colonies in Wellington, Nelson, Wanganui and New Plymouth, it had limited influence over the Canterbury and Dunedin settlements, and none over other urban developments in Northland, Auckland and elsewhere.
There is a Maori economy
From the time the British government took over New Zealand in 1840 many enterprising Maori developed their own flax mills, shipping businesses and horticultural industries. They were encouraged to do so by the authorities.
Experts estimate that today Maori companies and assets are worth well over $60 billion, mainly originating from the very generous and often unjustified Waitangi Tribunal grants to Maori tribes.
What Comyn and Gurunathan think a “Maori economy” would do, is unclear. Would it develop its own schools, hospitals, retail business, industries, roads, railways, theatres, galleries, sporting facilities and banks? Who would pay to set them up and where would they operate? He mentions that the second Maori “king” Tawhiao set up a bank in the late 19th century but did he do the research which shows that this financial experiment was a disaster. Most Part-Maori today have more settler than Polynesian blood and are happy to continue using the services and business that other New Zealanders do.
Maori have made giant strides under colonial and government rule
The economic growth, social policies and infrastructure development under the colonial rule and later governments were hugely beneficial to Maori, and today, outside the diehard activities, the vast majority recognize this and would not have wanted it any other way.
Guru knows this and needs to stop writing nonsense about the history and possible future development of the country. He should read up on New Zealand history with Michael King’s seminal Penguin History of New Zealand being a good starting point.
Relying on dubious interpretation of our country’s story by Comyn and others is not a good basis for providing newspaper readers with objective observations on how history has shaped the lives of part-Maori today.
Roger Childs is a retired teacher who taught History, Social Studies and Geography for 40 years. This article was first published HERE
6 comments:
The best way to deal with Stuff and it's newspapers is to ignore them. The more people who read them, the more revenue they get. Mr Guru-thingy only gets paid because he sturs up controversy and thereby attracts attention for the paper. But there's no need to buy into that.
Making out NZ colonisation was like that in other countries with very different races, by other European states at much earlier times, even centuries ago is foolish. The British Colonial Office did attempt to learn from earlier mistakes by the time NZ was colonised. We are not Brazil nor India.
Roger, you would be one of the few that perseveres reading what that bigoted narcissist writes, and it remains a wonder why "The Post" equally perseveres inflicting his dishonest racist nonsense on its ever-dwindling number of subscribers. As you point out, we have been spared Joel Maxwell for a while, but both of them really aren't worth a moments breath.
.... But the gullible will continue to read and believe... and vote for
He Puapua in incremental steps.
people like guru help you develop more respect for immigrants who work as uber drivers... even if they don't pay 39% tax rates, at least they don't sit in your house and shit on the carpet :(
Maori DNA would have pretty much been eaten up but for colonisation.
Maori tribal war was decimating Maori breeding stock.
Fortunately there were some robust breeding activities between remaining Maori stock across NZ and the colonials settling in NZ, and subsequent generations.
Until recently I would have said that created a pretty robust society with plenty of opportunity for those who ( whatever their DNA and cultural identity) chose to pursue.
Change in the 1800s was prevalent and
ongoing, no doubt challenging for many, but that is happening all the time.
Any colonial who grizzled through the generations about the good old days of Mother England would be a joke.
If Maori at the time thought colonials were so bad why did they not use their superior warfare skills and kill the colonials off rather than welcome colonials and their guns.
I guess Massey University and their new revised definitions of NZ history will explain all.
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