Geoff Parker, When History Becomes Theology

New Zealand is told—again—that asking whether colonisation was good or bad is the wrong question. We are instead presented with a pre-packaged moral verdict: Māori are cast as permanent losers, settlers as permanent winners, and dissent is treated as heresy.

This framing, repeated endlessly by academic activists, is not history. It is theology.

Dr Anaru Eketone’s latest contribution (sadly paywalled) asks us to see colonisation as a permanent bereavement, a generational grief akin to the death of a loved one. But grief is a personal experience, not a political argument. Nations do not function on therapeutic metaphors. If they did, no society that has ever lost a war, a territory, or a way of life could ever move forward.

The real sleight of hand is this: by redefining colonisation as an emotional injury rather than a historical process, disagreement itself is recast as cruelty. Any attempt to weigh outcomes becomes moral offence rather than legitimate inquiry—shutting down debate before it even begins.

Let’s deal with facts.

Pre-1840 Māori society was not some peaceful proto-state poised to blossom into a modern trading nation had Europeans simply behaved better. It was a tribal system governed by whakapapa (ancestor) hierarchy, enforced by violence. Slavery was real. Inter-tribal warfare was endemic. Land was not owned in the modern sense but held through power. Justice was the law of the spear. Women and children were rarely equal participants in decision-making. There was no national sovereignty—only competing iwi authority.

None of this is controversial among serious historians. It is merely unfashionable to say out loud.

Yes, Māori adopted new technologies quickly. Yes, some tribes prospered in early trade. But this is not evidence that New Zealand was on an inevitable path to becoming a liberal democracy with universal rights, written law, national infrastructure, and a modern economy—without colonisation. That is wishful thinking dressed up as counterfactual history.

Colonisation did not interrupt a Māori ‘nation-state’. It replaced tribalism with a civil order.

That replacement mattered. Law replaced utu. Written contracts replaced oral power. Individual land title replaced conquest. A national economy replaced fragmented subsistence and barter. Life expectancy rose. Literacy exploded—not because Māori were forced into it, but because leaders understood that English was the language of opportunity in a changing world.

The Native Schools Act is often held up as evidence of cultural brutality. But context matters. English-language education was demanded by Māori elders who wanted their children equipped to succeed in a British-governed economy. Physical punishment was common in schools of the era for all children. To retroactively recast this as a uniquely racialised abuse is dishonest.

And here’s the damned-if-you-do problem no grievance industry ever answers:

Had the Crown not provided English education, today’s activists would be claiming Māori were deliberately excluded from equal citizenship. Either way, outrage is guaranteed.

Dr Eketone also repeats the claim that Māori were stripped of political power in violation of the Treaty. But sovereignty was ceded. That was the point of the Treaty. Government under one law is not oppression; it is the foundation of a nation. Rebellions against that authority—however morally framed—were still rebellions. Consequences followed. Land confiscations were not arbitrary theft; they were penalties for armed insurrection, a practice common to every state of the era.

Extensive deed records show that most land was sold, not stolen. This does not mean all transactions were fair by modern standards. It means the cartoon version of history does not survive contact with evidence.

The most corrosive myth is that colonisation delivered “settler wealth through Māori impoverishment” as some grand design. The reality is simpler and less sinister: a modern economy rewards capital accumulation, scale, and legal integration. Those who adapted thrived. Those who remained locked in tribal structures struggled. That is not racial. It is structural—and it applies everywhere in the world.

Today, Māori are not excluded from prosperity. They are over-represented in politics, public institutions, and grievance settlements. The idea that success is still “reserved for settlers” collapses the moment one looks around Parliament, academia, or the corporate sector.

What is resented is not Māori success, but the claim that success is owed—permanently, collectively, and without end—because history must always be paid for again.

Colonisation was not pure virtue. It was not pure vice. Judged by today’s standards, it was a messy, transformative process that replaced a brutal tribal order with a modern state. It raised living standards, created peace, and laid the foundations of the society we all live in—including those who now denounce it from the safety and comfort it produced.

We are not required to hate our own country to understand its past.

And we are certainly not obliged to pretend that history ends in grievance rather than citizenship under a common law.

Geoff Parker is a passionate advocate for equal rights and a colour blind society.