Pee Kay: Decolonisation

Recently, CXY posted an excellent article, The Case For Colonisation.

“Therefore, acknowledging Māori as historical colonisers becomes politically inconvenient. The narrative must be protected, even at the expense of historical truth.”

I want to have a look at the other side of the coin – Decolonisation.

For some time now Maori activists, ably incentivised by the Labour governments of Ardern and Hipkins and, lamentably, furthered by the Chris Luxon led coalition, have been claiming, with increasing fervour, “Māori have been crushed by the weight of colonisation!”

Labour promoted the skewed ideology that social justice and equality for Māori can only be achieved by disregarding the principles of democracy and that has seen, with increasing regularity and intensity, activists demanding “Pakeha accept decolonisation”!

To investigate decolonisation, we must first understand colonisation for it is very easy for colonisation to be correlated with colonialism. They are two unique occurrences.

Colonisation: Simplistically, is the action or process of settling among and establishing control over the indigenous people of an area, occupying it with settlers, and developing it economically.

Colonialism: Is the policy or practice of justifying control acquired through colonisation, imposing culture over another country.

Colonisation is the action and colonialism is the belief system behind colonisation.

The crucial difference is that the process of colonisation is to establish a colony, while retaining many of the native culture and beliefs, but settler colonialism is where the colonist negates the indigenous people of that place.

An example of colonialism , close to New Zealand, is Hawaii.

In 1893 Americans invaded Hawaii, overthrowing the Queen and implementing a form of government characterized by the rule of a few persons or families. The driving factor was economic, American interests in sugar!

In 1898, Hawaii became part of the United States. In 1959 it became the 50th state in The United States. By this time native Hawaiians had lost most of their land and their monarchy was demolished.

Both Spain and Britain provide excellent examples of differing attitudes and actions to colonisation and colonialism.

Evidence from Spanish and British colonialism, show that the economic models of the colonising nations also affected the reversals of fortune. Merchant/Commercialist Spain tended to colonize most extensively precolonial regions that were reasonably populous and had a developed and functioning structure or society.

Spanish colonisation of the 17th century was very focussed on conquest and the garnering of riches, thus giving rise to negative consequences for postcolonial development.

In comparison, a more liberal, benign Britain tended to colonise most extensively precolonial regions that were sparsely populated and underdeveloped; In turn, extensive British colonialism had, comparatively, positive effects.

So, to evaluate colonisation, we should start at the arrival of James Cook in 1769, 127 years after Tasman in 1642. Cooks voyage to the south Pacific was primarily a scientific expedition.

The French were not far behind Cook and this clearly meant the end of isolation for New Zealand.

Over the next 60 years contact grew, mainly from the arrival of sealers and whalers but also from traders looking to settle and develop new markets. The overwhelming majority of encounters between European and Māori had passed without incident.

The monumental shift in NZ history occurred with the introduction of European technology in the form of the musket.

Up to one-fifth of the Māori population was killed during the intertribal Musket Wars of the 1810s, 1820s and 1830s. Very often these wars centred around the settling of old grievances.

The first British steps in NZ were rather tentative. Initially, the government of Britain exhibited a reluctance to colonise New Zealand and that step was taken only after 13 northern chiefs wrote to King William IV in 1831, asking for his protection due to fears of a French annexation, lawless settlers and the worrying slaughter from the musket wars.

That saw the Colonial Office sending William Hobson out to New Zealand with instructions to obtain sovereignty over the country with the consent of chiefs, via a treaty. Once he had done so, New Zealand came under the jurisdiction of the Governor of New South Wales.

At the end of 1840, New Zealand ceased to be administered from New South Wales and became a colony in its own right.

So, let’s assume colonisation commenced from around this point.

Helen Moewaka Barnes, a Massey University professor of Maori wrote in 2019 – “Colonisation has deeply harmed Maori communities, seriously and consistently undermining their vitality, aspirations and potentials, particularly since the 1860s, at inestimable cost to the entire nation.”

“Despite manifest breaches of te Tiriti o Waitangi, this relationship has centred settler interests ensuring that Maori sovereignty has been displaced in favour of colonial hegemony, entrenching longstanding, preventable inequities in health and other important domains of social life.”

Barnes added, “Through land alienation, economic impoverishment, mass settler immigration, warfare, cultural marginalisation, forced social change and multi-level hegemonic racism, Indigenous cultures, economies, populations and rights have been diminished and degraded over more than seven generations.”

Adrienne Paul a leading legal academic and specialist in Māori legal issues stated, “That before Pākehā law, there was Māori law.”

I’m struggling with her term “Māori Law.” Wasn’t pre-European Maori law simply the power of the strongest, the power of the taiaha. It certainly was “the power of the strongest” once muskets were introduced!

Was it “Māori Law” that sanctioned the customary right of the victor to subject the defeated enemies to absolute and final denigration by being eaten?

Further from Paul, “So, as an act of decolonisation and cultural redress, shouldn’t the law schools of Aotearoa New Zealand be teaching both?”

What really annoys me about all these calls for decolonisation is the complete lack of acknowledgement that Māori culture was basically a stone-age culture until the arrival of Europeans and the introduction of metal. Yes, it was it was structured, although tribally, extremely fragmented and warfare was common.

I equate “stone age” as simply meaning a time when humans, anywhere, used stone or bone tools exclusively, before discovering how to make metal tools and weapons or were introduced to them.

The various working materials used before the Māori had access to metal were mainly bird, whale, dog and human bones, ivory teeth and stone.

When journeying for exploration, food gathering or even war, Maori travel was confined to movement within easy distances from a water source. Only because they had no way to carry water!

So, by living in a land that prevented them from finding and utilising metals, by the use of tribal warfare to settle a grievance or increase territory, infanticide, cannibalism and no written language; Where would Maori be today?

How often do you hear Maori activists extolling the rewards or recognising the many benefits acquired by Maori from colonisation.

Very rarely, because, wouldn’t that fly counter to their argument “Pakeha must accept decolonisation.”

Now I know I could be accused taking a cheap shot at Maori. But that is simply not the case.

All I am saying is, “Isn’t it time we had some fairness and objectivity in this colonisation/decolonisation challenge?”

We have been force fed a diet of the wonderfulness of Maori culture, the language and even been asked to accept that Mātauranga Māori is the equal of proven scientific fact.

If Maori activists demand this of us then I believe it is only fair to expect them to acknowledge and recognise the many benefits they have acquired by way of colonisation.

So, I ask, where would Maori be today if colonisation had never taken place?

Does DECOLONISATION mean the benefits of colonisation, health, education, law and order and infrastructure must be “deconstructed?”

Of course not, deconstruction would be just as ridiculous as decolonisation!

The call for decolonisation has nothing to do with colonisation or even colonialism.

It is all about wealth and control shifting into to the hands of so called, Maori Elite!

Pee Kay writes he is from a generation where common sense, standards, integrity and honesty are fundamental attributes. This article was first published HERE