Steven Gaskell: Colonialism Apparently Invented Mortgages

According to the latest fashionable academic theory coming out of the University of Auckland, Māori housing struggles today can largely be traced back to colonialism introducing private property, debt and home ownership systems that supposedly “reshaped Māori life”. In other words, the modern housing market is now apparently responsible not only for interest rates and rent increases, but also for rewriting centuries of history into a permanent grievance narrative where every social problem somehow traces back to Captain Cook personally inventing mortgages.

From BreakingViews Archives: Bob Jones - Colonialism Nonsense

Try and imagine the carry-on in Britain if its government announced special privileges for the original Anglo-Saxon and Celt citizens.

Nearly 40% of today’s Brits are of non-traditional ethnicity. Take those of Indian ethnicity. They have the highest educational standards of all Britain’s diverse ethnicities. They also have the highest incomes and are the least likely to be in prison. The current cabinet is dominated by Indian ethnics, many of four generations back and most pundits are picking the current, (Indian ethnic) Chancellor as Boris’s successor.

But here in New Zealand the government’s posture, if in charge in Britain, would be that you citizens of Indian ethnicity, must step back and allow special privileges to the poor suffering original Anglo-Saxon and Celt inhabitants.

That is a parallel of what is happening here in New Zealand with maoridom.

Barrie Davis: The Colonist

You have arrived with five of your surviving eight children at the new settlement of Wellington, New Zealand on the 500-ton barque Olympus in April 1841.

The captain is John Whyte, there are 16 crew, and the ship’s surgeon is Isaac Featherston who would become Wellington’s leader and one of the colony’s most eminent politicians. On board are 27 married couple emigrants, including yourselves, 16 single men, 11 single women, and 45 children including 5 infants. The males are mostly farm workers with a sprinkling of trades and the females are mostly sempstresses and servants. The ship also carries four hundred barrels of flour to feed the new colony.

Matua Kahurangi: David Seymour exposes the fraud of the anti-colonial crusade

ACT Leader David Seymour hit the nail on the head with his latest post about the Kapa-Kingi’s and Te Pāti Māori. When the party that constantly rails against “colonial” systems suddenly runs to the very same system for protection, it exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of their politics.

Centrist: ‘Colonialism didn’t murder this child’.......

Colonialism didn’t murder this child’: Te Pāti Māori slammed over silence in toddler murder case

Broadcaster Michael Laws has accused Te Pāti Māori of moral cowardice and political negligence following the alleged murder of three-year-old Catalya Remana Tangimetua Pepene.

Barrie Davis: “Becoming Aotearoa” - a Book Review

We sometimes read that the history of New Zealand is being rewritten. The title of Michael Belgrave’s 2024 book Becoming Aotearoa: A New History of New Zealand leaves no doubt that is the case.

The first sentence of the Preface reads:

 

“This history of Aotearoa New Zealand is a response to crisis: the massacre of 51 Muslim worshippers in Christchurch on 15 March 2019 and the ongoing uncertainty which has followed it.”

Dr Michael Bassett: Is it state care or family failure that explains our underclass?

Years ago, when I taught history at Auckland University, we had a rule for student essays. They were to be no longer than 1,000 words. We aimed at concentrating the student’s mind on the question which too many of them thought could more easily be answered by a long, often irrelevant, plethora of words.

I was thinking of this rule as I dabbled in the thousands of pages of the report of the Royal Commission into State Care. Like too many C-class students, the report rambles, with only occasional bits of analysis of what is under discussion. Of course, state care never has been, isn’t now, and never will be the ideal repository for anyone in need of care.

Greg Dawes: Political Decolonization

There’s a lot of talk at the present time about ‘decolonization’. But despite the frequency with which the word is used, it’s hard to find an explanation of what it means. In an effort to understand the issues involved, I’ve been reading a historian and political theorist of the colonial period, Mahmood Mamdani.

Mamdani’s writings focus on the colonization of Africa and the rise of post-colonial African states. He is well placed to understand his topic. Coming from an Indian family, Mamdani was born in Mumbai, of parents who had been brought up in Tanzania. He himself was brought up in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, and studied in the United States, where he was involved in the civil rights movement. Shortly after returning to Uganda, he was expelled from the country because of his Asian ethnicity. After fleeing to Britain as a refugee, he returned to take up a university position in Tanzania, before returning to Uganda, where he was stripped of citizenship for criticizing the new government’s policies. But he outlived his political opponents and is now Chancellor of Kampala International University.

David Farrar: Reviewing the evidence behind the claims on Maori health

Ian Harrison of Tailrisk Economics has published a paper analysing the evidence behind the claims that disparity in health outcomes between Maori and non-Maori is due to colonialism and racism. His summary is:

Mike Butler: Racism, Maori health link elusive

The Crown and the Waitangi Tribunal did not have evidence of a causative link between racism, colonialism, and Maori health, so did not want to talk about the issue, economist Ian Harrison found.

His paper titled Racism, colonialism, and Maori health: A review of the evidence, released recently, examines claims in the Waitangi Tribunal’s 2021 Hauora Report on Stage One of its Health Services and Outcomes Kaupapa Inquiry that a gap in life expectancy of seven years between Maori and non-Maori had not “meaningfully” changed over 20 years.

Harrison, who has worked at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Bank for International Settlements, concluded that there was “very little robust empirical evidence that racism contributes materially to the gap in life expectancy”.

Lushington D. Brady: How’d Africa Go Once the Colonials Left?

Bruce Gilleys’ paper The Case for Colonialism provoked a storm and resulted in something not seen since Galileo and Lysenko: a double-blind, peer-reviewed scientific paper was memory-holed under threat of violence. That this dangerously regressive step went almost unremarked apart from near-universal approval from the academic establishment is testament to the New Dark Age on whose edge we teeter.

What was so heretical about Gilleys’ paper? Merely that it argued that colonialism was not a universal evil, and that, in some instances, some developing nations today might benefit from a managed, temporary, return to colonial-like oversight of at least some of their functions. A contentious argument, certainly, but the violent reaction spoke to something else entirely.

David Lillis: Sorry, Professor Mutu – You do not Convince!

In academia much bogus knowledge is tolerated in the name of academic freedom - which is like allowing for the sale of contaminated food in the name of free enterprise. I submit that such tolerance is suicidal: that the serious students must be protected against the “anything goes” crowd. Mario Bunge (2010)

Can we Possibly Cooperate?

Recently, we have seen numerous articles and heard interviews on colonialism and historic repression from people such as Professor Margaret Mutu. We agree with Professor Mutu that colonialism brought negative experiences for indigenous people and that historic racism has left a legacy that is felt to this day. However, as Professor Mutu knows, indigenous communities were not themselves innocent of repression and exploitation of others. Just as various oppressors across different parts of the world at different times were guilty of murder and theft of property and lands, so too did indigenous societies engage in warfare, enslavement and cannibalism – behaviours that were not unknown before the arrival of Europeans – even here in New Zealand.

Cam Slater: I Thought Maori Invented Swimming?

Apparently, too many Maori are drowning, and it’s all the fault of colonialism. If only we could approach water safety the Maori way it could solve this problem. Well, that’s what the woke Wombles at Water Safety NZ have decided:

David Seymour chats to Moana Maniapoto about co-governance, colonialism and crime

David Seymour says he is not playing dog whistle or apartheid style politics - and he’s not a useless Māori. 

No holding back in this discussion. Here's the full interview.

Dr David Lillis: Reflections on Reading of the Passing of Queen Elizabeth

The Legacies of Colonialism

Recently Dr. Don Brash (former New Zealand politician, former Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the New Zealand National Party, former Leader of ACT New Zealand and former Governor of the Reserve Bank) wrote an interesting piece on the passing of Queen Elizabeth, published in Breaking Views on 17 September (Brash, 2022). In his article Dr. Brash spoke positively of the Queen and of his interactions some years ago with Prince Charles, now King Charles III. 

On reflection (and, admittedly, not having met any of the Royal Family in person – like most of us!), I tend to agree with the positive views of Dr. Brash expressed within that article. I also agree with Dr. Brash that colonialism perpetrated some negatives to indigenous peoples but most of that lies centuries into the past and there were very significant positives too.

Bob Jones: Colonialism Nonsense

Try and imagine the carry-on in Britain if its government announced special privileges for the original Anglo-Saxon and Celt citizens.

Nearly 40% of today’s Brits are of non-traditional ethnicity. Take those of Indian ethnicity. They have the highest educational standards of all Britain’s diverse ethnicities. They also have the highest incomes and are the least likely to be in prison. The current cabinet is dominated by Indian ethnics, many of four generations back and most pundits are picking the current, (Indian ethnic) Chancellor as Boris’s successor.

But here in New Zealand the government’s posture, if in charge in Britain, would be that you citizens of Indian ethnicity, must step back and allow special privileges to the poor suffering original Anglo-Saxon and Celt inhabitants.

That is a parallel of what is happening here in New Zealand with maoridom.