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Are National trying to buy Tuhoe off?

It seems bizarre to me that the National Government has just signed another deal with a Maori group whose ancestors joined in with the murderous rampages of the infamous Te Kooti. No mention of that in the Prime Minister's speech, nor in the Stuff article on the settlement.

What's more, a PHD student in the Waikato has had his script on Te Kooti picked up by the Maori film development unit, Te Paepae Ataata. A feature length film will be out in about six years. Great, it will probably try to glorify the man.

Not PC has post up on the actual history of Tuhoe and their involvement with Te Kooti and why the Government of the time confiscated their land.

Imagine, if you will, that a savage murderer has been moving up the country, and he's heading your way. He seeks refuge in your large, rambling property (which you share with extended family). Instead of either handing him over or doing him in (in both of which you would be justified), you and your whanau choose instead to join him in his savagery and plunder, heading out on expeditions of rapine and looting before coming home to hunker down in the least accessible parts of your refuge to fend off John Law, who naturally wants to put a stop to your lawlessness and brutality.

The law decides the safest way to stop you and your partner in crime is to starve you out, a strategy that meets with success—but whose perfectly justifiable results a century-and-a-half later are used to justify further pillage, this time of taxpayers apparently ignorant of the reasons for the original dispossession.

This is the short history of what happened when Tuhoe gave refuge to stone killer Te Kooti before joining in enthusiastically in his genocidal killing sprees—for which you and I are being punished now for the punishment that was meted out to the killers then.

Which is why I'm wondering if National is trying to buy Tuhoe off. Give them some of what they want, and hope they settle down and stop agitating. And also hope like heck that the people of NZ don't actually read the history.

Comments


  1. Yes Lucia it does get your goat alright when certain Maori tribes go on about being oppressed and 'genocided' by the Crown.

    Only to have been the biggest oppressors, genociders and butchers of other Maori tribes themselves. That doesn't appear to count though.

    ReplyDelete

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