Post by Kiwi Frontline on Oct 3, 2023 7:55:18 GMT 12
Elizabeth Rata: TWO TREATIES OF WAITANGI: THE ARTICLES TREATY AND THE PRINCIPLES TREATY
The rapid inclusion of the word indigenous into New Zealanders’ everyday language from the 1980s shows how effective this method is. Belief in a treaty partnership requires partners who are to live in a permanent relationship. Differences are emphasised, sometimes even created, and commonality rejected.
Embedding one of those partners in the status of indigeneity with the other partner an intruder into Arcadia expands the moral distinction into a timeless mythical realm. Romantic evocations of the evil coloniser and the indigenous colonised provide a more seductive narrative for the nation’s collective memory than the more prosaic fact that, from the thirteen century to the present, all New Zealanders are settlers.
Our history is one of waves of settlers. It is a shared experience that trumps an arbitrary division into the indigenous on the one hand and all other settlers on the other. But language control is most successful when it evokes the sacred. The word indigenous does this with its suggestion of a mythological connection to the land and its creators. Those who resist the language game are accused of refusing not only the word, but the Word as revealed truth. Those who insist that truth lies in reality – that the 1840 Treaty didn’t have Principles and that we are all settlers, no matter the time of arrival, are silenced by accusations of racism. Far better to be silent than to bear the racist taint suggestive of a profoundly immoral character......
breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2023/10/elizabeth-rata-two-treaties-of-waitangi.html
The rapid inclusion of the word indigenous into New Zealanders’ everyday language from the 1980s shows how effective this method is. Belief in a treaty partnership requires partners who are to live in a permanent relationship. Differences are emphasised, sometimes even created, and commonality rejected.
Embedding one of those partners in the status of indigeneity with the other partner an intruder into Arcadia expands the moral distinction into a timeless mythical realm. Romantic evocations of the evil coloniser and the indigenous colonised provide a more seductive narrative for the nation’s collective memory than the more prosaic fact that, from the thirteen century to the present, all New Zealanders are settlers.
Our history is one of waves of settlers. It is a shared experience that trumps an arbitrary division into the indigenous on the one hand and all other settlers on the other. But language control is most successful when it evokes the sacred. The word indigenous does this with its suggestion of a mythological connection to the land and its creators. Those who resist the language game are accused of refusing not only the word, but the Word as revealed truth. Those who insist that truth lies in reality – that the 1840 Treaty didn’t have Principles and that we are all settlers, no matter the time of arrival, are silenced by accusations of racism. Far better to be silent than to bear the racist taint suggestive of a profoundly immoral character......
breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2023/10/elizabeth-rata-two-treaties-of-waitangi.html