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Post by Kiwi Frontline on Mar 29, 2019 5:52:55 GMT 12
AN OPEN LETTER TO TWO ASSOCIATE PROFESSORS AT WAIKATO UNIVERSITY Dear Associate Professor Leonie Pihama and Associate Professor Tom Roa, You have both seized the opportunity you perceive in the recent appalling tragedy in Christchurch to present what one of you calls “colonial terror and violence since 1642”[1] with the other saying “Maori had been victims to acts of terrorism in Aotearoa in the past”.[2] And Police Deputy Commissioner of Maori and Ethnic Services Wally Haumaha chimes in, about “historical killings of Maori at different times and across the country during early colonisation”.[3] Well, now, perhaps it is timely for us to look with care at these allegations........ Read Bruce's well researched look into Pihama's and Roa's allegations > breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2019/03/bruce-moon-open-letter-to-two-associate.html
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Post by Kiwi Frontline on Apr 24, 2019 5:27:08 GMT 12
Bruce Moon responds to Tom Roa’s letter (image below), Bruce is proving to be the more scholarly of the two, Roa gets the month wrong (May?) and a typo (Chsristchurch)
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18th April 2019
Associate Professor Tom Roa, University of Waikato Private Bag 3105, Hamilton 3240
Tashi Delek!
Dear Tom Roa,
I appreciate your writing to me in response to my recent letter to you. That is distinctly more courteous than the action of your colleague, Ms Pihama, who chose instead to voice her purported outrage on “Twitter”. For your information, I have referred that to your Vice-Chancellor and also in a complaint to the Human Right Commission.
While your piece of 21st March did indeed commence with an expression of sympathy for the victims of the mosque shooting such as any decent citizen might express, it then digressed immediately to make confronting remarks about people who do not agree with you. Your apparent justification for this is repetition of alleged events which are not part of New Zealand’s history. Upon my drawing this to your attention, you state: “You accuse me of using the tragedy of Christchurch for my own purpose.” What I said was not an accusation, simply a statement of the plain facts. “Accusation” is your description.
I note too your comments imputing to me a “purpose which is to further the lack of real scholastic rigour in the historicity of the events referred to”. Historicity is of course (in contrast to belief, myth, hearsay and fable) the concept of real and actual history. I refer you to the references I gave to support the historicity of what I say.
I noted your own references to support your interpretation of events but any such must be substantively accurate to contribute to the discourse of history, not contrived justification to reconstruct it.
I am well aware of Cowan’s seminal work which should be the basis of any course of study of the tribal rebellions of colonial times. While it appears that he did not have access to some sources available to me, his description of the Rangiaowhia affray is accurate, as far as he knew it, although his opinion that he whom we now know to have been Hoani Papita was an “old hero” can be seen in retrospect to have been misguided.
On the other hand, with respect to the integrity of Belich’s work and notwithstanding he has a chair at Oxford. I refer you to John Robinson’s “When two cultures meet, the New Zealand Experience”, ISBN 1-872970-31-1, 2012 which gives many instances of the flaws in Belich. John’s demographic modelling to ascertain the true cause of the Maori population decline in the colonial period is also most enlightening. I commend it to you and your students.
If you do not know it already, you will also find Robinson’s “The Kingite Rebellion”, ISBN1872970486 to be accurate and informative.
Then simply referencing O’Malley does not impute historicity, notwithstanding his long article in “The Listener” for 25th February 2017. In “New Zealand Voice” for March 2017 there is an essay of mine to expose many flaws in O’Malley’s work and to give an accurate account of what happened at Rangiaowhia The editor, Mykeljon Winckel, chose not to include my list of references but I daresay that he would provide them to you on request. (mj@elocal.co.nz).
So, Sir, it would be a worthy move for you to withdraw your emotive denigration of me. My work is researched as closely as possible to source, cross-validated and referenced to ensure that I present facts of history. It is regrettable if it provokes emotive responses, more so when those responses are re-presented as facts. The role of historians, academics and keepers of the public truth is of course to protect the neutrality of facts, not to perpetrate mawkishness or anything else masquerading as fact. Consider perhaps Hans Christian Anderson’s 1837 tale, “The Emperor’s new clothes.”
I understand that you are a direct descendant of Thomas Power who was appointed by Governor Grey to assist Waikato tribes in improving their farming methods. You could, I suggest, take better steps to honour his memory and his important place in your ancestry..
Please note that I shall be sending copy of this letter to your Vice-Chancellor and other interested persons as I see fit.
Namaste,
Bruce Moon********************* Click on image to read Roa's letter
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