Post by Kiwi Frontline on Mar 26, 2017 5:48:45 GMT 12
Dear Editor, (Sent to the Taranaki Daily News 18/3/17)
Messrs Day, Eriwhata and Keenan (Stuff, 18/3/17) certainly cherry-pick and distort our history. They have conveniently forgotten that the only “Land Wars” were amongst Maori tribes before 1840 when 1300 Taranaki tribesmen were killed and eaten in a single action at Pukerangiora. Compare this with 2200 killed in the entire period of the tribal rebellions subsequently. South Taranaki was almost deserted.
Hostilities in Taranaki largely arose through fights over who owned what between returning slaves and refugees post-1840 when it was safe to do so. Some land was bought from different claimants three times. Settlers suffered in the rebellions – 177 farmsteads being destroyed in twelve-months. Land confiscations were not wholesale and were to pay in part for the cost of suppressing the rebellions.
Kelvin Day is the man who wrote to me that “there is no such thing as one true history”. Well, oddly enough, there is one – the record of what actually happened. Then there is false history such as the lie that there was no cannibalism of the shipwrecked crew of the “Harriet” promulgated by himself. Again, Parihaka was the base of a nasty cult, not a haven of peace. So is our history twisted.
BRUCE MOON
Nelson
.
Dear Editor, (Sent to the Northland Age 14/3/17)
Your pale-faced part-Maori correspondent, Herbert-Graves continues to babble on with her make-believe in your columns yet again, I see. (14/3/17) Her statement that “Rangatiratanga was always about looking after Papatuanuka” is rubbish it would be hard to beat. She can keep her pagan belief in “Papatuanuka” if she wants to since religious tolerance is the New Zealand way, but “rangatiratanga” was just a missionary-coined word for the right of possession of property – for “weaklings” said Te Rauparaha to whom, in the tribal tradition or “tikanga”, possession was by force of arms.
As for her kaitiakitanga before 1840, it was estimated by Dr Tim Flannery that pre-European Maoris were responsible for the extinction of between 28 and 35 species of birds and destruction of about one third of New Zealand’s forest cover. Subsequently seven to nine species have become extinct - deeply regrettable but not solely due to Europeans. It is recorded that Maoris killed 646 huia in a single month. Plunder of moa led to their extinction within a century and the archaeological evidence is that only the choice cuts were eaten, the rest going to waste.
Today, muttonbirds, plentiful in the Bluff of my youth, have been hunted by Ngai Tahu to the point of commercial extinction. As for our beautiful native pigeons, senior Ngapuhi tribesman Sonny Tau, justly convicted of the possession of five corpses, has set the example. It has been reckoned that at the present rate of poaching in Northland, it will be extinct there within a decade or two.
One ray of hope was a pigeon census on Banks Peninsula on the initiative of local Ngai Tahu in which I personally took part. I invite Herbert-Graves to do the hard yards of tramping through sodden bush herself on some genuine conservation work.
BRUCE MOON, Nelson
sites.google.com/site/kiwifrontline/letters-submitted-to-newspapers/unpublished-letters
Messrs Day, Eriwhata and Keenan (Stuff, 18/3/17) certainly cherry-pick and distort our history. They have conveniently forgotten that the only “Land Wars” were amongst Maori tribes before 1840 when 1300 Taranaki tribesmen were killed and eaten in a single action at Pukerangiora. Compare this with 2200 killed in the entire period of the tribal rebellions subsequently. South Taranaki was almost deserted.
Hostilities in Taranaki largely arose through fights over who owned what between returning slaves and refugees post-1840 when it was safe to do so. Some land was bought from different claimants three times. Settlers suffered in the rebellions – 177 farmsteads being destroyed in twelve-months. Land confiscations were not wholesale and were to pay in part for the cost of suppressing the rebellions.
Kelvin Day is the man who wrote to me that “there is no such thing as one true history”. Well, oddly enough, there is one – the record of what actually happened. Then there is false history such as the lie that there was no cannibalism of the shipwrecked crew of the “Harriet” promulgated by himself. Again, Parihaka was the base of a nasty cult, not a haven of peace. So is our history twisted.
BRUCE MOON
Nelson
.
Dear Editor, (Sent to the Northland Age 14/3/17)
Your pale-faced part-Maori correspondent, Herbert-Graves continues to babble on with her make-believe in your columns yet again, I see. (14/3/17) Her statement that “Rangatiratanga was always about looking after Papatuanuka” is rubbish it would be hard to beat. She can keep her pagan belief in “Papatuanuka” if she wants to since religious tolerance is the New Zealand way, but “rangatiratanga” was just a missionary-coined word for the right of possession of property – for “weaklings” said Te Rauparaha to whom, in the tribal tradition or “tikanga”, possession was by force of arms.
As for her kaitiakitanga before 1840, it was estimated by Dr Tim Flannery that pre-European Maoris were responsible for the extinction of between 28 and 35 species of birds and destruction of about one third of New Zealand’s forest cover. Subsequently seven to nine species have become extinct - deeply regrettable but not solely due to Europeans. It is recorded that Maoris killed 646 huia in a single month. Plunder of moa led to their extinction within a century and the archaeological evidence is that only the choice cuts were eaten, the rest going to waste.
Today, muttonbirds, plentiful in the Bluff of my youth, have been hunted by Ngai Tahu to the point of commercial extinction. As for our beautiful native pigeons, senior Ngapuhi tribesman Sonny Tau, justly convicted of the possession of five corpses, has set the example. It has been reckoned that at the present rate of poaching in Northland, it will be extinct there within a decade or two.
One ray of hope was a pigeon census on Banks Peninsula on the initiative of local Ngai Tahu in which I personally took part. I invite Herbert-Graves to do the hard yards of tramping through sodden bush herself on some genuine conservation work.
BRUCE MOON, Nelson
sites.google.com/site/kiwifrontline/letters-submitted-to-newspapers/unpublished-letters