Post by Kiwi Frontline on Apr 8, 2020 12:55:44 GMT 12
REPLY TO CAROLINE PUKEROA-MCKINNEY’S “NORTHLAND AGE” LETTER OF 17/3/20.
The lengthy letter from Caroline Pukeroa-McKinney in the “Age” is grossly flawed and misleading with substantial but falsely presumptive criticism of me. It requires a considered response.
Let us take these topics one at a time.
She quotes selectively from the 1831 letter in both English and Maori from 13 Ngapuhi chiefs to King William, omitting the following:
i) ‘We are a people without possessions (“taonga” in the Maori text). We have nothing but timber, flax, pork and potatoes.’ Now that’s very different from what Professor Sir Hugh Kawharu and other treaty-twisters have said since. In his translation he claimed that: ‘As submissions to the Waitangi Tribunal have made clear, “taonga” refers to all dimensions of a tribal group’s estate, material and non-material – heirlooms and wahi tapu sacred places), ancestral lore and whakapapa (genealogies), etc.’ This very senior professor ignored academic standards, a fundamental principle being that in interpreting an 1840 document only the 1840 situation and meanings of words applied.
ii) ‘It is only thy land which is liberal towards us.’ Compare that with recent claims such as that of Moana Jackson of ‘Violent invasion of Māori land’ (reported by Rosslyn Beeby, 18/3/20), just one example of today’s history-twisting epidemic.
iii) ‘we pray thee to become our friend ... lest the teasing of other tribes should come near us’. ‘Teasing’ was a very mild word to describe the slaughter, treachery and cannibalism of the day in which Ngapuhi had reason to fear retribution from other tribes for the brutality of the Musket Wars which they had started.
She proceeds with the usual treaty-twisters’ false claim that ‘the chiefs agreed to kawanatanga, so the British had governance over all their (British) people and all those ... who came later, while the chiefs retained rangatiratanga/chieftainship over their tribal regions and people.’ The plain truth is that the chiefs agreed to cede sovereignty - ‘kawanatanga’ - to the Queen, completely and for ever, as clearly understood by the chiefs who spoke at Waitangi on 5th February 1840 and unequivocally confirmed at their great meeting at Kohimarama in 1860. ‘Rangatiratanga’, possession of property, was guaranteed not only to rangatira but to ‘tangata katoa o Nu Tirani’, that is ‘all the people of New Zealand’ irrespective of their origins, another point ignored by the treaty-twisters whose false accounts she accepts.
Then she talks of ‘the ambiguity ... between the Maori and English Treaty versions’, accepting again the treaty-twisters’ tales. There is no ‘English version’ of the treaty, though it is claimed at all levels that a fake treaty written by Hobson’s secretary, Freeman, to send to dignitaries overseas is such. One defective copy was indeed used for an overflow of signatures at Waikato Heads but the treaty twisters never ask why on a unique occasion an apparent ‘treaty in English’ was signed. It was but the second page of a single document, whose first page was a printed copy of the real treaty in the Ngapuhi dialect with the first few signatures on it.
Thus Contra Preferentum which she brings up is irrelevant.
At this point she introduces the false name ‘Aotearoa’ for our country, unaware apparently that it was first given to the South Island alone by Waitaha but later appropriated by Northerners as one of several names of the North Island. Our country has been New Zealand for 377 years. In the Treaty it is transliterated as ‘Nu Tirani’ and ‘Aotearoa’ is nowhere. Had it been in use, the Williams, residents in New Zealand for 17 years and very competent in the language, would undoubtedly have used it but nobody, simply nobody, objected to ‘Nu Tirani’! Only in the 1890s did a couple of colonial writers use ‘Ao Tea Roa’ in their stories.
She then asserts in apparent innocence “that every claim taken to the Tribunal is thoroughly researched”. The topic it too great to introduce here, but it may be fairly claimed that the Waitangi Tribunal is the most corrupt body ever established in New Zealand with taxpayers’ money and its ‘findings’, uncritically accepted in official and parliamentary circles, are a stain on the integrity of all those concerned.
The flaws in Ms Pukeroa-McKinney’s narrative continue in her unresearched presumption that I am not fit to criticise Tom Roa’s statements. A simple google search would have revealed my personal credentials. See for example www.kiwifrontline.com His response to my open letter to him was that I was “deceitful” and advanced “a racist political agenda”. Is this really maintenance of the highest ethical standards and accountability for a university as prescribed in section 161 of the Education Act 1989? Is this an appropriate response to public scrutiny? It is saddening that they both misunderstand and misconstrue the turbulent, often tragic, social, political and economic mores of the tribal warrior culture of the Polynesian people of pre-European NZ.
With reference to their ocean navigation, I am familiar with the impressive work of David Lewis. I have some experience of it myself.
Moreover, her account of the ocean travels of Polynesians also shows conclusively that the Maoris, here for only a few hundred years before Tasman, are plainly not indigenous in New Zealand.
I am all for racial harmony but promulgating lies about our history is no way to achieve it.
BRUCE MOON, Nelson.
The lengthy letter from Caroline Pukeroa-McKinney in the “Age” is grossly flawed and misleading with substantial but falsely presumptive criticism of me. It requires a considered response.
Let us take these topics one at a time.
She quotes selectively from the 1831 letter in both English and Maori from 13 Ngapuhi chiefs to King William, omitting the following:
i) ‘We are a people without possessions (“taonga” in the Maori text). We have nothing but timber, flax, pork and potatoes.’ Now that’s very different from what Professor Sir Hugh Kawharu and other treaty-twisters have said since. In his translation he claimed that: ‘As submissions to the Waitangi Tribunal have made clear, “taonga” refers to all dimensions of a tribal group’s estate, material and non-material – heirlooms and wahi tapu sacred places), ancestral lore and whakapapa (genealogies), etc.’ This very senior professor ignored academic standards, a fundamental principle being that in interpreting an 1840 document only the 1840 situation and meanings of words applied.
ii) ‘It is only thy land which is liberal towards us.’ Compare that with recent claims such as that of Moana Jackson of ‘Violent invasion of Māori land’ (reported by Rosslyn Beeby, 18/3/20), just one example of today’s history-twisting epidemic.
iii) ‘we pray thee to become our friend ... lest the teasing of other tribes should come near us’. ‘Teasing’ was a very mild word to describe the slaughter, treachery and cannibalism of the day in which Ngapuhi had reason to fear retribution from other tribes for the brutality of the Musket Wars which they had started.
She proceeds with the usual treaty-twisters’ false claim that ‘the chiefs agreed to kawanatanga, so the British had governance over all their (British) people and all those ... who came later, while the chiefs retained rangatiratanga/chieftainship over their tribal regions and people.’ The plain truth is that the chiefs agreed to cede sovereignty - ‘kawanatanga’ - to the Queen, completely and for ever, as clearly understood by the chiefs who spoke at Waitangi on 5th February 1840 and unequivocally confirmed at their great meeting at Kohimarama in 1860. ‘Rangatiratanga’, possession of property, was guaranteed not only to rangatira but to ‘tangata katoa o Nu Tirani’, that is ‘all the people of New Zealand’ irrespective of their origins, another point ignored by the treaty-twisters whose false accounts she accepts.
Then she talks of ‘the ambiguity ... between the Maori and English Treaty versions’, accepting again the treaty-twisters’ tales. There is no ‘English version’ of the treaty, though it is claimed at all levels that a fake treaty written by Hobson’s secretary, Freeman, to send to dignitaries overseas is such. One defective copy was indeed used for an overflow of signatures at Waikato Heads but the treaty twisters never ask why on a unique occasion an apparent ‘treaty in English’ was signed. It was but the second page of a single document, whose first page was a printed copy of the real treaty in the Ngapuhi dialect with the first few signatures on it.
Thus Contra Preferentum which she brings up is irrelevant.
At this point she introduces the false name ‘Aotearoa’ for our country, unaware apparently that it was first given to the South Island alone by Waitaha but later appropriated by Northerners as one of several names of the North Island. Our country has been New Zealand for 377 years. In the Treaty it is transliterated as ‘Nu Tirani’ and ‘Aotearoa’ is nowhere. Had it been in use, the Williams, residents in New Zealand for 17 years and very competent in the language, would undoubtedly have used it but nobody, simply nobody, objected to ‘Nu Tirani’! Only in the 1890s did a couple of colonial writers use ‘Ao Tea Roa’ in their stories.
She then asserts in apparent innocence “that every claim taken to the Tribunal is thoroughly researched”. The topic it too great to introduce here, but it may be fairly claimed that the Waitangi Tribunal is the most corrupt body ever established in New Zealand with taxpayers’ money and its ‘findings’, uncritically accepted in official and parliamentary circles, are a stain on the integrity of all those concerned.
The flaws in Ms Pukeroa-McKinney’s narrative continue in her unresearched presumption that I am not fit to criticise Tom Roa’s statements. A simple google search would have revealed my personal credentials. See for example www.kiwifrontline.com His response to my open letter to him was that I was “deceitful” and advanced “a racist political agenda”. Is this really maintenance of the highest ethical standards and accountability for a university as prescribed in section 161 of the Education Act 1989? Is this an appropriate response to public scrutiny? It is saddening that they both misunderstand and misconstrue the turbulent, often tragic, social, political and economic mores of the tribal warrior culture of the Polynesian people of pre-European NZ.
With reference to their ocean navigation, I am familiar with the impressive work of David Lewis. I have some experience of it myself.
Moreover, her account of the ocean travels of Polynesians also shows conclusively that the Maoris, here for only a few hundred years before Tasman, are plainly not indigenous in New Zealand.
I am all for racial harmony but promulgating lies about our history is no way to achieve it.
BRUCE MOON, Nelson.