Religion or Nation

C McCabe. 4214 words

The Imposition of Māoritanga on New Zealand.

In He Puapua and Nationalism I looked into some of the ways in which non-Maori New Zealanders could respond to the threat posed by Maori separatism.

In this piece, we consider the radical notion that Maori activist behavior has more in common with the actions of an aggressive foreign State actor than a domestic protest group that seeks only to address legitimate concerns and grievances. What is happening in New Zealand is as serious as a foreign invasion and only when we grasp the significance of what is happening will we be able to confront and handle the threat.

With all the rhetoric about Treaty claims, settlements, sovereignty and culture one could be forgiven for thinking that the Maori people are a clearly defined racial and ethnic group. A group that has been defined, targeted and separated for abuse and oppression by a brutal and racist foreign conquering power. I have been confidently assured that “we came over here and stole New Zealand from the Maori”. This is the unquestioned orthodoxy across all sections of society, yet this simple statement betrays so many layers of lies, fabrications and deceit that it is hard to believe the narrative could stray so far from the truth without deliberate subversive intent.

The crime of the century in New Zealand is the appalling ignorance of the average New Zealander regarding the truth about the early settlement of these isles. This lack of education has left a knowledge vacuum that the Radicals and Marxists have been only too happy to fill.

Responses online to the question of the existence of full-blooded Maori as a distinct ethnic group are almost unbelievably naïve. A mix of covert white self-hatred from the white liberals and academics and condescending supremacy from any and all non-whites. The universities are much to blame for this situation. A Maori and a White going through the university system in New Zealand will come out; one with an unjustified feeling of nobility and grievance and the other with feelings of personal shame and responsibility. The thing they will both have in common is absolute confidence in the correctness of their beliefs.

They have both been maliciously misled, to the detriment of themselves and the country through the perpetuation of unjustified grievance and misplaced guilt.

What happened to Indigenous Maori?

No one wants to talk about race these days, it makes people feel uncomfortable. The whole subject has become so politicized; if a white talks about race – ”he’s a racist” if a none white talks about race it is for the purpose of attacking the Whites. European New Zealanders have no option but to break the deadlock and face the bogeyman head-on.

Maori blood or ancestry has become relevant because of the way in which Indigenous peoples are identified, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People does not define indigenous, it merely looks around for groups they can apply the label to. It is an arbitrary assignment, an undefined system that all but guarantees abuse. The system may well have started out with the best of intentions. Perhaps to safeguard the living conditions and lands of Amazon tribespeople who were being pushed out by oil exploration, logging or encroaching farming. Or perhaps any number of African tribes experiencing the same encroachment of civilisation onto their traditional way of life. These are legitimate concerns, but to suggest that the “Maori” people of 2020 are in the same category is fraudulent.

The truly indigenous peoples just mentioned are easily identified as distinct homogeneous racial-cultural groups wedded to a particular territory and way of life. The contemporary “Maori” of 2020 are part Maori New Zealanders who are completely integrated into New Zealand’s western liberal democracy. The fact that they are overrepresented in negative statistics of joblessness, educational achievement and incarceration does not make them indigenous. It may indicate that ethnicity is a factor for some but if they were to be thrown back into an indigenous way of life they would not survive.

Understanding the predicament contemporary Maori find themselves in requires a brief review of the condition of the Maori people at the time of settlement. And an understanding of how and why their population declined so rapidly in the decades before 1840. First of all, almost everything we are taught by the establishment about early New Zealand history either omits whole sections, distorts the truth or creates from whole cloth a completely false narrative.

The decline of the Maori population was due primarily to war, infanticide, and a high mortality rate due to malnutrition,- itself the consequence of continual war. Outbreeding started early with Maori mothers giving their children to white settlers to save them from the inevitable slaughter of inter-tribal warfare. Maori society had, by the 1820’s become completely homicidal. Locked in the death grip of competing Utu and reprisal, many Maori wanted European settlers close at hand as a safeguard against tribal attacks. Many Maori women found safety with White men as a means of survival and others would give their daughters to whites to avoid femicide. In this environment, so many Maori men were being slaughtered in war that White men looking for a mate would have little competition for young Maori women.

The demographic effects of the musket wars would be felt for a hundred years with the Maori population falling to a low of 42000 by 1896 from which point it began a slow recovery. The deliberate obscuring of these aspects of Maori history creates a strange incongruence surrounding the lack of Full Blood Maori. And in the absence of credible and reliable data, European colonisation will seem like a reasonable explanation for the almost complete collapse of Maori culture.

From Unrestrained Slaughter by John Robinson 

“It is hard to grasp the full extent of the widespread fighting that raged for many years across the entire North Island, and then to the south. The deadly inter-tribal wars, with the complex web of migrations, enmities and alliances, was to create a complex situation for the new colonial government, and in many ways the later wars represented a continuation of the musket wars.” pp96

“It was obvious that Maori society was destroying itself” pp73

“These chiefs were starting to doubt the wisdom of their traditions, starting to turn away from the requirements of Tikanga.” pp75

How Maori is Maori enough?

It is quite common in these times of imposed “Tikanga” (Maori customs and beliefs) for the question of full blood Maori to be raised in opposition to claims for compensation.

The argument against the claims being that because the Treaty was signed between the Crown and about 540 Maori chiefs rather than a single monolithic homogeneous Maori ‘people’ and because those distinct peoples, for all intents and purposes no longer exist then the claims are spurious. The current cohort of New Zealanders identifying as ‘Maori’ are largely cross-bred with Europeans, the Maori component of their heritage also being highly mixed with affiliations to many of the previously distinct tribes. This gives rise to the absurd situation of people who are only partly Maori in any case, claiming affiliation – and therefore compensation – to multiple tribal groups.

Remembering of course that even if there were people who could claim 100 per cent direct ancestral descent from a tribal signatory to the Treaty, all they would be able to claim would be the rights and privileges of British subjects including the right to undisturbed ownership of their property.

The response from Maori academics is to downplay the importance of Genetics or Blood to the essence of Maori identity.

Along with the supercilious talk about being full of blood “All Maori are full blooded. In common with all of humanity,…” Ross Himona of Maaori.com writes. “‘Maori-ness’ is a cultural and familial state of being, regardless of the total genetic inheritance of a particular person, and regardless of the degree of brownness of the skin. For instance many tribal peoples in Aotearoa / New Zealand today are quite fair-skinned after long contact with the Pakeha (non-Maori). But they may be nevertheless fiercely staunch members of a “Maori” family / tribe.”

“contact” in this case means outbreeding over many generations. Also “What I’m saying, I suppose, is that being ‘Maori’ is being a member of a family of ‘Maori’ descent that operates within ‘Maori’ cultural values, norms and beliefs, regardless of the degree of genetic infusion from outside that ‘Maori’ line of descent.”

Despite downplaying the importance of actual Maori ancestry, it suddenly became very important when in 2017 Native Affairs newsreader Oriini Kaipara was found to be 100 per cent Maori. All of a sudden it was a big deal to be able to prove wrong the oft-stated assertion that there are no longer any full blood Maori and have not been for a long time. The fan fair about the discovery of a Real Maori proves the disingenuous nature of the claim that Heritage doesn’t matter. The fact is it only doesn’t matter when they can’t find any actual Maori. When one finally turns up the fanfare created throws into doubt the prior claim that being genetically Maori is of little significance.

“I thought as long as I don’t get a result that’s less than 80 per cent I’ll be happy,” said Ms Kaipara. One can only imagine the outcry if any media personality said that about being White! At the very least they would lose their job, and would never work in Media again! 

Ms Kaipara continued “Being Māori is so much more than blood quantum. “ but also “As Māori, we rely on passing down our ancestry or whakapapa from one generation to the next. This is how we identify ourselves. ” So which is it? Does Race matter or not? Or is it simply an identity of convenience? Conclusively Kaipara says “You’re as Maori as you feel.” 

Pita Sharples Maori Party Co-leader 2006 has said “This concept of dividing our blood into parts – how Maori are you – flies in the face of one of our strongest values, the concept of whakapapa, our genealogy.”

“By this standard, indigenous nations vanish when a certain blood threshold is reached and white becomes the default identifier.” 

Sharples is simply stating a fact here, one he apparently doesn’t like. That with continual out-breeding the original racial stock will disappear. This is evident, and no amount of lawmaking will change that fact. And we can not make legislation pretending that this is not the case simply because we don’t like the laws of nature! If the Kiwis of Maori descent find it ‘disturbing‘ that they are outbreeding themselves there is a simple solution, but after more than 180 years of intermarriage it may well be that the horse has already bolted. Quotes from IC.org.

In an article from E-Tangata, commenting on the apparent natural inclination of Maori to play guitar, or be good at sports Morgan Godfery writes; “We shouldn’t listen to these ridiculous stereotypes. There’s no innate way to be Maori and, as new research out of Otago University is confirming, these stereotypes actually act as “justifications for colonialism”. “

He continues, “Settler colonialism needed to manufacture the myth of a “heathen savage” who must be subdued or destroyed. Without the myth, what’s the moral justification for dispossession and genocide?”

Or Waitai West Rakete, an analyst with the Ministry of social development 

“The issue is, Māori as a race have been targeted to have what was theirs taken away from them.” “When Europeans arrived, Māori uncontestably owned all of Aotearoa New Zealand.” Quora 2021

Uncontestably? The Pre European Maori contested with each other every square inch of the small patch of ground that each tribe could claim until he was summarily slaughtered and eaten by a neighbouring tribe. There was no monolithic Maori to own anything much less the entirety of New Zealand.

The doublespeak from Maori on Whakapapa and genetics is not present in professional DNA testing organisations. ‘Ancestry’ and ‘blood’ appear to be used interchangeably. The main DNA testing labs, AncestryDND, Family Tree DNA and 23andME make clear that when we talk of blood we are talking about DNA, ancestry and ethnicity. From MyFamilyHistory.com “How to find your genetic ancestry or blood relatives? “ or “...to uncover your ethnic mix and get a generalized picture of your ancestry from a genetic perspective.”

This doublespeak from Maori activists is a direct result of the Maori Affairs Amendment Act 1974 which redefined a Maori as “a person of the Maori race of New Zealand, and includes any descendant of such a Maori“. No longer did the Maori themselves have to make any attempt to preserve their racial integrity, and any largely non-Maori could on the basis of one distant ancestor claim membership in the Tribe. The meaning of Whakapapa now had to mean more than identifying Maori ancestry because Maori ancestry was no longer Maori-specifically.

UN Contribution

The United Nations has also done its part to encourage activists by supplying both the blueprint and the justification for Maori radicalisation. It’s fair to say that without the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, we might still have the grievance and claims industry but would not also be facing plans to completely split the country on racial lines.

The UNDRIP feeds into the Maori position with its definition of indigenous; rather than provide a clear definition the approach of the UN is to attempt to identify Indigenous peoples based on the following criteria.

• Self-identification as indigenous peoples at the individual level
• historical continuity with pre-colonial and /or pre settler societies
• strong link to territories and surrounding natural resources
• distinct social, economic or political systems
• Distinct language
• Form non-dominant groups of society
• Resolve to maintain and reproduce their ancestral environments and systems as distinctive peoples and communities.

Indigenous peoples retain social, cultural, economic and political characteristics that are distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live.

“According to the UN the most fruitful approach is to identify, rather than define indigenous peoples. This is based on the fundamental criterion of self-identification as underlined in a number of human rights documents.” – UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

It is also interesting to note which populations are excluded from the definition. From the United Nations definition, it seems impossible now to defend a majority population on the basis of indigenous rights! The UN definition precludes majority rights regardless of how many generations or thousands of years your identifiable racial-ethnic group has occupied a particular region. To be regarded as indigenous by the UN definition one has to be a minority group in a country with a singular dominant racial majority. What then are European people in European countries? Will we only be allowed by this definition the title Indigenous when we are less than 50 per cent of the population? Or is it 40, 30 or even only 20%? To those who say this will never happen; forty, or even only 20 years ago no one would have believed the demographics of our homelands could have been so radically transformed.

Imposition

Māoritanga 1. (noun) Māori culture, Māori practices and beliefs, Māoriness, Māori way of life.  Source

Due to what has already been said on the demise of the wholly Maori race the Tribalists have needed to find another basis on which to justify the imposition of Māoritanga on the rest of us.

Māoritanga includes religious beliefs that are wedded to place, what they call Aotearoa. It is also a world view and way of life and without using the word what they are describing is religion. But it is more than that, an ideologically defined people wedded to place is a Nation. A Maori nation without a state.

Now, where have we heard that before? Referring to Syria in 1853 Lord Shaftesbury wrote “a country without a nation in need of a nation without a country”. The Jews were regarded as a Nation long before the creation of the Jewish State of Israel in may 1948. Are Jews a race or a Religion? The same slippery argumentation found amongst Jewish radicals is evident in the current debate. If there is something to be gained by presenting oneself as merely another harmless religion then so be it. If expediency requires a Race then so be that too. These are arguments of convenience that are used to step over and around and in all cases to escape accountability. 

The drive to define Maoriness on the basis of feelings of belonging is all very well, and it seems reasonable to respect one’s desire to feel a sense of belonging to a group of kith and kin and shared history. But when we are talking about massive financial benefits, political power and national cultural hegemony exclusively for members of this group based only on feelings of belonging to a pseudo racial religion, this is a recipe for corruption graft and discrimination.

It will continue to be impossible to come to a firm conclusion with Maori activists if we can never agree on objective standards of truth and fact. It is of course in the interests of the activists to keep the claims and arguments going as long as there is money, power and resources to be gained.

Are their claims being made on the basis of contract law struck between the crown and a group of tribes defined by race? Or is it the case that the contemporary tribes having only a tenuous racial connection to the Tribes they claim to represent claim credibility on a religious basis instead?

In the absence of a firm acknowledgement of racial identity being a key delineating factor in Maori identity, we have to ask on what basis can the many claims of Maoridom be made? We suggest that the only reasonable approach is to treat Maori activism as a religion, or as the next step in the same line of reasoning, as a nation defined by religious ideology within a host nation and engaged in subversive activity to wrest political power from the host.

Separation of Church and State.

Regarding state funding of religious entities.
New Zealand has an uncodified constitution composed of acts of parliament, conventions and historical precedent. The separation of church and state is not explicitly stated but is respected as a convention in our system of government. Indeed, the Private Schools Conditional Integration Act 1975 provided for the funding of Catholic schools which was seen at the time as a breach of said separation. But was likely pushed through as a last-ditch effort by Bill Rowling to capture the Catholic vote and stave off impending defeat at the hands of the looming personage of Robert Muldoon. It didn’t work and didn’t seem to be worth the aggravation of appearing to break the convention of church–state separation.

So the state in that instance specifically provided funds for the promotion of a religious entity. The act may have been predicated on a desire to help one particular religious voting block but was framed in secular terms. However the danger or opportunity -depending on your point of view- is still there that there is no explicit prohibition.

Theocratic Nation-State.

A Maori Nation-State rising within New Zealand to displace the existing state, and replace it with a religious/cultural/racial/ideological regime.

If we consider their arguments merely on religious grounds. That Maori are claiming cultural concessions within New Zealand society on the basis of religious freedom and tolerance. Then they like everyone else can pursue their religious practices without state interference. But still, the limits to state support based on separation of church and state should prevent the state from acquiescing to what can now only be viewed as the most outrageous demands for money and privilege, the demands being based on a religious narrative. Their claims and beliefs are held with religious fervour as one might hold sacraments as an article of faith. NZ must decide whether to acquiesce to Maori separatism on the religious basis or not, being as they are, not defined by direct racial heritage to contract participants from 1840 but only on matters of faith in a belief system predicated on Maoritanga and contrived grievance. Lacking a constitution or any legal prohibition on a separation of church and state leaves the door open to a move in this direction. 

We can believe whatever we want, and we can believe fervently to be true things that are not, this is faith. When you construct an entire system of beliefs that support a worldview, this is religion. Some of the beliefs may be true and some may be demonstrably false, this is why it is so important to have a separation of church and state; because you cannot be making laws and legislation to govern the people based on things that are objectively false.

But what Maori separatists want is something that goes way beyond religious freedom and tolerance. Theirs are the demands of a nation-state with independent territory, institutions, schools, healthcare, and an independent government of their own- but crucially with veto rights over the existing Government!

If the same objectives were being pursued by a foreign power it would be clear that New Zealand was under attack and all measures of political and military defence would be taken to defend our people and our country from a clearly hostile foreign power. Yet this threat appears to be homegrown. Appearances can be deceiving however, He Puapua is the New Zealand implementation of a United Nations doctrine to which the National government of John Key signed up in 2010.

Up until the appearance of He Puapua, Maori activism had been mostly confined to achieving financial ‘settlements’; massive cash payouts repeatedly made to multiple tribes. The appearance of He Puapua as an implementation of UNDRIP dramatically changes the whole nature of the Maori question. With He Puapua the focus is now political power.

After considering the position of the Maori Activists as a religious one it is clear that what they are doing is so much more than mere religion. The only response that reflects the reality of Treatyist behaviour is to regard them as a Nation-State actor defined by religious ideology within a host nation, engaged in subversive activity to wrest political power from the host.

We can now put aside issues of race and tribe and claims, demands and allegations. These are aspects of the Maori Religion and as such are not pertinent to the search for a solution to the Maori Separatist question. They may present as a religion, but a religion that is encompassed in a collective of the prior existing tribes and peoples and everything that attends therein. These ideas advanced in the minds of men for the furtherance of the Maori religion define the basis for the political idea of the Nation-State. A pseudo theocratic Maori Nation-State.

We are dealing in New Zealand with the attempted imposition of one nation onto another. The usurpation of political power over the pre-existing Eurocentric western liberal democracy by the newly formed Maori Nation of Aotearoa.

When seen in this context all of a sudden many things become clear, as do our options and responses.

In Summary

The lethal combination of the short-sighted greed of Maori Tribal Activists supplemented by the long term globalist plan of the UN has created a powerful anti-New Zealand nationalist identity. The only option for the New Zealand government is to identify this threat for what it is and treat it accordingly. The Maori Nation should be regarded as we would any other aggressive nation-state that seeks to undermine the government and take over the country.

Pretending that we are dealing with anything other than a Nation-State actor will lead to further degradation of the integrity and autonomy of New Zealand. Assuming this position allows the New Zealand government freedom of action and agency to move against the Maori Nation with complete autonomy, unhindered by the years of moral blackmail and litigation that has handicapped our progress so far.

If the government were to take this stance they could bring forward a range of proposals to deal with the threat; at one end of the spectrum, they could negotiate territorial autonomy for the new nation, with some area of the country set aside for the creation of the Maori Nation of Aotearoa, with any degree of autonomy that seems workable.

At the other end of the spectrum, the government could proscribe Maori activist groups and organisations, shutting down the organisations and arresting the activists. Between the two extremes is an almost endless range of possibilities for autonomy and concession. But what we cannot have is this continual litigation and degradation of the culture at massive and crippling expense to the country.

These are radical proposals, but we cannot pretend it is business as usual in New Zealand. We face Maori Separatist extremists for whom a radical proposal is the only appropriate defence. If a forthright and serious solution is not found soon the country will be destroyed as we know it. And there will be people behind the UN who will be quite happy with that outcome.

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References

1. Unrestrained Slaughter: John Robinson
2. This Horrid Practice: P. Moon
3. Twisting The Treaty
4. https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1975/0129/latest/whole.html
5. https://www.secularism.org.uk/opinion/2013/11/finding-separation-of-church-and-state-for-new-zealand
6. https://www.hsnsw.asn.au/MaxWallace.html