The Slavery of Maoritanga

The Rise of Historical Determinism—Becoming Enslaved to the Past

In New Zealand we observed the emergence of a modern form of historical determinism with the recent rise of Maoritanga—in all its related manifestations. This is actually quite a curio to many in New Zealand because everyone who lives in this country is a migrant or descended from a migrant. Immigrants tend to loosen their ties over time to their whakapapa and culture. They become less wedded to the past.

For several decades British immigrants felt linked to the home country. They were even prepared to go and fight for it in its wars. But these things fade and today the ties with the home country are now tenuous at best. There is even talk of a republic in the air.

I recall meeting a Serbian immigrant family during the height of the troubles in the nineties. When they first arrived their faces were lined with the stress, the fear, the suspicions, the hostilities, and the animosities of their homeland. However, within two years this had all faded away and the hostilities of the former Yugoslavia seemed like another world. It was.

But for Maori the past is not over.

In the last half of the previous century Maori began to re-assert themselves. They sought to recover their historical culture, their historical language, their historical identity. They came to believe that these things had been virtually wiped out by an onslaught of European colonialism. If they were to survive as a people, if they were to liberate themselves from the pervasive repression (as they came to see it), they had to go back into the past and recover their whakapapa, their traditions, their culture, and their identity. The recovery of these things would enable them to establish their own sense of personhood. By knowing where they had come from (in the broadest cultural sense) they would learn where to stand. They would be able to stand apart from and against the dominant European culture.

This was an interesting development—not uncommon amongst indigenous peoples who now find themselves to be minorities in their own country. But it was new for this country.

In general educated white liberals agreed with the Maoritanga movement. The drivers of white liberal acquiescence to Maoritanga were twofold. Firstly, there was a gnawing sense of guilt over the illegal and unlawful appropriations of the past, and the resulting depredations of Maori for which white Europeans felt they had been responsible. So Maori were owed something. Secondly, there was a strain of elitist paternalism. White liberals knew that the pagan animism of traditional Maori culture, and the social arrangements that resulted, had been primitive and backward. But still white liberals encouraged Maori to recover these things in the same way that an indulgent parent will tolerate and be entertained by a child's play, regardless of how puerile it might be.

And so, New Zealand witnessed the first full flowering of a form of historical determinism. It is around 150 years since Maori “sovereignty” and culture came under sustained pressure from European migration. The recovery of Maori culture today is as curious as if the descendants of English immigrants began to seek their identity and place in the world by attempting to re-create the culture, language, mores, behaviours, dress, tattoos, and customs of working class Victorian England.

Historical determinism is like many modern idolatries. It has just enough of the truth to enable it to curry influence with the credulous. Clearly mankind is shaped and determined by what went before. Clearly, the past is determinative of the present. The Scriptures bear abundant and repeated testimony to this. God declares that He works through generations and families. He would be a God to Abraham and to his children. He would visit the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations. He would also show His lovingkindness to a thousand generations of those who love Him. In Acts, at Pentecost, when preaching the Gospel of the New Covenant, Peter declares, “This promise is to you and your children.” (Acts 2: 39)

Under the Older Covenant every Israelite adult male had to come before God once every year at the Feast of Harvest (Pentecost) to recite a formal creed of whakapapa: “A wandering Aramean was my father, and he went down to Egypt and sojourned there, few in number . . . and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand . . . and He has brought us to this place, and has given us this land, . . . and now, behold, I have brought the first of the produce of the ground which Thou O Lord has given me.” (Deuteronomy 26: 5—11) Clearly, the past was shaping the present and the future: God had determined and decreed that this would be the case. God's people were instructed to take this up and mold their lives around it.

So when Maori started to assert that their identity was tied up in their past they were half right. But they were also completely wrong. They turned the past into an idol, and separated their understanding of the past from the Living God who governs and ordains all histories, all whakapapa. In separating their understanding of the past from God, it became a pagan construct for them. Inevitably the advocates and disciples of Maoritanga came to believe in a form of historical determinism. If the past was to grant them identity, Maori had to believe they were determined, controlled, governed by the past. Their past has become their ruler or their god.

Every cultural inadequacy, every racial failure, every manifestation of suffering or degeneracy within Maori came to be blamed upon the past—and, in particular, upon how the pakeha had treated them. A deep sense of injustice and victimhood has flowered like a poisonous toadstool. Tariana Turia is a walking icon of the pathology. While wanting to represent her people and speak out for them and defend their interests, she has so deeply imbibed the waters of historical determinism that she believes Maori have suffered a holocaust and their victimhood is ineradicable. It needs to be perpetually atoned for by European immigrants and their descendants. She and those like her are doing Maori a terrible disservice.

Now, Maoritanga has left Maori more degenerate, degraded, enslaved, and eviscerated than ever before. Whenever man comes to regard any aspect of the creation as pre-determining his life he becomes enslaved to it. The more the influence, the deeper and pervasive the slavery. It becomes far worse when you believe a terrible injustice has been done to you in the past, and you are a living manifestation of that injustice today. Passing blame to another and seeing yourself as a victim leads to a realisation of the imagination. Because you think you are a victim, you act as one.

So, Maori, deeply convinced of their being victimised, end up actually role playing in real life all the characteristics of a victim. Consequently, Maori are hugely over represented in crime—both as perpetrators and victims—poverty, family disintegration, drunkenness, gangs, illiteracy, welfare dependence, and so forth.

Forty-nine percent of children living in care and foster placements are Maori. The rates of substantiated child abuse per 1,000 zero to sixteen year olds in this country is double for Maori compared to non-Maori. They have a shorter average life expectancy than non-Maori. Life expectancy amongst Maori has been static, while the rest of the nation's average life expectancy has been increasing. (Brian Easton, Listener, 20 March 2004). The higher morbidity rate cannot be explained by age, gender, location and socio-economic status.

Governmental and social agencies are flummoxed as to what to do about the problems. Their reflex response is to seek Maori solutions for Maori problems, attempting to elevate ethnicity into a solution. The white establishment has bought the ideology of Maoritanga hook, line, and sinker.

Maori are as enslaved today as they have been at any time in their history. They have less power and control over their lives as a people than ever before. And the reason? Maoritanga. If you seek for your raison d'etre in your past, historical determinism inevitably follows and soon after the mentality of a slave follows. You become like the idols you worship. And the white establishment is willingly complicit in the devastation. After all they have become cheerleaders for Maoritanga.

What will change this cycle of degradation? There is no easy way out of the prison cell. It is as if Maori have been led by the seductive sirens of Maoritanga down an increasingly dark and narrowing alley. The press of the followers makes turning around and reversing very difficult, if not impossible. Like the fish pots of their ancestors they have become trapped into an irreversible, one-way tunnel—but in this case they have both made the fish pot and they are the fish.

But there is hope. Two thousand years ago the Son of Man rose from the dead and ascended to the right hand of God Almighty. As a result, He declared His imperial reign over all nations, all whakapapa's, all histories, all peoples. No longer need any people be enslaved to their past. Despite the past, He summons every people, every culture to turn to Him as their Lord—and be accepted. He summons them out of their past to a new future.

But, in turning to Him, in submitting to His lordship and dominion, certain beliefs and actions result.

Firstly, Maori will be given a new whakapapa. They will be engrafted into the lineage of Abraham and adopted as his children. The determinative line will become not their ancestors, but Jesus Christ and His ancestors. They will be able to confess and recite, “a wandering Aramean was my father.” They will be given a new history which will shape their lives. But this new history will not imprison them as their own history has done. For this new history is redemptive history: God stands above it, as the maker and shaper of all reality, the all governing, all conditioning, Living God. Becoming enslaved to Christ means that they will be liberated from enslavement to their past and their present. They will find that their new yoke is not like the old: He is gentle and humble of heart. Maori will find rest for their souls.

Secondly, this liberation from the enslavement to the past will allow Maori to create a new future under Christ. In bowing before Him and believing in Him they will necessarily go through what all Christians go through: re-evaluating their past and all their lives in the light of His holy law. That means a comprehensive reappraisal of everything. Much that was once thought good will come to be rejected as evil. Much will required radical reshaping so that it is barely recognizable. And much that is new and never before seen will start to emerge. “If any man is in Christ he is a new creation: the old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (II Corinthians 5:17)

Thirdly, the enslavement that results from seeing oneself and one's people as a victim will disappear like the morning mist. While much evil may have been done to my people and me in the past, all has been within the plan and providence of the Living God. Therefore, since God is now my beloved Heavenly Father, none of the events of the past need trap me nor enslave me nor condition me. Maori will be free to escape their past by responding in love to their Heavenly Father and rejoicing in His love for them. As Christ has risen from the dead, so I have risen in Him and with Him: the future is bright indeed, unto a thousand generations, world without end.

Fourthly, in acknowledging one's own and one's ancestors former rebellion and sinfulness against the Living God, and in receiving His gracious forgiveness in Christ, Maori will be accepting responsibility. And as the Lord leads Maori to accept responsibility, they will be free to do, and be, and act differently. In accepting responsibility, one becomes free.

The ideology of Maoritanga is like the old nursery rhyme: “come into my parlour said the spider to the fly”. However, like all idols, it will one day lie “broke in the temple of Baal.” As it brings Maori into increasing enslavement and degradation let the cry of the ascended Son of Man be heard: “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

He alone can break the bonds of this slavery—for it is a willful slavery of heart and mind.