A Much Needed Corrective, Part III

Disinterring The Good From the Bones

As we have often recounted, Voltaire astutely observed that the writing of history is a trick the living play upon the dead.  He would have known.  He lived amidst and participated in one of the great acts of historical revisionism.  The "historians" of the Enlightenment deliberately rewrote and recast Western history to become of narrative of classical (pagan) glories, followed by a millennium of Christian ignorance, superstition, and darkness.  The classic of the genre (but by no means an isolated case) is Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  Voltaire's sneer is apropos.

Early New Zealand history has been similarly recast.  The trick played upon the dead in this instance--both Maori and pakeha--is that Christianity in general and the missionaries in particular were a perfidious influence.  The myth of the noble savage has emerged once again.  Rousseau would have been very pleased. 

Keith Newman's Bible and Treaty: Missionaries Among the Maori--a New Perspective (New York: Penguin Books, 2010) is a much needed corrective to this tsunami of scurrilous revisionism.  In the conclusion, he summarises by means of ironic understatement some aspects of the "great trick":

There has been much tampering with the story of the missionaries and their influence by revisionist historians who have overlaid their own post-Christian perspectives.  Some have attempted to dismiss the missionaries' diaries, record-keeping and observations as inaccurate or biased.  This is a slight on the missionaries; and it also dilutes their record of the integrity and intelligence of Maori teachers and converts who moved so quickly into the ranks of educated and informed Christians.  Those who refused to believe Maori could rise to the challenge of political or church leadership during these pivotal years, and those who continue to insist claims of Maori literacy were farcical missionary inventions, do both missionary and Maori a disservice. (Op cit., p. 312.)

One controversy erupting in our generation has been over the Treaty of Waitangi.  The predominant contemporary Maori perspective (as far as it is possible to tell) is that the Treaty was understood by Maori when signed in 1840 to be a covenant of co-sovereignty with the Crown.  This perspective has now achieved the status of myth--being believed by academics, government, and politicians--in most cases, fervently.  The thesis is that Maori were not surrendering sovereignty to the Crown when the chiefs signed the Treaty, they were graciously acknowledging the British government as co-sovereign.  The implication, we are led to believe, is that the Crown was to be sovereign over pakeha and British settlers, whilst Maori retained sovereignty over everything else. 

Newman's work shows this to be what it is--yet another trick played by the living upon the dead.  The idea of residual Maori sovereignty did not emerge until later, and only after the Crown and its agencies had broken the terms of the Treaty in so many ways.  The Maori King movement was partially--though not universally--an expression of the idea that the Treaty left sovereignty over New Zealand in the hands of Maori.  A review of the historical records, the writings of missionaries and Maori, do not countenance co-sovereignty.  It was clearly understood by Maori that when they signed the Treaty they were submitting to the sovereignty of the Crown--and that was one of its chief attractions.  The divide and rule dynamic, they hoped and understood, would be eviscerated by coming under the sole sovereignty of the Crown. 

But the speeches and the commentary of Maori chiefs at Waitangi in 1840 clearly show the concern was loss of land--tribal land--or land held by tribes and sub-tribes.  They signed the Treaty believing that it would mean the Crown would protect their property rights in their tribal lands.  The missionaries clearly encouraged them in this understanding of the Treaty, believing for their part, that it was the only way Maori land could be protected for Maori. 

There is no doubt that not just the Maori and the missionaries were acting in good faith.  Hobson and the representatives of the Crown and the British colonial office also had the same view.  But democratic governments are subject to changing views and perspectives and so it happened.  Very soon the enlightened views of wanting to protect Maori rights and interests became replaced by Realpolitick--how to accommodate the thousands of settlers flooding to New Zealand--all demanding the land which had been promised to them and for which many had already paid. 

Newman writes:

There is no disputing that the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi was a hurried and very English affair.  The experience of using a quill and ink on parchment or paper was more attuned to scholars than to Maori chiefs. Hobson said it wasn't his fault if the chiefs didn't understand what they were signing.  Colenso, to his credit, stood in their midst stating that many did not grasp the legality of the treaty or have any real ideas as to its purpose.  It was only hone Heke's advice that the chiefs should trust what the missionaries said that turned the tone of the meeting. . . .

Without the assurances of the missionaries, based on the instructions given by the humanitarian politicians back in London--that Maori interests in their lands, their traditional fishing and hunting grounds, and their cultural pursuits would be protected--there would have been no treaty. Within a few years of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, which the missionaries had promoted so thoroughly, it seemed to be worth less than the paper Colenso had printed it on.  Maori faced an increasingly aggressive stand from British and colonial authorities and the settled when they resisted land acquisitions.  (Ibid., p. 314f)

Bible and Treaty records incident after incident, example after example of this travesty.  More often than not it was the missionaries standing up to the Crown and settler demands in an effort to represent and protect Maori interests. 

It is true that human history is a very "thick" complex affair, never linear, never simple.  This is not to be lamented.  It is the way God works and the way His world and its history unfolds.  The Kingdom of God is a very messy affair--which is not to say that we must embrace sin, ignorance, or error.  It is to observe, however, that the facile solutions to complex issues are not often readily to hand.  Proposed remedies turn out to be often little more than simplistic nostrums, doing more harm than good. 

Given the tides of world-history flowing at the time, it is difficult to see how things might have turned out differently in New Zealand as far as the Treaty is concerned.  We acknowledge the good faith of all parties concerned, but in hindsight one concedes that it was doomed to fail.  In this failure, Maori were partially complicit.  Maori sold land to which they had no substantial or real claim.  Maori tribal land was an historically nebulous construct, given that it was subject to successive, incessant tribal warfare and was not infrequently changing hands.  The alienation of tribal lands was often due to Maori dispossessing Maori. 

The upshot is--and this is always the case--the clock of Providence cannot be wound back.  Each generation is called to be subject to God's laws of confession, repentance, forgiveness, healing, and restoration to enable us to move on.  The Kingdom is always forward looking: faith, hope, and love are eschatologically focused, not backward.  Revisionism is thus a double curse.  It plays tricks upon the living and enslaves them to a false past. 

Early New Zealand history is a complex admixture of good and bad.  Some of the good was spectacularly good.  And some of the bad, equally spectacular.  The sad truth is that it is the bad which tends to linger on, nursed by bitterness and prejudice.  But the good done is often interred with the bones of the departed.  Newman's book is a wonderful asset because it disinters so much of the good represented amongst missionary and Maori when the Gospel first came to this country and makes it live again--for our instruction, admonition and gratitude.

In an attempt to preserve the good, and disinter it from the bones, around 900 Maori from all parts of the country gathered at Paihia on the 11th January, 1876, having raised 200 pounds to erect a memorial to the late Henry Williams.  Reverend Matiu Taupaki--the first Maori to be ordained--delivered the oration at the unveiling of the memorial for Williams before the assembled Maori representatives.

Think of the wickedness of our island.  The exceeding heavy stone which weighed us down was cannibalism, but that did not deter him.  He forsook his own country and people, parents and relatives.  He arrived here in 1823.  He landed at Paihia, and there built his first fortress, the church standing before you.  It was in taht fortress he forged the weapons of war wherewith to overthrow the strongholds of the earth.

Taupaki quoted the long list of personal and tribal disputes and battled in which Williams had intervened, and his long journeys across the country to reach different tribes and to help establish other missionaries among the Maori.

His word was the Treaty of Waitangi, which confirmed to the Natives the possession of their lands, giving to the Queen the sovereignty in the Government . . . let the erection of this stone be a witness amongst us that the Maori Church shall stand, and not be cast down forever. (Ibid., p. 321.)