A Retrograde Neolithic Backward Step

Tribalism Puts Racism On Steroids

Maori in New Zealand (or at least some of them) have paddled themselves well up the creek and lost the paddle.  With a peculiar strain of deeply ingrained racism they have had the effrontery to argue that there is something racially superior in Maori adults taking care of and raising Maori children.  

So, when a Maori person (male or female) has a long history of child neglect and abuse, and when the State moves to take the vulnerable children away from the irresponsible and neglectful parent(s), it is interpreted as a racist attack upon Maori.  They go on to insist that if it were true that the parent(s) have neglected and harmed children in their care, it remains essential that the children be raised by "whanau"--by which is meant the wider tribe of the irresponsible parents and relatives. 

Such tribalism is generally regarded in other jurisdictions as primitive and backward.  And rightly so.  Racism is bad enough.  Tribalism is worse.  It is worse because not only does it discriminate negatively between races, but its "refinement" insists upon discriminating between Maori tribes.  If racism is evil, tribalism is exponentially evil. 

Winston Peters is not a politician we generally hold in high regard.  But on these issues we warmly endorse his stand.

Avoiding Racism in Our Child Rearing

No Room For Failure

A colloquial description for "taking responsibility" is that there is a soul to damn and a butt to kick if things go wrong. 

In the endless, recurring debate over child welfare in New Zealand Maori are sadly over represented in the statistics.  Maori leaders and spokespeople appear to want two fundamental changes: they want Maori to have a far bigger say in how Maori children are looked after and raised.  Secondly, they want a racial division in New Zealand such that most Maori children will end up being raised by Maori--whether the birth parents or, secondly, the extended family of the child, or, if that fails, the tribe, or, if that were to fail, Maori in general, and only then, when all that has failed, will Maori tolerate a Maori child being raised by someone else from a non-Maori race.  Even then a Maori child being placed in a non-Maori household does not sit well at all. 

This arrangement does not seem right.  Nor is it something to which other racial or cultural groups in the country appear to be bound.  If a Korean child, for example,  needs to be placed in a family the placement selection process appears far more colour-blind than the Maori process.  Insofar as racism is fundamentally perverse, this does not seem kosher at all. 

MP Judith Collins has a more straight forward approach:  make sure you do no harm--and if you do, you need to take responsibility and be held accountable.

Misleading and Deceptive

A Cancer of Histrionic Exaggerations

The Waitangi Tribunal has come out claiming that the Government is responsible for "failing Maori in the health system."  For our part, we confess we are bored to tears by the endless panoply of histrionic claims about Maori needs and the failure of the Government to provide for those needs.  

Waitangi Tribunal claimant Tureiti Lady Moxon wants the Government to apologise for failing Māori in the health system.  "It's our people dying of preventable diseases, who are the worst off in this country, in a democratic society that's supposed to look after everybody," she said.  "They've failed us constantly."

The tribunal has just released its comprehensive, stage one report from the Health Services and Outcomes Kaupapa Inquiry. It found multiple Treaty breaches and serious failings by the Crown to fix Māori health inequities.  "The prejudice suffered by Māori because of these Crown failures is extensive," said the tribunal in its report.

It said despite the Crown investing some $220 billion into the health system since 2000, there's been little improvement in outcomes for Māori.  The tribunal considered the issue of Māori health to be so urgent it released its 256-page report within three months of finishing the hearings. It also wanted the report and evidence to be included in the Government's health and disability system review currently underway.

During its deliberations the tribunal released screeds of data which gave evidence of the appalling health statistics of Māori.  In its final statement the tribunal asked the Crown to acknowledge its overall failure to improve Māori health outcomes since implementing major reforms nearly 20 years ago. [Stuff]

What is a genuine puzzle, however, is how and why large numbers of Pacific Island migrants to New Zealand don't seem to suffer from a similar malaise.

Some Things About This Country Are Truly Odious

New Zealand's Enduring Shame

Right now in New Zealand we have a most pernicious situation in which Maori children are being left with evil people (relatives) to care for them and raise them.  Why? Well, it is a racist policy.

Imagine a panel of "experts" deciding into which "family" a one year old Maori toddler ought to be placed.  There are three possible family options: a Samoan family, a Maori family, or a Caucasian family.  The Maori family gets the nod.  Why?  Blood ties are the overriding factor.

Now that is flat out racism in our book.  And so we get defenceless Maori children being placed with sub-optimal Maori families because race overrides all.  That's about as racist a policy as you could find on this globe.  But New Zealand authorities, whether governmental or cultural, clap and cheer lustily.  New Zealand, consequently, is one of the most racist countries on earth--at least as far as this particular metric is concerned.

Here is the latest outrage:

Damned If You Do, and Damned If You Don't

OK Whānau, Let's See How You Get On With Baby and Parents

Martin van Beynen
Stuff


During the Christchurch satanic panic of the early 90s, that led to the travesty of the Christchurch Civic Creche case, I saw the Child, Youth and Family service at work and was left with some grave doubts.  So I watched Newsroom's documentary about the attempt by Hawke's Bay Oranga Tamariki staff to take a seven-day-old baby from its 19-year-old mother with that in mind.

I also thought about Donna Catherine Parangi, 54, the grandmother of a baby boy who died after being left in a hot car for hours while she smoked synthetic cannabis and passed out in her Rūātoki home. In March a jury found her guilty of his manslaughter .

Most people would agree the Hawke's Bay hospital uplift, even allowing for a bit of media beat-up, was an appalling debacle and completely unnecessary.

What on earth was the hurry? The baby was safe, the mother was safe and the whānau were behaving themselves. The programme revealed a litany of confusion, poor communication, incompetence and deceit. Mind you, how would any of us look if our actions were filmed in such circumstances?

The doco raised a lot of issues deeper than a bungled uplift.  The first was whether this was typical of the current process followed by Oranga Tamariki in taking the ultimate step of removing babies from their parents.  Was this just an outlier or was it representative of such uplifts all around the country? On the programme Hawke's Bay midwife Jean Te Huia suggested these cruel, bungled uplifts happened all the time but I'm skeptical.

Three inquiries are under way and hopefully they will come up with answers.

The next question is whether Māori are unjustifiably picked on.

"Hello, Pot" Says the Kettle

'Divisive group of haters' in Hobson's Pledge 'Must be Investigated'

Māori Council Displays Prejudice


John Weekes
Stuff

Don Brash says the 'absolutely outrageously stupid' decision and rhetoric from the Māori Council has led to him taking legal advice.  The New Zealand Māori Council said on Wednesday it had asked the Human Rights Commission (HRC) to investigate the group, which is led by former National Party and Act leader Don Brash.

Hobson's Pledge was formed in 2016 and campaigns against what it says is preferential treatment given to Māori.  New Zealand Māori Council executive director Matthew Tukaki said the council had made the move because "no one's called them out".

"They've been given a significant amount of latitude," Tukaki told Stuff.  He hoped the HRC would censure the group.  He said the "accumulation" of Hobson's Pledge's behaviour and statements, rather than any one incident, influenced the decision to go to the HRC.

Tukaki also said Hobson's Pledge was "nothing more than a divisive group of haters who would do nothing more than send us all back to the dark ages.

Long Term Effects

Not the Same

We have been reading through A. W. Reed's volume, Auckland: The City of the Seas.  [Wellington: A. H. and A. W. Reed, 1955.] It's an entertaining read.  But one piece caught our eye as being indicative of a much wider canvas.

The account is innocuous enough.  It consists of Miss Eliza Jones describing a visit to a school in "south" Auckland in 1857.  Reed describes the landscape:

The volcanic mounds were pitted with natural caves, formed by the hot lava rolling over marshy ground countless years before.  The gases which were generated formed gigantic bubbles which became frozen into the rock when congealed.  Early explorers and, at a later date, settlers and visitors found borken bones thickly carpeted over the floor of the caves. . . [Ibid., p. 199]

Miss Jones takes up the account as follows:

We proceeded straight to the school, through a paddock dotted with sheep.  The appearance of this picturesque , peaceful spot, and the happy looking, neatly clad Maori boys whom we met, gave no suggestion of being in the 'Cannibal Islands'.  Still less did the school room, where we were warmly welcomed by the master, Mr Reid.

Maori Youth In Our Courts

Facing Up--Or Not

It appears there are no solutions to the endless lines of Maori in our courts to be sentenced for serious crime.  Secular humanism has come to a dead end.  What on earth is to be done?  No-one knows.  No-one is prepared to speculate, let alone say.  

When the fundamental fabric of human society is torn up and thrown away, government programmes laced with billions of dollars will only exacerbate the problem--as has happened.  New Zealand's great god of the age--Secular Gummint--has failed miserably.  The tsunami of crime continues.  More hands are wrung.  More lamentations are heard.  Nothing changes.  Except for the worse.

We published an article on Maori youth yesterday, which included the following:

One of the most poignant sentencing notes I've read was by Judge Gerard Winter. A judge in Auckland for seven years, he was sentencing an 18-year-old for kidnap and aggravated robbery last year. He robbed two international students at gunpoint.

Before sentencing the man to 25 months' jail, the judge traversed the figures of Māori crime and incarceration rates included in the Waitangi Tribunal's Tū Mai te Rangi report. Judge Winter granted the youth a five-month discount to his sentence on the strength of a cultural report that covered the decades and generations that preceded the youth, and his whānau's rural-to-urban move and its impacts.  "Each and every day this court is engaged in sentencing, far too often there are young Māori offenders appearing for sentence on the very worst crime at category 3 level," the judge said. 

The Great Secular Humanist dream has turned into a nightmare.  The only thing that has changed is that now a few more people are prepared to own up to its wretched failures.  But they have no solution to offer, except more of the same.  We are approaching the layman's definition of insanity.

This is not a racial issue.

A Curse Passing Down the Generations

Clinging To A Poisoned Vine

Followers of current affairs in New Zealand will be aware of the disordered state of Maori in the northern most climes of the country.  We have in mind the divisions within the tribe Ngapuhi.  The government wants to conclude a Treaty settlement with the tribe.  The tribe is said to have over 110 hapu or clans, or family groupings of people related by genealogical descent.  The tribe also has these groups roughly grouped into over half a dozen "sub-tribes".

Some of these groups are bitterly at odds with others.  Some claim that no-one and no organization can represent all of Ngapuhi.  They are demanding that their particular hapu must negotiate with the Crown on its own behalf and on its own terms.  The Government has voted an amount for settlement; Ngapuhi sub-tribes cannot agree who or what group should represent them in negotiations with the Crown.  This has gone on for decades.

Well, actually, it has gone on for centuries amongst Ngapuhi.  Literally.

A Promise Not Realized

The Rise and Fall of Maori in New Zealand

In the late 1840's, within a decade of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, Maori tribes up and down the country were actively involved in rural based industries and farming.  It was an economic "miracle".

We return to Harold Miller's account:

In 1847 the Lieutenant-Governor reported that the Maoris near Wellington were doing wonders in agriculture; they had "good barns, huts with fire-places, nicely-fenced large gardens, extensive wheatfields beautifully tilled, numerous small paddocks of grass and a variety of comforts".  He received in a chief's house a very good meal, "nicely cooked and arranged, cloth, knives and forks, plates, tea-cups and saucers, milk, bread, etc., etc., as comfortably enjoyed as could have been at many inns".  It was estimated that along a hundred miles of coast there were ten thousand acres of native crops; and steady supplies of wheat and flour and potatoes and pigs were arriving in the European settlement.

In the ten years following 1846, especially when prices rose as a result of the Australian gold-rushes, everybody was busy in the fields.  A few of the more enterprising chiefs erected flour mills; and even the ferocious Rangihaeata who had been responsible for the worst of the bad work done at Wairau in 1843, was reported to be organizing the making of a road through the Manawatu Gorge, in order to open up trade with the East Coast!

During these ten years something like this was happening all over the North Island--in Waikato and Taranaki and the Bay of Plenty and all down the East Coast.  In the early 'fifties a remote valley near the present town of Gisborne was reported to be producing fifty thousand bushels of what and shipping them to Auckland in its own fleet of schooners.  The Maoris were turning into very good seamen and were reported in 1855 to be practically monpolizing the carrying trade along the northern coasts.  [Harold Miller, New Zealand (London: Hutchinson's University Library, 1950),  p.45.]  

The significance and knowledge of Maori enterprise and labour during this period has been largely lost.  It has been lost because of the subsequent descent of Maori into poverty, economic dislocation, and alienation.  There was both an intrinsic and an extrinsic cause resulting in this drastic change for the worse.

Imprisoned In the Past

Tribal New Zealand

The tribalism of modern Maori has largely ebbed away, with a few occasional exceptions.  Life and times in the early 19th century in New Zealand was another matter.  

Everything changed when a northern paramount chief, Hongi Hika managed to get passage to England.  Harold Miller, former Librarian of Victoria University takes up the story:

In 1820 Hongi got himself carried to England to see for himself the wonders of the western world.  He was truly astonished by what he saw but one thing especially stuck in his mind: over all England there was only one ruler!  One King George over all England--why not one King Hongi over all New Zealand?  On his way home he turned the rich presents with which he had been loaded into muskets and prepared to apply the lessons he had received. . . .

Already before 1820 the Northern tribes had ravaged as far as Cook Strait; but now things were worse.  Thousands were killed or enslaved and whole tribes were driven from the lands that their ancestors had occupied for centuries.  In 1820 when a missionary visited the Waitemata district it was teeming with people.  From the top of a hill he could see ". . . twenty villages in the valley below, and . . . the largest portion of cultivated land I had ever met in one place in New Zealand".  There were, he estimated, at least four thousand people.  . . . The people were friendly but uneasy.  They asked for missionaries and were disappointed when he spoke of delay; "Our eyes," they said, "will be all dark before that time arrives and we shall never see them. . . . " In a few months, Hongi came down upon them with two thousand men and a thousand muskets swept them away.  Within a short time the whole Ngati Whatua tribe had vanished and not a living soul remained on the tribal lands. . . . And so it went on through the 1820's [Harold Miller, New Zealand (London: Hutchinson's University Library, 1950), p. 11f.]

 On the surface, tribalism appears dead and buried amongst modern Maori.

Inane Identity Propaganda

"Maoridom" Is A Meaningless Construct

David Garrett has written a guest post in Kiwiblog which is worth a read.  It is about "Maoridom"--which is to say, it is about identity politics.  What Garrett describes and rejects is the same mindset that equally applies to feminists who both claim and assert that there is a "woman's perspective" or ideology.  The most egregious example in recent times is Michelle Obama ridiculously claiming that women who vote Republican are not really voting according to their "true selves".  

Another topical example is "African Americanism" in the United States.  For the reasons Garrett finds Maori identity politics to be stupid and meaningless, so with all forms of identity politics and propaganda. 

Following the shock defeat of all Maori Party candidates at the recent election, there were lots of comments – from all sides of the commentariat – about how “Maoridom” were affected, and how this mythical beast would feel about what had happened. I have often wondered about this odd construct, which implies that all Maori think alike, and all Maori view all issues – including political issues – in the same way. That surely makes no more sense than referring to “pakehadom”. Grant Robertson and I are both middle aged white men, but other than that,  I have  about as much in common with him as I have with Kim Jong -Un.

Exceedingly Heavy Stones

Academic Celebrates Degeneracy

A Maori academic has come forth claiming that pre-European settlement, Maori were sexually degenerate and engaged in unGodly practices.  Nothing surprising there at all.  Naturally, however, this modern academic is also claiming that the degeneracy of Maori represents a long honoured, storied historical tradition, which means (queue the drumroll) that modern Maori can glory in such degenerate practices in our modern world.

For Maori who don't fit neatly into carefully constructed moulds of gender and sexuality the term takatāpui can be a relief.  Scholar Elizabeth Kerekere argues that pre-colonial Maori were sexually experimental people who openly accepted gender and sexual fluidity.  Anyone who didn't fit into heterosexuality was considered "takatāpui".  [NZ Herald]

What is startling here is Kerekere seems to think that she has achieved some sort of amazing discovery.  What she appears to have forgotten is that whilst pre-colonial Maori were cunning and  highly intelligent, they were also degenerate--pretty much like today's average secular atheist.

Kerekere, who identifies as lesbian, has spent five years writing her PhD and discovering new evidence takatāpui existed in pre-colonial society. It was released recently at Victoria University.

Five years is a long time spent researching and searching for something that one would have expected to have existed in spades.

"I'm Gonna Cry, Cry, Cry . . . Big River"

No Soul to Damn, and No Butt to Kick

The Attorney-General Tips his Cloth Cap to Animism

Jamie Whyte
NZ Herald

Whanganui River has all the rights of a person under a Treaty of Waitangi settlement passed into law today.

A neighbour came over for tea last week. She became agitated and I asked what was wrong. She was furious with our lawn. It was uneven and she had almost fallen. I apologised for my poor gardening but she insisted it had nothing to do with me. Her dispute was with the ground, which she regarded as unforgivably derelict.

My neighbour is as mad as Dr Evil's father, who would "accuse chestnuts of being lazy". Thank God she doesn't have an important job, like being an MP.  Or maybe she does. Last week, our MPs unanimously passed a law declaring that the Whanganui River has all "the rights, duties and liabilities of a legal person".

Chris Finlayson, the Attorney-General, acknowledges that "some people will say it's pretty strange to give a natural resource a legal personality, but it's no stranger than family trusts, or companies, or incorporated societies".

Legal persons are of two kinds: we humans, known in law as "natural persons", and persons that are legal fictions, such as companies and countries. These fictional people solve legal problems that can arise when natural people act in groups.

A New Tune, Or An Old Dirge

The Turning of the Tide?

At this year's Waitangi Day, the New Zealand Prime Minister, Bill English gave a couple of speeches which asserted that a quiet revolution is underway in New Zealand.  One person covering the speeches claimed that what English said was "extraordinary".  

English chose not to go to Waitangi, preferring to attend a breakfast hosted by Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei. When it came his turn to speak during the powhiri, which was held inside the wharenui, he began with a short mihi and then he said, “I want to tell you why I’ve come here, to this marae.”

He said it was because of what had been achieved by Ngāti Whātua and the manner of its achievement. He spoke directly to Joe Hawke, the much-loved Uncle Joe, the man who in 1976-78 led a 506-day protest “occupation” of the very land they were on that day. Hawke sat front and centre across from English, flanked by other kaumātua, many of whom were also protest veterans. He soaked it up.

Hawke is silver haired now, a thin man with the sad eyes of age, but what draws you is the whispery smile that keeps flitting over his face, creasing the skin, puckering the lips, lighting those eyes. He leaves it to others to do the talking, and none of them leaves you in any doubt of their pride at their achievements.  English understood it very well.

Letter From New Zealand

Recovering Mana

There are some things about living in New Zealand for which we can be extremely grateful.  Sure, there are heaps of things with this country which are flat out wrong, even evil.  They call for relentless, determined exposure at every opportunity.  But there are also some things which are rather cool.

Here is one example.  The northern Maori tribe, Ngapuhi is dysfunctional at best.  Always at this time of the year there is controversy over the national holiday, Waitangi Day because, on the one hand, Ngapuhi hosts the memorial celebrations since it was in their territory that the Treaty of Waitangi was signed between the Crown and Maori tribes in 1840.  But this national celebration has been captured as a platform for Ngapuhi radicals to voice their grievances against the government.

 

Recently, the controversy has narrowed down to whether the Prime Minister should be invited to attend, and, if invited, whether he should be granted speaking rights.  For the past two years, the PM has been invited, but forbidden to speak.  Last year the PM declined to attend.  Ngapuhi cut of their collective nose to spite their face. The same has fallen out this year.

Time For Righteous Outrage

Abused Children Used To Support Blighted Racist Narrative

Maori elites in New Zealand are sadly riven with perverse institutional racism.  For years now abused Maori children, at the insistence of the Maori Party, have been placed by the state into Maori "homes" when their current "home" is no longer suitable.  

The new proposal which would change the "Maori first" policy has been described as follows:

Cabinet papers released by Social Development Minister Anne Tolley last week revealed that the Government plans to axe a provision that gives priority to placing abused children with foster parents from the same [Maori] extended family or tribe.  A new law, which will create a new Ministry for Vulnerable Children Oranga Tamakiri, would require that any child who was removed from its family and cannot be returned to immediate family "must be placed with a safe, stable and loving family at the earliest opportunity".

The change would remove a provision in the 1989 Children, Young Persons and their Families Act that gave priority to placing a child with "a person who is a member of the child's or young person's hapu or iwi [with preference being given to hapu members], or, if that is not possible, who has the same tribal, racial, ethnic, or cultural background as the child".  [NZ Herald]

To put it baldly, if an abused child has only one of two foster homes available--one a Maori "home" which is unstable, violent, riven with abuse, drug use, poverty, disease, indolence, and drunkenness, and the other a stable, loving, experienced, financially secure, happy Pacific Island home, the current law requires that the child be placed in the Maori home.

"Loser" Talk

Marxist Go-Nowhere Nonsense

Alan Duff
NZ Herald

A video of teenage girls rampaging inside a South Auckland superette, robbing it of cigarettes was disturbing.  The owners are Indian. The thieves have clearly grown up on the notion that stealing beats working, and very likely been taught that the Indian superette owners rip brown people off, and not that they work very hard in making a better life for their families.

A Maori rugby team I used to support in Hawke's Bay had a similar attitude to white people. Whenever they played Havelock North - a team with no shortage of Maori and Pacific Island players - the spectators would yell and scream, "Get those rich honkies! Smash them!"

Loser talk.

Same loser outlook that girl gang has. I don't know of any Pakeha girl gangs.

One-Legged Solutions

The Maori Sole-Parent Problem

Allow us to use racial and ethnic categories for a new minutes.  It is generally known that Maori have substantial problems and issues.  But we forget, or overlook the size and scale of the problem.  Then, every so often, it shows forth once again in startling, appalling relief.

Here is a vignette which we came across the other day: a breakdown by ethnicity of Sole Parents receiving taxpayer (government) welfare in New Zealand.

The first, expected, characteristic is that the Sole Parent category in the table is overwhelmingly female.  No surprises there.

But when broken down by ethnicity, we find a startling bit of data: there are nearly 60 percent more  Maori women on the Sole Parent benefit, than NZ European women.  In June 2016, there were 31,040 Maori women receiving the Sole Parent benefit, compared to 19,753 NZ Europeans.  Yet Maori represent only 15 percent of the entire NZ population.  Of the 60,000 women on Sole Parent benefits, half of them are Maori.

Battered and Broken

How Has It Come To This?

We have posted previously on the sad case of Alan Duff  here.  Alan is an evolutionist, a disciple of Richard Dawkins, and a mocker of the Son of God.  But contradictorily he is also a moralist.  He thinks that some things are right, and some are wrong.  Definitively so.  

For some reason Alan hasn't confronted his own inconsistency and confusion.  He has not realised that he is a walking, talking contradiction.  As the Apache would say, he speaks with a forked tongue.
Every so often Alan thinks and speaks as if there are absolute rights and wrongs.  He speaks with holy anger and passion.  No doubt tomorrow his left hand will remove what his right hand put forward today.  But that's a function of his spiritual blindness.

Alan has written a piece declaiming Maori violence--systemic family violence--in New Zealand.  We would honour him for his plain speaking, his high morality and principled stance--in these matters.  He is responding to the horrific case where two "care-givers" systematically beat a child to death over several days.  He writes:

Real Men Don't Beat Up Kids

Alan Duff
NZ Herald

We can't let Moko Rangitoheriri's death be forgotten - or be a vengeful mob storming the Taupo police cells to lynch Moko's evil killers.

One of many marches around the country took place in Lower Hutt and there were some brave men who spoke out. I quote Anaru Moke: "I was bashed myself. Who wasn't?" He says he's breaking the cycle with his own 11 children. He's a Mob member. Good on him for speaking out. Here's Star Olsen: "I knew I had to say something that was at the pit of my stomach. The hardest word for some Maori males to say is sorry." Including when they just helped torture and murder a child.

It's a waste of breath to scream that vile punishments should be inflicted on Tania Shailer, 26, and David Haerewa, 46. We'd just be drawn into an endless cycle of violence begetting more violence. But we Maori have to ask why we totally dominate statistics in the killing of more than 200 infants in the past two decades. Why us?