Tani Newton
Friends, help me. I’m trying to come to grips with this whole hikoi/treaty/co-governance thing. And I’m a really big picture person.
Tell me if I’m getting this wrong. The family is the primary and normative human institution. Basic human society is organised by tribal, that is, extended-family, groups. Only when a society becomes a civilisation (by definition, a city-building culture) does it acquire a civil government, with a king (or similar equivalent) and a capital city.
Every people group has its mysteries, and the New Zealand Māori are no exception. How on earth could they rise to such dizzying heights of workmanship in woodcarving and other decorative arts, yet never figure out how to make clothes, even in the South Island? It’s mind-boggling.
Other things lend themselves more readily to an explanation. Why did they never become a civilisation? Because they couldn’t stop fighting with each other. The Council of Chiefs that met in Waitangi, and declared independence and sovereignty in 1835, was trying to be a civil government for the whole country. But the other tribes wouldn’t stop fighting and join them. Later, the Land Wars were a convoluted mess, with Māori fighting on both sides and continuing to fight with each other long after the British Army had announced a victory and gone away.
I don’t think that’s entirely changed. Christianity brought a great deal of peace to these islands, but the tribal conflict continues to some extent, for example in gang violence. It’s also seen in a more complicated way in the actions of a very loud minority who claim to be acting in the interests of ‘what’s good for Māori’. These people, who win less than a quarter of the Māori vote, have yet to explain how demolishing civilisation and making our nation’s parliament the object of the world’s derision is ‘good for Māori’. If appearances are anything to go by, what the majority of Māori consider to be good for themselves is to assimilate with modern culture and make the best of a bad world like everybody else.
It is modern culture, not European culture, that is the important distinction here. We were all tribal once. We were all savages once. We’ve all chosen not to be at some point. New Zealand went from the Stone Age to the Space Age in a mere 200 years, becoming a part of the British Empire less than halfway through the process. That’s too short a time to change everything. Māori society is still tribal at heart. Te Pāti so-called Māori ignore this fundamental fact and promote their ill-defined agenda as if it were the only thing that anyone who dares to be called Māori could think of wanting.
As a Pākehā living in the one part of the country with a majority-Maori population, and in a village where a pale face can be hard to spot, I see the good side of tribalism every day. I consider myself blessed to live somewhere where the iwi runs practically everything, not for any ideological reason but because of their undeniable competence. While the Gisborne District Council busies itself with Streets for People projects and rainbow pedestrian crossings, Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki repairs flood-damaged houses and makes sure everyone has firewood for the winter. And they do this for everyone, not just their own people. The tribal system provides the leadership, and the leadership benefits the whole community.
Rawiri Waititi and his motley crew are attacking not European culture or colonialisation but the majority of their own people and the understated ethos of their own country. It has never been perfect but over the years we’ve worked out ways for a myriad of viewpoints to be quietly tolerated and for many cultures to live side by side. In all that time the Māori tribes have never become a united nation with a common set of goals at odds with everyone else’s. To pretend otherwise is arrogant and dishonest.
