The late Sir Apirana Ngata is a man I never knew personally but from his preserved words and the reverence in which he was held as a scholar in contrasting worlds: those of Maori lore and British law, as a politician of long (nearly forty years) standing, and as a very gifted orator, I can easily accommodate the idea he was considered a fit and proper person to adorn our fresh new $50 banknotes when they were first minted in 1983. His portrait is still there, forty years later.
So it disappoints me, to say the least, to see his measured words misconstrued, and misused, out of context by lesser people. More so when that pliability of Ngata’s words is performance-puttied by those whose wont is beating verbal ploughshares into swords, the better to barb us with.
Sad, but true, that emptiness in argument is sometimes counter-balanced by grandiosity in title, thus we heard from “Distinguished Professor Emeritus” on Wednesday 8th:
Invoking the ghost of the good man Professor Distinguished begins his sermon:
”Sir Apirana Ngata, in a speech at the opening of the wharenui at Waitangi on February 6, 1940, was very direct: “I do not know of any year the Maori people have approached with so much misgiving as this Centennial Year. In retrospect what does the Maori see? Lands gone, the power of chiefs humbled in the dust. He added: “What remained of all the fine things said 100 years ago?” Indeed.”
Indeed, indeed. The Emeritus said the great man said it, so it must be true, and we must all lament in unison upon the great man’s saying, repeated by the great professor.
So what, pray tell, did the great man say next? Surely Emeritus knows, and would want to share it with us? Surely Distinguished Professor knows that everybody knows Ngata was a very gifted orator, and that a gifted orator would never ask a rhetorical question without providing a response? Even very stupid people, like the peddler of these words, knows that. So in the spirit of service to the public, and in the absence caused by the severe selective-quote convenient-amnesia afflicting Prof Distinguished, here it is: in answer to the rhetorical question: “What remained of all the fine things said 100 years ago?” spoken on February 6, 1940, Sir Apirana continued:
“What remains of the Treaty of Waitangi? What is there in the Treaty that the Maori can today celebrate wholeheartedly with you?
Let me say one thing: Clause 1 of the Treaty handed over the mana and the sovereignty of New Zealand to Queen Victoria and her descendant’s; forever. That is the outstanding fact today: that but for the shield of the sovereignty handed over to Her Majesty and her descendant’s I doubt there whether would be a free Maori race in New Zealand today.”
Oh dear, that will never do: the great man dispelling the myth so beholden of the radical left and the Emeritus Distinguished today, and reminding us, speaking during the turbulent times of the greatest cultural clash ever visited upon the face of this bloodied Earth, of the pragmatics and of the protection afforded Maori and non-Maori alike by aligning under the British coat-of-arms.
I know this revelation may upset some, but try to have a nice day anyway.
