All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. George Orwell Animal Farm

Exploding the myths and lies

By Roger Childs

Andy Oakley was brought up in Cannons Creek where he mixed with many different ethnic groups. He cares deeply about New Zealand society and what the future holds.

The key thesis of his book Once We Were One: The Fraud Of Modern Separatism is a plea for treating every New Zealander equally, regardless of where their many ancestors may have come from. Surely this is what we all want, and it lines up with the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

He is appalled at the way our early history has been twisted, to provide favoured status for people who have even the smallest connection with a group that came to be called Maori in the late 1840s.

The brutality of pre-Treaty life

There were no Maori people before, during and for many years after, the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.

This is true, as the people of the country in the years before 1840 consisted of hundreds of groups who had come from many parts of the globe, had inter-married, and, in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, were slaughtering one another.

Oakley quotes many primary sources, drawn from the observations of explorers, missionaries, travellers and settlers, which record that there were people here with skin pigment ranging from fair to dark, and hair colour from red to frizzy black.

There was definitely no unity among these people variously called indigenous people, Aborigines, savages, natives, New Zealanders, but not Maori.

It was a reluctant British government that decided that they needed to bring law and order to New Zealand, especially as an increasing number of British people were settling there.

However the Colonial Office was determined to ensure that the natives   … a people composed of numerous, dispersed and petty tribes who possess few political relations to each other… would be protected.

The result was the incredibly enlightened Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi).

Twisting the Treaty

Andy Oakley analyses Te Tiriti in detail and points out that what was read to the representatives of the native peoples who signed at the time, should determine our understanding 177 years later.

The treaty was very generous to the native people and within a few years effectively ended tribal warfare, slavery, cannibalism, infanticide and human sacrifice.

There were subsequently some breaches of the three Articles, but by the 1950s these had been addressed in what were often called full and final settlements.

In the mid 20^th century, the 1840 wish of Lieutenant-Governor William Hobson He iwi tahi tatou – We are now one nation, seemed to have been fulfilled.

Unfortunately, from the late 1970s Maori activism, reinterpretations of the Treaty and the battle between National and Labour for the Maori vote, queered the pitch.

 Reinterpreting our history – changing the facts

…how is it possible that in New Zealand we have a separate “race” – Maori – that has been given superior rights in so many areas, billions of dollars of taxpayer’s money, and vast public resources such as rivers, lakes and forests?

Oakley explains in detail how there has been a monumental turnaround over the last 50 years. Basically a massive fraud has been visited on the New Zealand public and the politicians have been complicit partners in this sorry process.

One of the huge mistakes was to set up the permanent Waitangi Tribunal, which has dispensed billions of taxpayers money to tribes without reference to the public.

For example South Island conquerors, Ngai Tahu, had received four settlements from the government before the Tribunal was set up, however the latter has provided further top ups of $170 million and $68 million!

Reaping the greatest benefit of Tribunal handouts have been iwi leaders, such as Ngai Tahu’s 1/16^th Maori Stephen (Tipene) O’Regan. Many are now millionaires.

Andy Oakley provides detailed explanations of how the concepts of Crown-Maori partnership and Treaty principles, which did not feature in 1840, have been created and used to infiltrate virtually all legislation, government departments, local government and the education system from pre-school to university.

“ Bi-culturalism is code for separatism”

The author makes some comparisons with South African apartheid. It is ironic, that if the entire “Maori” population of today had been living in South Africa in 1950, they would have been classified as Coloureds under the Population Registration Act, with few rights.

Once We Were One should be widely read to give people an understanding of why “racial” inequality exists in New Zealand today.

Andy Oakley’s plea is for a return to our once prized and admired egalitarian, democratic status. He has some interesting ideas on how this could be done, including a very feasible binding referendum.

 

(“Once We Were One: The Fraud Of Modern Separatism” by Andy Oakley, and his first book “Cannons Creek to Waitangi”, are available for $35 and $30 respectively, at Paper Plus, Coastlands (and Levin) or direct from the publisher: Tross Publishing – trosspub@gmail.com)