It takes a special kind of chutzpah to accuse others of “inaccuracy”, “disinformation” and “writing with an agenda” when those are exactly the tools you’re using to attack them. But then, this is the New Zealand mainstream media and left-cultural establishment we’re talking about. These sorts of deceitful hit-jobs are exactly what the Ardern government is paying them to do.
As previously reported by The BFD, One News recently ran a hit job on Tross Publishing for the temerity of having a different view of New Zealand history than the permitted narrative. In their first piece, they all but-ordered bookshops to stop stocking Tross’ books. Now, they’re targeting schools that dare to.
A Wellington company accused of publishing books that are anti- Maori, inaccurate and harmful has been going door to door promoting and selling its work at high schools.
Tross Publishing has a collection of books that claim Maori come from a dysfunctional, violent, and stone aged culture.
“Accused” by whom? Well, by One News and a handful of activists with a stone axe to grind. So, this isn’t so much fact as a circular argument. And where is the evidence that the books “claim Maori come from a dysfunctional, violent, and stone aged culture”?
It might also be pointed out that at least two of those claims are objectively true: Maori technology was literally stone-aged, and pre-European New Zealand was an extraordinarily violent place.
Even the New Zealand government’s own official Te Ara site acknowledges that “Tribal histories are rich with stories of armed conflict, and New Zealand’s many sculpted hills and ridges – the relics of fortifications – are evidence of the importance of warfare in traditional Maori society. Cannibalism was a feature, as was polygamy. Technology was limited to tools made of naturally occurring materials such as pounamu (the South Island’s greenstone) and tuhua (obsidian)”.
Another New Zealand government history website acknowledges that “Up to one-fifth of the Maori population was killed during the intertribal Musket Wars”. The government also admits that “These wars were about tikanga (custom) and often involved the settling of old scores. They would have occurred whether contact had been made or not.”
So, warfare was rife and customary, as was cannibalism, and technology was limited to stone tools… tell us again how “violent and stone aged” is “inaccurate and harmful”?
After all, we Pakeha have managed to acknowledge the nasty bits of our history without collapsing into blubbering heaps. The idea that brown people can’t manage to do the same is frankly just more racism-of-low-expectations.
Many books by Tross Publishing refer to historical events such as the 1881 Crown invasion of the peaceful Taranaki settlement Parihaka.
Andy Oakley’s book Cannons Creek to Waitangi explains how there were no casualties during the invasion and just a single injury after a child’s foot was stood on.
It forgets to mention that women were raped by crown-troops, houses were desecrated, and people were forcibly evicted from their homes.
The Crown has itself acknowledged these violent acts and more.
Does Oakley’s book actually say that, though? Tross Publishing is adamant that many of the accusations being bandied about are false.
“Tross Publishing’s books are based on historical facts without any revisionist or other agenda and are heavily referenced. We resent your continuing attacks on our right of free speech,” it said.
But it’s kind of rich for Tross’ critics to accuse it of “a form of denial”, when the official history curriculum, starting next year, deliberately omits such brutal facts of New Zealand’s history as the inter-tribal Musket Wars.
What we are seeing here is the establishment of an ideological dogma every bit as destructive, deceitful and dangerous as any other Inquisition.
At Cambridge High School the books are kept in a back room and handled carefully, leaving space on shelves for work that is peer-reviewed and supported by universities and iwi.
1News
Can they translate Index Librorum Prohibitorum into Te Reo?
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