Every time I read a headline and story like the one Radio NZ was running on the weekend about how terrible colonisation was, I immediately think of the Monty Python sketch from The Life of Brian about what the Romans did.
First opened in 2006, the Time Tunnel (soon to be renamed the Discovery Ride) is a carriage ride at the top of Christchurch’s gondola, taking customers through the history of Canterbury.
It has attracted complaints for mispronouncing kupu Maori and celebrating colonisation.
Anahera Clarkson (Kai Tahu, Nga Ruahinerangi) said she found the ride distasteful and embarrassing when she rode it in 2020.
“It was quite a shock to me, and even though it was so long ago it feels like it was yesterday, like it’s still there and it’s still hurtful,” she said.
“I felt so disappointed and so saddened that my tupuna were portrayed the way that they were.
“It felt as though the colonisation of my people was being glorified.”
The ride featured models of “cave-like” Maori crouched over fire, and narration heavily focussed on European migration.
“The early settlers arrived, and it didn’t take long for this shanty town in swampy Christchurch to be transformed into a thriving city,” said the narrator.
“Selling products from the land, such as livestock, flax and wheat, helped the colony prosper.”
The ride ended with an uplifting soundtrack and a haka, where eight high achievers of Canterbury – all of whom were Pakeha – were celebrated.
Clarkson said the experience made her feel excluded and discouraged.
“We have stories about our whenua far before colonisation took place, and I also think that being non-inclusive and also not making a conscious effort to pronounce kupu Maori correctly is quite embarrassing and distasteful on their behalf.”
Radio NZ
Let’s be brutally honest here. Forget the romantic Maori were in peace and harmony with nature malarky and that colonisation was simply dreadful. Maori couldn’t even boil water, they lacked the knowledge of how to even make clay pots and certainly lacked the knowledge of metallurgy. They were indeed a stone-age people, subsisting in a landscape that gave them an average life expectancy in their 30s.
Whilst it may come as a shock to woke snowflake Anahera Clarkson, her tipuna did indeed live in mud-floored huts, barely scraping an existence from the swampy ground that Christchurch was built on. Her carping and whining reminds me of an earlier post I did riffing off Monty Python and she certainly reminds me of a member the People’s Front of Judea:
The New Zealand equivalent would be the Iwi Whenua Aro O Aotearoa moaning about the British and would sound something like this:
Debbie: They bled us, the white bastards (Pakeha). They’ve taken everything we had. And not just from us! From our fathers, and from our father’s fathers.
Rawiri: And from our father’s father’s fathers.
Debbie: Yeah.
Rawiri: And from our father’s father’s father’s fathers.
Debbie: Yeah, all right Rawiri, don’t labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?
Hone: The Treaty?
Debbie: What?
Hone: The Treaty.
Debbie: Oh. Yeah, yeah, they did give us that, ah, that’s true, yeah.
Ngahiwi: And the sanitation.
Rawiri: Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Debbie. Remember what the pa used to be like?
Debbie: Yeah, all right, I’ll grant you the Treaty and sanitation – the two things the British have done.
Rangi: And the roads.
Debbie: Oh, yeah, obviously the roads. I mean the roads go without saying, don’t they? But apart from the sanitation, the Treaty and the roads…
Heeni: Irrigation.
Hone: Medicine.
Rangi: Education.
Debbie: Yeah, yeah, all right, fair enough.
Heeni: And the beer.
All revolutionaries except Debbie: Oh, yeah! Right!
Rawiri: Yeah! Yeah, that’s something we’d really miss Debbie, if the British left. Huh.
Heeni: Plumbing.
Rawiri: And it’s safe to walk in the streets at night now, Debbie.
Rangi: Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let’s face it: they’re the only ones who could in a place like this.
All revolutionaries except Debbie: Hahaha… all right…
Debbie: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, beer, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, the Treaty and public health, what have the British ever done for us?
Hone: Brought peace?
Debbie: Oh, peace! E ta e, hoihoi!!