Simon Seymour
New Zealand The Benefits of Colonisation
By Adam Plover
113 Pages excluding references and preface
Tross Publishing
Those who regard with skepticism wild, latter-day claims about the virtuous – if not utopian – lifestyle of the early colonisers of New Zealand will be well informed by the details in this book.
Somehow, somewhere, it needs to be shouted aloud that a variety of canoe-borne tribes of similar DNA colonised New Zealand in various places a few hundred years before the later arrival of Europeans.
Just as European nations have been at war with one another for centuries, so the various Maori settler tribes went to war with one another just as soon as they could.
There was not (nor is there) a Maori nation, any more than there was a single European nation. Such labels are a lie. A very convenient one, as the book conveys. There were/are at least as many Maori tribes as there are European nations. (The Treaty of Waitangi uses the expression “tangata Maori” – meaning various tribes of ‘people Maori’.)
More recently made-up and deceitful expressions are tangata whenua (people of the land) and mana whenua (lords of the land).
A perplexing, perhaps missing aspect of the book is a more in-depth look at how it happened. How have a succession of what seem like nominally intelligent people been duped by such a breathtakingly broad collection of lies and fantasy tales? Is there more to it than simple ‘vote-buying?’
“As a nation, NZ has lost its senses, collectively and simultaneously – to regain them as a people, slowly, one person at a time.”
Just as the Waitangi Tribunal does, modern historians seem imbued with a perverse desire to avoid historical reality using some sort of this-is-how-it-could’ve-been wishful thinking. This book exposes them as pathological and intractable liars.
Further, it’s telling that the Waitangi Tribunal uses a years-later invented and concocted version as its reference point, rather than the Maori language version of the Treaty signed at Waitangi.
The present NZ Government bought-and-paid-for media will never mention this book.
While the book may tell you nothing you didn’t already suspect, it provides the essential, often first-hand, detailed accounts from authors living at that time. A ready reckoner to refer to when confronted with the tall tales of fabricated and fantasy history that’s presented by today’s leading, part-Maori racists and those whom they’ve so successfully duped.
Buy a copy today from Tross Publishing for $30, including postage within NZ