An article worth sharing around – Amy Brooke, The Spectator

Historians know that the Maori were not the first peoples of NZ On 5 March 2019, New Zealand’s Labour Coalition presided over by the now highly controversial Jacinda Ardern, set up a working group to implement UNDRIP (the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples).Why? Our Prime Minister had no justification for doing this. She would be particularly ignorant of our history not to know the ancestors of today’s part-Maori were not indigenous to this country. Therefore, as this declaration is irrelevant to New Zealand, it should have been repudiated. That we have no indigenous peoples should have been pointed out – in other words, that we are unable to implement this UN declaration as it simply doesn’t apply.However, the fabricated claim of indigeneity by a small minority of radicalised part-Maori is crucial to what’s happening to this country. It is backed by the determination of Ardern’s government to implement this anti-western, UNDRIP exhortation – which hinges on it applying to indigenous peoples. And what was the then Prime Minister John Key up to, surreptitiously sneaking Pita Sharples, then Minister of Maori Affairs, to New York to sign it (although our previous government, like other Western countries, had refused, for good reasons)? If Key, as claimed, regarded signing this declaration as basically of little importance, symbolic and non-binding, one wonders why he went to such lengths to make sure the country did not know what he was doing. Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice might say.Moreover, the radicalised Maori party MP Hone Harawira immediately trumpeted that the declaration would be used to promote claims of self-determination by iwi – now tribal corporations – invoking in typically extravagant language ‘the rights of Maori to be human’. Key was accused of naivety at the time. More acute criticism came from opposition MPs, shocked and appalled, realising what lay ahead.Peace-loving Polynesians, the Morori were killed and enslaved by invading northern Maori tribes. The claimed justification for signing was based on the ‘fact’ that Maori immigrants who came here – arriving a few short centuries before the colonists – were indigenous. It is obviously quite untrue. The consequences of John Key’s actions were well summed up by ACT NZ party’s Rodney Hide, stating that the declaration was divisive, a further step down the path of a divided nation – the very antithesis of the policy of one law for all New Zealanders – which the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders subscribe to. The dubious provisions of the declaration should have sounded warning bells, challenging the authority of a democratic state – even providing a veto over it.There is no doubt this pernicious document serves as a blueprint for Jacinda Ardern’s equally surreptitious promotion of the unhelpful He Puapua with its aim of not only advancing co-government of this country by 2040, but with those of part-Maori descent entitled to virtual sovereignty over so much of our national life.What Key should have known was that his statement of support in parliament completely contradicted the articles of the Treaty of Waitangi, establishing the sovereignty of the Crown and guaranteeing equal rights and protection under the law for all – including those of European and Maori descent. The latter gained legal protection for their property rights and the land they occupied – for the first time ever.What is central to today’s increasing promotion of all things relating to Maori (much of it fake Maori, as with the largely made-up te reo – where scores of thousands of completely inauthentic words in ‘Maori’ are now being forced upon the country) is this claim that as Maori were indigenous to New Zealand, they should have superior rights. This is why it is so important that the claim be challenged and exposed for the falsehood it is.Although Sharples claimed to the UN that ‘Maori hold a distinct and special status as the indigenous people or tangata whenua of New Zealand’ he was quite wrong. Far from being indigenous, Maori were immigrants, just like the later colonists. The names of their different canoes, still known, brought their settlers between roughly 1320 and 1350 AD. They were not even the first arrivals in this country. In fact, the term Tangata Whenua which today’s part-Maori now conveniently claim refers to themselves as ‘the first people’ is inaccurate. Early 19th century Maoris freely admitted to historians, such as the eminent James Cowan, that they themselves used the term tangata whenua to refer to the original inhabitants of New Zealand – those they well recognised as here before them. Dr Ranganui Walker, former Professor of Maori Studies at Auckland University, wrote in the 1986 New Zealand Yearbook, ‘The traditions are quite clear on one point – whenever crew disembarked, there were already Tangata Whenua (prior inhabitants)’.Because this fact is distinctly inconvenient for today’s activists – opportunistically claiming special rights as indigenous – they have long disputed it. However, on archaeological evidence, others also previously found their way to these shores, very possibly including the Moriori of the Chatham Islands. Peace-loving Polynesians, they were later barbarously killed and enslaved to the point of genocide by invading northern Maori tribes, with the result that the last full-blooded descendant of the Moriori died nearly a century ago. This historical fact is also now regarded as inconvenient, so it, too, is described as inaccurate by today’s activists.New Zealand has now descended into a rabbit hole of irrationality and actual menace – given the threat to our long-established values and freedoms by Prime Minister Ardern blatantly promoting divisive racism. This historically inaccurate claim of being indigenous to New Zealand is now the blueprint for radicalised activists claiming to be a superior people, with special spiritual insights which should take precedence over those of others who are by far the majority of New Zealanders. Why – given there is no tangible evidence whatever to justify this assumption of superiority?What we are now faced with is basically anti-Christian – ignoring this great religion’s emphasis on the common origin of all human beings and the equal worth of every individual regardless of colour, status, gender or sex. Moreover, deliberately undermining social stability by promoting identity politics is essentially Marxist. Is this why racial triumphalism is being allowed to destroy our democracy?