Tuesday 1 March 2016

An Alibi For Absence.

The Men Behind Country Calendar:  From Left: Martin Didsbury, Frank Torley, Bill Knight and Tony Trotter photographed out "in the field" at some point during the 1970s. Absent from the iconic series, however, was any hint that prior to the arrival of the farming families Country Calendar regularly featured was half-a-millennium of Maori occupation and agriculture.
 
IT WAS FIFTY YEARS AGO, last week, that Country Calendar first appeared on New Zealanders’ television screens. The programme has gone on to earn for itself that most coveted of descriptions – iconic. Kiwis loved Country Calendar almost from the first broadcast. It expressed in a very special way the psychic link that binds even the most urbanised New Zealanders to the open spaces and rural enterprises that made their country possible.
 
I have more reason than most to honour Country Calendar because it was my father, Tony Trotter, who played a critical role in refining the programme’s compass and developing its unique production style. My teenage years were spent watching my dad as he sat at the kitchen table finalising, with the aid of a stop-watch, the script for that week’s episode. (That I have spent the best part of my life slaving away over a hot keyboard is no accident!)
 
It was only years later that a highly critical blog-post by a young Auckland writer, Tim Selwyn, gave me cause to think about Country Calendar in a very different way. Selwyn’s criticism was based on the undeniable fact that the programme was a celebration of the achievements of the generations of Pakeha settlers who built this country’s primary industries. Country Calendar inevitably dated the history of the particular farm or district they were covering from the time it was settled by Europeans. That these places had half-a-millennium of human history prior to European settlement remained both unspoken and unexamined.
 
In Selwyn’s scathing description, the typical farming family featured “will mention they lease a neighbouring Maori block but not think to mention the circumstances of how their farm became so. ‘The station’s history goes back over a hundred years…’ is the usual broad brush that covers over the confiscation, or seizure, or dirty deal typically behind a title that rests on little more than the white man’s naked land-grabbing. History only goes back to where the current owner wants it to go back on Country Calendar.”
 
Maori appeared in Country Calendar – as shearers and shepherds, fishermen and farmers – but almost never as the original occupiers, exploiters and owners of the land that has always been the real hero of the programme. It was an absence that I had simply failed to notice until Selwyn’s posting drew it to my attention.
 
Do I blame the original presenter of Country Calendar, the pipe-smoking Fred Barnes, for this crucial absence? No, of course not. Neither do I blame my father, nor his worthy successor, the programme’s long-time producer, Frank Torley. Because this absence has been a feature of New Zealand cultural life since, at least, the end of the land wars that effectively put an end to the thriving agricultural communities that Maori had constructed in the twenty years between the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi and the invasion of the Waikato by the Crown.
 
After the forcible subjugation of the Maori, what could Settler New Zealand possibly say about the actual origins of all the thriving farms and rural towns that sprang up in its wake? By any fair judgement, Settler New Zealand’s title to the land upon which, and out of which, its nationhood has been constructed remains, if not actually suspect, then, to put it very mildly, challengeable. (How challengeable is made clear in just about every judgement of the Waitangi Tribunal.) Unsurprisingly, the historical consensus, unspoken for the most part, was that if there was nothing good to say about the provenance of Pakeha rural property, then by far the best course of action was to say nothing at all.
 
In this respect, Country Calendar is guilty of nothing more than conforming to the cultural imperatives of its time. The temptation, as the son of the programme’s pivotal producer, is to say, rather warily: “Ah, but that was then and this is now. New Zealand has changed hugely since 1966.” (As part of the production team behind Mana Whenua - Natural World of the Maori, presented by Sir Tipene O’Reagan, my father was part of that change.)
 
But has it really? In the last fortnight, the head of Te Whakaruruhau, the Maori broadcasters’ association, Willie Jackson, has fronted a full-scale assault on what he alleges is Radio New Zealand’s dearth of Maori content and coverage. Is the cultural absence that Selwyn exposed in his 2013 posting about Country Calendar also a feature of the last real exemplar of public broadcasting in New Zealand? More critically, what would happen to RNZ’s audience if that absence was made good?
 
Even more subversively, has the advent of Maori radio stations and Maori Television, by separating (ghettoising?) the cultural expression of New Zealand’s original agriculturalists, provided the prime conveyors of Pakeha iconography – like Country Calendar and RNZ – with an alibi for absence?
 
This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 1 March 2016.

46 comments:

greywarbler said...

I miss the Maori news bulletin. It was like the four seats in Parliament - a guarantee that there will be a minimum of time with Maori news that Maori news presenters had chosen. And noticeably there was much good news reported, it was positive stuff and often some sterling people talked there about their lives past or present. This was it -
Te Manu Korihi
Providing news on Māori issues, Te Manu Korihi features four times each weekday, in Radio New Zealand National's leading news programmes Morning Report and Checkpoint. A longer weekly edition, Te Waonui, is broadcast on Sunday evenings.

Willie Jackson has much experience in Maori Radio and Chris has written about his criticism. He makes his points in this link.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/201790954/rnz-challenged-on-level-of-maori-content
Or hear here - http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/201790954

And Wallace Chapman after talking about matters relating to Maori discontent, for some reason chose to read out a simplistic comment saying that 'They have their own TV station'. That indicated how Maori are catered to apparently. If the phrase was 'We have Maori TV' it would have been embracing. But parts of NZ still feel separate from Maori, and separate provisions from mainstream for any services, should not divide us from reporting on Maori culture, developments and events.

I can't help feeling that the people in positions of power in RADIONZ are RW skewed. Even dropping the Radio name to a conjunction of initials makes me nervous. The Listener is still called that because it ties the present coloured tissue paper to the previous grand publication. RADIONz can develop as many media arms as the Indian goddess Durga* just as long as they make factual reporting radio and NZ life and culture their main theme. (And less about the USA.)

*Hindu Deities: Goddess Durga
www.koausa.org/Gods/God1.html
Goddess Durga represents the power of the Supreme Being that preserves moral order and ... She has eighteen arms, carrying many objects in Her hands. Wikipedia

Julian O'Brien said...

As Producer of Country Cal and a great admirer of Bill Trotter, who set the style of the show that we make today, and also as a regular Bowalley Road reader and admirer, I perhaps illustrate the problem by admitting I had no idea the two Trotters were even related! So much, you might say, for Country Cal's sense of history, even in the more recent post-land-grab era.
Country Cal is a reflection of society. As we celebrate the show's 50th birthday, I've been looking at a lot of old episodes and the portrayal of rural women, for instance, has changed hugely - by and large they played a bit-part in earlier times, whereas now many of our shows focus more on women than men. That's partly because of changing attitudes - but mainly because women’s role on the land and in the business of farming has changed radically.
The trouble with being an 'icon' is that the faithful tend to see the image, rather than the reality. The show has changed, so while Selwyn's - and your - critiques have some validity, we're no longer quite the unthinking upholders of traditional colonial values that you might imagine.
We most definitely do stories that take in a longer and broader view of history - and we also do stories about Maori who are not necessarily shearers or shepherds (not that there's anything wrong with those roles, as I'm sure you'd agree).
Also - Country Cal isn't a history programme. It tends to be about the filmable 'here and now', with the occasional nod to history, so we're not necessarily sweeping ugly facts under the carpet - it's more that our broom doesn't go there.
Does Country Cal do enough, in terms of how we cover the history of the land and in terms of how we portray the tangata whenua? No, we probably don't, and we're aware of that - but please don’t think we’re totally ignorant, either.
I think it’s great that you’ve raised this topic. - Julian O'Brien

jh said...

So if Tim Selwyn or Chris Trotter could go back in time and intervene what would they have done for Maori? Nghai Tahu use the best brains to manage their affairs; that would be a good analogy?
Instead of buying land from Maori for farming should we have set up Maori farms? Or should we have merely been leaseholders of Maori land? Should we pay a tax to Maori for living here?
When you boil it down in order to achieve that sort of justice you end up with an injustice.
At the end of the day we are governed by the self-preservation principle?

jh said...

I see Tim Selwyn overlooks Ranganui Walkers opposition to Labour's immigration policy changes 1886 and 1991. How could he have such a gap in his knowledge?
http://www.waikato.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/74141/dp-37.pdf

Chris Trotter said...

To: Julian O'Brien.

Thanks for your comments, Julian.

Just a small quibble. Dad's name is "Tony" not "Bill". (But he did, rather strangely, have a brother named Bill!)

Julian O'Brien said...

Chris - Dunno what I was thinking! - the only Bill Trotter I know (Chair of First NZ Capital Securities) is probably NOT related (or is the black sheep of your family). Slip of the pen...

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"Instead of buying land from Maori for farming should we have set up Maori farms? Or should we have merely been leaseholders of Maori land? Should we pay a tax to Maori for living here?"

We should perhaps have been a little more careful with the purchasing of Maori land, and stuck a little bit more to the law, which the government often ignored at Maori expense, and maybe Ben a bit less self-serving about the way we went about extracting the land from Maori ownership. Unfortunately that comment shows a sandal lack of historical knowledge. A lack which feeds into the often blimp-ish comments about how Maori are treated today.

Nick J said...

Jeez Chris, you blew my socks off with that reminiscence. Like yourself i was a mid 70s student,and saw the beginning of the Maori renaissance. I remember at Canterbury we had mates who joined the Maori club, people like Tainui Stevens. There were a some old heads mentoring these young people, Rangi Mate Kingi, Bill Nepia come to mind. We in our blissful ignorance thought "Wow, that's great, cultural revival".

How bloody cossetted and ignorant we were, it did not for a second occur to me that it was far more, it was political, it was the birth of a cohort educated people who could take a fight (which we had little visibility of) to the "powers that be".

As students we marched against the SIS Bill, protested apartheid culminating with the 81 tour, and took stances against Muldoon, Indonesian aggression in East Timor etc. We were politically active BUT never did we join in with Bastion Point or the Hikoi.

We watched those events from a distance, supportive but in an anti authority, anti government way. Meanwhile like yourself Chris we watched Country calendar and never got the back story. Were we blind? Were we what!

Adolf Fiinkensein said...

Mr Trotter

Clearly, you have no idea how many hundreds of thousands of acres have been successfully farmed by Maori for close on a hundred years. You see, they never had big bloody signs on them proclaiming them to be Maori land.

You should get out a bit more and stop listening to the patronizing bullshit which gushes from university faculty lunch rooms.

Anonymous said...

There is a problem and the lack of jobs for badly educated folk, whether Maori, PI or European young people is not helping.
Reasonably well educated youth are also victims of the prejudice shown to our youth.
I believe the situation is getting worse.
I do not know the answer but I know Willie Jackson is not the answer, nor are such leaders as Kelvin Davis or Hone Harawiria as they all breed contempt against anyone who is not Maori.
You reap what you sow and their contempt against the PM returns prejudice and bitterness, who blames John Key for Watangi ?.
Kelvin Davis, Hone Harawiria, Willie Jackson do, which to me is a massive glaring example of weak and racist leadership.
Unfortunately this weakness is aided and abetted by the leadership of the Green and Labour political parties.
Labours non-support of the TPPA, but they will keep the TPPA if elected is white man trickery against every-one in NZ but particularly our Maori people.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Hone Harawiria as they all breed contempt against anyone who is not Maori.
You reap what you sow and their contempt against the PM returns prejudice and bitterness, who blames John Key for Watangi ?. "

And we all know there was no contempt or bitterness towards Maori before Hone got going right? Jesus I was right, here it starts. 'It's their own fault' 'they should get off their arse and get a real job' 'it's been hundred and 50 years, why can't they let it go' 'they get all this free stuff', they woz all wearing grass skirts and eatin' each other before we civilised them.'. – There now I've said it all so the rest of the blimps don't have to.

Jigsaw said...

As usual the article and the comments insist on treating all those with even a smidgeon of Maori blood as being Maori so that it becomes easy to divide when you do that. Fact is that most Maori land was sold and keenly at that-willing buyer and willing seller. Easy from this distance to condemn this. Many Maori managed to sell the same block several times over and of course the large majority of land sold before the Treaty was signed was given back to Maori. A few years ago I talked with a Maori elder I knew well-from a small iwi he told me that he had just that day bought a dairy farm for his iwi for $1 million and the week before another for a similar price-this was before they had their settlement he said. He was/is a successful businessman who said his mother was pakeha and his father Maori-his wife was pakeha, his son married to a pakeha and his grandchildren all blue eyed blondes. Well good for him but the racial stereotypes so often paraded by people like Willie Jackson and GS are so destructive to this country that no amount of trying to rewrite the past will right any wrong that was done-on either side-and there was plenty of wrongs to go around. People like Willie Jackson do not point a way forward just wallow in what he hopes will be a way that pays off for them.

Nick J said...

Adolf, that is very disingenuous. If I had come over 100 years ago and defrauded your granny of her possessions, or stolen them you would still be up in arms talking about property rights and criminal behavior, and maybe non enforcement by the state of the law.

Conversely according to your logic you would be pointing out to us that 100s of grannies managed to retain their possessions and hand them down to you, and to ignore anybody, particularly academics who point out that somebody elses' granny might have a real grievance.

Nick J said...

Anon at 19.30...who blames Key for Waitangi? Get real, Key as head of state represents the present, future and past of the NZ political establishment. That is his job, he represents past wins and past losses, and he doesn't get to chose to whom, or what issue. In the case of Waitangi Key singularly failed to lead, to front up to the issues raised. He chose instead to play the aggrieved party for the benefit of his polling popularity. Yes, he did not have to go to Waitangi, but he could have addressed the grievances raised from anywhere else in NZ. The issues were not addressed, redressed, or otherwise dealt to. All Key did was point fingers and call names. As a leader Key failed. He is not alone, Clark failed the same test.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

And of course I forgot the plenty of Maori sold stuff and ripped Pakeha off thing – probably because it's pretty much non-existent – infinitesimal compared to the way Maori got ripped off. The government "lost" a 30,000 acre reserve in the Wairarapa for Christ's sake.

Charles E said...

In the CHCH Press today there is a long lament from mostly music people that songs with Maori content don't get much air time and many people openly say they are fine on Maori radio but not on the mainstream ... etc etc.
Your odd generalising criticism of Country Calendar is not the same but it is in the same general area. In my opinion there are two main causes for this anxiety, one malignant and one benign, even positively healthy. The confusion of the two needs to be discussed and then at least half the problem is solved.
Racism is still about although in sharp decline at last. I still know the odd person who believes in genetic superiority & inferiority but they are increasingly dinosaurs, and I tell them so. When I was young they were the norm. Those were the bad old days indeed.
But the other cause is cultural. People prefer their own culture. I know it's amazing to think that Serbians and Russians actually prefer their culture to all others. And Americans .... even Australians? Yes they prefer their culture to ours! Well hello guys, I'm Pakeha. That is a unique culture, a subculture of which is Canterbury Pakeha (I prefer it to Auckland Pakeha), a subculture of which is Canterbury High Country farming culture which Country Calendar has spent many a programme on. So if it's a Pakeha programme, why not? Are we not allowed our own cultural treasures? So I have my own culture, my treasure and I prefer it to all others. So yes I do have a lack of interest in Maori culture. It's entirely healthy to prefer your own culture and get very pissed off when someone suggests it must mean I am hostile to Maori or Irish culture for that matter. I'm not. I'm just not interested.
This is apparently a problem for some Maori like Jackson, but I have not heard it from my Maori friends. Yet they, have Pakeha family and ancestors too, perhaps the majority. So they are bi-cultural. Fine. Good for them. I don't. Most of us are not bicultural but that is not a fault. So leave us alone and enjoy your own culture or cultures. My indifference is not your problem, and not a problem at all. Concentrate on real problems in the world, this is not one of them.

Chris Trotter said...

This is not an argument, Charles, that in any way addresses the posting. A publicly-funded television programme about New Zealand's primary industries which neglects to mention or include the legacy and contribution of Maori is failing in its duty to accurately reflect the realities of life in this country. (Maori are "public" too!)

"Country Calendar" was, of course, no better or worse than any of the other offerings from public television in the 1960s and 70s. The "absence" of Maori was every bit as glaring in just about everything produced in those years.

It is less forgivable now.

Your dissertation upon "Pakeha Culture" would carry more weight if we were talking about a discrete national entity, but that is not the case. The culture of New Zealand is a blending of two traditions, Maori and European. That is the reality that programmes made with public money are morally obligated to reflect.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Charles, you have a habit of making grand statements on topics about which you know very little in order to make a political point of some sort. Chris has answered this one, but I'm is still reeling from the "people didn't want to come to New Zealand because it was too boring" thing. You didn't even bother checking them migration figures. If you had, you would have realised that when things started to get less boring – i.e. when you're neoliberal friends took over – we actually lost population. At all other times, we've been steadily gaining it. Including when we were allegedly at our most boring.

Unknown said...

In a Response to Mai Chen's Super Diversity Stocktake, Tailrace economics has prduced a paper The Super diversity Myth
They have this to say on the NZ economy
The distinctive feature of the New Zealand economy is that land is an important input into
the productive process. This is obvious with the agricultural, fishing and forestry sectors but
it also applies to international tourism. In a simple model of the New Zealand economy
where the supply of land is fixed, and New Zealand’s isolation means it is not a ‘natural’ location for the production of a broad range of internationally traded goods and services, then an increase in the labour supply through large scale immigration will reduce the marginal product of labour. As a result:
Real wages will fall
Owners of land will benefit
There will be an outflow of ‘native’ labour in search of higher wages in Australia
The economy will be bigger, but average incomes will fall
Resources will flow into low value service production

This conventional model of the impact of an increase in labour supply is obviously a simplification of a complex reality, but we think that the fixed factor effect is important enough to be considered in any discussion or analysis of the impact of immigration in New Zealand. The official analysis, however, almost entirely omits it. There is a tendency to follow the international literature, where omitting the impact of fixed factors of production is a simplification that doesn’t matter very much, without thinking at all about how New Zealand could be different.
The model seems to be consistent with some of the observed facts:

http://www.tailrisk.co.nz/documents/TheSuperdiversityMyth.pdf
and here is Cameron Bagley saying the economy is putting along niceley . The banks represent income to land through their mortgages etc. The woman from the "independant" NZIER also gives the economy a pat on the back. The public are in the dark as the "owners of land" are a broad and powerful group (including Mitre10). Cameron Slater and David Farrah would also represent "owners of land" (rat-bags of realestate).

Charles E said...

Chris I accept your point generally but we are not there are we, as it goes in both directions? Clearly public funding for things Maori, like Maori television and countless other Maori cultural things the taxpayer funds are an exception. I don't actually seek it but where is the Pakeha input into those? The answer for TV would be to merge MTV with TVNZ I presume? Yes that would then be fine for the bicultural minority but what about the monocultural majority? And conversely, what about those seeking Maori immersion?

Let's accept your argument that CC is about Pakeha farming (which it isn't, as I'm sure iwi owned farms have featured). Well, perhaps it is justified as a Pakeha 'treasure'? Are we not allowed them too?
Another example, one I'm connected to is the CHCH Botanic Gardens, as I'm on the public committee. Recently we had a talk from a landscaper who argued that it needs modernising since it has little or no Maori content, being very 'colonial' still. However Botanic Gardens like ours come entirely from the Victorians who created CHCH so isn't it a local historical treasure of my culture, which I am entitled to defend as it is? Everyone can use it but that does not mean it has to be changed to become a blend of all cultures does it? I accept that CHCH rates support it but they support the local Marae as well, so can I suggest that place become more Pakeha as if I go there I might feel culturally unrepresented? No I can't, nor do I want to.
As it happens I accept the CHCH Botanic Gardens could add more Maori features without we Pakeha suffering any cultural loss, since it has room for all. But I would appreciate it if my culture could be credited more often as being a unique and valued culture too. Not that there is an equivalence in these matters I accept, with Pakeha having more to do in that regard for Maori to feel more valued in there own country. I'm merely seeking to explain why many Pakeha get pissed off with some aspects of 'Maorification'. It's not all about racism or cultural superiority. Part is simply cultural and perfectly valid.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

" It's not all about racism or cultural superiority"

Actually, it pretty much is. That's just an opinion mind, but backed up by a certain amount of research. Charles – you assume that racism is not as prevalent in New Zealand now simply because the people you talk to don't say racist stuff, and if they do you tell them off. Do you actually believe that your experience tells all of the tale?

Interesting isn't it, that in the 1950s and 60s people thought that the racial climate in New Zealand was pretty much ideal. Was it buggery, as we found out later.

There could be a number of reasons why people don't use racist language in your presence though Charles. Firstly it could be that racism has become socially unacceptable to express in public. It still may be in their hearts and minds :). Secondly it may be that they realise that you are going to tell them off if they use racist language. And of course it may be that racism has declined, just a bit, or a lot – but you don't know. Or it may be a combination of all three. Another of your grand pronouncements demolished sorry.

jh said...

Why is an issue such as insufficient acknowledgement Of Maori as the previous land owners (on Country Calender) a big issue but the issue raised in The Super diversity Myth not? Is it o.k for elites to pick and choose what lower beings get to know? Which issue is of most concern to (non -elite) Maori?

Anonymous said...

Chris, where have your column postings gone? I'm getting withdrawal symptoms! I'm used to only two or three days gap. Are you on holiday?

greywarbler said...

One of the Anonmymous crowd has said it all. I realise that you don't want to advertise to the world! your every movement, but the crowd here are missing you. Perhaps you have been loaned a very nice holiday house in Hawaii?

Especially RWs who are beyond fractious to the point of fractured?

And GS Tom Lehrer has some points on repressing congenital racism and other negative reactions. National Brotherhood week -
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUwbZ9AlSPI

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Tom Lehrer is funny I must admit. But the point I perhaps should have made to Charles is that once someone like Trump makes racism respectable again – out it comes. Trump has made it socially acceptable to express racist sentiments, and by God that is what his voter base does. Over and over.

Wayne Mapp said...

"Ruminations of an old New Zealander"
Your very fine eulogy for your father makes it much clearer why you have this description of yourself. My father, slighter younger than yours, but with similar formative experiences died two years ago. They were both born into a different New Zealand to that of the 21st century. Simpler, more unified but also with its prejudices.
I still see this New Zealand throughout the South Island, but it is much less evident in Auckland. Though Auckland has its own variations, some suburbs are much less diverse than others and are more aware of the past, others look much more to the future.
Have we lost too much as we have changed? Perhaps. I was always struck by the reference that Helen Clark made early in her Prime Ministership, that she wanted New Zealand to be more like it was during the era of Holyoake, less sharp and divisive.It was a conscious appeal to conservative voters, but it was also about evoking her own youth growing up on a Waikato farm. But like all recollections of youth they exist in a warm glow of memory, that might not entirely accord with the reality of those times.

jh said...

The culture of New Zealand is a blending of two traditions, Maori and European. That is the reality that programmes made with public money are morally obligated to reflect.
.......
In as much as Vikings and Picts are part of Pakeha culture.

jh said...

A publicly-funded television programme about New Zealand's primary industries which neglects to mention or include the legacy and contribution of Maori is failing in its duty to accurately reflect the realities of life in this country. (Maori are "public" too!)
....
GS claims we don't know our history and we should beware as most of the land was stolen or bought unfairly.
Odds are most farmers struggled (remember The Magpies by Dennis Glover).
We shouldn't underplay the achievements of Pakeha farmers .
This thread resembles the Otago Settlers Museum.

jh said...

Wayne Mapp says:

But like all recollections of youth they exist in a warm glow of memory, that might not entirely accord with the reality of those times.
........
Speaking of reality:
Real wages will fall
Owners of land will benefit
There will be an outflow of ‘native’ labour in search of higher wages in Australia
The economy will be bigger, but average incomes will fall
Resources will flow into low value service production
http://www.tailrisk.co.nz/documents/TheSuperdiversityMyth.pdf

That's reality for a lot of people in NZ. Wayne is safe as Red Radio and Property Council TV will keep Wayne safe.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"GS claims we don't know our history and we should beware as most of the land was stolen or bought unfairly."
The first part of your statement is correct. Most people don't know a great deal about the history of the acquisition of Maori land. The second part is incorrect, as I don't tend to make wild statements like that. I'm not Charles. I know personally that a LOT of land was stolen or bought unfairly, because I was involved in research on that. That's as far as I'm prepared to go. So please stop putting words into my mouth.
PS – I was in the Otago Settlers, Museum in September. It's nothing like this thread :).

jh said...

Underlying any discussion on Maori is the meme that next to no land was bought fairly but also (Chris introduced here) the idea that Maori were dissplaced intensive farmers. But you will be hard put to see that on any map, you will have to go to the Waitangi Tribunal.
Many people just see the Waitangi Tribunal as a rubber stamp/kangaroo court; we suffer the process in the hope that the beast will have drunk enough to be satisfied.
.....
The attack on Pakeha by the left is still a mystery. Pakeha have an identity: that must be critiqued and destroyed: Pakeha have pride; they must be shamed. Is like the left are a priesthood who should rule. All the left will do/have done is break the nation for property investors and foreigners to take over (and the foreigners vote in their own interests).

jh said...

PS – I was in the Otago Settlers, Museum in September. It's nothing like this thread :).
....
It is in the sense that it isn't allowed to have a museum with a name that is based squarely on the first European settlers to Otago. The same breed insisted on incorporating a Maori name to the museum.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Maori is an official language. Not to mention that Maori also settled in Otago right? FFS it's just nitpicking – what the hell harm does it do to have a Maori name for anything? Especially given it IS an official language. This sort of bull ship really pisses me off. Like white people are victims or something.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Maybe this meme underlies the discussions you take part in, but no academic, or indeed anyone who knows anything about the history would have a bar of them. It's made quite clear in books and articles written about this, that not everything the government did was illegal or immoral. But it did do illegal and immoral things.
Your last paragraph is sad. You sound like those American fundamentalists, who claim that Sharia Law is coming, or that being forced to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple makes you a victim. It's sheer whining.

JH said...

GS
"Your last paragraph is sad. You sound like those American fundamentalists, who claim that Sharia Law is coming, or that being forced to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple makes you a victim. It's sheer whining. "
......
Your entitled to your opinion but what we have seen a lot of in recent history is elites (who think they know best), out of control. Toitu is a case in point.

Unknown said...

By jove! Katherine Ryan admits immigration hasn't improved productivity
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/201793229/getting-ahead-through-smarter-migration-policies

that's close enough to hasn't done us any good?

Guerilla Surgeon said...

FFS jh please explain what possible harm it does to you, or to any other pakeha to have a Maori as well as an English name for a museum? Try to be specific here, because I'm pretty damn sure it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference to you, except it somehow annoys you. I doubt if it costs a great deal, so you're not paying for it out of your taxes right? What practical fucking harm does it do?

jh said...

60,000 years ago humans had symbols. Would GS grap one and say "what harm does it do you if I throw your stone statuette over that revene?". The battle with the left has always been about human nature.

jh said...

Interesting situation on Wikipedia over superdiversity. Wikipedia is not The Standard; is superdiversity a social science term and if not what is it? Can cordlesslary maintain his spin-piece?

Guerilla Surgeon said...

jh.So you can't really answer my question. Try this one then. What symbol is being thrown over a ravine? Considering that the damned Museum has two names, one of which you obviously approve of. So your symbol is still at the top of the cliff. Sitting right next to the Maori one. You see this sort of incoherent rage is what leads to Donald Trump, Mussolini, and yes – Godwin be fucked – Hitler.

jh said...

Your's is a nihilistic argument GS and has to be seen against the left-wing attack on Pakeha NZ.
I can't access the arguments about the OSM right now.

jh said...

● Cr Richard Thomson “One or two” people had told him they would not like a Maori name for anything. “In fact, a number of views presented to me were thinly veiled racism.”

● Cr Kate Wilson said it was “about time we got over ourselves and allowed ourselves to acknowledge our Maori heritage”.

● Cr Chris Staynes “In this city’s history, we [the council] have allowed a few small-minded conservative individuals to influence us in our decision-making. That should not continue.”

● Mayor Dave Cull described the emails he received about the new name as “at best ignorant” and at worst “just plain bigoted”.

The poll found most people preferred the museum’s name to remain “Otago Settlers Museum”.

https://dunedinstadium.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/otago-settlers-museum/

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Nihilism is a belief in nothing. I don't think that it describes my argument at all. Again, when I went to the Otago Settler's Museum, that's what I called it, and that's what it seemed to be called when I got there. There is nothing preventing you from calling it the Otago Settler's Museum if you so wish. Again – what actual harm has it done to you? If you can't come to some conclusion beyond "I don't like it." or "it's an attack on Pakeha society." Then I would suggest again that your rage is incoherent. You sound like those idiots who suggest we can't use the word "gay" anymore because homosexuals have somehow taken it over.
As far as the poll goes, I would like to see how it was conducted, by whom, and how many people were actually polled before I came to any conclusions about that. But the possibility exists that it was a group of self-selected white supremacists. Meaningless until you have the actual figures.
Pakeha New Zealand's problem seems to be that they have enjoyed superiority for so long, that equality begins to look like persecution to them :).

jh said...

But the possibility exists that it was a group of self-selected white supremacists. Meaningless until you have the actual figures.
.........
Thank goodness we have people like you (and Dave Cull) to put things right!

jh said...

There is nothing preventing you from calling it the Otago Settler's Museum if you so wish.
......
but we are talking about official names resulting from representational democracy and the councilors who acted unilaterally never managed to persuade their constituents so they justify their actions by making claims of racism. And this is against a wider background of attacks on the legitimacy of Pakeha society which no doubt make people defensive.
The Otago Settlers Museum was unmistakingly about those faces looking down from the walls.
The left talk about inclusion forgetting that including excludes the original occupiers of a space of their quality of life, identity etc with nothing to show except an alleged diversity dividend.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Governments, including local governments do lots of things I don't like. Most of them never even bothered to poll me to find out my opinion. Most local governments are run by right-wing people.
In what way are you excluded from the Otago settlers Museum? FFS it's just a name, and one of New Zealand's official languages no less. Anyway, my last word – this page has dropped off the bottom :).