Advertising, religion and other forms of brainwashing all use the tactic of repeating a lie knowing that if something is repeated often enough it will become accepted because that's all they know.
Fluoride is good for you, Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, People cause global warning, Maori were peaceful.
When they encountered Europeans, Maori were a new stone age culture of cannibal warriors who killed and ate their slaves, and most stray Europeans that came by.
The estimate is 60,000 Europeans ended up in the pot from the 1770s until the 1840s.
Maori were also eating each other wholesale. Until Captain Cook released pigs in the 1770s humans were the only source of first class protein in Aotearoa.
Once peaceful Maori got hold of muskets they slaughtered each other, and then took on the Europeans. The musket wars of the early 1800s killed a quarter of the Maori population.
To get those muskets peaceful chiefs sent entire tribes into the swamps to cut flax, where they died like flies from TB while doing it. A musket was worth Three tonnes of dressed flax, or three to five slaves. In the BOP a musket cost three tonnes of potatoes and eight pigs.
The peaceful Maori took on the British in the later half of the century and nearly beat an imperial power with centuries of experience in defeating native cultures.
Andrew Campbell, Welcome Bay.