When people can't face reality, or are unable to support their position through either reasoned argument or hard evidence, they tend to cope by resorting to empty rhetoric, outright lies, or by citing spirituality; these strategies have been adopted by the Treatyists and Maori separatists, and Richard Matthews appears to be following suit.
Contrary to his accusation, 'Twisting the Treaty” is a carefully researched and, for the most part, dispassionately presented set of papers (by the way, there is - by definition - no such thing as 'negative propaganda”); the problem is that it says things that the Maori radicals and racists don't want to hear.
Regrettably, successive administrations have pandered to them, by failing to challenge either the historical revisionism that is now part of our politically-correct culture, or the fanciful and avaricious tribal claims based on that distortion of the past.
The present National-led government has behaved appallingly in this respect, and its capitulation to both flawed legal process and vested interest will go down in this nation's annals of notoriety.
The fact remains that were it not for the arrival of Europeans, Maori would have faced worsening squalor and privation, and probable extinction through starvation, disease and cannibalistic internecine warfare; colonization saved them from themselves.
Virtually everything that they now enjoy and take for granted, from bread to books, cars, and even the clothes they wear, they owe to the maligned Pakeha. And still they portray themselves as victims, demanding ever more, on the basis of alleged injustice.
It follows that if we get a written constitution based on the Treaty, then we're sunk, for the tribal elite will hold sway over our natural resources and, thereby, control the country's economy. We are sleepwalking to a state of quasi-apartheid.

Dr Graham Cliff, Katikati.