Re letters The Sun August 6 2010 'Maori appeals for protection from each other led to treaty” G.Allan, 'Land taken, previous vendor eaten” K. Roke, 'Time to proceed with unified NZ” R. McGuinness, 'Theft of ‘indigenous' land continues” Sam Nikora.
I am afraid I have to agree in the main with messrs Allan, Roke and McGuinness.
However Sam Nikora is still living in the past and is still very angry about it. I agree that in many cases the early Europeans treated the Maori people very badly. However the land, gold, timber etc that Mr Nikora says was stolen from Maori, in many cases did not belong to them in the first place. Maori tribes fought, conquered, raped, slaughtered and ate any other Maori tribes who had something they wanted. They also slaughtered and ate members of their own tribes.
This is a fact that many Maori today do not want to admit. They present their ancestors as 'whiter than white” No pun intended. History tells us that early Maori immigrants slaughtered and drove out the indigenous people the Moriori. According to Mr Nikora the Moriori were a ficticious race made up by the Europeans. A book Mr Nikora should therefore read is 'This Horrid Practice” which is a record of early Maori practices. It is not a pleasant read. Many of the accounts were told to Europeans by Maori chiefs and were written down at the time. The early Maori people treated their own in many cases a lot worse than the Europeans ever did.
Today the 'Maori” people have in a good majority as much if not more European blood than Maori blood. Why are they not proud of their European ancestry?
Mr Nikora should start living in the 21st century and not keep harking back to what was 200 years ago.
Look to the future and assist NZ go forwards as a nation. (abridged)
Roger Bailey, Papamoa Beach.