Alternative explanations for the origin of Maori in New Zealand

 

I am going into what is taboo territory in this country.

As usual with longer works I have run into formatting problems.

 

The other day, I came across a series of tweets where a Christchurch man, Byron B. Clark attacked a right -wing YouTuber, Lee Williams, who goes by the name Cross the Rubicon. 

I have never really been a fan or follower of Mr. Williams, nor do I particularly like him but I wanted to find out why he is so offensive to the Left and to the mainstream so I went looking. 

During this search I found Mr. Williams recommended a video called New Zealand Skeletons in the Cupboard, posted below.

When I watched I found the material interesting and thought-provoking; this led me to go deeper and see what I could find and to give my impressions.

Having watched it I decided to go and look online and see what I could find. What I found was practically nothing – everything came down to a few paragraphs, such as this from a site called 100% Pure NZ!

According to the people of Ngāpuhi (tribe of the Far North), the first explorer to reach New Zealand was the intrepid ancestor, Kupe. Using the stars and ocean currents as his navigational guides, he ventured across the Pacific on his waka hourua (voyaging canoe) from his ancestral Polynesian homeland of Hawaiki. It is said that Kupe made landfall at the Hokianga Harbour in Northland, around 1000 years ago.

https://www.newzealand.com/nz/feature/arrival-of-maori/

Or this:

New Zealand has a shorter human history than any other country. The date of first settlement is a matter of debate, but current understanding is that the first arrivals came from East Polynesia in the late 13th century. It was not until 1642 that Europeans became aware the country existed….

https://teara.govt.nz/en/history/page-1

That is about it when it comes to what I could find – one or two throwaway lines TELLING you that Maori came (albeit in several waves of migration) in the late-13th Century or 14th Century.

Worse still was this piece of indescribable garbage.

I wasn’t sure if it was directed at children or (more likely) adult children.

We used, once-upon-a time have serious historians whose writings were readily available to the public. From within my own lifetime I can think of Roger Duff (with whom I became briefly acquainted with in the mid-70’s), books such as the History of New Zealand by Keith Sinclair, Ask That Mountain: The Story of Parihaka by Dick Scott which discusses the government-sanctioned land grab at Parihaka at the end of the 19th Century but does not warrant a Wikipedia item.

These were works that I grew up with.

The new history started in some ways with historian, Michael King’s book, the Penguin History of New Zealand, which may mark the beginning of the new history. 

It was certainly very readable and had a clear narrative.

But that may be part of the problem, as we will see. A couple of years I had a skim read of what he had to say – most of the chapter on the prehistory was full of stories of how Maori was the Tangata Whenua (People of the Land), but in the midst of this was one paragraph that acknowledged the late arrival of Maori

“A thirteenth century date for the initial settlement of New Zealand…is more soundly based on the range of evidence currently verifiable. It is still an informed guess, however [emphasis added], and there is always a possibility that new evidence will provoke a further twist of the kaleidoscope that will move the settlement pattern towards different configurations.”

(Michael King, Penguin History of New Zealand, p.51

Thats all he had to say

It seemed to me as if he had to sweat it out, to just slip in one paragraph perhaps the most important information of the book.

New Zealand Skeletons in the Cupboard: Episode 1 The Red Heads

So, as we have seen, the contemporary official version is that Maori arrived from Polynesia around the 14th Century (about 300 years before Abel Tasman discovered New Zealand for the Europeans). This is reflected in this paragraph:

“Despite a plethora of amateur theories about Melanesian, South American, Egyptian, Phoenician and Celtic colonisation of New Zealand, there is not a shred of evidence that the first human settlers were anything other than Polynesian”

–Michael King, Penguin History of New Zealand

According to the Left, to say this is to be a conspiracy theorist at best, a white supremacist at worse:

White supremacists still active in NZ

One has to wonder where objectivity went.

But more of that later.

There seems to be plenty of evidence coming from “amateur scientists” , but also of archeologists and other scientists whose work has been suppressed that the history is much more complicated than that.

The academics: Dr. Paul Moon

In my research I came across the Auckland academic, Dr Paul Moon who has had an interesting contribution to make.

Back in 2010 he responded to research which indicated Maori colonised New Zealand between 1210 and 1385 AD.

“If Maori reached New Zealand waters just 300 years before the first Europeans, some people might also start to reconsider the idea of Maori being indigenous. It could be interpreted as a different type of ‘indigenous’ from the sort that applies to peoples who inhabited countries exclusively for thousands of years. This would be an unfortunate conclusion to draw, but is something that might have to be faced.”

Here is the article from the NZ Herald

Study questions date of Maori arrival in NZ

Research showing Maori may have reached New Zealand later than previously believed may have implications for the Waitangi Tribunal, a New Zealand historian says.

In the study “High-precision radiocarbon dating shows recent and rapid initial human colonization of East Polynesia”, published yesterday in the American journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and led by Janet Wilmshurst from New Zealand’s Landcare Research, more than 1400 radiocarbon dates were analysed from 47 Pacific islands. The results indicate New Zealand was first colonised by humans between 1210 and 1385 AD.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1015876108

AUT University History Professor, Paul Moon said the study might have “far-reaching implications for Maori oral history”.

Maori oral histories which recall lists of ancestors have been used to date the first arrival in New Zealand as early as 800 AD, Dr Moon said.

“If these Maori whakapapa [genealogies] are out by over five hundred years, then this must raise questions about their reliability.

“If Maori reached New Zealand waters just 300 years before the first Europeans, some people might also start to reconsider the idea of Maori being indigenous. It could be interpreted as a different type of ‘indigenous’ from the sort that applies to peoples who inhabited countries exclusively for thousands of years. This would be an unfortunate conclusion to draw, but is something that might have to be faced.”

Dr Moon said the study could also impact on the findings of the Waitangi Tribunal, which has accepted evidence of a much earlier settlement date.

“Ironically, the mid-fourteenth century date for the first arrival of Maori in New Zealand was widely accepted up until the 1950s, when academics challenged it on the basis of Maori whakapapa, and shunted back the date by hundreds of years. Now, it looks like it will have to be dragged forward again”

***

In addition, Dr. Moon wrote a book about cannibalism amongst Maori

In other words, leave it to the experts who, by the way include archaeologists and other real scientists.

Ian Wishart’s “The Great Divide”

In some ways my digging brought me to this book by Ian Wishart.

The Great Divide: The Story of New Zealand & Its Treaty

Here is a bio:

Ian Wishart is a multi-award winning investigative journalist and bestselling author of more than 20 books, who’s now in his fourth decade in the news business. His writing style has often been compared to John Grisham by reviewers.

He’s been a radio News Director, a Chief of Staff for TV3 News and a magazine editor. His work has featured in the Times of London, Daily Mail, New Zealand Herald and America’s massive Coast to Coast radio programme – to name a few. His books Totalitaria, Air Con and Vitamin D became Amazon bestsellers worldwide.

While writing his first book, The Paradise Conspiracy, Wishart’s TVNZ office was discovered to have been bugged, his home was broken into, the manuscript for the book stolen, and an attempt was made on his life. Needless to say, he survived to write the story.

The first four chapters of The Paradise Conspiracy inspired movie director Geoff Murphy (“Young Guns II”, “Under Siege 2”) to produce the movie “Spooked” starring Cliff Curtis (“Runaway Jury”, “Live Free or Die Hard”) in a loose portrayal of Wishart’s role as an investigative journalist.

He’s been shot at, tear-gassed and stalked, but Wishart says his motivation remains telling the stories that “need to be told”, whether its new leads on cold case murders, or government espionage.

I was surprised by the book.

Instead of finding a right-wing diatribe I found a fine piece of scholarship.

In some ways, in a modern sense, it is not good history in that it is very short on narrative and replete with long quotes of  accounts from the time leading up to the Treaty, from people on Abel Tasman’s, expedition, Captain James Cook, missionary Samuel Marsden. 

He does what few others have done and let these people speak to us from 200 years ago, together with the principles, attitudes and prejudices of the time.

Let us hear from Ian Wishart himself.

His conclusion (verbatim) –