Race and indigeneity
October 13, 2014 5:56 PM Subscribe
Can New Zealand teach the US anything about race?
The US was founded on the idea of freedom and liberty. But freedom and liberty, which might be called the “sacred” values of American society, were exclusive ideas. In the colonial period there was, writes Dee Brown in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, “an almost reverential attitude toward the ideal of personal freedom for those who already had it.” Treaties are the mechanism to extend that freedom and liberty – that is, the right to self determination – to indigenous peoples who were promised it, but do not have full exercise of it.
Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!
posted by oceanjesse at 7:13 PM on October 13, 2014
posted by oceanjesse at 7:13 PM on October 13, 2014
That was a really good article. To second feral_goldfish (nice username!), treaties are secondary to the history of colonization of the North American continent because, well, the most interesting thing about each treaty with an indigenous people is just how fast the treaty was summarily ignored.
I remember reading about this treaty or that treat with this or that tribe and how the treaties, after having been signed, were used as toilet paper. It really tempered my understanding of Westward Expansion: "Wait....we weren't the good guys, huh."
posted by notsnot at 7:15 PM on October 13, 2014
I remember reading about this treaty or that treat with this or that tribe and how the treaties, after having been signed, were used as toilet paper. It really tempered my understanding of Westward Expansion: "Wait....we weren't the good guys, huh."
posted by notsnot at 7:15 PM on October 13, 2014
"the author doesn't seem to have considered how we might elevate treaties by actually enforcing them."
Over the last century and a half, the treaty of Waitangi has gone from being "a simple nullity" in one infamous judgement to having its principles being enshined in legislation.
One of the great legacies of the Kirk government in the 70s was creating the Waitangi Tribunal which hears cases about treaty breaches. Initially it had no enforcement powers, but its judgements contributed to a moral climate which has seen later governments reach settlements with Maori of considerable financial value.
Maori leaders had the insight that the legally void treaty could become a powerful political tool in a polity where the settler majority thought there was no race problem.
Of course from the perspective of many Maori today NZ is very very far from acknowedging Maori sovereignty or restoring the multi-generational hurts of the systematic alienation of Maori assets. So I like many NZers will be reading this article feeling all smug at our relative performance while seeing just how limited it still is.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:29 PM on October 13, 2014 [17 favorites]
Over the last century and a half, the treaty of Waitangi has gone from being "a simple nullity" in one infamous judgement to having its principles being enshined in legislation.
One of the great legacies of the Kirk government in the 70s was creating the Waitangi Tribunal which hears cases about treaty breaches. Initially it had no enforcement powers, but its judgements contributed to a moral climate which has seen later governments reach settlements with Maori of considerable financial value.
Maori leaders had the insight that the legally void treaty could become a powerful political tool in a polity where the settler majority thought there was no race problem.
Of course from the perspective of many Maori today NZ is very very far from acknowedging Maori sovereignty or restoring the multi-generational hurts of the systematic alienation of Maori assets. So I like many NZers will be reading this article feeling all smug at our relative performance while seeing just how limited it still is.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:29 PM on October 13, 2014 [17 favorites]
Interesting article, if a little rose-coloured in its view of NZ race relations.
One relevant additional consideration is that the Maori were just ridiculously stone-cold badasses, another is that NZ was colonised late (1850ish) when attitudes were shifting around how to deal with native populations. And a third consideration is that the Treaty of Waitangi was essentially legally invalidated a few decades after its signing, and it wasn't until the 1970s that it really started being taken seriously (after a lot of activism).
Maori are still very much at the bottom of the socio-economic scale here, and improving child poverty (disproportionately Maori in its impact) is a major focus for the government right now.
posted by Sebmojo at 7:33 PM on October 13, 2014 [3 favorites]
One relevant additional consideration is that the Maori were just ridiculously stone-cold badasses, another is that NZ was colonised late (1850ish) when attitudes were shifting around how to deal with native populations. And a third consideration is that the Treaty of Waitangi was essentially legally invalidated a few decades after its signing, and it wasn't until the 1970s that it really started being taken seriously (after a lot of activism).
Maori are still very much at the bottom of the socio-economic scale here, and improving child poverty (disproportionately Maori in its impact) is a major focus for the government right now.
posted by Sebmojo at 7:33 PM on October 13, 2014 [3 favorites]
lol snap
posted by Sebmojo at 7:34 PM on October 13, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by Sebmojo at 7:34 PM on October 13, 2014 [1 favorite]
It's hard to overstate the importance of relative military power. In Canada, the Huron and the French (weak and few compared to the Anglophones) interacted on something like an equal basis. As in the case of labor unions, the best guarantee of not getting stepped on is being too powerful to crush.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 7:36 PM on October 13, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 7:36 PM on October 13, 2014 [2 favorites]
But the author doesn't seem to have considered how we might elevate treaties by actually enforcing them.
Every year, the Cayuga tribe in upstate New York gets a shipment of muslin cloth, simply because a treaty requires it. The treaties are being upheld. But that doesn't give the Indians much leverage for anything. The only tribes that get serious help from the treaties either 1. live where there's an economy worth mentioning in which they play a significant demographic part (e.g. New Mexico) or 2. have treaties with clauses that give them the power to do something really disruptive (e.g. the tribes in Wisconsin who have the ability to shut down hunting and fishing in the north of the state).
If it's not in a treaty, forget it. If it's in a treaty, it better be usable for today's purposes.
posted by ocschwar at 7:48 PM on October 13, 2014
Every year, the Cayuga tribe in upstate New York gets a shipment of muslin cloth, simply because a treaty requires it. The treaties are being upheld. But that doesn't give the Indians much leverage for anything. The only tribes that get serious help from the treaties either 1. live where there's an economy worth mentioning in which they play a significant demographic part (e.g. New Mexico) or 2. have treaties with clauses that give them the power to do something really disruptive (e.g. the tribes in Wisconsin who have the ability to shut down hunting and fishing in the north of the state).
If it's not in a treaty, forget it. If it's in a treaty, it better be usable for today's purposes.
posted by ocschwar at 7:48 PM on October 13, 2014
Weren't the Maori, as Sebmojo states, extremely warlike? My oustider's understanding is that they loved war and studied and practiced it non-stop, not because they had to fight wars, but because they wanted to. As a result, the British colonists had a heck of time with them and the British government finally gave up and told the locals: sorry, you are on your own. So they effectively had no choice but to work out, and keep deals.
There were certainly groups of warriors among the original population in the US, but diseases wiped out much of the population. There were always people trying to do right, but in the end money and power spoke much louder.
posted by eye of newt at 8:27 PM on October 13, 2014 [1 favorite]
There were certainly groups of warriors among the original population in the US, but diseases wiped out much of the population. There were always people trying to do right, but in the end money and power spoke much louder.
posted by eye of newt at 8:27 PM on October 13, 2014 [1 favorite]
Not exactly, eye of newt, no. The deals came early on, before large-scale colonisation. [Simplification follows]
In the years following Cook's voyages to New Zealand various British people came here: missionaries, whalers, sealers, traders etc. Contact was mostly peaceable, but the British government appointed a representative to help control the more unlawful settlers. Maori chiefs issued a declaration of independence in 1835. A private British company, the New Zealand Company, announced intentions to establish colonies in NZ. At that point the British government decided to make NZ a colony, which led to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, where Maori may or may not have ceded sovereignty to Britain (the Brits proposed the Treaty with that as the goal, but the Maori version of the Treaty certainly didn't cede sovereignty).
So NZ is then a British colony. And by about the 1860s when the Treaty is being well and truly broken and land is being stolen, there's armed resistance from the Maori, who fought both colonial and British troops in the New Zealand Wars. Which basically ended with more theft of land, and the solution to all this really didn't start to happen until the 1970s, as i_am_joe's_spleen noted above, and was political not military.
posted by Pink Frost at 8:46 PM on October 13, 2014 [5 favorites]
In the years following Cook's voyages to New Zealand various British people came here: missionaries, whalers, sealers, traders etc. Contact was mostly peaceable, but the British government appointed a representative to help control the more unlawful settlers. Maori chiefs issued a declaration of independence in 1835. A private British company, the New Zealand Company, announced intentions to establish colonies in NZ. At that point the British government decided to make NZ a colony, which led to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, where Maori may or may not have ceded sovereignty to Britain (the Brits proposed the Treaty with that as the goal, but the Maori version of the Treaty certainly didn't cede sovereignty).
So NZ is then a British colony. And by about the 1860s when the Treaty is being well and truly broken and land is being stolen, there's armed resistance from the Maori, who fought both colonial and British troops in the New Zealand Wars. Which basically ended with more theft of land, and the solution to all this really didn't start to happen until the 1970s, as i_am_joe's_spleen noted above, and was political not military.
posted by Pink Frost at 8:46 PM on October 13, 2014 [5 favorites]
Well, by the end of the 19th century, disease and alcohol and military defeat had brought Maori to a point where local whites thought that they were just going to "smoothe the pillow of a dying race" and assimilate any survivors. The most notable military conflicts happened in the first decades after the treaty was signed, as different tribal groups rebelled against what they saw as illegimate land transactions. Their early victories over settlers ended in complete defeat: Maori warriors had to go home and plant crops, while the settlers were reinforced by the British Empire, and as a result huge tracts of land were confiscated from the tribes who fought against the settlers, reducing them to penury. Also, like I said before, for most of its history, the treaty had no legal force in NZ.
So attributing NZ's current race relations and treatment of indigenous people to the military prowess of mid-19th century Maori is really a big stretch. Yeah, they were extraordinarily resourceful, innovative and tough, effectively independently inventing trench warfare. But they lost and lost hard. Their descendants' achievement in keeping the dream of sovereignty alive and recouping even a fraction of what the treaty might have entitled them to is a remarkable feat of multigenerational peaceful political struggle which stands on its own.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:50 PM on October 13, 2014 [8 favorites]
So attributing NZ's current race relations and treatment of indigenous people to the military prowess of mid-19th century Maori is really a big stretch. Yeah, they were extraordinarily resourceful, innovative and tough, effectively independently inventing trench warfare. But they lost and lost hard. Their descendants' achievement in keeping the dream of sovereignty alive and recouping even a fraction of what the treaty might have entitled them to is a remarkable feat of multigenerational peaceful political struggle which stands on its own.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:50 PM on October 13, 2014 [8 favorites]
Snap, Pink Frost.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:50 PM on October 13, 2014
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:50 PM on October 13, 2014
The Wikipedia article "New Zealand foreshore and seabed controversy" seems to indicate that about ten years ago court rulings determined that the Maori retained ownership of the entire coastline of New Zealand, and as a response the national parliament passed a law nationalizing it all. I think it's that kind of thing the US would be inclined to learn from NZ, if anything.
posted by XMLicious at 10:07 PM on October 13, 2014
posted by XMLicious at 10:07 PM on October 13, 2014
I'm not much liking the rhetoric about how the Maoris got a good deal because they were badass, warriors who stood up for themselves, and what it seems to be implying about the Native Americans.
posted by Segundus at 11:17 PM on October 13, 2014 [4 favorites]
posted by Segundus at 11:17 PM on October 13, 2014 [4 favorites]
Maori benefited from being colonized at a time when the British Empire was losing its taste for colonies. I agree, the military prowess angle has some unfair implications.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:04 AM on October 14, 2014
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:04 AM on October 14, 2014
I'm not much liking the rhetoric about how the Maoris got a good deal because they were badass, warriors who stood up for themselves, and what it seems to be implying about the Native Americans.==Segundus
I didn't imply--I said it. Native Americans were mostly wiped out by disease. The rest were mostly kicked off their land. As for the Maori, the New Zealand Wars link lists 9 wars over 20 years, the last one described as "the ugliest and most savage". You don't think this had an effect? Maybe it didn't. I do now see that a lot of the reforms took place in the 1970s.
Part of my reason for posting my ignorant outsider's view is to get an insider's response and correction, which I appreciate.
posted by eye of newt at 12:34 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]
I didn't imply--I said it. Native Americans were mostly wiped out by disease. The rest were mostly kicked off their land. As for the Maori, the New Zealand Wars link lists 9 wars over 20 years, the last one described as "the ugliest and most savage". You don't think this had an effect? Maybe it didn't. I do now see that a lot of the reforms took place in the 1970s.
Part of my reason for posting my ignorant outsider's view is to get an insider's response and correction, which I appreciate.
posted by eye of newt at 12:34 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]
As for the Maori, the New Zealand Wars link lists 9 wars over 20 years, the last one described as "the ugliest and most savage". You don't think this had an effect? Maybe it didn't. I do now see that a lot of the reforms took place in the 1970s ...Sure. Titokowaru (the Maori leader in that last war you mention) was, as Jamie Belich points out, one of New Zealand's greatest generals and his military achievements in 1868–9 were remarkable:
At the outset, the odds against Titokowaru were immense, twelve to one in fighting men, and the chances of victory minuscule. Yet Titokowaru and his people destroyed one colonist army (at Te Ngutu-o-te-manu on 7 September 1868); comprehensively defeated another (at Moturoa on 7 November 1868); and scored several lesser victories (including Turuturumokai on 12 June 1868, and Te Karaka and Otautu on 3 February and 13 March 1869). Their least successful tactical performance was a drawn battle at Te Ngutu-o-te-manu on 21 August 1868, and it could be argued that even this was a strategic success. This remarkable record cannot be attributed to the incompetence of the bested leaders – Thomas McDonnell, Gustavus von Tempsky, George Whitmore and Te Keepa Te Rangihiwinui were all able men....The problem was low absolute numbers and the challenges involved in maintaining both a fighting force in a crop-planting economy and, more importantly in Titokowaru's case, enough political support from other tribal groupings (hapu) to enable the campaign to continue. In Titokowaru's case, he lost political support abruptly at the end of 1869 and the war was abandoned. In the face of these difficulties, the military victories (all over relatively small colonial formations) counted for little. Indeed, as Belich points out, they led to brutal crackdowns from Pakeha (settler European) authorities and a dedicated programme of public forgetting in the settler mind: "Titokowaru's War is a dark secret of New Zealand history, forgotten by the Pakeha as a child forgets a nightmare."
By the 1880s, as spleen, Pink Frost, and Sebmojo point out above, Maori were seen as a dying race and had been effectively marginalized politically and economically. It's at this point that we start to see the rise of the romanticizing, abstract Maoriland literary culture that both idealized Maori as a harmless and picturesque relict race and encouraged European settlers to appropriate elements of this culture as they saw fit. Indeed, one might say the haka before sports matches was initially part of this programme of cultural appropriation. Before the '70s and '80s, most of the teams conducting haka had few if any Maori representatives and footage of these white-led haka don't look very far removed at all from the US Redskins-style appropriative performances Godfery talks about in the linked article. Maori, from the 1880s onwards, were concentrated in poor rural districts, badly educated in the so-called Native School system, where the boys were taught low-status trade skills and the girls how to be servants, discouraged from speaking Maori, and generally isolated from the white settler population at large. The four Maori seats in parliament were numerically unimportant and their representatives had little chance to influence policy. What enabled the Maori political (re)-awakening were economic changes. Post WWII, Maori started moving to the cities in large numbers, many became involved in trade-union and Labour politics, and from the 1960s, young Maori activists were increasingly inspired by the AIM movement in the US. If you read interviews or oral histories from this period, AIM looms large. So large that its absence from Godfery's discussion is a bit odd. (I kinda wish he'd asked Alice Te Punga Somervile about this: she's written extensively about the way indigenous rights movements internationally have influenced each other.) Really, I don't think the big Maori political rights movements that coalesced in the '70s would have happened (at least in the form they did) without the examples of the AIM and the civil rights movements in the States. There's an international perspective here that's really missing in the Guardian piece, good though it is in many ways.
So, really, it's a lot more complicated than "Maori were good fighters; that's why they succeeded" and "Native Americans should look to Maori as examples of how to achieve political influence." No matter how many small-scale battles Maori won (and they won many), they were never going to compete with the sheer people-power of the British metropolitan centre, pushing settlers and armies outwards at rates that small Maori hapu could never hope to compete with. They were on a hiding to nothing, militarily and demographically. And the influence of Native American political action on Maori (and indeed on indigenous rights movements everywhere) has been profound. That, to me, is the story here.
posted by Sonny Jim at 4:56 AM on October 14, 2014 [12 favorites]
There have also been some pretty stunning* treaty based results for the first nations people in British Columbia.
*Stunning within the context of Canada's generally shitty treaty compliance.
posted by srboisvert at 7:14 AM on October 14, 2014
*Stunning within the context of Canada's generally shitty treaty compliance.
posted by srboisvert at 7:14 AM on October 14, 2014
So attributing NZ's current race relations and treatment of indigenous people to the military prowess of mid-19th century Maori is really a big stretch. Yeah, they were extraordinarily resourceful, innovative and tough, effectively independently inventing trench warfare. But they lost and lost hard.
Also, the Maori were not that unique in their military success against a colonizing power. The United States lost Red Cloud's War with the Lakota.
posted by srboisvert at 7:28 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]
Also, the Maori were not that unique in their military success against a colonizing power. The United States lost Red Cloud's War with the Lakota.
posted by srboisvert at 7:28 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]
When I was in NZ back in ~2004 I remember talking to somebody in a rather rural area of the south island. I mentioned how impressed I was that the Treaty of Waitangi was actually enforced and that the Maori seemed to get much more respect than natives in the US. The response I got back was something along the lines of how the Maori did not actually use the resources that were being given back to them and that they had been better managed under the whites. That more or less ended the conversation.
I offer this as a data point, indicative only of the fact that there is at least some unhappiness with the implementation of the treaty.
posted by Hactar at 11:43 AM on October 14, 2014
I offer this as a data point, indicative only of the fact that there is at least some unhappiness with the implementation of the treaty.
posted by Hactar at 11:43 AM on October 14, 2014
So attributing NZ's current race relations and treatment of indigenous people to the military prowess of mid-19th century Maori is really a big stretch. Yeah, they were extraordinarily resourceful, innovative and tough, effectively independently inventing trench warfare. But they lost and lost hard.
I just said it was a consideration; even if in swinging the balance of convenience for Britain towards treaty-mediated settlement rather than simple force of arms. The generally internecine nature of the struggles probably didn't help them any either.
But the instructions for the signing of the Treaty from the Colonial Secretary are also worth reading:
All dealings with the Aborigines for their Lands must be conducted on the same principles of sincerity, justice, and good faith as must govern your transactions with them for the recognition of Her Majesty's Sovereignty in the Islands. Nor is this all. They must not be permitted to enter into any Contracts in which they might be ignorant and unintentional authors of injuries to themselves. You will not, for example, purchase from them any Territory the retention of which by them would be essential, or highly conducive, to their own comfort, safety or subsistence. The acquisition of Land by the Crown for the future Settlement of British Subjects must be confined to such Districts as the Natives can alienate without distress or serious inconvenience to themselves. To secure the observance of this rule will be one of the first duties of their official protector.
posted by Sebmojo at 2:06 PM on October 14, 2014
I just said it was a consideration; even if in swinging the balance of convenience for Britain towards treaty-mediated settlement rather than simple force of arms. The generally internecine nature of the struggles probably didn't help them any either.
But the instructions for the signing of the Treaty from the Colonial Secretary are also worth reading:
All dealings with the Aborigines for their Lands must be conducted on the same principles of sincerity, justice, and good faith as must govern your transactions with them for the recognition of Her Majesty's Sovereignty in the Islands. Nor is this all. They must not be permitted to enter into any Contracts in which they might be ignorant and unintentional authors of injuries to themselves. You will not, for example, purchase from them any Territory the retention of which by them would be essential, or highly conducive, to their own comfort, safety or subsistence. The acquisition of Land by the Crown for the future Settlement of British Subjects must be confined to such Districts as the Natives can alienate without distress or serious inconvenience to themselves. To secure the observance of this rule will be one of the first duties of their official protector.
posted by Sebmojo at 2:06 PM on October 14, 2014
There's a live rugby match between the Eagles and the All Blacks going on right now. The All Blacks just did the haka, no grass dance from the Eagles, though.
posted by homunculus at 1:09 PM on November 1, 2014
posted by homunculus at 1:09 PM on November 1, 2014
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But the author doesn't seem to have considered how we might elevate treaties by actually enforcing them.
Fretting over forms of cultural representation and symbolic mediation is all very well, and this stuff is indeed important, but you know what's a really powerful, game-changing form of cultural mediation? Political economy.
posted by feral_goldfish at 6:13 PM on October 13, 2014 [5 favorites]