The Māori and the Moriori | Hacker News Reader

The Māori and the Moriori

stoneageherbalist.com

67 pointsjseliger45 comments

Talk of the Moriori has historically been used as a cudgel to beat Māori with when seeking redress from the evils of European colonization. It’s not that it’s taboo or no one cares, it’s that we’re weary of the motivations of people bringing it up and how they frame this history.

https://thespinoff.co.nz/atea/03-08-2018/the-moriori-myth-an...

> It’s not that it’s taboo or no one cares, it’s that we’re weary of the motivations of people bringing it up and how they frame this history.

The same thing is true in the United States and Canada of Native Americans.

Nobody brings it up of course but tribes extinguishing other tribes completely was a fact of life. It isn't unique to Europeans.

I think what IS unique to Europeans is:

1) Colonised the globe

2) Started a system of global resource extraction and slavery

3) Built an entire system of economic development based on this extraction which vastly enriched said Europeans and disadvantaged the colonised peoples

4) Deliberately nobbled attempts by those from which the wealth is being extracted to share in the economic gains through shady business, military and political tactics

5) Refusal to acknowledge the role of that extraction in their continued success (those [INSERT PEJORATIVE NAME FOR THE COLONISED HERE] just need to do better!)

I mean, I don't know if it's unique in all history but it's certainly unique when comparing local conflict pre-colonisation with European colonisation.

This is not unique to Europeans to the extent that the suggestion is borderline racist.

It might be more accurate to say that every people engage(d) in this nature to the extent that they are capable, and that, in relatively modern recorded history, Europeans have proven themselves to be by far the most capable in that regard.

So capable that they are perhaps the first people ever to police themselves in moderation of this behaviour, often explicitly and deliberately acting in the interests of alien people to their own detriment. That is unique.

> It might be more accurate to say that every people engage(d) in this nature to the extent that they are capable

Questionable that every people did this, eg:

Aboriginal mitogenomes reveal 50,000 years of regionalism in Australia

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature21416

strongly suggests that Australia was first settled by people spreading out, finding an area that suited them, and settling down such that the most recent indigenous DNA in various areas matches (bar evolution) the earliest DNA in those areas (ie no waves of replacement).

How certain can we be that those groups hadn't simply reached the limits of their capacity for expansion?

Aboriginal Australians have one of the lowest average IQs of any ethnic group on earth, they had little to no concept of agriculture or weaponry, and existed in relatively small disjointed tribes rife with infighting and appalling violence in an unforgiving climate.

Were these people capable of organising, planning, equipping, strategising, and executing an assault on their neighbours? Would it have even been worth it - what would they gain? Even if capable, they may have been wisely unwilling.

I think it's incredibly naive to think that a capable tribe of Aboriginal Australians would have left their defenceless neighbours in peace if they stood in the way of valuable resources. Or that this didn't indeed occur countless times in relatively small skirmishes.

> So capable that they are perhaps the first people ever to police themselves in moderation of this behaviour, often explicitly and deliberately acting in the interests of alien people to their own detriment. That is unique.

Posting that in a thread about the Moriori is rich.

What you have described doesn't sound that unique to Europeans. The article this discussion was spawned from describes behaviour by Maori against the Moriori that mirrors most of your described points.

I would argue that throughout history, people have been acting like shits to each other, regardless of their point of origin, race, religion, or culture. We're just finally enlightened enough to be examining this behaviour through a critical eye.

None of these are European...

Europeans were the first to do it across continents, sure? But are you going to blame the culture of the first persons to use electricity to eliminate jobs of manual labour? Or is that just technology paving a way?

Your comment has nothing to do with Europeans specifically.

What is unique to Europeans and their descendants is to lambast their own history and portray themselves as uniquely evil. I am no aware of any other culture which has done the same, possibly/probably because cultures which show this behaviour end up extinct.

In South America a lot of tribes were just absorbed without warfare, they joined together because it made financial sense. The Inca were well known for it.

There sure was a lot of ritual human sacrifice for being a peaceful peoples. Specifically child sacrifice in the case of the Incas. [1] And the Aztecs, boy oh boy lol

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacocha

Mayans would go to war because they hadn't had one in a while according to my guide at Mayapan. At their peak Aztecs were sacrificing 80k+ people a year, usually war prisoners. This behavior is how the conquistadors were able to rally their enemies and topple them.

Oh worse than not being unique to Europeans, still happening today.

Here’s an example from Darfur in June this year: https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/16/africa/darfur-sudan-geneina-m...

Whoever is the second-to-last foreign colonizer is forever to be considered a victim not responsible for any similar crimes committed on their part. This shouldn't be a reason to not care at all about the Maori, or other indigenous groups. Rather, perhaps there are others we should give attention and money to besides the most politically expedient groups.

What native tribes did to one another was still nothing compared to the scale of what Europeans did to them.

And one doesn't justify the other. If I break into your house, kill your family and steal everything not nailed down, including your youngest kid who I raise as my own, and the bones of your dead aunt that I put in a window display, I can't justify that by pointing out that you got into a fight with a kid in high school one time and once stole a pair of sunglasses from the Wal-Mart.

This analogy is naïve. There is plenty of evidence of extermination behavior among early native Americans. In more recent times, the Anasazi were especially feared by their neighbors for the horrors they'd inflict.

Did the Anasazi exterminate nearly everyone on an entire continent, then march the remainder into reservations where it remained illegal for them to openly practice their religion until 40 years ago, and did they kidnap people's children and send them to boarding schools to be indoctrinated against their own culture, abuse and torture them, and bury them in mass graves?

No. It's not even in the same ballpark.

You are arguing with a straw man. Your link is specifically addressing a myth that the moriori were pre-maori inhabitants of New Zealand. But the link in this post makes no such claim, and, in fact, clearly states that there were no known human inhabitants prior to the maori.

You're right the focus of the two articles is different. But some of the early comments on this thread did not seem to be making that distinction, so I added that link (to an article from one of nz most respected media companies, written by a PHD holding policy researcher at a national university) just try and add some context for the many people who might be hearing about this part of nz history for the first time.

I've come across this article before, and like all the other ones I've found that talk about a "Moriori myth" they seem to be creating and attacking a strawman: principally, the idea that the Moriori were the first inhabitants of New Zealand proper, rather than the Chatham Islands. That (incorrect) claim is nowhere in the original post here, or the Wikipedia page on the Moriori, but by knocking it down vigorously and then quickly eliding over the details of the genocide ("...yes, some Māori did kill some Moriori...but to attribute this to all Māori is wrong, and if you find yourself wanting to do it you should question your motives in doing so", which reads as another strawman: who is blaming ALL Maori?) the impression is given to casual readers that the historiography is wrong and the genocide never happened.

That might be a strawman in the context of actual historians, but in the context of your racist uncle spewing horseshit at the family barbecue the idea that "actually the Moriori were here first and the Maori killed them therefore European colonists did absolutely nothing wrong" is an extremely common take that does need to be debunked.

I'm sure that may be true among ignorant Kiwis, but your racist uncle didn't write the OP's article or the history sources, which don't make that claim. So them posting the Spinoff article in response doesn't address the actual events.

There's been other research that suggests that the Moriori were actually Māori. At which point is it genocide or just in fighting?

This is a fairly taboo subject in New Zealand. Criticism of the Māori is all but forbidden, especially by the mainstream left.

Why would you criticize a race rather than individuals?

“Mainstream left” is a race? That’s news to me! If you meant why would you criticise the Māori instead of the Individuals? Well, the individuals in question are long dead and who the exact people responsible are is unclear.

A pacifist friend gave me Island by Aldous Huxley, with a similar scenario, a pacifist island is overrun by a martial island. The pacifist island is drawn as a wonderful, cooperative society, while the warlike island is a tyranny. My friend considered the pacifist island a good model for the real world, but that just made me wonder if she really read it to the brutal end.

I’m really unsure why this is front page. For a hacker news audience that has little knowledge of Aotearoa New Zealand history, this is an odd first introduction that has historically been used to vilify Maori and in turn justify colonisation. If this is your first exposure to the history of Maori, please know this emphasis carries its own agenda.

I think if someone had posted some link to an uncontroversial part of nz history it would languish on the new page with 1 or two points. Things that reinforce discourses of racial tension seem to constantly get upvoted .. somehow..

Although a definite minority in New Zealand, Maori culture has a huge influence at this point, particularly in all government operations. I've brought up this genocide of the Moriori by the Maori (and in 1835, not an ancient memory) to Kiwis, and what surprised me is that everyone appears to know about it - and nobody seems to care, despite what it implies for the history of the Maori culture.

> despite what it implies for the history of the Maori culture.

Which is?

That they committed genocide. I think one of the worst aspects of (human nature? Dominant culture? I don't know why people think this way) is that people somehow cannot internalize the concept that a person can be both a victim and a perpetrator. You're either one or the other, never both.

This issue is especially acute when it comes to colonialism. It's so bad that it robs people of agency. Victims of colonialism are practically infantilized by the very people who are supposed to be defending them.

> That they committed genocide.

Not exactly new knowledge there though, is it?

I first heard that in ~1980 from both Māori and Pakeha in both Australia and New Zealand.

It's pretty much a core part of (say) Once Were Warriors that they historically had a fierce fighting culture.

> people somehow cannot internalize the concept that a person can be both a victim and a perpetrator.

Depends on the person really, though, doesn't it.

Many people can walk and chew gum while thinking compex thoughts about others in the world. Other people seem to think that they alone can do so while projecting an inability to do so on others.

> Victims of colonialism are practically infantilized by the very people who are supposed to be defending them.

Not everybody wanders about wearing a halo of white savior complex though, do they?

One critique of a certain subclass of "the right" is that they like to homogenous "the left" and reduce them all down to some dopey cartoon characterization .. which is hardly higher level thinking.

> everyone appears to know about it - and nobody seems to care

"Why do you care? Are you saying that makes European colonization justified? Are you trying to imply Europeans should feel slightly less guilty? That they are not history's sole villains? That these were "savages" in need of "civilizing"? Are you some kind of Nazi? I wonder how your employer will feel about having a white-supremacy-apologist on their payroll. Hey everyone, this guy is defending colonialism and genocide!"

See this play out a few times, and you learn to shut up.

Edit: Right on cue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37698608

Note how the story linked therein [1] minimizes the genocide by calling it a "myth" in the title, and in the body reduces it to:

In 1835 a group of about 900 Taranaki Māori [..] sailed from Wellington to the Chathams, with the intention to make it their new home. They had recently been driven out of their own rohe during the Musket Wars. Shortly after they arrived they killed around 300 Moriori and enslaved the rest. So yes, some Māori did kill some Moriori, and the story is an awful one – but to attribute this to all Māori is wrong, and if you find yourself wanting to do it you should question your motives in doing so.

Wikipedia [2,3] describes it slightly differently:

Later, a prominent pacifist culture emerged; [..] This culture made it easier for Taranaki Māori invaders to nearly exterminate them in the 1830s during the Musket Wars. This was the Moriori genocide, in which the Moriori were either murdered or enslaved by members of the Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama iwi, killing or displacing nearly 95% of the Moriori population.

What does this tell us about when is it permissible to minimize and deny genocides?

[1] https://thespinoff.co.nz/atea/03-08-2018/the-moriori-myth-an...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moriori - "Currently there are around 700 people who identify as Moriori"

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81ori_people - "A June 2022 estimate gives the Māori ethnic population of New Zealand as 892,200"

>Note how the story linked therein [1] minimizes the genocide by calling it a "myth"

What they're calling a myth is the idea that Moriori were a pre-Maori race, not that there was a genocide.

Firstly, the myth. You’ve heard it before. There were a pre-Māori people in New Zealand, called the Moriori. When Māori arrived in the country they set about obliterating these peaceful Moriori inhabitants until not a single Moriori remained alive.

That's what the article opens with. It proceeds to claim the entire genocide involved only 300 deaths.

You're right that the paragraph you've quoted could be read that way, and is badly worded, to the point where, without any additional context, it could be interpreted to be saying that the genocide is a myth. But there is additional context, and the rest of the article makes no attempt to deny the genocide and enslavement of the Moriori. The Moriori weren't pre-Maori people, and they weren't completely obliterated (by the 900 Maori that attacked them) - that's the myth.

This severely downplays the whole European colonialism aspect of the situation - the author seems somewhat biased and the whole article is written in a way that paints all Māori people as villains. This was only a couple iwi, and while the genocide was terrible, the author is trying to spin it to make all Māori seem evil.

The writer of this is from the vitalist skull-measuring(phrenology) part of the Internet. Disappointed.

https://substack.com/@stoneageherbalist

I scrolled through the linked stories all the way to the end, and while there were a few stories about neolithic skull cults, I could find nothing about phrenology. Perhaps I missed it - could you point it out?

Substack is full of this sort of thing, to the point that I immediately look at the author page before reading (probably a good habit to have everywhere, really)

I don't see it? Could you link to something specific?

Disappointing, but not particularly surprising. Anyone from New Zealand would be familiar with "what about the Moriori" being almost exclusively mentioned as a way to downplay the harm caused by European colonization rather than as any sort of genuine historical curiosity.

What a strange thing to be disappointed in. Would you say you prefer the depressive part of the internet that has no interest in people?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com