We have a treaty. Of course, our treaty meant very little in the early days. To my knowledge there has never been an official "whitening" policy that was quite so overt. We went for a policy of assimilation which focused on education in Whitey Ways, active punishment for speaking Maori, covert racism - and I have to say, probably an expectation that they would just die out at first. Our bad things have been a lot more subtle. On paper, we look like GODS compared to Australia.
Unlike the Australian white population, we early developed a sort of "Our Maoris" mentality which tended to trot the Maori out to be impressive in the realms of sport, war and entertainment. Eventually, and understandably, they got a bit sick of this. Especially because the people who were making money from the plastic tikis and teatowels were not them. This has changed *dramatically* since the 1970s.
I've just been checking the voting history, and that, too, in its way was quite "good". Theoretically Maori could vote in 1853, but only if they individually owned land - which hardly any did, because that's not how they do things. Europeans were glad because they were scared of an "uncivilised" government. Eventually, though, in 1867, the Maori electorates were formed and all adult Maori men could vote for (and stand for) those four seats. (Of course, the representation was quite minor, given the percentage of the population that was Maori.)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2006-07-20 08:30 pm (UTC)We have a treaty. Of course, our treaty meant very little in the early days. To my knowledge there has never been an official "whitening" policy that was quite so overt. We went for a policy of assimilation which focused on education in Whitey Ways, active punishment for speaking Maori, covert racism - and I have to say, probably an expectation that they would just die out at first. Our bad things have been a lot more subtle. On paper, we look like GODS compared to Australia.
Unlike the Australian white population, we early developed a sort of "Our Maoris" mentality which tended to trot the Maori out to be impressive in the realms of sport, war and entertainment. Eventually, and understandably, they got a bit sick of this. Especially because the people who were making money from the plastic tikis and teatowels were not them. This has changed *dramatically* since the 1970s.
I've just been checking the voting history, and that, too, in its way was quite "good". Theoretically Maori could vote in 1853, but only if they individually owned land - which hardly any did, because that's not how they do things. Europeans were glad because they were scared of an "uncivilised" government. Eventually, though, in 1867, the Maori electorates were formed and all adult Maori men could vote for (and stand for) those four seats. (Of course, the representation was quite minor, given the percentage of the population that was Maori.)