this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
13 points (88.2% liked)

Aotearoa / New Zealand

1651 readers
26 users here now

Kia ora and welcome to !newzealand, a place to share and discuss anything about Aotearoa in general

Rules:

FAQ ~ NZ Community List ~ Join Matrix chatroom

 

Banner image by Bernard Spragg

Got an idea for next month's banner?

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 17 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Oh fuck, it's going to be one of those elections isn't it?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

A shitshow? Yup.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

always has been meme

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Blow that dog whistle a bit harder, Winnie!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

He's really trying, but chain smoking for a few decades really does fuck with your lung capacity

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

How long does a people need to have been some where first before they're indigenous?

According to Peters more than 700 but less than 55000 years.

What's the threshold Mr. Peters?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Depending on whose definition you use, he may have a point. It's well understood that Maori came from elsewhere to NZ, and quite recently in historical terms. Thus, are not "naturally occurring".

Of course, they did get here first though, and we signed a treaty guaranteeing certain rights regardless.

Mostly this is just Winnie being Winnie.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I mean, Homo Sapiens is only "naturally occuring" in Africa. We may have spread to Asia, Europe, Australia and the Americas (much) earlier than to NZ.

But if you think of the Maori as a people of Oceanian (more specifically east polynesian) descent, you can absolutely make an argument, that they are a native group spreading in their native territory.

You wouldn't call a north american native people "not native", just because they began settling some remote part of Canada nobody had been to before only in 1250 CE. The only difference would be that one is separated by water while the other is not, but "separated by water" loses all meaning in Oceania.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thx, not my native language and somehow I keep making that same error.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you define it as "didn't come from somewhere else" then it's a meaningless term since everyone outside parts of Africa came from somewhere else.

The UN definition is explicitly about colonization, which makes sense, i.e. some people arrived, then some other people came and took over.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, he doesn't have a leg to stand on with the UN declaration.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You mean the declaration that was voted on by all UN members and supported by an overwhelming majority, including (eventually) NZ under John Key?

Yeah doesn't hold any water....

/s

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You do understand I'm agreeing with you, right?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yes, sorry I might have misread your post

Used to people reacting badly to UN DRIP

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

The problem with arguing this is that it ignores the things he isn't saying - Maori aren't indigenous which means colonialism wasn't a crime, and the treaty doesn't need to be honoured.

You can argue the semantics about what indigenous means all you want, but that's not the argument he is actually making.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

While he's right about the timeframe, he's wrong about the country of origin.

The best hypothesis of the Polynesian expansion is that they left from Taiwan sometime after 3000BC. They are decendants of the Taiwanese aboriginal peoples, not Han Chinese settlers. So even if you ignore current geopolitics, saying "China" is grossly misleading.