When I lived in Singapore with the ANZUK forces we had a troupe of Maori singers and dancers come to put on a concert.... from that day I was hooked. It just resonates with something deep inside. I just love how these students are performing. Well done all x x
Quite a history about the Maori - put the Inca's or the Aztecs to shame in degeneration. Outcast as weaker primitive Neolithic people by the invading Hawaiians & Tongans (Maori were from the original wave of primitive Asian/Melanesians pushed right out across the Eastern Pacific by successive stronger races coming from the west). They were outcast on rafts and some floated up in NZ stranded for 500 years. The weaker were pushed down to the South Island or Chathams etc. So the South Island Maori (had their own language) were the weakest of the weak. They were captured and eaten as 'Slave flesh' by the northern Maori doing raids. (Well they all ate each other - 80% of Maori pre European were dark skinned easily fattened slaves farmed and eaten by a lighter skinned 'Ariki' thin wiry elite royal caste). So it was with some righteousness as well as British cunning that they armed the southern Maori who then with muskets launched a genocidal war on the north.. That plus measles & flu halved the Maori population and removed most of the elite. The British then liberated the slaves and outlawed cannibalism. The northern Maori fought with the British against the south bad west Maori 'rebels'. The Maori sued for peace and a treaty was signed that removed all sovereignty and made them subjects to the English crown where the English would protect them from each other. Land could only be sold to or via the Crown. Maori could live on their reservations with native custom but none did. The treaty of Waitangi is strikingly clear in that the Maori cede any claim and give up and die as an original society - all 3 clauses lock that in. Nothing in today's 'Maori' culture is authentic. The music - all European (Maoris did not have tonal music, the songs are missionary tunes or introduced - Poi dance is from Islands and Stick dance from old Malaya. The carvings and art - all European - Arabesques that was the fashion at the time. Original Maori had limited dash carving and no painting of objects. No written language - all the syntax & grammar plus vowel inflection is European. No technology - some lagoon canoes and wood or stone Neolithic tools. No food sources - like pigs or crops - they left that all behind, all they had was a weak inbred fox (now extinct), some rats and a weak dismal pacific yam. They ate out all the bird-life, didn't know how to farm the sea as were island people and so they turned to societal cannibalism. Today - no full blood or half blood left. No genuine tradition and almost all are offspring of Maori slave females sold to white settlers for muskets or food. -So more fake than the 'Sioux' or 'Cherokee' or 'Crow' who had at least retained some genuineness about who they were and their history. -Everything you 'saw or experienced' is Fake. A totally convected disneyfied tokenistic set of inventions fueled by a grievance culture of almost totally European people fetishing a false past bad history because it pays benefits. 'This Horrid Practice' - Professor Paul Moon, 'Behind The Tattooed Face' - Heretaunga Pat Baker, 'A History Of New Zealand Anthropology In The 19th Century' - H D Skinner
