But it seemed that the why didn’t matter. Our breakfast companion went straight to telling us that Māori were "not indigenous" (and we’ve deliberately used a small i), that there was another group before Māori, and was closing with the waste of resources expended on Māori economic development before his final statement stereotyping all Māori as having a certain trait.
Luckily for him, we were interrupted just as he’d made his final statement, but what was most startling about this brief exchange was that despite the fact that each of his statements could be refuted and alternative perspectives provided, he was so sure of himself. He was adamant that his story was the correct one.
What was his evidence? What evidence do we have?
A significant document from the fairly recent past, the 1961 Hunn Report, can help here. One of the reasons for picking this document is that like the comments of the man in the breakfast line, in his report, Mr Hunn seriously overstepped his brief.
The terms of reference for the 1961 report required Mr Hunn to focus on the material assets of Māori and review their use, proposing ways for these assets to be best used. But what the report presented was a manifesto focused on assimilation. Scarily, and reminiscent of the rhetoric today, the report proposed racial integration and outlined three categories of Māori: from those who were "good", already detribalised, those who were at "home" in both societies and those who were backward, living in primitive conditions. And these categories were A, B and C! We are not sure if reminding everyone of this is going to fuel more racist fires (again). Is it the information that we want to be repeated? But there is no use hiding it.
Those spouting off half-baked stories about alternate peoples pre-dating Māori, need to know about the attempts in the not too distant past to exterminate us and our culture, although Hunn euphemistically called it "evolution".
Not long after the publication of the Hunn Report in 1961, a commentary was written by the esteemed Tā Prof Bruce Biggs. Hunn may have surveyed the facts, Tā Bruce wrote, but disturbingly, there was "over-simplification of the complexities of race relations by the one person in New Zealand who has most power to implement his views". Hunn ignored the earlier self-determining policies led by Tā Āpirana Ngata and others, which had supported the economic development of our own lands.
The implementation of the Hunn Report had far-reaching consequences on our land, our wealth and our health, dismissing the importance of us as Māori, of our land, and our rights of residence and belonging. But thankfully, 63 years later, Hunn’s assimilation hasn’t been achieved, and even now, with naff politicians spouting their racist rhetoric and implementing their assimilation agendas across all spheres of policy, it will not get us down.
To the chap in the breakfast line who sparked this piece, what the heck are you on about? Wherever you are getting your half-baked ideas, stop reading them. You don’t get to deny our existence. Our strength, in our whānau, marae, hapū, iwi, and the strength of our Tāngata Tiriti allies, are supporting us to live better together, fairly and justly. Our whakataukī, "Me he mārō te kakī o te taiari" speaks of our resoluteness, that together, we will defeat those opposing us.
