Deconstructing the Doctrine of Discovery

This seminar is about deconstructing (and decolonizing) historical narratives about the colonisation of the indigenous world and an opportunity to revise and re-examine the historical record about the ‘discovery of Aotearoa’
Speakers
Tina Ngata is a mother of two from Ngati Porou, Tai Rawhiti. Her work involves advocacy for environmental, Indigenous and human rights, highlighting the role of settler colonialism in issues such as climate change and waste pollution. She promotes Indigenous conservation as best practice for a globally sustainable future and writes frequently at ‘The Non-Plastic Maori’.
Tāwhana Chadwick (Ngāti Kahungunu) is a tangata moana/tangata whenua from Heretaunga. Tāwhana is a captain of waka hourua (doubled hulled sailing canoes) with about 50,000 Nautical miles of blue water experience. His passion is for the revitalization of waka knowledge and justice for Te Moananui-a-Kiwa (including the people and creatures within).
Dr Emalani Case is a lecturer in Pacific Studies at Victoria University of Wellington's School of Languages and Cultures. As a Hawaiian woman, scholar, activist, writer, blogger, and dancer, she is deeply engaged in issues of indigenous rights and representation, dietary colonialism and food sovereignty, art and activism, political independence, and environmental and social justice.

[@ravenkama6922]

Very interesting korero... when we continually deny the part of us that is in fact colonizers blood, we are in denial of who we actually are. There is no argument to contest the fact that we are ALL part colonizer, and we speak about history as if it was THEM... No get real with it, it was US and there's nothing we can do to change that fact. No matter how brown your skin, no matter how good your reo, no matter how knowledgeable you are about tikanga, Kawa, matauranga, you are still part colonizer.

[@jonathantepairi2664]

You are right about us sharing the same blood as the english but that argument works the other way too ,it is slso true that our maori heritage is in our toto, and our manawa and our wairua ,regardless of our connection with our pakeha family ,it is also true we had slaves and we raided and pillaged other people's this is regrettably some of the darker side of ourselves but this whole talk is about the christian doctrine of discovery which was written by pope Nicholas in the year 1493 giving the rights for white christian men to colonise the countries deemed habited by savages including maori under the pretext we were not human and we did not own any land and that the white man had come to save us so we could have Christianity the term terra nullius which meant no man's land or land nobody owns. so the white man could take everything on that land for his king since 2023 the pope has repudiated that doctrine no one skin colour will ever rule the world ,that's why hitler was crushed by the allies the rest of the world did not want Hitler's version of aryan automony

[@ravenkama6922]

Thanks for your reply. I say these things because I'm sick of maori being in denial of reality, you can't say "them" because "them" is in our blood whether we like it or not. My own mother (maori) had me to a pakeha man and I was raised to dislike and deny that part of myself, like it was something to be ashamed of, I was then left with the remaining narrative of who I was as a maori-oppressed, blaming "them", at no point did anybody teach me that I am OK with ALL of me and THAT is part of the problem you see. We need to teach our babies, YOU ARE OK BEING MAORI AND PAKEHA, not that they should be ashamed and in denial of a part of who they are. And meanwhile, we're at a deficit and fighting foe who we are and the Government is still fing us over... we are all people at the end of the day, it's the government who has always been and always will be the issue here

[@ravenkama6922]

We were taught the land was taken by force, yes some of it was but that's not the whole story... The uncomfortable truth is, some of our tipuna SOLD out. And some of our tipuna (settlers) brought in. It is what it is.

[@jonathantepairi2664]

@@ravenkama6922 honestly ,I can feel your pain ,though my heritage is strongly maori i am only 1/4maori I am proudly Irish,english and my lineage is from the ryland family and my English family was the poulgrain line,,, for all of my life I have borne the marks from all of my blood all of my bloodlines are available on Google search including my last name which is Tepairi ,if you were taught to hate being pakeha ,I am sorry I can not take that pain from you ,but not all of us have that mindset that we should hate our pakeha family ,,,,, and it is true in your saying that our tipuna sold land to them one of the reasons for that though was that those settlers had taken maori wives ,and some of those settlers were even gifted land from maori chiefs, and some few , saw opportunities opened with traders to sell their land ,yet it is also undeniable that the land confiscations perpetrated on maori by the Edward gibbon wakefeild land company was forced on them as being rebellious savages who fought against the queen ,yet even pakeha acknowledge that wakefeilds purchases and confiscations were questionable given he had earlier that year been an incarcerated inmate in nsw Australia and amongst all of this is why maori fought back ,,,,the reason was in the wording of the treaty if you take that out of the treaty narrative, you will no doubt be wondering where the hell I'm going with this ,,,,well short answer is under the treaty the queen set forth guarantees of protection particularly against the French we were to have rights to our taonga yet the only thing the brittish colonial goverors (not the queen)gave us is the name hell hole of the pacific (referring to kororareka or russell) this was because of the brothels, the alcohol , tobacco and syphilis, typhoid and the flu ,which is what the brittish did give us ,,,,,my point bub,is that it's not that the pakeha where the hated, but how they went about it ,,,,with the lies the betrayal of the treaty itself and the deceptions perpetrated on maori by dubious means my closing comment is this ,,for 200 years or so we have walked in the same shoes as the pakeha we have assimilated into european society and taken their christian doctrine ,yet we remain committed to righting the injustices of those settler colonists ,to redress our grievances to parliament, and for me my fight is resolving those issues ,,,one final thought to share with you about myself ,none of the imformation I give was taught to me at school all I knew was that maori signed the treaty ,,,,,so I'm saying, I was uneducated fool ,,,,now not so uneducated

[@whiro8945]

@@ravenkama6922 thank you for your words, I think the difference is making british/irish/French (akaroa) synonymous with coloniser. we're all part european but that doesn't equal coloniser just like with our pākehā cousins. I agree we all have some decolonial mahi to do as a collective but people who are māori are obviously going to talk about it differently than those who aren't. just the same way tauiwi talk about it differently, especially when they usually don't have any pākehā in them or in their history.

[@robertronning7016]

He will destroy the doctrine and you will free Leonard peltier he is a hero to us

[@jasonshaw7590]

This sounds like a maxist history lesson.

[@michellenicholls9039]

Can barely hear that first speaker it’s annoying lol

[@jasonshaw7590]

Maori also had slaves. When they pillaged other tribes the took slaves and toa.

[@ex_orpheus1166]

Not the same as chattel slavery.

[@jasonshaw7590]

@ex_orpheus1166 haha I don't think the difference was known. Nice try haha

[@ex_orpheus1166]

@@jasonshaw7590European explorers, missionaries and traders in the early 1800s actually differentiated between mōkai (slaves) and African chattel slaves. The former were relatively treated better than the latter. Slaves were always war captives and weren’t traded on anywhere near on the same scale as the trans-Atlantic chattel slave trade.

[@jasonshaw7590]

@ex_orpheus1166 what's your point? Did they eat them? No! Shez

[@ex_orpheus1166]

⁠​⁠@@jasonshaw7590 That Māori mōkai/taurekareka/ponga weren’t the same as African chattel and it’s wrong to equate the two.