this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2024
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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Weren't the Maori also just invaders who killed the natives and brought invasive species with them? I feel kind.of ambiguous about this whole Maori fascination.

[–] [email protected] 89 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

The Maori were Polynesian navigators who were the first humans to settle NZ around 1300 AD. New Zealand and Hawaii were two of the last places on Earth to be settled by humans.

Then some of the Maori left from NZ and colonized the Chatham Islands around 1500. Due to their geographic isolation, they diverged culturally from the Maori, adopted a pacifist way of life, and came to be known as the Moriori.

In the mid-1800s, some Maori tribes, armed with muskets obtained from trade with Europeans, invaded the Chatham Islands and committed a genocide for nearly 30 years against the Moriori, who did not fight back because of their belief in pacifism. This is known as the Moriori genocide.

[–] Stamau123 30 points 3 months ago (2 children)

In 1870, a Native Land Court was established to adjudicate competing land claims; by this time most Māori had returned to Taranaki. The court ruled in favour of the Māori, awarding them 97% of the land.The judge ruled that since the Moriori had been conquered by Māori they did not have ownership rights of the land.

Ahahahaha, wtf

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Pretty much every piece of NZ had been taken off someone by force at some point, before Europeans even landed. The Maori tribes had a number of wars between each other over territory.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

I'd think that's the case for pretty much everywhere on Earth.

It's only fairly recently that we started exchanging coins for land rather than just killing whoever was on it.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago

The land court's purpose was literally (as stated in the establishing legislation) to oversee the "extinguishment or Māori title".

Setting conquest as a precedent of losing your land was deliberate.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

There's still one little tribe of moriori left

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Not 100%, all surviving Moriori are a mixture of Maori and Moriori. At this point probably some European as well.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The "full blooded X" argument is an attempt to disenfranchise Māori from their whakapapa. If a person can and wants to trace their lineage (whakapapa) to any iwi or waka then they are Māori.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I don't know, I have a not insignificant amount of indigenous blood (not Maori) and without any cultural ties I don't think it's significant as an individual. My family was raised and then raised me with no real connections to any of our hereditary cultures.

I don't really have an interest in submerging into a culture that is foreign to me, nor am I interested in attempting to benefit from any sort of reparations. I'm just a white girl with a large fraction of indigenous blood.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

That was my "wants to" bit was supposed to cover. It's entirety your choice and no-one else's.

I don't get to tell you "how Māori" you are, or specifically if you are/not Māori enough.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Including David Seymour, ironically enough.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

That's something I just don't get. That's why I included "and wants to".

[–] [email protected] 49 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Nope. Not even close. That's a myth used to invalidate actual Māori history.

The "moriori" were a Māori tribe on the Chatham islands who were conquered by mainland Māori.

Fun fact: NZ is the last place on earth to be permanently settled by humans.

TL;DR: Polynesians settled New Zealand over the 13th century, slowly lost contact with polynesia and the cultures diverged.

[–] Alexstarfire 14 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Are we just discounting that Antarctica still has no permanent residents?

[–] IMongoose 25 points 3 months ago

Antarctica can't be the last place with a permanent settlement if it has no permanent settlement.

[–] captainlezbian 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It hasn’t happened yet so New Zealand is last. Give it a hundred years and we’ll have antarcticans

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Yep. It has some permanent research facilities but no permanent settlement.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

They were genocided by mainland Maori, the island's inhabitants were either killed or enslaved, and forced to adopt the culture of their conquerors.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Yeah. I deliberately avoided using "genocide". It's a bit of a political hot topic right now (middle east) and I also wasn't entirely sure, so erred on the conservative side and just used "conquered".

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Fun fact: Easter Island was probably settled about the same time, the Juan Fernandez islands weren't settled until the late 1600's.

ETA: Falklands/Islas Malvinas is even more recent iirc

[–] Skullgrid 4 points 3 months ago

Islas Malvinas

🤣

[–] nyctre 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I have a question about the fun fact. Trying to better understand it. If I were rich enough to buy an island and move to it, would that be the new last place to be settled by humans? If no, why not. And if yes, then surely there's at least one example of someone doing that since the 13th century.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It depends how big the island is, and whether it's supported by something else. NZ is a very large place, a country in it's own right, and is economically independent.

Your hypothetical island would likely be answerable to another government, and economically reliant on whatever your source of income is.

[–] nyctre 3 points 3 months ago

Fair enough. Yeah, I thought that maybe there were still small, unclaimed islands out there where you could have a small farm with solar power and shit and be self sufficient.

[–] yokonzo 27 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If you look back far enough most everyone is an invader

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

Maybe we shouldnt be looking backwards for inspiration.

[–] RegalPotoo 21 points 3 months ago

Kinda sorta. The Moriori settled in the Chatham Island (a few hundred km south of New Zealand) and were later victims of genocide at the hands of a Maori tribe during the musket wars. Previously it was assumed that the Moriori came to the Chathams in a separate wave of migration to the ones that brought the Maori, but more recent evidence seems to point to them arriving in New Zealand at about the same time, then moving south.

There were a few species that went extinct between the Maori arriving in NZ and the Europeans showing up, but expecting an ecosystem to not change when a new apex predator shows up is just "noble savage" BS.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Some of them were cannibals too.