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10 tweets,
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1 Te Kawerau a Maki kaumatua Te Warena Taua condemns SOUL, the group confronting police on sacred land at Ihuamatao. Taua's attacks on SOUL leader Pania Newton take us back to the '20s, when some conservative Auckland kaumatua made an alliance with white supremacists (thread) 
2 Taua says that Pania Newton's whakapapa disqualifies her from having an opinion on development at Ihumatao. Newton grew up in the village, & whakapapas to many local ancestors. For Taua, tho, this is not enough. Taua's views owe more to white supremacism than Maori tikanga.
3 Ihumatao & the other kainga on the shores of Manukau harbour suffered double calamities in the 19th century. First Nga Puhi warlord Hongi Hika then British warlord Governor George Grey emptied villages in Tamaki Makaurau, & looted what refugees had left behind.
4 In the 20th century kainga like Ihumatao struggled to survive on scraps of unconfiscated land. A gardening economy developed, as Maori collaborated with another marginalised people, Chinese migrants, to till the soils of Tamaki Makaurau & fill Pakeha stomachs.
5 As Maori & Asian labour created thriving market gardens in early 20th century Auckland, indigenous migrants from NZ's depressed regions arrived, & helped to gather in harvests. The old kainga swelled in size again. Both racist Pakeha & some conservative kaumatua were alarmed.
6 In 1926 the White NZ League was founded in Pukekohe, where Maori, Chinese & Indian market gardeners were together reaping huge harvests, & alarming their Pakeha competitors. The League warned of miscegenation, & called for the mass deportation of Asians. It won wide support.
7 Some conservative kaumatua in Tamaki Makaurau were threatened by the swelling communities at places like Pukekohe, Mangere, & Ihumatao. They feared losing control of their marae, to newcomers from other parts of Aotearoa. They made common cause with the White NZ League.
8 Te Akarana Maori Association, which presented itself as the representative of Maori in Auckland, made an alliance with the White NZ League, & campaigned against the s'posed 'corruption' of Maori life by Asians & manuhiri in places like Ihumatao.
9 Te Akarana Maori Association did not merely ally itself with white supremacists in the 1920s: its kaumatua absorbed a European, pseudo-scientific attitude to 'race', an attitude that relied not on history & r'ships but on spurious notions of purity, degeneracy, & otherness.
10 When Taua claims his opponents in SOUL are not 'real' tangata whenua, he harks back to attitudes of Te Akarana Maori Association in the '20s & '30s - attitudes borrowed from white supremacists. Taua's test of identity is as anti-historical as the bulldozers of Fletchers.
