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1 Moriori hope that their Treaty settlement will destroy the misconceptions about their history. But the Moriori myth is like an evil & ingenious virus: it has been able to mutate & multiply, & is now infecting people across the globe. I count 5 versions of the myth. (thread)
2 A century ago the Edwardian scholars Elsdon Best & Percy Smith decided, on the basis of misunderstood oral tradition, that the ancestors of Maori had arrived in Aotearoa after a Melanesian people called the Moriori, or Maruiwi.
3 According to Best & Smith, Moriori were a dark-skinned people who practiced cannibalism & spoke a Melanesian language. The Moriori were driven by Maori into the Ureweras, where they became the Tuhoe, & to the Chathams/Rekohu. 
4 Just after World War One HD Skinner, NZ's first properly trained anthropologist, stowed away on a ship to the Chathams, where he did detailed studies of the artefacts, physiogomy, traditions, & language of Moriori. Skinner's subsequent showed Moriori were a Polynesian people.
5 Skinner's work convinced most scholars that Moriori were not a Melanesian but a Polynesian people, related to but not distinct from Maori, & indigenous to Rekohu, not all NZ. Keith Sinclair began his famous Pelican History of NZ by dismissing the Moriori myth.
6 In the 1970s Doug Sutton led archaeological excavations on Rekohu that further buried the myth created by Best & Smith. The Moriori renaissance of the '80s, & the book by Michael King that it produced, made the notion of an extinct pre-Maori people even less tenable.
7 But as the notion of Moriori as a pre-Maori people lost credibility, a new myth emerged. In 1989 CK Stead published an article called 'Polynesian Pacifists' in Metro magazine. Stead seized on a real & calamitous event, the 1835 invasion of Rekohu by two small Taranaki iwi.
8 At the fag end of the Musket Wars, when iwi had achieved parity of arms, making further conflict foolish, the displaced iwi Ngati Mutunga & Ngati Tama took a ship to Rekohu, where they conquered & enslaved the unarmed Moriori. Hundreds of the tchakat henu died.
9 In his Metro article, CK Stead extrapolated from the tragedy of 1835, & drew a contrast between the pacifist Moriori & an allegedly warlike, barbaric Maori. He ignored the fact that only a tiny number of Maori invaded Rekohu.
10 Stead also ignored the fact that, since the 'discovery' of the Chathams by Vancouver in 1791, sealers & whalers had been visiting the islands, & frequently killing & looting. Scholar Rhys Richards argues that, by 1835, the Moriori population had already been 'decimated'.
11 Stead talked about the cannibalism of the conquerors of Rekohu. But he ignored the way that hundreds of pairs of Moriori dentures were harvested by visiting Pakeha from beaches where Moriori had been massacred. The dentures ended up in Europe, where they were fitted to mouths
12 Stead had built a new myth from the facts of the 1835 invasion. As the old Moriori myth became less tenable, Stead's version was taken up by many Pakeha eager to justify colonialism. Stead's fellow writer Peter Wells was an enthusiast.
13 Altho the notion of a pre-Maori people had been discredited amongst educated NZers by the 1980s, it was taken up with alacrity by an emerging generation of pseudo-historians. White supremacists like Martin Doutre & Kerry Bolton saw Moriori as an extinct white race.
14 In the 21st century yet another version of the Moriori myth has emerged, & quickly gone global. Jared Diamond's bestselling book Guns, Germs, & Steel helped to launch the myth.
15 Jared Diamond drew a contrast between a peaceful & somewhat naive Moriori people & ferocious Maori invaders. He suggested that the isolation of Moriori on Rekohu had led them to adopt an unrealistic pacifist ideology. This ideology was, Diamond says, their doom.
16 Diamond's discussion of Moriori was soon picked up by numerous right-wing northern hemisphere websites. The alt right has made Moriori into a symbol of the foolishness of pacifism. Liberal whites who refuse to fight non-white 'invaders' are likened to the people of Rekohu.
17 But alt-righters who misuse Moriori history are ignorant of the circumstances that led the people of Rekohu not to resist the invasion of 1835. Moriori had seen many violent groups of sealers & whalers arrive on their islands & depart; they likely expected the same pattern.
18 There is a 5th Moriori myth that is flourishing. Unlike the other 4 versions, which are advanced mostly by white racists, the 5th iteration of the myth is advanced by some Maori & by liberal Pakeha. It holds that Moriori were not a distinct people, but simply a Maori iwi.
19 Many liberal commenters on social media insist that Moriori are nothing more than an iwi of Aotearoa. Tama Rua claims that the language and culture of Moriori are 'almost identical' to that of Maori. Gerald Patena says bluntly that 'Moriori are Maori'.
20 But Moriori themselves insist upon their identity as a distinct Polynesian people, related to but not identical with Maori. The Hokotehi Trust, which represents Moriori & employs the scholar Susan Thorpe, says that Moriori arrived on Rekohu directly from tropical Polynesia.
21 The undoubted links between Moriori and early Maori culture came, the Hokotehi Trust says, because Moriori made return journeys to Te Wai Pounamu, where they traded & intermarried with locals.
22 There's no doubt the people of Rekohu developed a distinct culture. Moriori called themselves tchakat henu, not tangata whenua; the gorgeous, freeflowing artworks Moriori made on trees lacked the complex patterning of classical Maori carving; Moriori were egalitarian pacifists
23 The leaders of Ngati Mutunga o Wharekauri, whose ancestors invaded Rekohu in 1835, employed a version of the fifth Moriori myth, as they attempted to block the Moriori Treaty settlement. They claimed Moriori were a conquered people, who had lost mana whenua over Rekohu.
24 Ngati Mutunga o Wharekauri leaders remind me of the way redneck Pakeha often insist that Maori are no longer a distinct people but simply New Zealanders. The assimilationist argument is wrong when it is made by Pakeha against Maori, & wrong when it is made against Moriori.
25 I have given only a vague outline of the nightmarish history of the Moriori myth. Jacinta Blank & Peter Clayworth have both researched the myth at length, & their theses are online: ourarchive.otago.ac.nz/handle/10523/3… ir.canterbury.ac.nz/handle/10092/9…
