1/5 I find the eliminationist rhetoric that's entering NZ politics from Trumpian America disturbing. We're hearing the rhetoric from the right at the moment, but I've also heard it from the odd person on the left in the past. I've got a graphic to show to NZ's eliminationists.

https://twitter.com/secondzeit/status/1765162373088956919

2/5 This is a graphic of NZ's 1902 election, when Seddon's Liberals triumphed over Massey's Conservatives. In the 122 years since, NZ has been divided into left & right blocs. They aren't going away, because they're rooted in sociology & history.

1/7 Imagine that settler govts had not denied Maori the vote, that there had been no wars & confiscations, that Maori & Pakeha had come together in a hybrid culture. This might sound like a plot for an alt history novel, but in a remote part of NZ it was reality.

2/7 These precise & exquisite maps are part of Kaye Dragicevich's book about the gumlands of early 20thC Northland, which I acquired yesterday. Amidst the swamps & hut villages on these maps a new, Slavic Polynesian people was born.

1/7 The debate about the meaning of the Treaty shouldn't be settled by partisan politics or polls. It should be settled by historical evidence. Here are 5 reasons why I believe David Seymour's wrong when he claims the Maori who signed the Treaty 1840 gave away all sovereignty. 2/7 The reason is the speeches the chiefs made at Waitangi. If they wanted Britain to take away their authority, why did not one of them say that? The chiefs talked obsessively about the negative impact of British settlers in the north, & the need to control those settlers.

1/10 A number of people who don't read poetry have pronounced Tusiata Avia a bad poet. How can we judge for ourselves? Back in the days when I used to edit literary publications, & often had loads of poems to accept or reject, I had two tests. I think Avia passes both. 2/10 The first test involves imagery; the second involves sound. One of the jobs of the poet is to renew the worn out, cliched imagery that we tend to use in everyday life. Bad poets will use cliches. Their seas will sigh or shine; their mountains will be mighty.

1/17 Brian Tamaki has led haka in support of Israel. 6 of the 14 nations that backed Israel in a UN vote were in the Pacific Islands. What is the reason for the significant, tho not overwhelming, support for Israel from indigenous Pacific peoples? The answer lies in the 19th C. 2/17 Grant Wyeth has attributed Pacific support for Israel to the strength of pentecostal, End Times Christianity in the region. Wyeth has a point, but he ignores the fact that a significant number of Pacific people see themselves as descendants of Jews.

1/5 I posted yesterday about the way Ben Couch & Winston Peters internalised white supremacist ideas in spite of their brown skin. Another case of the same phenomenon was the Samoan Nazi Party, which grew in the late '30s, & hoped that Hitler would throw NZ out of Samoa. 2/5 These startling photos have been publicised by Michael Field. Interestingly, many 'pure' German Samoans spurned the Nazi Party, preferring the more socially elite Concordia Club. A lot of party members had mixed German & Samoan heritage. A few were Jews.

1/9 'Don't listen to Julian Batchelor, he's not an expert. Don't listen to me, I'm not an expert. Go to the experts.' These rare & precious words were spoken by Pere Huriwai-Seger, at the last meeting of the Kaipara District Council. The meeting was a shambles. 2/9 If you order clowns, you get a circus. The circus started when Julian Batchelor addressed the council. Mayor Craig Jepson claimed Batchelor had approached him & asked to speak, but Huriwai-Seger showed the meeting an e mail that proved Jepson had invited Batchelor.

1/15 Jill Bender teaches history at the Uni of North Carolina. She's dived into NZ archives, & returned with a story about alliances between Maori & Irish anti-imperialists in the 19th C Waikato & King Country. Bender has also found an old, long-forgotten, potent name: Piniana. 2/15 Bender gives us new facts about the small Fenian army that formed in Thames & sent men into Te Rohe Potae or the King Country, then an independent state, in 1869. The army appears to have been carefully organised, with ranks, sashes, & flags.

1/4 I've got a simple question for Julian Batchelor. It's about this man, James Busby, who along with Hobson drafted the Treaty of Waitangi. According to Batchelor, their true version of the Treaty was suppressed. 2/4 Batchelor says that the authentic Busby and Hobson text and its Maori translation were hidden by sinister forces shortly after the February 6 1840 signing, & a phoney, much more pro-Maori text was substituted.

1/10 Yesterday was the 171st anniversary of the Constitution Act, the most tragically neglected law in NZ history. Created by Britain as NZ prepared for self-government, the law concretised the 'two people, two systems' pragmatism of early governors, especially FitzRoy. 2/10 Most early governors had allowed iwi wide autonomy, except where their activities clashed with those of whites. Early laws like the Juries Act had established separate systems for Maori & Pakeha. Section 71 of the Constitution Act allowed iwi self-government.

1/9 This property was the stronghold of two Pakeha capitalists. One thrived in the 19th C, the other in the 21st. Both saw the property as the model for a new & sinister society. Both hoarded art here. Both uprooted communities of less fortunate NZers. & both suffered vengeance. 2/9 I'm talking about Thomas Russell & James Wallace, & the property named Pah Homestead. Russell was the founder of the Bank of New Zealand & a string of less successful business institutions. He entered politics, & was part of the govt that invaded the Wakato Kingdom in 1863

1/5 In 1852 Robinson Crusoe became the first novel to appear in Maori. According to an Elsdon Best article I've just read, the story had quite an impact on a group of Manawatu Maori. They launched an expedition to search for Crusoe. 2/5 Crusoe's would-be rescuers searched for him at the mouth of the Manawatu, where were there are small islands. Best mocks the Maori who went searching for Crusoe as 'primitive'. But weren't they simply assimilating a new story to their worldview?

1/4 I feel overwhelmed by high culture here in Warkworth. Today the NZ String Quartet turned up to give a concert in the same hall where Pasifika dancers performed on Friday. They performed a piece by Shostakovich, who is surely a composer with new relevance in the era of Putin. 2/4 At the end of April the NZ Symphony Orchestra will be performing Shostakovich's 10th Symphony, where he dared to portray the dictator who tormented him for decades. The symphony's furious noise is an attempt to convey Stalin's brutal paranoia.

1/4 Michael Stevens took this gorgeous photo at Meola Reef, a rocky isthmus that extends into the Waitemata harbour parallel to Point Chevalier, which can be seen in the distance. In the early 1860s a sinister village was built on Meola. It had no inhabitants.

https://twitter.com/mstevnz/status/1642451059636596743

2/4 Governor Grey & his settler allies were preparing to invade the Waikato Kingdom, & by the end of '62 Auckland teemed with British soldiers. There was a rifle range near Meola, & the point got its modern name from a soldier named Chevalier who won a sharpshooting contest.

1/7 Many Australasians are still either ignorant of or in denial about their nations' role in the 19th C slave trade. Artist Jasmin Togo-Brisby is one of 70,000 South Sea Islanders, living reminders of the trade. Many of their ancestors were stolen from Melanesia. 2/7 Togo-Brisby's art opens a wormhole to the slave ships & sugar plantations of the 19th C. Her work Bittersweet, which I wrote about years ago when it was on show in West Auckland, was recently shown in Australia.

1/6 William Massey's memorial was recently vandalised. In an article for Stuff, Conor Knell explained why Massey has enemies - he mentioned the white supremacism, & the violent quashing of the 1913 Great Strike - but tried for some balance. That's where things went wrong. 2/6 In an effort to show Massey's positive achievements, Knell mentioned that he 'invested in national infrastructure & education', & that he 'signed the treaty of Versailles on behalf of NZers'. But Massey's signature was hard-won.

1/6 Julian Batchelor came to Rodney recently to proclaim a race war, but the day after his farcical meeting in Orewa Pakeha & Maori united at a gathering up the road in Wellsford. They were members of Fight the Tip. 2/6 The group formed to oppose plans for a vast rubbish dump in the Dome Valley, close to the Kaipara-bound Hoteo River. The recent floods caused large slips on land meant for the dump, giving a sense of the danger of contamination of the awa & the harbour.

1/9 Tonight I learned I am a cannibal. The revelation came during the World of Culture event at Warkworth hall, where locals from Tuvalu, Kiribati, Fiji, Samoa, the Solomons, Niue, Banaba, & Tonga were exhibiting handicrafts & dancing. I was speaking to a Banaban named Henry. 2/9 We'd been talking about Banaba's destruction by phosphate mining, & the way the phosphates had been sprayed NZ farms like the one I grew up on. That fine coat of white powder seemed magical, like snow, when I was 8 or 9. Now it doesn't. What Henry said next shocked me.

1/18 Richard Dawkins & his allies have been attacking the idea that Polynesians gained scientific knowledge during their thousands of years exploring the Pacific & settling lands like Aotearoa. Dawkins et al regard such an idea as a 21st C, 'woke' phenomenon. They're badly wrong 2/18 Apirana Ngata is often the go-to man for Pakeha looking for a token Maori to defend colonialism & assimilation. Opponents of Maori science have invoked Ngata. In a 1911 speech, tho, Ngata spoke of the great contribution ancient Maori knowledge could make to science.

1/5 I've spent the last week or so listening almost exclusively to John Coltrane. I'm determined to defeat the lazy approach to the arts that the digital era is trying to instill in me. Back in the '90s books & albums were expensive, & you watched whatever arthouse cinemas showed 2/5 I was resilient. I struggled with Finnegans Wake, knowing I'd not be able to afford another book for a fortnight. I sat through Theo Angelopoulos' glacial movies. If I bought an album & found it too frenetic or lugubrious, I had no choice but to listen again & again.

1/23 I made a raid on Auckland & picked up this volume, which has been out of print for decades & cost $60. The Farthest Promised should be in the windows of all the shops that sell new books, not on a shelf at the back of a secondhand store. Every Pakeha needs to read it. Twice. 2/23 Since the '80s we've had a series of well-meaning books about Pakeha identity, & how Pakeha can live more easily alongside Maori in Aotearoa. Most of these books are worthless, because their authors don't understand why most 19th C Pakeha came here, & what they were fleeing.