- IJ
Sidestep: 5 GENOCIDES
There have been many genocides over the ages, the worst in modern times being that against Jews by Nazi Germany. The holocaust involved not just the Jews but also many others including Soviets, the Poles etc, but the annihilation genocide was specifically aimed against Jews. Of the 36 major modern genocides, over 20 of them are by non-European nations. Did you read that right? Yes you did! Even the Moriori genocide is listed on Wiki - but not the Musket wars genocides strangely. We will take just 5 in proportion to European/non-European. The first two are Europeans as the aggressor, the third Africans against African, and the last two committed by Maori against their own kind...
1. Nazi against Jew
The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War II between 1941 and 1945 by Nazi Germany and its collaborators where they systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe. The murders were carried out in pogroms and mass shootings; by a policy of extermination through labor in concentration camps; and in gas chambers and gas vans in German extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka in occupied Poland.
Germany implemented the persecution in stages. Following Adolf Hitler's appointment as chancellor on 30 January 1933, the regime built a network of concentration camps in Germany for political opponents and those deemed "undesirable" (yes, deemed to be committing 'hate speech' ). It started with Dachau on 22 March 1933. After the passing of the Enabling Act on 24 March, which gave Hitler dictatorial plenary powers, the government began isolating Jews from civil society; this included boycotting Jewish businesses in April 1933 and enacting the Nuremberg Laws in September 1935. On 9–10 November 1938, eight months after Germany annexed Austria, Jewish businesses and other buildings were ransacked or set on fire throughout Germany and Austria on what became known as Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass"). After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, triggering World War II, the regime set up ghettos to segregate Jews. Eventually, thousands of camps and other detention sites were established across German-occupied Europe. In October 1939 Hitler sign a euthanasia decree to carry out involuntary euthanasia (learning yet?).
The segregation of Jews in ghettos culminated in the policy of extermination the Nazis called the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, discussed by senior government officials at the Wannsee Conference in Berlin in January 1942. As German forces captured territories in the East, all anti-Jewish measures were radicalized. Under the coordination of the SS, with directions from the highest leadership of the Nazi Party, killings were committed within Germany itself, throughout occupied Europe, and within territories controlled by Germany's allies. Paramilitary death squads called Einsatzgruppen, in cooperation with the German Army and local collaborators, murdered around 1.3 million Jews in mass shootings and pogroms from the summer of 1941. By mid-1942, victims were being deported from ghettos across Europe in sealed freight trains to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, they were gassed, worked or beaten to death, or killed by disease, starvation, cold, medical experiments, or during death marches. The killing continued until the end of World War II in Europe in May 1945.
In the end some 6 million died... 3,218,000 in the six main death camps
2. European against Se'lknam
We covered this on 2nd October 2022. See that post for photos. This genocide occurred relatively recently and was akin to hunting wild animals. Can you imagine the panic in being maimed and killed by an enemy weapon that was noisy, hit you without being face to face, with something your mind could not comprehend. It would be like aliens arriving now and killing us with weapons we did not understand, nor could compete with. The Selknam could do nothing about it. At first gold was discovered, then ranchers moved in and tried to relocate the people and then the exterminations began in the early 1890's with the complicity of the Argentine and Chilean governments. Bounties were even paid on the numbers killed. It is brutal story but you can research it for yourself. My purpose in this is to compare the treatment of Maori by Europeans to these people - a vastly different treatment as to that of their own supposed people.
There were many involved in the Selknam massacres - including some NZ shepherds. The large ranchers tried to drive out the Selk'nam, then began a campaign of extermination against them, with the complicity of the Argentine and Chilean governments. Large companies paid sheep farmers or militia a bounty for each Selk'nam dead, which was confirmed on presentation of a pair of hands or ears, or later a complete skull. They were given more for the death of a woman than a man. Think about that one...
The last full-blooded Selk'nam, Ángela Loij, died in 1974.
3. Tutsu against Hutu
Nearly 800,000 Tutsi were systematically murdered by the Hutu's in 1994. The strong majority murdered the weak minority. Tutsi have straighter noses and were taller than the Hutu but represented only 15% of Rwanda's population. The Tutsi are darker but very different in facial features and were discriminated against by Hutu since 1962 setting up the basis for the genocide. Genocides are not random, they are based on long held discrimination and planning
4. Maori against Maori
Between 30,000-40,000 are estimated to have been killed by Ngapuhi rampages. Such that when Europeans first arrived in Auckland, there was hardly a Maori to be seen alive from what was once tens of thousands of them spread over hundreds of villages and Pa in the Auckland region. It was a genocide of epic proportions committed by Maori. Some will say not us, it was Ngapuhi, then Ngapuhi will say not us, but Hōne Heke. Was he not Maori? Were those with him not Maori? Obviously not many tribes would side with Ngapuhi for they still hate them for what they did. But Ngapuhi were merciless, killing men, women and children alike, and not only killing them but enslaving then and killing some of them to eat along the way. Cannibal feasts were part of life in war back then.
Another fact few know when talking these genocidal attacks is the Ngapuhi got down as far as Mataura in Southland while on these rampages. And when we say rampages, they were not attacking with stone and wood clubs like in the olden days, they were killing them with the musket, a weapon their 'enemy' did not have. What a sick heart Hōne Heke must have had to do this and claim European protection when those tribes gained the musket and came back at him. What a sick coward he was.
These facts are quickly getting written out of the history books. But why? If you need to hide the past one much be ashamed of ti. Yet no Maori alive today is to blame for Ngapuhi actions back then. get this... no Europeans alive now are to blame for European crimes against Maori either. But history is history... Let it be known.
Large Ngapuhi war canoe returning with severed heads on poles from a raid of East Coast Tribes - 1819
5. Maori against Moriori
The smallest but last genocide that occurred locally was this one where two Maori tribes murdered those who refused to fight against them. That's right, not a fighting enemy but a passive one. It was similar to the British taking a passive group at Parihaka... one that the government had to apologise for in 2017. But it's ok MoriOri did not need an apology from those two tribes. Now articles come out like that in the NZ Herald that say those like us use the Moriori genocide in order to be anti-Maori (despite the fact all claim MoriOri are Maori).
Where much of the killing occurred.
After 1791, when the British ship Chatham called at Rēkohu, Moriori came into contact with Europeans and Māori who came as crew on sealing and whaling vessels. Some settled on the islands and lived alongside the Moriori. This relative peace was shattered in 1835 when Māori of the Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama tribes, both from Taranaki, arrived in the Chatham Islands in search of new territories and resources. Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama immediately began killing and enslaving the Moriori people. Although Moriori outnumbered them almost two to one, they chose to obey Nunuku’s Law and did not fight back. Approximately 300 were killed, and the rest were enslaved. The tribe was in danger of being destroyed completely. Following several Moriori petitions, the New Zealand government finally stepped..... in after 28 years. A land court in 1870 decided to give most of the Chatham Islands to Ngāti Tama and Ngāti Mutunga, despite the fact that most Māori had by this time returned to their homes in Taranaki. This just compounded the issue.
Now however, the Moriori are finally recognised as the indigenous people of the Chatham Islands.
On November 19, 1835, the brig Lord Rodney arrived in Chatham with 500 Maori warriors armed with their traditional arsenal, but also with pistols and muskets. The boat had several dozen tons of sweet potatoes in its holds to consume, but also to plant to meet the needs of the conquerors determined to stay. On December 5, 1835, another ship convened 400 Maori warriors. The tone was quickly set; the invasion would be bloody. The first victim was said to have been a 12-year-old girl, caught, killed, skinned and whose remains of the carcass and flesh were said to have been suspended from a pole. The signal was clear, the Maoris had come to kill the Morioris and incidentally eat those they would defeat.
No tabu was respected; no property, no sacred enclosure, no place of life which was not invaded and where the most abominable massacres took place on defenseless inhabitants and who, moreover, refused to fight. With no abundant meat on the island, the Morioris became both slaves and cattle of the Maori who mercilessly devoured any vanquished they could kill, keeping the others in reserve to make them their servants.
A Moriori survivor later testified that, from then on, the Maori considered them all to be cattle: men, women, children, the Maori did not make any detail, they killed and ate the Morioris whenever they wanted. A Maori, later explained that in their minds, they took full possession of these lands and that in accordance with their traditions, they were entitled to capture and dispose of all the indigenous population as they wished, including to eat it. . No one was to escape …
In 1862, there were less than a hundred Morioris still alive, out of the two thousand people making up, in 1834, this small peaceful ethnic group.
The Maori, as we have seen, behaved like butchers on this archipelago of Chatham populated before their arrival by nearly two thousand completely peaceful people. This colonization followed by a veritable genocide should have brought the Maori to a little compassion. Nay! If in 1863, the New Zealand authorities came to release their freedom to the last Morioris, the Ngati Mutunga and Ngati Tama clans categorically refused to return the confiscated lands to the first people, the British justice officially declaring in 1870 that 97.3% of the lands belonged to indeed to the Maoris and not to the dispossessed Morioris.
The results of the Maori on the Moriori
This Maori arrogance towards the Morioris has not ceased since: in 1994, the Morioris filed a new appeal in the Waitangi Tribunal, asking for their status as an indigenous people. In 2001 alone, the court finally found them right; they obtained the right to oversee the exploitation of marine resources around their archipelago, but on the other hand, the Maoris, bent on their positions as colonialists and invaders, refused any act of repentance. Finally, on February 14, 2020, New Zealand made a formal request for forgiveness for the suffering endured and paid the Morioris an indemnity of 18 million in compensation. Finally, the Morioris were given the land that had previously belonged to the New Zealand government – but not a square meter of the land most illegally held by the Maori. They still do not want to give in anything and especially not admit their wrongs. Worse, between 2001 and 2020, the latter multiplied acts of incivility towards the Moriori community, sacking and vandalizing the sacred sites of the last Morioris.
We see that if the Maoris willingly pose themselves, even today, as victims of British colonization, they are hypocritical in being part of the same injustices they complain about in being the executioner of a small people neighboring theirs … Do what I say, not what I do!
No race is perfect regardless of colour and history over thousands of years has shown that over time certain races gained or lost the upper hand. The world will look very different 500 years from now with many more genocides being committed.
