You’re done here, and you won’t be missed a bit. Delusions of grandeur are so…déclassé.
What I am is the swift sword of justice in Great Debates. I enforce - along with others - comity and respect for others. Something which I encourage you to think about.
By the terms you agreed to when you signed up you should know that insulting others, and the having of multiple accounts, is forbidden. I am very grateful for your honesty in announcing your plans.
Jonathan Chance
Moderator
Great Debates
Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha so weak, all because I said shut up. Ahahahahahahaha … Try and stop me creating another account, it can’t happen! Who you are is a not important to me, your a nobody, you have no affect on my everyday life.
Silenus, I can smell the poo coming from your breath. There are no delusions of Grandure here! You have no clue who I am. Not a clue! Loser
P.s I NEVER READ YOUR STUPID RULES,I FED THEM TO THE DOGS!!
A touch! A touch, I say!
I have been touched to the quick by your rapier wit. Chastened, I am.
Hi there, I’m one of the administrators here at the Straight Dope.
I see you’ve collected two warnings since you’ve been here, which is all of four days ago. Not a great way to make a start.
As to authority, please look here at the registration agreement that you did agree to when you registered here:
Also:
It’s the job of the moderators to enforce the rules for everybody. It’s your job as a member of the Straight Dope community to operate under these rules and pay attention to what moderators and administrators tell you.
Play nice or be gone. It’s up to you.
Is this the type of person who deserves official recognition of Maori nobilitiness? No wonder the Queen is ignoring him.
By his own standards, no:
Quite a shame, really. Makes me glad that we are doing away with the entire concept of “hereditary” ennobling, and replacing it with knighthoods and other such recognitions of the value and contribution of individuals. If a title doth not improve the man, then the effort is mere vanity. Oh, woe! Oh, tragedy!
All right, that’s enough, then.
Or perhaps it’s not enough.
One of our non-banned kiwi brethren has appealed to me to reopen the thread as he believes he and others from NZ can benefit from the discussion.
Enjoy the thread, you summer-loving people, you.
Thanks Jonathan -
There’s a bunch of stuff that Ben has said that I find objectionable, stupid and also inaccurate from what I remember at school - so I’m going to try and address some of what he talks about.
Am at work right now though…
Straight off the bat though - one thing to understand about Maori, and about New Zealand, is that “Maori” is not a singular term - there are over 100 (tribes that are) signatories to the Treaty of Waitangi. Many of the tribes were mortal enemies - my own home town was the site of a rather well known battle and Marae (fortified village) of a rampaging northern invader.
Given this, talks of a “Maori Royalty” immediately prompt me to ask - which tribe? This Map is but one resource to get an idea of how fragmented the tribal situation was
I’m a white New Zealander and I find the term “Pakeha” offensive. It has a lot of negative connotations to me (ranging from, at best, an unironic “Whitey” through to “New Zealand European who has co-opted lots of Maori culture and thinks they’re better than other New Zealanders as a result”, through to “White Pig”, depending on context).
There are plenty of New Zealanders who do self-identify as “Pakeha”, but I’m not one of them - and the assumption all white New Zealanders are Pakeha is, well, wrong, to put it mildly, and in many cases (including mine) veers into “offensive”.
Yes, it is, to a certain extent. Most of the focus is on New Zealand’s European history because, well, that’s when the country’s written (and recorded) history begins.
We did quite a bit on Maori culture and the like in primary school though, so it’s not like the Maori were glossed over as interesting trivia rather than the people who were in NZ before the British showed up.
Like Martini, I’m also not very comfortable with the term “Pakeha”.
Particularly as Ben liked to employ it to refer to any “white person”. If pressed, I would have to identify as New Zealand European, but would actually prefer a simple “New Zealander”.
My memory of what was covered in school, and when is now rather sketchy - but from what I recall equal prominence was given to “Maori” and “European” history.
Certainly, we were taught about both Tasman and Cook, about land wars, the treaty, Maori custom and history (and why the European practices at the time were “unfair”) and more.
Thanks for the information…I found Ben’s claim that Maori culture and history wasn’t taught in schools hard to believe. Thanks again for weighing in.
That includes Maoris, doesn’t it? Maybe “non-Maori” would be most useful in the context of this conversation.
Like bengangmo, I prefer “New Zealander” generally, but yes, in the context of this conversation Non-Maori is probably the best way to refer to, well, all the people living in New Zealand who aren’t Maori.
Which, incidentally, is the overwhelming majority of the country’s population - Maori culture has a prominent place in New Zealand’s tourism imagery but most New Zealanders aren’t Maori.
Back to the OP’s issue:
It seems to me he wanted to know why Maori who live in what is now New Zealand shouldn’t get British aristocrocy-based titles that parallel their Maori ones.
The reason they shouldn’t get them is that the Maori don’t meet the criteria for those titles. The people who dole out the aristocratic titles have a different set of criteria from the Maori criteria, and the people who dole out the titles desired by the OP are in control now.
The Maori no longer control (what is now) New Zealand. Put simply, they lost that a long time ago. There may be some ideal of Fairness that says, “That isn’t fair–the Maori were there first and their land was stolen,” but such an Ideal has no bearing on reality.
It’s a bummer to have winners and losers in conflicts, but when conflict does arise, it definitely pays to be a winner.
I think the problem that some of us have - the distinction really isn’t all that clear.
For one thing - the distinction between what is “Maori” and “Non-Maori” is rather amorphous and goes more by self identification than anything else. There are very very few “pure” Maori left in New Zealand, and even the whitest of white bread families will partially follow some “Maori” traditions and customs.
The area where I grew up and schooled has much less “Maori Culture” - but it is still a significant part of our lives. And you can’t grow up in New Zealand without at least a basic understanding of things like Mana (loosely translated as honour and respect for a person), Taonga (treasure) and others.
Certain parts of traditional Maori culture are very much a part of our daily lives - the national anthem for example is always sung in two languages, the famous Haka. Late 19th Century, places were named for “English” - many of these have now be reverted to the tradtional Maori name - and many others had Maori names all along.
Another thing that bothered me about Ben’s arguments - New Zealand has traditionally been fiercely, almost obsessively egalitarian. Both along class and wealth lines. yes - even more so than the US.
furthermore, although there were injustices, on the whole the very honest effort, (and general feeling within New Zealand) was that Maori and Maori culture were treated very fairly, and given every opportunity to succeed - one early example would be Sir Apirana Ngata, but other folk heroes abound - like George Nepia for instance, or Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Te Rangi Hīroa, (Sir Peter Henry Buck).
Like Martini mentioned - Maori folklore is an integral part of schooling - everybody learns the legend of Maui, and how he fished the South Island (or Te Wai Pounamou) out of the sea, or how he captured the sun and slowed its progress across the sky.
Another great and respected Maori leader would have been Dame Whina Cooper, I guess the point that I’m trying to make - in contrast to what Ben was claiming,
- A great many Maori were honoured as Dames / Knights / special honours from the govt. All of these were earned, based on their achievements, and the respect they earned within the community in general.
- There is not the separation between Maori and Non-Maori that Ben would have you believe.
- IMHO, the community in general would be very resistant to his idea of hereditary honours - especially coming from Britain. Like Australia, New Zealand is progressively moving further from the crown all the time.