Maori King Quotes

martial people, however, it was not long before Maori began to use muskets in inter-tribal

If popular mythology is to be believed, the discoverer of New Zealand was a Polynesian voyager named Kupe. Oddly, this myth was Pakeha in origin rather than Maori. Maori came to embrace it solely as a result of its widespread publication and dissemination in New Zealand primary schools between the 1910s and the 1970s.

The early Greek tribal society resembles in many respects that of peoples like the Polynesians, the Maoris for instance. Small bands of warriors, usually living in fortified settlements, ruled by tribal chiefs or kings, or by aristocratic families, were waging war against one another on sea as well as on land.

In 1960s America, Martin Luther King, Jr., cited Christianity and the words of America’s founding fathers to craft a plea for civil rights that spoke to many whites. A generation later, at the far side of the world, Maori were using much the same tactic, seeking their own racial justice by deploying old treaties, English common law, and the journals of a man regarded by many Pakeha as New Zealand’s founding father. When I suggested this analogy to Tracey, she smiled tightly. “We admire King, and we’re Christians, too. But we’re not so keen as he was on turning the other cheek.