Take a look around the colonial powers of the 19th century and tell me, if the settlers and soldiers and legal systems were going to roll up the beach whether you liked it or not, which one you'd take if you had a choice.
The Dutch? How'd that work out for the Dutch West Indies.
The Japanese? How'd that work out for Manchuria.
The French? How'd that work out for Algeria.
The Germans? How'd that work out for German South West Africa.
The Russians? How'd that work out for Finland.
The Belgians? How'd that work out for the Belgian Congo.
The British? Well, right here is an April letter to me from the Ministry of Justice and the Maori Land Court acknowledging me as a successful claimant (among many) in a land claim shitfest that has been dragging on for five generations.
Among the many reasons why the helpful Maori lawyer with whom I have spent so much time on Zoom in the past year was able to get shit done were such things as:
- oral cultures have veeeeeeeeery long memories.
- the colonisers were from the nation who had in their own intellectual background such things as Magna Carta and Mill's
On Liberty and the rule of law. And colonisation means that those are part of my intellectual background, and my Maori lawyer's intellectual background, and we'll see you in court whitey. Owned.
My mother's father's father's mother was bayoneted to death by a British soldier and her body dumped in a mass grave. That's just one data point in the clusterfuck of native-colonial interaction in NZ. None of that shit has been forgotten. Like I said, long memories. But it's complicated. I'm also descended from some of those colonists. And I am 100% convinced that if any other colonial power than Britain had been the one to roll up that beach, there would have been no Treaty and no five generations of angry whanau waiting for a day in court. There would have been exterminations and no records, the end.
Seriously guys, if I consider Goldsmith's comments to be basically statements of fact, that's a good hint that the issue isn't, um, black or white.