Learning from our Past

Our government is in the course – before our very eyes – of declaring that it has lost confidence in, and is accordingly abandoning, the founding concept of New Zealand. It apparently prefers the path trodden by others.

The world is not short of countries in which an invading population of – usually white – people takes over the government and subjects another group – usually black or brown – to an inferior status. If I had wanted to live in such a country, I would not have returned from the UK to my native New Zealand, but I would instead have sought citizenship of Australia, or the United States, or perhaps even South Africa.

Instead, however, I embraced a country which had, quite deliberately, opted for a quite different model. It is a model in which one civilisation does not assert its superiority over another but where they each agree to live together and to learn from each other. They each understand that they are better off, and lead fuller and richer lives, if they can draw upon their different histories and world views.

We have run New Zealand on this basis for long enough, and with enough success, to prove to ourselves that it is a superior model – that it provides us, not only with a country that avoids the tensions and conflicts that beset other countries, but also with a secure basis from which we can make further progress.

Sadly, however, our current government is acting as though it has lost confidence in what has been the very foundation of our success so far. They seem determined to emphasise what divides us, not what unites us, to ignore the lessons that history has taught us. They look elsewhere for models as to the best way to build a country that owes its foundation to two or more races rather than one.

For the first time in our short history, we are invited to see division and difference, to act on what separates us, not what brings us together. So, the beauty of the Maori language and dance, the subtlety of the Maori world view, are declared to be of no value. The issue of what we can learn from each other is, we are told, a matter of one-way traffic.

I, as a pakeha New Zealander, am left with a sense of abandonment. I am no longer different, because I am a New Zealander. I no longer have something that is different – something that makes me part of the South Pacific. I am just another colonist, bringing my civilisation with me from foreign climes, not learning from where I was born.

We must hope that this attempt to close off our options is given short shrift and that we return to what has served us so well so far.