I Stuart

D Dawson’s letter of Beacon, August 1 (Special place for Māori) prompts a second reply.  

His use of the word “assimilation” reveals a desire for all Māori to assimilate to the culture of the European immigrants.  

This is clearly what some believe when they speak of one people.  It is a desire for Māori culture to be eliminated in this country, leaving only a genetic residue of Polynesian people.  

In other words, the complete destruction of Māori as a people.

No wonder there is fear and division in the community. Māori fear what Mr Dawson, and his political hero David Seymour, want for them.  

Assimilation policies, like the previous colonisation policy, have failed indigenous people worldwide. They largely fail because, no matter how assimilated they become, the colonisers always see the brown skin, never the person wearing the skin.

There is a European saying: “when in Rome do as the Romans do”, meaning to act like the locals.  

But, the vast majority of the European people, and their descendants, have not followed that when they arrived here.

Why have the immigrants never assimilated to the culture that was here, and owned these islands?  

I have a book called a Grammar of the New Zealand Language.  It is old, and includes two dates, one in Roman numerals says 1894, the other is a preface dated 1945. The language and grammar it sets out is what we now call te reo Māori.  

I find it fascinating that in 1945 Māori were the New Zealanders.

In his letter, Mr Dawson says “assimilated and became New Zealanders”.  Really? Surely, if the early European immigrants had assimilated, they would be entitled to be called New Zealanders.

Instead, they have stolen that identity and are now trying to steal the identity “tangata whenua”.  (I have no issue at all with people born on this country calling themselves New Zealanders, we cannot turn back history, nor can we deny the descendants of the immigrants citizenship in our country.)  

We expect new arrivals to assimilate into our collective cultures, so what is different from the 19th and early 20th century immigrants from Britain, and the rest of Europe?  

Why does assimilation apply only to the people who were here when the immigrants arrived?

I suspect it has something to do with Cecil Rhodes’ idea that the burden of white people was to conquer the world and civilise all the brown people. It seems to me that European-descent culture remains a dominant culture – it does so simply because of current population numbers.