Repugnant Outburst In New Zealand Parliament Proves ‘Native’ Cultures Should Be Assimilated
The video, which went viral Thursday, showed a group of Maori (“indigenous”) members of the New Zealand House of Representatives screaming, chanting, and generally causing mayhem in the House chamber in response to the mere idea that a bill they didn’t like would come up for a vote.
The “appallingly disrespectful” spectacle was led by members of the Maori-centric party Te Pāti Māori. The party extols explicitly Marxist positions, advocating for Maori “liberation” and endorsing redistributive economic policies.
On Thursday, Te Pāti Māori successfully liberated the New Zealand House chamber from the rules-based parliamentary procedure that allows Western-style democratic governments to function without descending into complete anarchy.
The ritualistic dance the House members performed, the haka, has a grisly history, as do the Maori themselves.
Before the arrival of the British, the Maori routinely engaged in ritual cannibalism and human sacrifice, mostly related to warfare. A tribe’s warriors would perform the haka, go off to fight, and then consume the flesh of slain enemies afterward.
In fact, the very haka performed by the House members on Thursday (the title of which translates to “It is death”) was created by a Maori chief who had escaped capture and consumption by an enemy tribe.
Though the Maori and leftist scholars have tried to downplay (and still do) the frequency and significance of cannibalism in Maori culture for decades, New Zealand historian Paul Moon extensively documented instances of cannibalism in his book This Horrid Practice, drawing on European accounts going back to the legendary Captain James Cook in the 1770s.
Moon also noted that the Maori practiced infanticide. Their warrior culture prized male babies, so mothers would sometimes smother female infants or push their fingers through the soft part of their skulls.
As they did elsewhere in the world, the British extirpated cannibalism and human sacrifice in New Zealand after the Treaty of Waitangi to such an extent that many historians doubted that the practices had taken place at all.
Maori revisionists have claimed that the haka can represent a greeting or a “celebration of life,” but any rational observer can conclude that the Te Pāti Māori members did not intend their Thursday haka as a greeting or celebration.
The AP characterized the stunt as a “rare outburst of protest” and, of course, other leftist outlets framed it as a brave demonstration against injustice, but this kind of behavior more resembles a tantrum from frustrated children.
It should go without saying that this display, with its explicitly violent undertones, is wholly unacceptable in a modern state. It also elucidates the fact that the brute force culture of many “indigenous” groups runs directly counter to the tradition of decorum found in Western government as well as the principles of debate, deliberation, and compromise.
Instead of compromising with the “natives” and allowing them to masquerade as a “marginalized” group to get more handouts, the British should have done more to both acknowledge Maori culture was morally repugnant and fully assimilate them into English culture. In the long-term, their full assimilation would have avoided almost all of the problems the Maori currently face and would allow the country’s House of Representatives to actually function properly.
And it’s not impossible to assimilate foreign cultures. The United States did it very successfully up until a few decades ago — when we made the conscious decision to stop trying. European history has seen dozens if not hundreds of cultures assimilated (see any culture that fell under Roman hegemony). All it takes is the confidence that your culture is more moral and more dedicated to the improvement of human life. When the culture you’re trying to assimilate is engaging in or glorifying cannibalism and human sacrifice, that shouldn’t be a hard stance to take.
