Originally Authored at TheFederalist.com
A recent video from New Zealand’s House of Representatives proves that some aspects of “native” culture truly belong in the dustbin of history.
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.
This meltdown took place because the country’s parliament is considering a bill to reinterpret the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, one of New Zealand’s foundational documents. The treaty established the British Crown’s sovereignty over New Zealand in exchange for broad protections of Maori lands and rights.
ACT New Zealand, the party that introduced the new bill, argues that in the last few decades the principles outlined in the treaty have been used to grant extra privileges, like ethnic quotas in public institutions, to the Maori. ACT’s bill would extend the rights outlined in the treaty to all New Zealanders, regardless of race.
Of course, the Maori and their leftist allies screamed (literally) that this bill would strip away the Maori’s fundamental right to special treatment.
After multiple interruptions of House Speaker Gerry Brownlee as he tried to move the chamber to a party vote, Member of Parliament Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke began a ritualistic war chant and dance, called a haka, by ripping up a copy of the bill Nancy Pelosi-style. Soon a mob of parliament members and onlookers in the balcony joined Maipi-Clarke in the fracas, completely drowning out any attempts to restore order in the chamber. They even approached David Seymour, the leader of ACT, as they performed the chant in a clear attempt to intimidate him, the Associated Press reported.
Brownlee temporarily suspended the house and expelled two lawmakers, including Maipi-Clarke, from the chamber. Eventually, the bill passed its first reading, but it will almost certainly fail in future votes.
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.
The Maori protest on Thursday broke out because they felt threatened by the idea that they would have to share their heretofore exclusive privileges with their fellow countrymen — that their rights would be assimilated into the rest of the body politic.
With the Treaty of Waitangi, the Maori arguably secured for themselves the best deal any “native” group ever struck with European settlers, yet they still portray themselves as perpetual victims.
Because they were not assimilated, they’ll forever see themselves as outside of the culture that they live in, no matter how much Western governments give them. Regardless of how generously Westerners shower them with money or social programs or special reverence, they’ll always want more. Because they don’t want to assimilate. They want to cling to their aggrieved status forever and degrade Western society as much as possible as a means of revenge.
We see the same pattern here in the United States. Perpetual victimhood serves as the lifeblood of the CRT scourge that has plagued academia and public education for the last few years. The ethnic quotas that evolved from the Treaty of Waitangi smack of the DEI programs and quotas that define modern, woke corporate America. So-called “marginalized” sections of the population want to receive government money and favor in the name of “restitution.” They then scream accusations of racism at reasonable people who threaten their perks by suggesting a system of equality of opportunity.
Repudiating Maori culture and fully assimilating the Maori into Western culture would have benefitted all parties and avoided the shameful impudence shown toward the rules that facilitate good governance. By continuing to tolerate such open exhibitions of hostility, Westerners permit the degradation of their own culture.
Hayden Daniel is a staff editor at The Federalist. He previously worked as an editor at The Daily Wire and as deputy editor/opinion editor at The Daily Caller. He received his B.A. in European History from Washington and Lee University with minors in Philosophy and Classics. Follow him on Twitter at @HaydenWDaniel