Paul Moon says the Ruatoki raid this week shows the rift still exists between Maori and Pakeha
KEY POINTS:
"Guilty of moral resistance" was how the jury found against some of the inhabitants of the Urewera settlement of Maungapohatu.
On April 2 1916, armed police raided the area to arrest the Tuhoe prophet Rua Kenana, who was wanted for various offences but who had refused to hand himself over to the authorities.
When the police arrived, there was a brief gunfight which left two Maori lying dead on the slopes of Tuhoe's most sacred mountain. In the wake of this episode, there was much impassioned gorging on faux patriotism by the country's European population. How could some Maori be so opposed to the Government that they would consider taking up arms against the police?
And how could this happen just nine years after New Zealand had become a Dominion, with all the pretence to national maturity that such a proud status implied? The conclusion that most European New Zealanders reached was that the defiance shown by Rua and his followers was a relic of 19th century Maori nationalism: "The last instance of armed Maori resistance to Pakeha" as the press later rather nostalgically portrayed it as.
Yet it turned out to be much more than the final gasp of the country's fractious colonial past being breathed in the remote crags of the Ureweras. The police intervention at Maungapohatu in 1916 exposed a rift that no amount of impassioned appeals to a nascent "New Zealandness" could conceal.
The desires of some Maori were headed in a different social and political trajectory to those of the country's European inhabitants - it was just that no one at the time saw this happening.
Rua's subsequent imprisonment, and the gradual decline of his self-styled "New Jerusalem" at Maungapohatu appeared to spell the end to this low-level, intermittent rejection of the European world.
And any suggestion of Maori discontent reappearing - especially to the point where weapons might be involved - was utterly inconceivable to most people.
However, as the events of recent days have shown, there is obviously still a rich seam of disgruntlement that some Maori have been tapping into.
If nothing else, this reveals the obstinate cry of "One New Zealand" as little more than a hollow, self-serving platitude. There are two New Zealands, and in some respects, the cultural fissure separating them seems to be growing wider every year. The first of these New Zealands - the one probably familiar to most of us - is predominantly urban, materialistic, outwardly secular, increasingly culturally diverse, and is still clumsily feeling around to discover its identity. As much as it galls some people, the monochromatic Anglo-Saxon New Zealand of the post-war decades is fast fading from sight, and is being replaced by an ethnically kaleidoscopic society.
Then there is the other New Zealand - indigenous, often tucked away in remote recesses like the Ureweras (although it could be any of a dozen of such locations around the country), impoverished and nursed on a diet of injustices that their ancestors endured (some as recent as just a generation or two ago).
Fearful of any assaults on their culture, and feeling disconnected from and to some extent ambivalent towards mainstream society.
When all these ingredients curdle together, they fortify a separatist sentiment that has existed for more than a century among some communities. With such a gulf, the events in Ruatoki this week ought not to have come as a complete surprise.
The longer-term challenge is to encourage both New Zealands to act in ways that strengthen and not undermine each other. It might not result in a nation with a single social and cultural fabric, but it may help to mend some of the tears in the patchwork.
* Paul Moon, is Professor of History at AUT University and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society at University College, London. He is the author of two books on the Tuhoe tohunga Hohepa Kereopa
