John Ansell's view of Maori as primitive highlights ethnocentricity at its worst (Rotorua Daily Post, April 8).
It is centred on the notion of a hierarchy of races. It is a discourse Ansell's forebears brought to Aotearoa and who perceived that physical differences (hair, skin colour, physical features) between themselves and Maori, as equating to Maori cultural and social inferiority.
Maori however, never saw themselves as insignificant to settlers. Believing in the superiority of Pakeha culture, governments set about implementing it. The process that Ansell refers to as ' civilisation ' was actually assimilation. Our education system was the vehicle for the systematic eradication of Maori values, mores, beliefs and language. Its purpose was to change Maori into Pakeha. Maori would live in a society governed by Pakeha social, cultural and political norms rather than their own.
The outcome has been that Maori have lost themselves, drowning in an ocean of negative statistics and identity theft, just as many other colonised peoples world-wide have experienced.
Ansell says his post was criticism but of what? The photo he added of Te Matarae I o Rehu kapa haka group depicts power, precision and beauty. It is a source of great pride for the kapa themselves and for Te Arawa. He sees only primitivism, a view based on the archaic, antiquated racial framework his tupuna left for him to cling to.
