Very well spoken.

Awesome korero

Give me a $100 for every utterance of 'narrative' and 'patriarchy' and I could fly to London to see the King! And he's far too coy about the evident (mixed) motives of other tribes; after all, we do pay historians to take a punt ie articulate a considered view on key, critical events. and not avoid critical appraisal. however inconvenient or impolitic or offensive to current leftist anti-colonialist ideology. Maori tribes had agency after all; they could form, amend and terminate alliances with the British Crown at key times to secure and advance their circumscribed geographic interests & localised social contract and keep neighbouring tribes in check etc. This sort of strategic behaviour has occurred since time immemorial eg. on the Gangetic plain of the Indian subcontinent in antiquity wherein 'janapada' comprised the composite idea of land-people. I wrote a 2006 book chapter on this topic - Arthasastra and Hindu Equilibrium. The power configuration of the Indic state system was quite unstable, tending towards anarchy. So whilst of great interest for we kiwis, the Maori experience wasn't especially novel or a singularity - even the use of newly available high-tech weaponry to decimate a tribe's enemies! Whilst history may not exactly repeat itself, it does rhyme. I do know the Bay of Plenty quite well, having ridden a bicycle around the east coast, from Opotiki to Gisborne and back via the Waimana gorge. Happy times! Pax deorum (peace of the gods). Keep up the good work comrades. And remember the horrific death and multilation of the missionary, Rev Carl Volkner in Opotiki during 1865. Lest we forget.

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