Interview with Kim Hill
Read this interesting interview with Kim Hill
Kim Hill Interviews Michael King
“Face to Face with Kim Hill” TV One
K - Don Brash’s Orewa speech. The public reaction and the political reaction, did it take you by surprise?
M - Yes, it did take me by surprise because I thought that there was a kind of agreement within the Pakeha constituency that the direction in which National and Labour Governments had taken New Zealand in recent years in the race relations field; I thought there was consensus that that was the right way to go. But the degree of disenchantment expressed in the reaction to Brash’s speech and the jump in the poles was a huge surprise.
K - This is the bipartisan policy that Helen Clark presumably was referring to by saying that the consensus had broken down.
M - Yes, Yes.
K - And it’s clearly the result of a feeling of disaffection on the part of non-Maori.
M - Yes, it is clearly the result of that. But its also the result of something else. That in spite of what some people say ad-nauseum; we are not one country we are not one people we are still very much a bi-cultural country. Nothing could have illustrated it more dramatically than this.
K - Can we have a nation made up of different kinds like that? I mean, not even just two, but much more diversity than that?
M - We’ve had it since the 18th century, and Maori have gone on being Maori since the 18th century. Even though from the middle of the 19th century Pakeha politicians have been predicting that on one or two generations we will all become sun-burnt New Zealanders. But what is most interesting, if you look, for example at the kind of survey that’s been done is that more than 150 years after the first contact, Maori and Pakeha still have different sets of attitudes, values and customs. which they want to retain. The difference is that Maori want to retain them without wanting to turn pakeha into Maori but Pakeha want to retain theirs but also want to turn Maori into Pakeha and that’s the other message out of all this. Some people are saying why can’t we all be New Zealanders and they want everyone to be New Zealanders like them, they don’t want to tolerate the existence of the two the cultural expressions.
K - What do you understand to be Pakeha cultural values?
M - First of all, Pakeha culture is non-Maori New Zealand culture. When I talk about the fact that you can have a state highway stopped because of a taniwha but you can’t stop the widening of a road where Frank Sargeson’s ashes are. It means that the non-Maori part does not get the same acknowledgement. Pakeha culture is largely derived from Europe, its more individually oriented whereas Maori culture is more communally oriented. Pakeha culture has all sorts of other values that New Zealanders think are precious, like protecting the underdog, not having great extremes of wealth and extremities of poor. There’s a whole list of these things.
K - Well, according to that then, protecting the underdog, it would appear to make preferential treatment for Maori was perfectly acceptable?
M - I think that’s what it was for a long time until the perception arose that it had gone too far. But the perception arose that it had gone too far is for a variety of reasons including the fact that recent governments have not been very good about explaining what they are doing and why they’re doing it. One of the proposals that I put to the Waitangi Tribunal years ago was that in addition to the Tribunal Report which nobody would read except the claimants and the Tribunal members. That there ought to be main stream publications like the kinds of books I’m writing – about Te Puea and Whina Cooper. It would make the Maori grievances clear and make the basis for the Tribunal decisions clear. They said, ”No, no, its not our job, its not a judicial function.” But they could only exercise that judicial function while there was a Pakeha majority that accepts that it needs to be done. And if there’s going to be a change in that then the whole Waitangi Tribunal system will fall down.
K - As indeed so will the Treaty too, won’t it?
M - Yes. The Treaty will only have effect if Maori think it is important in mediating a living relationship and Pakeha agree with that and if one of those situations changes then the Treaty will go back to what it was prior to about 1980 – a nullity.
K - So, if sufficient numbers of people subscribe to the National Party view that it is important but merely historical, then what’s going to happen?
M - This is where I think there is one element of positivity in raising these issues the way Don Brash has. He says, and he’s right, we have never had a National debate about what the Treaty means, or what its significance is. We’ve had two governments, a National one and a Labour one, who have decided that it was important and decided to put Treaty clauses into legislation but the debate in the country at large as to what the Treaty is – whether it is just a mechanism for moving Sovereignty from Maori to the Crown in 1840 or whether it does mediate a living relationship; that debate has never taken place and I hope now that it will take place.
K - Do you?
M - Yes.
K - Has it never? I feel that we’ve been talking about the Treaty for ever!
How would such a debate be fruitfully held?
M - It has never been held in a way that a majority of people has felt that they were involved in it. Its gone on above their heads either through the media or in Parliament. I’m encountering now a great many people who still don’t understand the Treaty. Some of them think buying the Penguin History might help. That’s why I do what I do. The reason why I’m not teaching history in a lecture theatre is that I want to give history out to that wider New Zealand public so that they do understand these things.
K - But are you able to say what the principles of the Treaty are?
M - Beyond the fact that they require people to act in good faith and in partnership. No! But those two principles themselves are quite important.
K - But the National Party rejects the idea of partnership.
M - Yes, you can argue along those lines.
K - So if we are going to have a debate on the Treaty we have to go right back to basics, which is kind of horrifying because we have to be prepared though, don’t we, for it to be torn up and thrown away? The debate would mean that that’s a possibility?
M - Yes that’s a possibility. Anything’s a possibility. I’m sympathetic to the idea that we should actually have some kind of Royal Commission to hear submissions and to deliberate on what the meaning and the relevance of the Treaty is at this present time. For those naturally who already have a secure view of the Treaty that is to their advantage, which is probably the consensus of the Maori view now, the Treaty viewed as a partnership has been used as a lever to take resources back from the Crown into Maori hands, which has been enormously valuable, and they may not want to give that up. But you still have a large number of people out there, Pakeha people, saying, “We haven’t been consulted about this. Our voice has not been heard.” And that’s unhealthy because these people eventually have the power to turn the tap off.
K - You recommended a Royal Commission on the Treaty. With what purpose?
M - So that people who say they currently have not been heard on this debate, are heard.
K - But you can hardly hear yourself think for the number of people who have been heard on the debate at the moment!
M - You mean people who have been stopped on the curb and been interviewed for two minutes by someone from the New Zealand Herald?
No, I mean people who want to make considered submissions somewhere should be given the opportunity to do so. You know, some years ago, Don McKinnon was chairing a government committee to revamp Waitangi Day and I thought, “I’ve got some ideas on this”
So I wrote to him and said, ”Where do I send my submissions?”
He replied, “Don’t bother, we’ve already made up our minds what we’re going to do. We’re not going to take submissions.”
You know, you’ve got to give people who feel they have something to say, an opportunity to be heard. To feel that there point of viewed has been weighed in some kind of final consensus. And Royal Commission or something like that will give that opportunity.
K - Have you had any feedback on your book? Because you have dealt not only with Maori culture and also with non-Maori culture.
M - Yes I have. I’ve been getting a lot of correspondence but I got even more correspondence from something I wrote in the Herald about Waitangi Day in which I suggested that perhaps it was not the most appropriate day to celebrate a National Day and of the thirty or so letters I got back about that, around twenty of them were from people who said, “I’m glad you raised that because I feel I can’t raise this without being regarded as racist.”
Why am I worried about all this? Because one of my fundamental beliefs as a Pakeha New Zealander, not a Maori New Zealander, is in the open society.
That everything we want to do, everything we are worried about we should be able to talk about and wherever I hear about people not being able to talk about things because they are being constrained by things like possible accusations of racism, it worries me.
K - So you think we should celebrate Dr Brash’s speech on the National Party’s position?
M - No, I wouldn’t say that. If all Dr Brash said was, we need to talk about this, that would have been OK. But Dr Brash actually sent out very carefully constructed coded messages that suggested that National is going to turn back the tide on Maori privileges and take away advantages that Maori have over non-Maori without saying what it was. To me it rang like a Winston Peters speech and that’s almost what it was because anyone who had a grudge could take some comfort from it. I have neighbours who say, “I’m going to vote for that man because he’s going to stop Maori privileges.”
We don’t know that. Don Brash has not yet said specifically what he will do. It was not a speech to open a debate; it was a speech to swing the poles.
K - What, as you understand it, are Maori privileges”
M - One is that it’s a great privilege to be Maori have an indigenous culture in your own country and feel that you belong to it. The other thing is the things around affirmative action. Affirmative action programmes are things that were absolutely needed from about the 1960’s, to close the enormous gaps in things like employment, mortality rates, health statistics, education statistics, crime statistics. Whether we still need all those programmes is, of course, the grounds for such a debate.
Shall I tell you why we needed them? Let me give you an example.
In 1974 I made a documentary on a Waikato woman called Herepo Rongo. She was then in her eighties. Three times in her life she had been removed from her home and from her communal property. Once in the 1930’s when her father-in-law was embezzled by a corrupt Maori Land Court Official. Once in 1941 when the Government took Miria Te Kakara Pa for the emergency landing strip at Raglan, and once in the 1960’s when the Maori Trustees sold the land she was living on because there were too many owners and didn’t tell her. Now there was a woman who, three times in her life had been displaced. She knew nothing about the way the national system of the Public Service or Local Bodies work. She had no hatred for individual Pakeha but she felt extremely disoriented by the world in which she lived and which she did not understand. Now that was not an uncommon experience for Maori individuals, and Maori communities. Up to the 1960’s were not getting a fair go.
K - But, Pakeha will say, generally speaking, “That was then, this is now. We cannot be blamed for that and Maori can’t benefit from something has not happened to then, so move on.”
M - Yes but the now has occurred because of the affirmative action measures I’m talking about. Both in terms of trying to get Maori into education and employment and it terms of a very strong move that was made in the 1980’s to bend the public system towards Maori values and Maori needs. If those things hadn’t happened we would not have it better now. What we now have to decide is, which of those things are still necessary and which aren’t. John Tamihere said we have enough Maori lawyers, we don’t need special measures there. He’s probably right. But there are other areas where we still don’t have enough of Maori anything in some cases.
K - In his latest book (Launching Maori Futures) Mason Durie said, “The issue is how to reconcile the two obligations. To be fair to all citizens and at the same time to endorse indigeneity.” And that presumably is the problem that the Labour Government’s got and a National Government or any other government will have. How do you endorse indigeneity without making Pakeha non-Maori feel that they don’t belong? If someone else has a prior claim?
M - We do it, not by taking anything away from Maori, but by making sure that you are affirming the other culture just as emphatically. I think that’s what people feel has not been happening. You know, we have for example the Resource Management Act which is recognizes Maori spiritual and cultural values. It doesn’t recognize non-Maori spiritual and cultural values. Why not? I mentioned another example in my book. The coincidence of two things happening. At the same time that Waikato Museum pulls the "Rex Morrelli" exhibition because Tainui Maori didn't like Four Square Grocers with tattoos on because they said it was disrespectful . At the same time Te Papa did not pull the Virgin and the Condom out which was offending Christians. All these things add to a perception that the indigenous culture has been valued at the expense of the non-indigenous culture. That need not be the case.
K - If, then, we are to move on from this point. We you taken aback by the Labour Government’s response to the reponse to Don Brash’s speech?
Yes I was. But, I mean, the leadership of this current Labour Government is nothing if not smart and when something has to happen in quick time, they do it. M - And they obviously felt they had to show that they were not wedded to policies that were perceived to be unpopular.
K - And if you’re right; if indeed the pendulum has swung too far they are pulling it back again.
M - Yes, and that’s a perfectly legitimate thing for a government to decide to do. They may well pull it back without, in the end, canceling any of the programmes targeted at Maori of Pacific Islanders.
That’s a perfectly legitimate thing for a government to decide to do.
K - In which case, it is just cosmetic.
M - No, a genuine investigation may establish the fact that those policies are there on the basis of need. That wouldn’t surprise me. We all; know stories of about the silly things that happen. And this is what, of course, has contributed to that anti-Maori perception. There was one University, I won’t name it, that when you applied for the Writers’ Fellowship, sat you down and said, “How would you implement the Treaty of Waitangi when you earn the Writers’ Fellowship?
Now that’s absolutely ridiculous. You could argue that the role of a writer is to subvert the Treaty of Waitangi!
We are all aware of people who have gone over the top and given the endorsement of indigenous values a bad name. That is not what you define the issues by, but by middle of the road sensible politics.
K - We were talking about how Pakeha values are not esteemed as are Maori values. How come? Pakeha are in charge of everything.
M - No, its more a perception that they are not esteemed, In fact I think that they are but, particularly with the emphasis that the current Government has put into funding and resourcing the arts sector. And the Prime Minister taking the portfolio for the arts.
I think the problem with Pakeha insecurity in a historical sense arises from the fact that after the Second World War we threw off our cloak of British-ness without having another one ready to put on. And that new cloak of being a Pakeha New Zealander and regarding Pakeha culture, not as a European culture, but as a second indigenous culture is something we are still putting together.
K - A second indigenous culture?
M -A second indigenous culture. Maori indigenous culture didn’t arise spontaneously in New Zealand. Polynesian people came here from the islands and established themselves here and after about two generations they were less concerned with where they came from than the act that they lived here. From that point on, Maori culture became indigenous. Pakeha culture is doing exactly the same thing.
K - But the fact is, that we can only have one indigenous culture. Because, surely, ‘indigenous’ implies a unique property?
M - Have you read the Waitangi Tribunal Report on the Chatham Islands?
This report decided that there were two indigenous cultures on the Chatham Islands. Moriori culture as the senior indigenous culture and Maori as the junior indigenous culture. Why not apply the same format to the Mainland?
I have no problem with that. Maori can be first people and Pakeha the second people but can both eventually, and we will both eventually be, indigenous cultures.
K - But we will never merge into one New Zealand culture?
M - Oh, we probably will eventually but I suspect it will take a thousand years.
K - But this is what Steve Maharey said, “We need to consciously build a New Zealand identity we can all have a stake in. Is that the same thing?
M - In a sense that is Pakeha culture, the mainstream culture and Maori have a stake in that too. When Maori go to work in the professions, when they play rugby and when they go round to the pub with their mates they are properly joining the mainstream culture but they also have the option of going back to their community or family culture which is the Maori one. And that mainstream culture will always be there and probably will get larger. Maori culture will also still be there. One of the most consistent things about New Zealand history from 1840 on is Pakeha politicians predicting that in a generation Maori culture would be gone and we’d all be brown-skinned New Zealanders. It hasn’t happened yet and its not going to happen for another hundred years.
K - So, are you optimistic that we are going to be able to work this out, despite the fact that we seem to be more and more apart…?
M - We seem to be more and more apart but for most of us, in our day to day professional lives, we are integrated far more with Maori than we were, for example, when we were growing up.
K - He values the essence of indigenous Maori culture because it allows Pakeha to say, “They’re not really Maori, they’ve only got one sixteenth Maori. Why not call themselves Pakeha.?
M - The Pakeha I know who are most comfortable with Maori culture and with Maori colleagues are the people who know most about them and who are culturally equipped to interact with that culture. And one of the reasons I write books instead of doing other things is because I believe that information dissolves prejudice. Information shared by the family. And people need information.
K - I understand why you would want to believe that? But do you really believe that? Do you not rather think that people select the bits from the information that feed their prejudice and put aside the rest?
M - Sometimes, but not always I have to say, I’ve had letters from people who have said their lives have been changed by books. At the very least they’ve been prepared to look at it a situation and once they know the concepts. Concepts are everything. If you don’t understand the concepts of history, you don’t understand New Zealand current affairs. For historians, the one thing that’s good news about this current dispute is that it proves that history is now and is New Zealand. Everything that’s happening now is a product of our history and if you understand our history you can understand what’s happening now without being threatened or frightened by it.
K - But Pakeha are saying that we are over with our history. That history merely provides Maori for excuse to demand more and more. We need to move on now.
M - Of course I accept there are people who are reacting in that way, but there are also people who are not reacting in that way.
I remain an optimist. I believe that the more New Zealanders get to know one another and interact with one another then the more the basic New Zealand values of being practical and of common sense, will reassert themselves. We’ve had these spats before, over the fiscal envelope, and we’ll have them again but I believe, basically we will sort them out, Maori and Pakeha, because we’ve been doing it for 150 years and we’ll do it for another 150 years.
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Michael King
Emminent New Zealand author and historian
Michael King was born in Wellington. His family was Irish and Scottish: his elders nurtured their ethnicity through Catholic ritual, and longing for their ‘old countries’, with their ancient pasts and their mournful songs. From an early age, King set himself a different task, encountering the New Zealand histories which lay all around him, in the archaeology and terrain of Paremata.
King’s knowledge of Maori protocol and access to a wide range of Maori informants were crucial to his writings throughout the 1970s and early 1980s.
(source: http://bookcouncil.org.nz/writers/kingmichael.htm)
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