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• Date: 19 January 2021
• Published date: 19 January 2021

Well, why didn’t Mr Morris provide some link or reference to that hard evidence? Mr Morris, please do so.Leo LeitchBenneydaleItching for a fightTo me it’s incredible that people are still itching for a fight by the tone of some of the letters in the Northland Age.

Yes, there have been many wrongs committed in the past, especially to indigenous people throughout the world. Once addressed, we need to move on.

Our great mother the earth, Papatuanuku, is in distress, with poisons such as deadly 1080 being dropped on her daily. We need to treat her with love and respect. This goes for all life on Earth. Why has the Covid virus come along? To show us we are out of step, what with factory farming and spraying poisons on our food.

Come on all you good people, wake up. We are a global village, so we are all in this together.Trish Monahan

Kerikeri

A changing society

Kevin Grose (letters, Northern Advocate January 13) raises some interesting points of history that are worthy of full debate at the time a binding referendum is held on the issue of Māori-only seats on our local councils.

It would be good, for example, to have clarity of exactly what the principles of the Treaty are and who drafted them. It would also be good to know where the concept of partnership originated, because it is certainly not mentioned in the Treaty. It appears to be a political construct, for the benefit of politicians and vested interest groups.

On the matter of land confiscation, just 2.5 per cent of New Zealand remained legally confiscated from rebelling tribes after 1928, and not “stolen,” as Mr Grose asserts. Other Māori lands were willingly sold, which can be verified by Googling Turton’s Deeds (Victoria University).

In a changing society, Māori embraced the “new” culture with its many benefits, in particular, some elders and statespersons lobbied the settler Government to forbid Māori to be spoken at schools.

The Māori Representation Act 1867 was an interim measure for five years, because the Māori Land Court, established in 1865, was expected to resolve land title issues for Māori within that time. The 1867 Act was extended in 1872, and extended again in 1876, this time indefinitely.

Universal suffrage, from 1893, extended voting rights to all New Zealanders, subject only to an age qualification. This meant any practical reason for separate Māori seats in central government disappeared. But separate seats continued, and this separate representation took on a life of its own as political parties courted Māori support.

Kevin makes some giant leaps of assumption when describing the...