English town too disturbingly white

[Agathon]

If this is one of Cali's friends, sent here to punish the race traitors, I worry about him.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
I see f**kwit has gone strangely quiet now...

I wouldn't necessarily call him a f**twit.

But yes, he was arrogant, rude, obnoxious, snobbish, insensitive, clueless, ignorant, irrational, illogical, foolish, short-sighted, and egoistical.



I'm sure I forgot something.

[Provost Harrison]

You're forgetting f**kwit

He was a pretty obnoxious piece of work...whoever's DL he was

[MrFun]

Ok -- so we shall say that f**twit is a nice concisive word that includes everything I used to describe his posting?

[Provost Harrison]

If the shoe fits...

[Theben]

I miss him already. He was more fun than MrFun.

[Kuciwalker]

Isn't everybody?

[MrFun]

I love you guys, too.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Theben
I miss him already. He was more fun than MrFun.

That isn't hard - Mr Fun should change his name to Mr Funless

[Kuciwalker]

Way to FAIL

[Flip McWho]

Hey Agathon and some of you others that actually know a thing or two about this.

Is their any truth in the whole people in NZ before the Maori thing at all, and if there is what truth is in it?

I've heard stuff being spouted and well this place is better than an encyclopedia afterall.

Thanks for any answers.

[Agathon]

Is their any truth in the whole people in NZ before the Maori thing at all, and if there is what truth is in it?

None whatsoever. There are two "myths" one is slightly more well-established than the others.

The first is that the Maori colonists discovered a people called the Moriori, who they conquered and basically exterminated, apart from those who were living on the Chatham Islands. This story was circulated for years. The motivation seems to have been to legitimize the European conquest of New Zealand by showing the Maori to also have taken the land by conquest from its original inhabitants.

It's completely false: there were people calling themselves Moriori on the Chathams, but they weren't a separate race. Like the mainland Maori, they were just another group of descendents of the original colonists from Polynesia. The mainlanders and they had lost contact after the original settlement and it was not resumed until after the Europeans arrived. There are no full-blooded Moriori left – the last died early in the 20th century.

The second is the so-called "Waitaha" theory. This theorizes that there was a people known as Waitaha who preceded Maori. There is absolutely no evidence of this, and it is on the level of the Atlantis theory – it is not taken seriously by any scholars. A number of Maori have adopted this myth as there were tribes who identified themselves under the name "Waitaha" and it suits them politically to be thought of as the original inhabitants. It's all a crock though.

All we really know is that New Zealand was colonized by Polynesians sometime in the 13th to 14th centuries. There is no evidence that they came as a "great fleet" as is often supposed, nor that their journeys were accidental. The Polynesians were the greatest mariners of history – we know that they journeyed as far east as South America and as far west as New Zealand, and we know that they were accomplished navigators. The original colonists ended up spreading over the whole of New Zealand and developed a series of interrelated cultures and dialects that we now identify as Maori.

[Flip McWho]

Thank you, that clears things up nicely now.

Its amazing how many NZ'ers believe the moriori one especially. Also its actually the first I've heard of the Waitaha one, so thanks for that info as well.

[Agathon]

The Moriori one is partly down to the department of Education who repeated it in school textbooks up until the 80s (along with the myth of the Great Fleet).

Read Michael King's A History of New Zealand. That gives a good overview.

[Flip McWho]

Cheers again.

And yeah that makes sense considering its usually people who were educated before the 80s that believe the moriori myth.