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> everyone appears to know about it - and nobody seems to care "Why do you care? Are you saying that makes European colonization justified? Are you trying to i

> everyone appears to know about it - and nobody seems to care "Why do you care? Are you saying that makes European colonization justified? Are you trying to imply Europeans should feel slightly less guilty? That they are not history's sole villains? That these were "savages" in need of "civilizing"? Are you some kind of Nazi? I wonder how your employer will feel about having a white-supremacy-apologist on their payroll. Hey everyone, this guy is defending colonialism and genocide!" See this play out a few times, and you learn to shut up. Edit: Right on cue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37698608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37698608 Note how the story linked therein [1] minimizes the genocide by calling it a "myth" in the title, and in the body reduces it to: In 1835 a group of about 900 Taranaki Māori [..] sailed from Wellington to the Chathams, with the intention to make it their new home. They had recently been driven out of their own rohe during the Musket Wars. Shortly after they arrived they killed around 300 Moriori and enslaved the rest. So yes, some Māori did kill some Moriori, and the story is an awful one – but to attribute this to all Māori is wrong, and if you find yourself wanting to do it you should question your motives in doing so. Wikipedia [2,3] describes it slightly differently: Later, a prominent pacifist culture emerged; [..] This culture made it easier for Taranaki Māori invaders to nearly exterminate them in the 1830s during the Musket Wars. This was the Moriori genocide, in which the Moriori were either murdered or enslaved by members of the Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama iwi, killing or displacing nearly 95% of the Moriori population. What does this tell us about when is it permissible to minimize and deny genocides? [1] https://thespinoff.co.nz/atea/03-08-2018/the-moriori-myth-and-why-its-still-with-us https://thespinoff.co.nz/atea/03-08-2018/the-moriori-myth-an... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moriori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moriori - "Currently there are around 700 people who identify as Moriori" [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81ori_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81ori_people - "A June 2022 estimate gives the Māori ethnic population of New Zealand as 892,200"

PlunderBunny 3y ago
>Note how the story linked therein [1] minimizes the genocide by calling it a "myth" What they're calling a myth is the idea that Moriori were a pre-Maori race, not that there was a genocide.
- SenAnder 3y ago
  Firstly, the myth. You’ve heard it before. There were a pre-Māori people in New Zealand, called the Moriori. When Māori arrived in the country they set about obliterating these peaceful Moriori inhabitants until not a single Moriori remained alive. That's what the article opens with. It proceeds to claim the entire genocide involved only 300 deaths.
  - PlunderBunny 3y ago
    You're right that the paragraph you've quoted could be read that way, and is badly worded, to the point where, without any additional context, it could be interpreted to be saying that the genocide is a myth. But there is additional context, and the rest of the article makes no attempt to deny the genocide and enslavement of the Moriori. The Moriori weren't pre-Maori people, and they weren't completely obliterated (by the 900 Maori that attacked them) - that's the myth.

PlunderBunny 3y ago

>Note how the story linked therein [1] minimizes the genocide by calling it a "myth" What they're calling a myth is the idea that Moriori were a pre-Maori race, not that there was a genocide.

SenAnder 3y ago
Firstly, the myth. You’ve heard it before. There were a pre-Māori people in New Zealand, called the Moriori. When Māori arrived in the country they set about obliterating these peaceful Moriori inhabitants until not a single Moriori remained alive. That's what the article opens with. It proceeds to claim the entire genocide involved only 300 deaths.
- PlunderBunny 3y ago
  You're right that the paragraph you've quoted could be read that way, and is badly worded, to the point where, without any additional context, it could be interpreted to be saying that the genocide is a myth. But there is additional context, and the rest of the article makes no attempt to deny the genocide and enslavement of the Moriori. The Moriori weren't pre-Maori people, and they weren't completely obliterated (by the 900 Maori that attacked them) - that's the myth.