Colonial past key to ‘understanding society’

Press, 6 September 1984, Page 8

Colonial past key to ‘understanding society’

New Zealand “whites” must strive for a better understanding of their past “colonialism” for biculturalism to proceed successfully, according to a visiting American anti-racism promoter.

Dr Robert Moore is in Christchurch as part of a New Zealand tour focusing on racism and education. His visit has been sponsored by the National Council of Churches.

Dr Moore said last evening that pakeha New Zealanders needed to be better informed of their history to understand the monocultural situation that existed today.

Unless pakehas made this effort they would remain ignorant of Maori needs.

Dr Moore was critical of school journals which portrayed the white settler in New Zealand as hard-work-ing and courageous while the Maori was seen as a threat to his life and to development.

A sense of what the Maori people felt before and during European settlement, had not been presented.

“The message is clear in these materials that this is mostly a white society. They basically give the sense that New Zealand and anything worth while in society was built by the white people,” he said.

Although that may not

have been the intention, it was the result

The responsibility for change lay with educators, Dr Moore said. It was their duty to take a look at what they were doing in school curricular and at the attitudes they were enforcing.

“It seems the Maori people have been pushing the school system for a long time, just as other ‘minority* groups have been doing in other countries, and so the responsibility rests with the educators.”

Some responsibility also needed to be taken by the Government, the news media, and other institutional groups for New Zealand to move closer to a bicultiq-al society.

Dr Moore was critical of growing accusations by pakehas of “inverse racism” describing “hand-outs” or opportunities available to the Maori people. Again, pakehas needed to look at their history to see how that situation had arisen.

He related a story that an American black colleague, a woman, always used when confronted with the accusation, “It is hard to put a car into reverse when you are not in the driver’s seat” In the United States, most, of the “drivers” were white and male, Dr Moore said. Separatism was another concept which he noticed was being widely used in New Zealand. He had been discouraged to hear the Minister of Women’s Affairs, Mrs Hercus, describe

a proposal for Maori representation in the Ministry of Women’s Affairs as separatism. .

“I keep hearing that word from white people and see it as a way of characterising self-determination,” Dr Moore said. New Zealand’s stand on the anti-nuclear issue impressed Dr Moore. The Government’s intention to ban nuclear ships had been welcomed by many Americans and people world wide, he said.

Dr Moore will be in Christchurch for about a week conducting lectures and workshops. He has done extensive consultancy work regarding racism in the United States and Canada, and written several educational publications.