THE MOTIVE OF NATIONALISM

Te Ao Hou, November 1957, Page 18

THE MOTIVE OF NATIONALISM In the second group we find leaders of a different calibre who, each in his own degree, were the champions of an emergent Maori nationalism. These leaders were men who recognised that the fates of individual tribes were inseparable from the fate of the Maori as a whole people, and that their continuance, as a race, depended on their adjustments to new conditions of existence, imposed, willy-nilly, by the spreading tide of pakeha settlement. This new nationalism, like all nationalisms, went through many phases. The leaders it threw up were divided between those who believed that the future of the Maori depended on his co-existence with the pakeha, and those who believed that his very existence demanded opposition to pakeha impact and its resultant changes. Needless to say these two points of view brought many leading chiefs into opposition. Some, like Hone Heke, consistently opposed pakeha infiltration and domination, others like Tamati Waka Nene were equally unswerving in their support of the pakeha. Some, like Te Rangihaeata and Rangitaake (Wiremu Kingi), began by co-operating with, and even protecting the pakeha, and ended by bitterly opposing him. Both the King movement, and the Hau-hau movement which succeeded it, produced outstanding leaders on both sides.