Michael Bassett: History in Schools - Bleeding Heart Versions of Our History Should Be Treated with Great Caution

If modern New Zealand History is to be taught to all students in schools as promised by Jacinda Ardern then the curriculum should not start in 1840. By then Maori had been 500 years in Aotearoa, the last forty of them in a state of almost perpetual warfare. One historian, Angela Ballara has noted that warfare “was endemic in Maori society; it was an integral part of the Maori political system”. Once they acquired muskets it was carried on with a new intensity. Between 1800 and 1840 most traditional iwi were raked fore and aft, and between 40,000 (Keith Sinclair’s estimate) and 50,000 (Ron Crosby’s estimate) people were killed, eaten or enslaved. This was approximately 25% of all Maori in Aotearoa at that time. More lost their lives during the Musket Wars than all the Kiwis killed in World War One and World War Two combined. Lands were pillaged, iwi borders altered, and livelihoods disrupted to an unprecedented extent.
https://thebfd.co.nz/2021/01/23/history-in-schools/

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