Hobson's Pledge and Dr John Robinson should get real: Letters to the Listener (pn689)

Hardly a week  passes without regurgitation. I'm tired of reading Hobson's Pledge's ( "a society in which all citizens have the same rights, irrespective of when we or our ancestors arrived") spurious and misleading claims about us "becoming one people." The Treaty of Waitangi, the Treaty Commission and subsequent legislation are now law. We are one nation, two and more people with shared and dissimilar cultures. Get real! Do not confuse nation with people or sameness with equality. 

The latest  call is by amateur historian Dr John Robinson's letter to the NZ Listener (6 Feb.) "Becoming One People".  With his Maths doctorate he attacks Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon for being a racist by supporting "a veritable history ...of inherited guilt on one side, with feelings of loss and demands for entitlement on the other ... justify(ing) an ever-widening racial divide; we are no longer one people" (As if we ever were!)

Fortunately, he had his rebuttals in the following week's letters (Feb13). 

• Alberton Chignall calls his policies assimilation "where Māori disappear into the dominant Pākehā culture... He (Robertson) would no doubt feel lost within a kaupapa Māori context, but our current reliance on English systems results in Māori feeling lost and abandoned. " 
• Michael Goldsmith points to his colonial mindset and "hiding behind a cloak of supposedly anti-racism," yet referring to friendly and hostile Māori and ignoring the "massive land confiscations,  social anomie and all the other present-day effects of colonial policy on health, education and economic deprivation ... the antithesis of being 'treated equally'."  
• Keith Burgess says we should see the "benefits of initiatives such as prisons holding Maori offenders run by Māori and enjoy kindness inherent in these." 
• I made the point, often repeated, that "treating people the same does not necessarily mean they are treated equally... almost any Māori social statistics would show such claims to be false." I then challenged his amateur historian-ism, questioning his Musket War dead by counter-citing Michael King's, and pointing to the obvious: there was no census until 1857-8, long after the Musket Wars. Robinson's figures are just guesswork.  I also asked why he did not cite Māori population losses, the result of the Land Wars, massive confiscations, poor living conditions and neglect,  from 1840 until 1921, the first census to show a recovery. So much for his "government benevolence" during this period.  Finally, I thanked Meng Foon and the Treaty of Waitangi Commission for helping to right past wrongs.  

• There was only one possibly pro-Robinson letter, from Graeme Berryman, who asked where Pacific Islanders fit in. A good question on many issues but nothing to do with the Treaty of Waitangi. There were no Pasifika in NZ in 1840, they came much later, in the late 1950s-60s, and on. 
• He was also wrong in citing their similar language and DNA with Māori.  Only Cook Island and French Polynesian indigenous languages are close, and their DNA (and language) parted with West Polynesian languages, Tongan, Samoan, and Niuean,  over 2,000 years ago.  This was when the English, Scots and Irish were speaking  Celtic and Gaelic. Long before the Anglo-Saxon from which modern English is derived. Julius Caesar invaded in 54-55BC.   

--ACW