Unity (7) Pakeha Responsibility

Norm McLeod says that he does not want Pakeha to feel guilty. That is good, because Maori should not be accusing Pakeha. However, responsibility always belongs to the powerful, so Pakeha Christians need to repent of their treatment of Maori. The unjust taking of their land created real hurts in the hearts of the Maori living at the time. These hurts have been passed down from generation to generation. So many generations have now passed by that some of those who carry the hurt often do not know where it came from, but the pain remains. This is the cause of much personal and social dysfunction.

Some troubled Maori will need a Pakeha person to personally ask them for forgiveness before they can be set free. The treaty settlement process is a good first step, but Pakeha Christians will need to seek forgiveness from each new generation of Maori, until they are set free and healed of the hurt, so that is no longer passed down to their children.

The beneficiaries of oppression and injustice have difficulty understanding its impact on its victims. They think they should get over it, but the scars and hurts don’t just disappear when the injustice is removed. If the injustice is minimised and excused by its beneficiaries, anger is created, which deepens the scars.

In the 1980s, I was asked to attend a small conference (hui) organised by Muri Thompson at Moerewa to discuss the links between the gospel and the Treaty of Waitangi. This was the covenant between the British governor and the Maori chiefs gathered at Waitangi that opened the way for the colonisation of New Zealand. Despite the promises made in the treaty, the Maori were quickly lost their land in a series of illegal political and military manoeuvres.

On the first morning of the conference, a young Maori Christian leader, Gray Theodore, spent two hours recounting the history of Maori dealings with European colonists. For many of the Maori people listening, mostly women and young people, all Christians, this was the first time they had heard a detailed account of the injustices that previous generations had experienced. As they listened, they all began to weep. This experience was an eye-opener for me (When I talk about the experience I still feel like weeping).

The reason that these people wept was that their hearts still carried the pain of the injustices their forefathers had experienced. They did not know what had happened, but they still carried the emotional scars from the injustices experienced by previous generations. As they listened, I saw the lights coming on for them. They got an understanding of the pain that they knew they still carried (despite their faith in Jesus).

When the injustices occurred, the people who lost their land felt terrible pain. Their children picked up that pain. Because their pain was real they passed the hurt on to their children. The history of the injustice was gradually lost, but the spiritual and emotional pain was passed on from generation to generation. Hearing their history explained the pain, but it did not heal it. That would require repentance and restitution by the descendants of European colonists who benefited from the injustices. I hope that my talk contributed a little to making that happen.

When injustice and oppression occur, emotional and spiritual pain is passed on to subsequent generations. As time passes, the reason for the emotional pain is forgotten, but the scars remain with the victims' descendants, crippling their lives. Those hurts need to be healed before the pattern is broken so they can be free.