ANOTHER PROPOSED “TREATY” RACKET
Guess what! The pale faces of the tribal elite have just thought up a new way of extracting more money out of the long-suffering taxpayer. This time it’s TEETH.
That master of one-sided bias and misinformation, the taxpayer funded Radio New Zealand, reported on 20 March, 2026, that the reason why so many Maori have bad teeth is because of “colonisation”. Without bothering to check the accuracy of what it was reporting it gave its piece the blazing headline of “Calls grow for Universal Te Tiriti consistent dental care”. Where in the Treaty can be found – or even implied – anything to do with teeth? Nowhere, as it was a treaty of cession (Article 1) by the chiefs to get rule by a single sovereign so as to bring about a much needed peace and good order to a land and society that was being destroyed by endless tribal war and cannibalism.
Some character called Jasmine Taankink, speaking for “Dental For All” claimed that “poor oral outcomes for Maori could not be separated from colonisation”. She went on, “We know that upon arrival to Aotearoa [she doesn’t even know the name of the country], English settlers were really impressed with the overall physical health of our tupuna Maori, especially their oral health……Our tupuna Maori didn’t have cavities, they didn’t have massive oral health problems. So poor oral health is just another negative implication of colonisation and us not being able to exercise our tino rangatiratanga”. She said that solutions must be grounded in “Maori led approaches. We have the expertise within our own communities to develop solutions that work for us”, implying that dental treatments that work for all other human beings somehow do not work for “Maori”.
This outburst was reinforced by Leeann Waaka, described as a “dental therapist of the Maori Dental Association”. [Yes, they even have to have a race-based dental association that is separate from the rest of New Zealand]. Leeann Waaka is by appearance European but, like so many on the separatist express, she has disfigured her chin by having it etched with scribble that resembles a map of the London Underground. This, of course, gives them more “street cred” in the highly lucrative separatist industry. This is what she said, “pushing for a Te Tiriti consistent system which would mean properly RESOURCING Maori providers and enabling iwi and hapu to design services that meet the needs of their people”. No dental qualifications needed! Just more money for iwi and hapu.
The key word in her quote is, of course “resourcing” which means sucking on the teat of the taxpayer in a very big way just as the corrupt and worthless Whanau Ora health racket has poured money into the tribes without any apparent positive results. Other people of all races go to the doctor, dentist and hospitals when they need to but Maori are deemed to be so different from all other human beings that they have to have their own non-science based “health system”. Why don’t they just call it a money racket and be done with it?
In demanding “resourcing” from the taxpayer they are following the lead of Whanau Ora which was set up in 2010 by the Maori Party co-leader, Tariana Turia – another example of John Key cheating the taxpayer by caving in to the demands of the tribal elite. Its stated purpose “to provide health and social services to Maori” was not only racist but every bit as deceitful as Mrs. Turia’s earlier claim that the colonisation of New Zealand was a “holocaust” This was a straight out lie and brings into question her credibility on any other matter.
Her Whanau Ora, which has already cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars, is more a slush fund for iwi than a health service. It has created numerous back office jobs and private ticket clipping without producing any noticeable improvement in the health of Maoris.
As soon as it got off the ground thousands of people claiming to be “Maori” were able to access up to $20,000 of Whanau Ora cash for family get-togethers, as Winston Peters told Parliament on 7 February, 2012. He said that many of those who allocated all these hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of Whanau Ora were working for the recipients (their own families, tribe), creating a conflict of interest.
Otaki’s Rahui Rugby and Sports Club received $60,000 in 2011 “to undertake whanau development research on resilience and community leadership” – a “bro-ocracy” in Mr. Peters’ words. One Hawkes Bay “whanau” of only twenty members received $5,000 to run a hui (booze-up) to “finalise spiritual balance” and “family development”; this included $500 each for two “facilitators”, $400 for a venue, $1,000 for a hangi, $600 for a chef, a $500 administration fee (of course!), $300 for travel, and $1,200 for “resources”. And there is no reason to suppose that giving tax dollars to unqualified iwi and hapu for TEETH would be any different.
To say that the poor state of teeth of to-day’s part-Maoris is a result of colonisation is a lie for which any radio station other than Radio New Zealand would be utterly ashamed. As for stating that those Europeans who had early contact with Maoris were impressed by their teeth and general good health, all the evidence points in the other direction.
Fern root was more or less their daily sustenance whereas kumera was regarded more as an occasional luxury. They would dig, dry, beat and roast the fern root and then chew it. In the words of John Nicholas who accompanied Samuel Marsden to New Zealand in 1814-5: “Being thus prepared for use, the cooks throw it [the fern root] round in handfuls to the chiefs and other persons, who chew it till all the sacharine or nutritive matter is extracted; and, spitting out the fibrous part, they go on again and continue in this manner till they have satisfied their appetites. The fern root, when hot, has a pleasant, sweetish taste and, on being steeped in water, deposes a glutinous substance resembling jelly”. (Narrative of a Voyage to New Zealand, Vol. I. P. 190-1)
War parties ate only fern root as it was the food of Tu, the god of war, “kumera and all other kinds of food are forbidden till the war is over”. (Te Rou, or the Maori at Home, John White, P. 114) However, the constant gnawing of the tough roots of the fern as well as the gritty shellfish and other hard foods wore away the teeth so that by about the age of twenty the teeth at the back of the mouth were worn to stumps. It didn’t help that they also chewed the big stalks of the pampas grass (toetoe).
“Early European observers such as Captain Cook frequently misjudged the age of Maoris as their toothless state made them appear much older than they were”, wrote Bill Benfield in The Third Wave; Poisoning the Land. (P. 14) Needless to say, colonisation brought dental care as the first decades of the nineteenth century saw tremendous strides in the skills and knowledge of dentistry throughout the Western world. Part-Maoris of to-day, who have their teeth, have reason to be grateful for this aspect of colonisation, which lifted them out of a veritable dental disaster with all its pain and inconvenience.
The poor state of their teeth was matched by the poor state of their general health. In the words of the early New Zealand historian, Elsdon Best, who was able to observe the early Maoris, “Native knowledge of medicine may be described as non-existent in former times. No attempt was made to study it because it was believed that sickness and disease were caused by atua (evil spirits).”
One of the worst failings, based on superstition and enforced by the wretched tohungas, was to abandon the sick and the dying into some outhouse away from the huts, as it was believed that to die in a normal hut would thereby make that hut tapu (forbidden). “So, in order to save the house for future use, when death was expected the sick man would be taken to an open shed,” wrote Rev. James Buller in his book, Forty Years in New Zealand. (P. 219) And the Church of England missionary, Rev. William Williams in his book, Christianity Among the New Zealanders, “The friends of the dying person prevented every kind of food from being given to them, water only being allowed. Thus the poor sufferer was literally starved to death” (P. 184) To-day, thanks to colonisation, their descendants die in comfortable hospitals and similar places.
It was the early Protestant missionaries who first introduced the natives to health care and Western medicine but it was an uphill struggle against the power of the tohungas who didn’t want to lose their influence. In the 1840s a small number of hospitals were set up by the colonial authorities specifically for Maoris to be treated with Western medicine. Improvement in health came first to those Maoris who had the greatest contact with Europeans, and it spread steadily throughout the nineteenth century.
Many of the natives suffered from sore eyes. They had difficulty opening them until the missionary, Thomas Kendall, started curing them by using goulard. It was believed that the prevalence of sore eyes was caused by their sleeping so often in the open air, under sometimes heavy dews and with their heads uncovered. Over the generations since colonisation many Maoris have been able to extend their optical powers by wearing European invented glasses, including the current co-leader of the Maori Party, Rawiri Waititi, who, despite ranting against colonisation and its effects at every turn, wears glasses on his own ink-stained face, thus making himself an object of both ridicule and hypocrisy.
With the introduction of Western medicine and dental care the average life expectancy of Maoris rose from 20 to 25 years (1840) to 77.1 years for women and 73.4 years for men in 2019. As they say in law, res ipsa loquitur (the thing speaks for itself).
Maoris have benefited enormously from the blessings of colonisation and are now living almost four times as long as when they led such unhealthy lives before European settlement. The hospitals and doctors and dentists that they have benefited from have been the fruits of Western civilisation with its superior knowledge and science. The hospitals and health care have been paid for mainly by European New Zealanders for no group contributes less to taxation on a per capita basis than Maoris. Similarly no group is more of a burden on the taxpayer than these same people. Their latest demand for “resourcing” so that unqualified members of tribes can be paid for giving dental care and treatment is yet another trick that they are trying to play on the rest of us. That Radio New Zealand were too dumb to work this out tells us all we need to know about its ignorance and bias.
More information on the advantages to Maori of British colonisation can be found in the book, New Zealand; the Benefits of Colonisation, by Adam Plover. Available from: www.trosspublishing.com