"Second Rate Citizens"

New Zealand, known in Māori as Aotearoa (Land of the Long White Cloud), is as anyone lucky enough to have been to will testify is simply one of the most breath-taking, mystical, and overall fantastic places on the planet! Home to an fascinating, proud, and ancient culture called the Māori, and in today's New Zealand, second rate citizens.

The Māori are one of the oldest surviving cultures on the planet, with language and cultural roots dating back as long as 5000 years! The most accurate reports indicate that the Great Migration from the Polynesian Islands to New Zealand was around 1280. And as far as we know the Māori settled and thrived in their new homeland. That is not to say that they were without conflict. Like any culture there were fights over a whole manner of subjects, the only difference being in the case of the Māori if you lost the fight you'd most likely be eaten.

It wasn't until explorers like Captain James Cook came over on the Endeavour and started trading and learning from this mysterious culture that we began to learn so much more about them; their religion and connections to nature, their language and local customs, the meaning behind the ritual of tā moko (tattooing), and so many more unheard of practices that I imagine would've terrified the Christian sailers and missionaries sent to convert these heathens.

Learning about traditional Māori customs.

And after several hundred years and a growing influx of European and especially British settlers to New Zealand the British Government decided to make the colonisation official, and on 6th February 1840 representatives of the British Crown and North Island Māori Chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi. The text of the treaty are bilingual, with the Māori text translated from the English. The Articles are as follows:

Article I: Native Māori cede "all rights and powers of sovereignty" to the Crown.

Article II: Established the continued ownership of the Māori over their lands, and establishes the exclusive right of pre-emption of the Crown.

Article III: Gives Māori people full rights and protections as British subjects.

However, the English text and the Māori text differ in meaning significantly, particularly in relation to the meaning of having and ceding sovereignty. These discrepancies led to disagreements in the decades following the signing, eventually culminating in the New Zealand Wars.

In today's world New Zealand is one of the most active hotspots for tourism, with around 4 million visiting the islands each year. And the Māori and their culture are one of the biggest aspects of that attraction. You would imagine that these people are treated with the utmost respect in their homeland, but you would be sadly mistaken. The Māori, just like the Aboriginal's that you find a few hundred mile away across the Tasman Sea, are treated like nothing more than a tourist attraction, and viewed more like freaks for a bygone age. I couldn't believe this until I spent the night in the Tamaki Māori Village in Rotorua in the North Island.

Our guide and member of this tribe was actually a documentary filmmaker that worked here on weekends, and he had just wrapped shooting a documentary in Auckland investigating the preferential treatment of European Kiwi's over Māori in all aspects of society, ranging from places in schools to roles in government. The Māori are overlooked for most roles within their society and that is simply baffling. And anti-Māori sentiment has been growing over the past few years sadly, as just in 2016 a local NZ mayor named Andrew Judd (who is in fact European Kiwi , or Pākehā) came under intense scrutiny and even was the victim of anti-Māori discrimination himself because he was proposing reforms for his local constituency, New Plymouth, that were aimed at aiding the Māori more than the Pākehā.

Learning about the history and significance of tā moko (tattooing).

He was shockingly abused, and in an interview with John Campbell on Checkpoint he sadly stated that he couldn't see any progress whatsoever in terms of Pākehā views towards Māori.

At the end of my conversation with my guide I asked him how he felt following the making of his documentary. He told me the he felt like he was living in an unofficial Apartheid, and that until Māori had a greater say in the running of their country that things would never change. Unfortunately I don't really see that happening anytime soon given that their are only 4 Māori sitting in Parliament.

It's such a tragedy to see such a fascinating and historical culture and people's be subjected to such treatment. It seems like people have forgotten that the Māori fought in pretty much every conflict New Zealand has been part of since the Second Boer War in 1899.

I can only hope that the documentary went on to change some minds, and hopefully some lives.