Tally Ho
Giovanni's spread across the pages of the Herald is the story of an ordinary NZ'er who became a Great White Hunter. It's the story of how he hunted down and scalped two Despicable Maori Men.
Never mind that there were two white broadcasters who offended in much the same way and who are still on air.
The excitement among the Herald editors over the Giovanni story must have been palpable. Its not easy these days to get good Maori prey - someone well known, uppity, easily despised. Someone to be toppled off their high horse. Or even to find a Decent White Hunter. But between them, Giovanni, W and JT ticked all the boxes.
Then again, maybe the Herald editors should Push Pause.
One of the Great White Hunters they promoted in his day was Alan Titford. He of the 24 year sentence for sexual brutality, child abuse, threatening to kill, torching a farmhouse, damaging his farm and blaming it on local Maori. He too was once spread across the Herald. A Great White Hunter defending his property and his family against the Savagery, the Violence, nay the Greed of local Maori.
Photo's and TV news footage of him standing among the debris of the burnt down farmhouse, pointing out the damage to the farm he said Te Roroa people were responsible for spiked a backlash against the Treaty settlement process. Arson and damage we now know he caused himself.
Yes. It is unfair to single out the Herald when other newspapers, television and radio were as culpable. The TV footage of him showing damage to his farm that iwi were supposed to have caused played on and off over several years.
Titford's lies had a huge impact on Maori and will have on NZ'ers 50 years hence. Govt changed the Waitangi Act so that privately owned land could no longer be the subject of recommendations for the Crown to purchase, whenever that land became available. That one change, coupled with the Crown
dictated process and the settlement cap has meant that the potential for the settlements to be enduring has been lost.
That is Titford's legacy.
But what can we learn from all this. Maybe not to blindly accept every anti Maori claim and to ask whether the same standards are being evenly applied. And to recognise that there are those whose heritage, genes and upbringing predispose them to hatred and of whom we must be vigilant
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Donna - New Zealand is built upon demonizing Maori. Te Kooti, Rua, Te Whiti, Tohu, the Kingitanga, Ti Tokowaru etc. etc. etc. etc. were all projected as Maori dissenters rising up against the British sensibility of takes what's theirs because we want it to be ours and or we don’t understand it therefore have to squash it.
ReplyDeleteDuncan Alexander, Gustav Baron Von Tempsky, Colonel Whitmore, John Cullen etc. were deified for fighting the fight in supressing the uppity Maori whose ideological ideals didn’t align with the colonists.
Titford is the contemporary of such men. The man from good farming stock who fought the fight against Maori that were committing arson on his buildings, ransacking his stock, threatening him with ill harm. The NZ Herald ran stories of Titfordd woes and he became the voice of all that was wrong with the Treaty of Waitangi process.
Not once did they mention how handsomely he was recompensed in comparison to TOW settlements.
The veracity of his stories were always questionable given the very nature of the man (a sycophantic raving loony tune) but the NZ Herald kept giving him a voice.
A voice that called to an ill-formed Pakeha mainstream that believed everything that fell out of his waha.
Titford was to become the anti-hero that Martin Doutre and his ilk championed in proffering their pseudo history of New Zealand. A history that included among other things that Celts were the true Tangata Whenua of New Zealand having arrived here pre-Maori…only to be wiped out by Maori that arrived centuries later.
Yet the Herald continued to champion his stories of woe!
Giovanni Tiso is now another mainstream New Zealand hero by virtue of having had two loud Maori broadcasters taken off air. Yes their line of questioning was ill thought but that he hasn’t since taken up the same kaupapa against Fagan and Plunkett who if anything pursued an even more errant line of questioning is still eminently interesting to me.
However I guess his job is done. Middle New Zealand is feting over him as their new go to guy and he is now enamouring himself in the fact he has two scalps to hang on his mantle.
What he doesn’t understand is that such men don’t simply wither and go away. Years of working in social services builds up a deep reservoir of networks and supporters and they will continue to work with Maori in their respective jurisdictions.
Those that know and have worked for Jackson and Tamihere respect them both and while they might not always see eye to eye on every single thing they know both have great intentions when it comes to helping Maori at the bottom of the social food chain.
Tiso can never ever say the same thing. To Maori on the ground the man is a complete utter stranger that picked out two brown men among four (two of who weren’t brown) and I again have to ask the question as to why he hasn’t since sought the actions against the other two?
Is he worried that by trying to have two Pakeha commentator’s taken off air he loses his cult hero status among middle-New Zealand?