1835: Chatham Islands Anschluss

curtly informed the inhabitants that their land had been taken and the Moriori living there were now vassals.”

Nazis and Maoris 100 years apart also had in common very poor organisation and coordination. Unready for a fight, they could have been overwhelmed by a determined population with the will to defend itself. In each case, Austrian and Moriori had no such will but were instead prepared to put their lands on the market to whoever wanted to take it from them. Austrians cheered the German warriors on and waved flowers and their swastika flags. Woozy Maoris sick, sleep-deprived, and dehydrated from their sea voyage were out-numbered 2:1 by fighting age Moriori. Shand (1892) writes that “According to the Maori’s own story…they said that when they landed on the island, had the Moriori’s attacked them, owing to their sufferings on the voyage, they might have been killed with ease, being quite too ill to resist.”

When the Chatham Islands and Moriori were first discovered 44 years prior by a ship (Chatham) of Captain George Vancouver’s Expedition things were not different. In November, 1791, Moriori hostility toward new arrivals was replied to with the shooting dead of a Moriori man. In a stunning demonstration of trait Agreeableness, the tribal elders accepted Moriori blame and resolved to change their culture to accommodate! Ref. 1791: The Vancouver Expedition, AHNZ

“Agreeableness is a personality trait that describes a person’s ability to put others needs before their own…Agreeable people are generally well-liked and prefer cooperation over conflict… One of the main concerns with overly agreeable people is that they struggle to progress in their professional careers because they are too concerned with others progressing, placing themselves in the background of what could be a positive step forwards.” – Agreeableness Personality Trait, Jayson Darby, Thomas (2023)

“On the morning of 12 March 1938, the 8th Army of the German Wehrmacht crossed the border into Austria. The troops were greeted by cheering Austrians with Nazi salutes, Nazi flags, and flowers…invading forces were badly organized and coordination among the units was poor, it mattered little because the Austrian government had ordered the Austrian Bundesheer not to resist.” – Wiki

“The total number of Maori colonists was now about 900. In addition to their potatoes and canoes, they had about twenty pigs. After a few days’ rest to recover from the effects of the voyage, they began to takahi — to take possession of parts of the island by a process known as ‘walking the land’.” – Moriori- A People Rediscovered, Michael King (1989)

“Initially, the Moriori had watched the arrival of the would-be colonists in surprise and disbelief. Around Whangaroa they had welcomed them, believing that the growth of the sealers’ settlement there would attract trade and prosperity. Once the ritual walking of the land began, however, the sense of dread which had settled on those who had witnessed Matioro’s war dance three years earlier became widespread. The first general action was to ignore what was happening in the hope that the problem would eventually disappear;” – ibid

Unlike other countries, there never was an effective Austrian armed resistance. The Austrian Armed Forces (Bundesheer) made such plans but politicians, elders, over-ruled their young warriors and had the nation roll over. Morioris, too, snapped out of their paralysed inactivity to meet at their revered place Te Awapatiki which had not yet been discovered by the invasion force. King writes, “The younger men spoke first. They argued that the prohibitions on killing…not envisage, nor were they appropriate for, an outright invasion by people who were prepared to kill on a large scale.” They knew Maori by reputation as kaupeke “flesh-eating demons.” Yet the elders, after 3 days talking, won their point and the meeting was closed resolved to stick to Moriori pacifism.

Maoris knew Moriori by reputation too. Their name for the entire Chathams was Wharekauri. This has been translated as ‘chocolate house’ or ‘room of candy’. To Maoris those natives were like sweets to be easily overcome and devoured. They called them ‘black fellows’ and like the dark chocolate wood of kauri timber were perhaps reminded of the kauri gum that Maoris used as a confectionery delicacy.

Maoris’ name for the Moriori people was ‘Paraiwhara’ which Google translates as ‘Software Error’. That is just how the Chatham natives were thought of due to their unfitness for Maori or Western life. They had the reputation for stone-dull intelligence, low energy, low initiative, being dirty, and physically stunted. Broken human software.

That was the end for the Moriori. They, like the Austrians, had given the game away. Morioris were massacred to be eaten and as a ritual, even primitive legal, action to establish land claims through homicide by customary law. Those suffered to live were made slaves. Many males were killed off to better control their wives who had been confiscated at Maori mates. Many died of the introduced diseases of the Maoris and many died of depression.

Germans, interestingly enough, soon appeared on the Chathams as missionaries of the Moravian denomination. They brought flourishing agriculture and literacy to the Chathams and witnessed the passing away of the Moriori slave race. The last of these to die out (19 March 1933) was Tommy Solomon however he lived the life of a Westernised Maori man and Ratana churchman. The Moriori culture had already been merely academic for a long time before.

Austrians were conquered by their racially and ethnically similar neighbors too but not extinguished. The Taranaki Empire was defeated and taken over by the Crown Colony of New Zealand (1841-1907) just as Austria was defeated and taken over by the Allies after World War 2. On  May 15, 1955, Austria was simply given its independence rather than fighting to take it back. From 1841 the Chatham Islands were given the same, again without winning it. The Austrians lived in denial of their massive passivity if not outright courting of their own conquest; It was not until  2006 that a President of Austria publicly admitted this. Likewise, Generations of Chatham Islanders put the past behind them and became a close community. The Moriori culture was long gone and their bloodline, by 1907 was down to just 1 man. Even Alexander Shand, greatest scholar of Moriori, (and the dictionary of their dead language along with him) was lost due to a house fire on  28 July, 1910.

Before flaming out the Austrians produced a last gasp of intellectuals whose muffled cry for freedom came out as social and economic doctrines. Ludwig von Mises, Karl Popper, Friedrich Hayek, and Joseph Schumpeter are famous men whose books I’ve read and they have some of the most influential and incredible ideas the West has ever known. They all got out of Austria whereas any Moriori thinkers were slain or trapped on their slave plantation with only one known exception. Koche, like his father before him, traveled abroad on whale ships and after much effort used this means to escape the captivity that befell the rest of his Moriori people. Before his death, Koche told his life story to a fellow shipmate (doctor or lawyer named C. Ewing) which presents him as a “a hero struggling for his freedom.” Koche may have lived out his last years in America and started a family but his text is the last gasp of Moriori intellectual achievement.

The reconciliation and peace of the Chathams Island community was broken again in the 1980s. After all, Anglo Zelandians and Maori Zelandians had lived together for generations now. Nobody with Moriori heritage could summon any victimhood without also finding the blame for it in their own mixed Maori-Moriori genealogy. However, a way was found after Michael King wrote Moriori- A People Rediscovered in 1989 and when the Waitangi Tribunal (est.1975) decided in 1981 to breach their mandate to consider only claims prior to 1975. In 1985 the lie was made true with legislation and the wealth of the Chathams was in play for anybody who could win at the Oppression Olympics…

“Chatham Islanders have always reguarded themselves as a tight, supportive, community different and remote from mainland New Zealand. It’s an island community which until recently has always put up an united front against the rest of New Zealand. From disputes over taxes and fishing quotas to postage rates. But this year’s Waitangi Tribunal claim is driving a wedge throught he community.” – 22mins, Insight, Radio New Zealand (1989)

“Ngāti Mutunga o Wharekauri is trying to block a planned transfer of 12,000 hectares of Department of Conservation (DoC) land back to Moriori,..”Ngāti Mutunga did conquer and subjugate Moriori at that time and have maintained their mana whenua status ever since,” Ngāti Mutunga o Wharekauri Iwi Trust chair Tom McClurg says.” – Iwi calls Moriori ‘conquered and subjugated’ in modern-day land battle, Newshub (2018)

That’s right, as soon as The State started paying a bounty for historical wrongs to Maoris ~Abracadabra!~ a whole industry’s worth of grievances and wrongs and myths and revisions hatched out. Ref. 1989: Moriori- A People Resurrected, AHNZ

Great tracts of land, fisheries, money, and power were in play which tore up the fabric of the Chathams. The Labour 6.0 Government brokered the deal for what must have been a worthwhile transfer of power to them and their partners. All that was required was for some individuals to be found with the right family tree who were Culturally Fluid and willing to move to the Chatham Islands. For generations such a sell-out of their integrity and the prospects of living on a far-off misty island was unthinkable. But that was before it paid.

The Chathams became part of the Crown Colony of New Zealand in 1842 by which time the Te Ati Awa had fractured. Partly they had destroyed themselves in a civil war, party they had departed, and partly they had been wiped out by starting a war with the French! There was nobody left to ‘save’ or set free until re-settlement occurred. In the mid-1850s one of the factions came back after 14 years away compared to having lived on the Chathams for 5 years in the first place. Only now might there be a case that those who were Moriori were ‘slaves’ or ‘mistreated’ and needed their New Zealand citizenship rights protected. And, indeed, what King calls a “meaningful form of administration” began in 1855.

However, none of these fact of culture or genetics or history could stand in the way of money and power. They were bent into shape by academics and authors like King (rhs, Image above) who were published and promoted and paid for their part. In 2019, with $18,000,000 on the line, the newly minted ‘Moriori Tribe’ brought Newhub’s Jesse Mulligan over for a visit to the island where he announced “Were you told that there are no longer any living Moriori? Well, it’s a myth.”

The extinction of Moriori accepted at Tommy Solomon’s own funeral, the resident expert Mr Shand, Chatham Islanders and New Zealanders, historians, the Government, the world,…all we knew was now called The Moriori Myth. Michael King, Jesse Mulligan, Andrew Little, the Waitangi Tribunal, Radio New Zealand, and others managed at great feat of history revisionism.

As a direct result of this the true memory of the Moriori people and the lesson of their Anschluss is obliterated. Failure to learn this lesson sets up our nation to have to re-learn it all over again the hard way. In the 2020s New Zealand was so high in trait agreeableness we are lucky it was only lockdowns and compulsory gene therapy that we cheered on and not another Anschluss because we would have put up with anything.

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Michael King (in his budenovka Communist hat) with Dick Scott; Gil Hanly photo, 1987. Auckland War Memorial Museum; Colour by AHNZ (2023)

Image ref. RELICS OF A FAST VANISHING RACE: MORIORI SKULLS ON THE NINE-MILE BEACH. CHATHAM ISLANDS, Auckland Weekly News, 1907; Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections

Ref. The occupation of the Chatham Islands by the Maoris in 1835, A. Shand (1892,) JARS

Ref. Koche, King of Pitt, C Ewing (1873,) Catholic World. Making of America Journals

Ref. Clayworth thesis, University of Otago (2001)

Ref. Moriori- A People Rediscovered, Michael King (1989)