Hone Harawira, Maori Party MP for the Te Tai Tokerau electorate has come under fire in the media for comments that the National Business Review described as “racially abusive” and Prime Minister John Key called “outrageous” and “deeply offensive”. So what did he say? Responding to an email from a member of the public, which criticised him for missing a meeting with EU representatives to go sight seeing in Paris while on a tax-payer funded trip, Harawira replied;

Gee Buddy, do you believe that white man bullshit too do you?
White motherfuckers have been raping our lands and ripping us off for centuries and all of a sudden you want me to play along with their puritanical bullshit.

When released to the media, those comments led to a record number of complaints to the Race Relations Commissioner, 365 in just five days, compared with 407 for all of 2008. Why is New Zealand’s white majority so upset by these comments? Harawira did not say anything derogatory about Pakeha (white New Zealanders). His reference to “that white man bullshit” is not a literal reference to Pakeha men, but a metaphor for a power structure that has historically benefited white males. Just as “The Man” does not refer to any particular man, but authority in general.

His reference to “raping our lands and ripping us off” is somewhat more literal. The civil wars between Pakeha settlers and Maori that raged throughout the North Island of nineteenth century New Zealand are agreed by historians such as Keith Sorrenson and Keith Sinclair to have been caused by disputes over land. Amid the media circus over Harawira’s “racist” comments, the anniversary of the invasion of Parihaka quietly passed. Parihaka was a village founded during the early years of dispossession of Maori from the land, but by 1870 it had become the largest Māori village in the country. On the morning of November 5 1881 an invasion force led by two Members of Parliament, both Cabinet Ministers, entered Parihaka, in two weeks the army had pulled down the houses and in two months they had destroyed the crops. Women and girls were raped leading to an outbreak of syphilis in the community.

In this context, Harawira’s words are not a racial outburst, but an acknowledgement of history that many Pakeha, such as perhaps the 365 complainants to the Relations Commissioner, would rather not be reminded off. History does not mean Hone Harawira was in the right when he skipped a ministerial meeting to be a tourist, but it does mean he can’t simply be dismissed as an anti-white racist.