Susan Healy shares how our coloniser forebears believed that Christianity was superior and remained ignorant of Māori beliefs, to our spiritual loss.

Ko Waitakere te pae maunga
Ko Te Whau te awa
Nō Airani taku pāpā, nō Ingarangi taku māmā
Ko Ihu Karaiti te tangata.

I grew up gazing out to the Waitakere ranges and near the Te Whau river, and in this pepeha I speak as a Pākehā Christian.

Like many others, I had the privilege of taking part in Henare Tate’s (Pā Henare’s) courses in Māori theology. There was a great depth to what he shared with us, often illustrated through stories poignant and humorous. While we Pākehā felt a bit lost at times — knowing we needed more Māori language to appreciate all Pā was saying — the courses brought us joy and satisfaction. Our minds and hearts were opened to the beliefs and practices of the indigenous people of our country. We found, too, a theology that intuitively made sense, grounded in human experience and at the same time profoundly spiritual.

I think we will have difficulty in appreciating Māori spirituality if our religious outlook is based in a rupture between the spiritual and the human — a rupture shown in much 19th-century European Christianity.

When writing about William Yate (1802-1877), Judith Binney makes a telling observation: 

“Like most missionaries, Yate's expressed feelings about the Maoris varied according to the point of view he wished to establish: as an emissary of Christianity he saw them as cruel, licentious, lacking in human affection, lazy, superstitious and proficient in cant; as a man he recognised that they could be kind, loving, brave, industrious (for 'natives'), intelligent and sincere in their beliefs.”

Prejudice Passed Down

To us, this may seem a sad travesty: a person’s Christian beliefs actively prejudicing them against the good in another culture. But, as descendants of settlers, we must ask whether remnants of this prejudice still abide in our communities.

Further, does an over-thought-out approach to our faith continue to prevent us from being in touch with what our humanity is telling us? Theory seems to have become the new god in so much education. Does this emphasis mean we are in danger of losing sight of the value in traditions that are rooted in the earthed experience of generations?

Not Listening to Māori

While we probably abhor the overt racism carried by many of the colonisers, we might not be aware of the harmful ignorance that derives from simply not listening to what Māori have to say.

This non-listening was typical of the early European evangelisation in this country as James Cowan (1870–1943) pointed out:

“Few of the excellent men who pioneered the Churches in New Zealand took the trouble to investigate the system of beliefs they were supplanting. It was but natural that they should decline to study the faiths and practices that appeared to them nothing but ‘idolatrous abominations’ . . . The missionary . . . quite failed to grasp the sublimity and beauty underlying the old Māori religion.”

Cowan recognised the value of Māori religion because he was a fluent speaker of the Māori language and spent time speaking with Māori and learning from them. Maybe Cowan teaches us that gaining an appreciation of another people’s spirituality takes time, discipline and a willingness to be moved from the suppositions we grew up with.

Cowan’s reflection reminds me of what I learnt from a 1980s study of New Zealand’s theological colleges and their relationship to Māori. I came to the conclusion that worse than the negative prejudices carried by some was the fact that, at that time, the colleges largely had little or no place for the Māori world, the indigenous culture of our country.

It struck me that when we are negative about another culture or person, at least we are acknowledging they exist. To ignore them is a terrible denial of their being.

Christianity Confused with Civilisation

In his use of the word “supplant”, Cowan points to the ultimate harm in the colonising project, which in effect was a drive to replace the religion, economy and politics of the indigenous people with Western institutions. A powerful justifier for this drive lay in the colonisers’ notion of civilisation, closely tied to that of Christianity. As the historian, Professor Keith Sorrenson, put it: “Christianity, the religion of civilisation . . . was a phrase that would reverberate through the mission records.” This is evident in the words of Samuel Marsden, a man who knew Māori as friends but, like others, did not inquire into their culture and beliefs.

“It may be requisite to state that the New Zealanders [Māori] have derived no advantages hitherto either from commerce or the arts of civilization; and must, therefore, be in heathen darkness and ignorance [even though] they appear to be a very superior people in point of mental capacity.”

Clearly, Marsden’s “civilisation” is that of Europe, seen as the epitome of human development.

Learn from Māori Wisdom

The equation of civilisation with Westernisation reverberates in much scholarship today, and probably affects us more than we realise. It has been strongly reinforced by the theory of social evolution, which classifies societies according to their progress along a continuum from the primitive to the advanced. This linear view of history is used to support the superiority of the West and creates a block to our fully recognising the worth of indigenous peoples and their spiritualities.

Rightly or wrongly, I see the influence of this sort of theory in the argument that we are evolving into a new era of ecological consciousness, where the “we” implies all humanity. I find myself murmuring in irritation: “But can’t you see, that is such a Eurocentric statement! Indigenous peoples, as peoples, have continuously seen themselves as deeply linked to the Earth.” What is more, these linear views of development, taken to their logical conclusion, mean that we are cutting ourselves off from our ancestors and their wisdom — an unthinkable position for indigenous peoples.

A careful reading of the evidence given by Māori to the Waitangi Tribunal shows their belief in the interconnectedness of all being, over space and time. To quote Ngāpuhi scholar, Hone Sadler: “the worldview of Māori . . . is that everything is interrelated from the sky to the land.” Another Ngāpuhi elder, Pereme Porter, emphasised to the Waitangi Tribunal that to understand Māori culture is to recognise that it is a culture of relationships: 

“Our culture is based on relationships with everything and everyone in Te Ao Mārama [the world of light, the physical world] as creatures that whakapapa [trace connection] to the source of that creation, the creator of the cosmos, Io.”

All this fits with what we learnt from Pa Henare’s classes: that, in the Māori theological framework, respect for the divine, for people and for the land is fundamental. They belong together. This is wisdom we of settler descent need to be open to, both to overcome the damaging blindness from our colonial past and to face the challenges of our time. 

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 237 May 2019: 4-5