Compensating the damage done to the Maori — it’s the gesture that counts

In history, damage was done to many countries, as in the case of New Zealand, and we might wonder why this matters to the present. It matters because damage is hard to forget, and the knowledge about it is passed down to new generations, because people want the young ones to remember what had happened, so that they might help to prevent it from happening again. Sometimes, the damage is so severe that, even decades later, the new generations feel the need to compensate for it — as in the case of the damages done to the Maori.

After the former British people having stolen so much land from the Maori, New Zealand’s government decided to provide the Maori with compensation, for example by Mount Cook being renamed Aoraki Mount Cook, which was its original name given by the Maori. Most of these compensations are only symbolic, not equal to what had been taken away. They wouldn’t have been able to make up for everything that had been done to the Maori anyway. Nevertheless, this was an important move, because it’s the gesture that counts and what is conveyed by it.

First of all, it conveys the government’s respect for the Maori as fellow citizens by seeing the need to compensate what had been done to them, even though it happened such a long time ago, and what is more, the ones compensating are not the ones who had caused the damage in the first place.

Secondly, it shows that the former British care for what had happened to the Maori and for what they had thought of “their land” and what had been important to them.

However, even the nicest gesture is relatively meaningless unless the Maori aren’t paid the same respect in everyday life. In 1955, the Maori asked for a formal apology by the Queen, according to www.nzhistory.net/nzpolitics/queen-elizabeth-jubilee/maori-and-the-queen, which shows how important this matter still is to the Maori. It’s all about the credibility of a government and its genuine will of the different cultures not only tolerating but respecting each other. With New Zealand’s government the expectations are quite high, because it “portray[s] New Zealand as having the best race relations in the world”, according to www.nzhistory.net/nzpolitics/queen-elizabeth-jubilee/maori-and-the-queen. So a lot needs to be done to live up to this claim and to ensure credibility.