Every country same shit — colonization

I read about NZ history this week and what I learned was really interesting. I had no idea of what has happened in NZ’s past, the only thing I knew was that NZ was colonized by Europeans, which probably holds true for 3/4 of the world. I didn’t even know when colonization took place there, so I got really interested into reading more about how it has been before and how the colonization worked out. The first thing that I found quite interesting was that the Maori basically colonized New Zealand themselves not too long before the Europeans settlers came. I was shocked by the fact that they were able to wipe out the complete Mao-Population (some kind of ostrich bird) and used the natural resources in such a way that they were soon forced to change their lifestyle form hunting animals to settling down and starting to build farms.

At an abstract level I think almost the same happened when the Europeans started to dig for gold and settle in huge numbers in New Zealand. They colonize it, push away the lives that are currently living there and start to use and take away all of the resources they can. To my mind it’s basically the same that happened in the colonization of America. As if there was a plan to abuse and exploit everything Europeans (or humans in general?) can get their hands on. Especially in NZ I think it is quite absurd that the colonization of the country caused a lot of harm to the native people. As a matter of fact, the idea of a treaty in order to not re-do the mistakes the crown made in the America was quite progressive at first sight. In the aftermath it did certainly not work out as people seemed (or still seem) to be egoistic and xenophobic as they did not care about the treaty (which was not really in favor of the Maori in the first place) and by doing so, ripping the Maori of their land and their freedom as well as depriving them of their rights to mutually govern New Zealand.

Although Britain already knew what could happen in colonization processes, although they tried to prevent a negative outcome in NZ, they still manged to fail. Again. To my mind just another example of the more or less selfish attitude the western world has. But from another point of view one could maybe say that this is human — proof might be seen in the exploit of nature the Maori took part in. Anyway I’d like to stick with the heading: every country same shit — colonization.