Māori want to talk about genocide

Just not the genocide they committed against the Moriori

Every time there is talk about an alleged genocide happening in Palestine, you can guarantee there will be loud activist Māori voices screaming about it. Debbie Ngawera=Packer this week started to cry out about injustice, oppression, colonisation, and the suffering of the people in Gaza. When it comes to the genocide their own ancestors carried out against the Chatham Islands' Moriori, they go deadly silent.

In 1835, the Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama iwi sailed to the Chathams and slaughtered around 300 Moriori men, women, and children. They didn’t just kill. They butchered. They staked people out to die. They raped women and used them as sex slaves, they enslaved the survivors, and they banned them from speaking their own language or having children. This was not war. It was ethnic cleansing. It was the cold-blooded destruction of an entire people, and it worked. From a population of 1,700, the Moriori were reduced to just about 100 by 1870. The last full blooded Moriori died in the 1930’s.

Māori did not do this out of necessity. The Moriori posed no threat. They followed Nunuku’s Law, a strict code of non-violence. They actually debated how to peacefully co-exist with the Māori invaders. While they were still debating, Māori slaughtered them. It was cowardly. It was merciless. It was genocide.

Māori leaders love to frame their people as eternal victims. It is always about what was done to them, never what they did to others. History does not let anyone off that easy.

These same people who cry about colonisation seem to forget that their own ancestors were colonisers, invaders who showed no mercy. They raped, pillaged, and enslaved. They owned other human beings. They killed children. And yet, somehow, this part of the story has been almost completely erased from the public consciousness.

There is no national day of remembrance for the Moriori genocide. No wall of names. No apology. Not even shame. Just silence.

If Māori want to be taken seriously when they talk about injustice, they must first face their own history honestly. You cannot demand recognition of your suffering while burying the suffering you inflicted on others.

Owning up to these atrocities does not weaken Māori mana. It strengthens it. It shows integrity. Denying them, on the other hand, just reeks of hypocrisy and moral cowardice.

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Māori were not just victims. They were also oppressors. They were slavers. They were murderers. They were genocidal. Pretending otherwise is an insult to the memory of the Moriori and to the very idea of justice.

Māori want to speak about colonisation? Fine. But do not pretend your hands are clean. Before the British even arrived, some Māori were wiping out entire peoples. The Moriori did not just vanish. They were erased by Māori hands.

It is long past time that Māori stopped rewriting history to make themselves look pure. They were not. They were human, capable of the savage brutality. In the Chathams, they proved it.

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