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Kotahi anō te tupuna o te tangata Māori, ko Ranginui e tū nei, ko Papatūānuku e takato nei. Colonisation through Christianity

Abstract
This thesis will look at the role that Christianity and the missionaries played in the colonisation of Māori during the 1800s. With discussion about the colonisation of Aotearoa, it is generally felt within the Christian community that the work of the missionaries and the Crown are separate and therefore the universal belief is that the missionaries are pardoned from the critique of their work here in Aotearoa. However, Christianity throughout history has always been a doorway for the British Empire to enter land that was not their own. It is widely accepted from the viewpoint of Christianity that it holds a religious superiority over all Indigenous people and their religions dating back to Pope Alexander VI and the issuing of the Papal Bull “Inter Caetera” in 1493 to justify Christian European explorers’ claims on land and waterways they allegedly discovered. Christian hegemony shaped missionary views of the ‘other’ and justified the assimilation of Indigenous people into European Christianity. The negative effects of Christianity on Māori far outweigh the positives as mission stations up and down Aotearoa contributed heavily to the loss of language, religion, and land, the three foundational pillars of Māori and other Indigenous peoples around the world. The thesis seeks to hold the missionaries and Christianity to account for its contribution to the colonisation and religious assimilation of Māori into a foreign and unrelated belief system.
Type
Thesis
Type of thesis
Series
Citation
Wallace, R. (2021). Kotahi anō te tupuna o te tangata Māori, ko Ranginui e tū nei, ko Papatūānuku e takato nei. Colonisation through Christianity (Thesis, Master of Māori and Pacific Development (MMPD)). The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10289/14556
Date
2021
Publisher
The University of Waikato
Supervisors
Rights
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