Talking nonsense tonight on Native Affairs

I'll be appearing on Maori TV's Native Affairs programme tonight to talk yet again about the moronic but unkillable theory that an ancient white civilisation existed in New Zealand, and about the neo-Nazis and Act MPs who have helped popularise the theory. 

Native Affairs interviewed Paul Moon and me for a clip that it will use to introduce a live studio debate between Annette Sykes and John Ansell, the former advisor to Don Brash who insists that New Zealand has become an apartheid state run by Maori where evidence of the Stonehenge-like structures built by an ancient white civilisation is being systematically destroyed. 

Sykes and Ansell will also clash over Allan Titford, a long-time advocate of the view that whites are the tangata whenua of New Zealand who was recently sent to prison for twenty-four years after being convicted of rape, arson, and various other crimes. Ansell claims that Titford is the blameless victim of an intricate conspiracy, and characterises him as the Nelson Mandela of New Zealand. Sykes disagrees, which presumably makes her part of the conspiracy. 

Native Affairs interviewed me in the Papakura Art Gallery, near some of my contributions to the A Sense of Place exhibition. There is a sad contrast between the thoughtful studies of history and landscape which fill the rooms at Papakura gallery and the hallucinations and rants of angry white men like Ansell and Titford. I'm probably excessively optimistic, but I'd like to think that, in some marvellous year, Pakeha will become as comfortable with their history and their geographical location as, say, the Tongatapuans I got to know last year, and will dispense with their fantasies about lost civilisations and superior races.

[Posted by Scott Hamilton]