April 11, 2003

莫里奥里人的教训

和平主义的短暂历史

 

从前有一群莫里奥里人据说是距新西兰东540里由四个主要岛屿组成的查塔姆岛的首批居民。

根据对他们的语言，骨骼残余及史前古器物的研究，学者们断定莫里奥里人和最先居住在新西兰的毛利人部落是同一个祖先。莫里奥里人可能约在13或14世纪从新西兰移民到查塔姆岛。莫里奥里人随之也带来了野蛮和吃人文化。但他们的首领努努克-伟尔对他所目睹的一场场无尽的战争渐渐厌恶了，他跳到对战的两军之间，命令停止战斗和野蛮！受惊的士兵撤了下来。根据迈克尔王的莫里奥里人传{新发现的民族}努努克命令：“大家听着！！！从现在永远，再也不许今天这样的战争重演！从今天起忘记人肉的味道！”所有拒绝遵守努努克命令的人将受到诅咒：从违反的这一天内脏就腐烂！”

并且，几乎在一夜之间，敌对的野蛮的文化变成了后来被圣雄甘地称之为“非暴力”民族文化。我们许多人认为莫里奥里哲学为和平主义。正如书上所说的，距离的隔膜阻断了查塔姆岛民和与他们想法和行为完全不同的民族的联系，却使他们的文化得以持续发展，努努克法律得到成功遵守。

但是莫里奥里的和平主义世界随着陌生人的到达而宣布停止。1791年11月27日的英国海军上尉威廉-罗伯特伯顿，查塔姆双桅船指挥官看到了这片外世界未曾注目的土地，联盟国旗在莫里奥里人的土地被掠为乔治三世的仪式上升起。欧洲人给莫里奥里族带来了灾难性的疾病，20%的人丧生。

塔日那科是新西兰的几个毛利族之一，他们是没有生活在努努克禁令下的不太和平的民族。他们确实了解查塔姆岛的莫里奥里人的和平性质，1835年，塔日那科毛利人决定移民到查塔姆。住在新西兰的毛利人大多数都经历了长期的并多次取胜的反抗白人侵略者的战役。白人数量上占据了优势，新西兰毛利人发明了一种堑壕作战，也就是用木材和一种叫PA的土方建筑。19世纪毛利人很快变得善长于轻武器，比任何一个比他们人数多得多的本土团体作战更长，更成功。只是因为无可抗拒的白人数量优势，新西兰毛利人最终在19世纪60年代被击败。甚至在那时他们就赢得了公民权和国会指定席位。

在新西兰，经过浴血战斗白人和毛利人的战斗最后以政治解决。大多数是胜利的，一些少数权力建立。在石头年代，澳大利亚土著居民很快被征服，新西兰好战的本土人保存了他们坚固的权力。

查塔姆岛结果不是这样。1835年初400个塔日那科毛利人乘着游民双桅船到了查塔姆，年底又有500毛利人到达。最后这群登陆不久，毛利人通过踏踏或穿越土地仪式开始占有了岛屿。

KING是这样描写占领的：“在没有任何通知，许可和问候的情况下，一队队手持步枪，棍棒，战斧的战士在他们的首领的带领下走过莫里奥里族领土。如果侵略者要该地区，他们会草率地通知居民：他们的土地已被占领住在那里的莫里奥里人现在是臣民。”

莫里奥里长者会议在一个叫Te Awapatiki.的殖民地召集，尽管知道毛利人喜好杀和吃被征服者，尽管年长的首领们警告努努克法则现在不适当的。两个首领Tapata和Torea宣布：“努努克法律不是生存的策略，应根据条件的变化而变化，它是道德需要”

因此就这样决定了，也没有反抗，没有努努克法则的折衷。KING继续写道：“莫里奥里人变成囚犯，妇女儿童被束缚，他们中还有男人们被杀掉或吃掉，以至森林还有平原上堆的到处都是尸体，那些免得一死的人象猪一样的养着，年年都有被杀掉的。

KING提出莫里奥里人不反击的决定是对毛利人野蛮的一个鞭策，因为毛利人误认为努努克就是怯懦，根据含意就是无益。到1862年最初的2000莫里奥里人只剩下101人活着。不试图生存的策略直接导致莫里奥里人的毁灭。欧洲人眼看着毛利人对莫里奥里人的杀戮，但没有做任何事阻止。

 

如果圣雄甘地能了解莫里奥里人，他也许会很钦佩他们：“一个人能为他所认为的正义而放弃自己的生命是非暴力的消极抵抗和不合作主义的核心（非暴力方式的反抗）（用非暴力）勇敢包含着死亡而不是杀戮”他说。但是正如KING所看到的，“莫里奥里人学会了一种不同于他们的文化的别的民族有关的战术的哲学的真理：非暴力只是反抗和你的道德心相同的敌手的一个有效的武器”

最后满身是血的莫里奥里人，汤米’所罗门死于1933年三月19日

在美国，英国和澳大利亚，一些和平主义者向那些保护自由言论的和平主义者权力的士兵宣布他们的精神崇尚.如果不是英国许多代士兵和海员们的保护，发生在莫里奥里人身上的灾难同样也会落到这些和平主义者身上。毛利人对莫里奥里人所做的一切会通过希特勒，东条，本拉登及任何一个和平主义者所唾弃并与之抵抗的暴君数千次的施之于和平主义者。

正如一个广为流传的标签语所说的：“如果会读这个，感谢老师”如果你是一个还未被暗杀或被奴役的和平主义者，请感谢战士。

作者注：我们向有兴趣阅读更多的朋友们推荐下列书籍：迈克尔王， 莫里奥里：新发现的民族（企鹅篇。2000）托马斯-黙顿。甘地非暴力：甘地著作选集（新注， 1965）希拉Natusch， 地狱与高潮。1843-1910查塔姆岛一个德国人的故事（新西兰：神马印刷，1977）大卫科贝是研究主管，保罗 格伦特和乔安妮艾森是独立学会的高级会员。

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A Moriori Lesson
A brief history of pacifism.
By Dave Kopel, Paul Gallant & Joanne D. Eisen

 

Once upon a time, there was a people called the Moriori. Of Polynesian descent, they are believed to be the first inhabitants of the Chatham Islands, a group of four main islands about 540 miles east of New Zealand.

Based on study of their language, skeletal remains, and artifacts, scholars have concluded that the Moriori shared a common ancestry with Maori tribes who first settled in New Zealand. The Moriori probably migrated from New Zealand to the Chatham Islands around the 13th or 14th centuries.

The Moriori brought with them a culture of violence and cannibalism. But their revered chieftain, Nunuku-whenua, became sickened by the endless combat he was witnessing. Nunuku jumped between two fighting forces, and ordered the fighting and savagery to stop. The stunned warriors pulled apart. According to Michael King's book Moriori: A People Rediscovered, Nunuku demanded: "Listen all! From now and forever, never again let there be war as this day has been! From today on forget the taste of human flesh!" Those who refused to honor Nunuku's decree would be cursed: "May your bowels rot the day you disobey."

And so, virtually overnight, a warring, violent culture changed to a culture of people who practiced what Mahatma Gandhi would later call "ahimsa," or non-violence. Most of us would recognize the Moriori philosophy as pacificism. As King noted, "The membrane of distance, which had protected the Chatham Islanders from contact with peoples who thought and behaved differently from themselves . . . allowed the uninterrupted evolution of their culture and the successful observance of Nunuku's law."

But the pacifist world of the Morioris would be tested to the limit when strangers began to arrive.

On November 27, 1791, 28-year-old British lieutenant William Robert Broughton, commander of the brig Chatham, sighted land where none was supposed to be. The Union Jack was planted in a ceremony that stole the Moriori land for King George III. The Europeans brought with them devastating disease, which killed 10-20 percent of the Morioris.

The Taranaki were one of the several Maori tribes of New Zealand; they were a not-so-peaceful people who did not live under Nukunu's prohibitions. They did know about the peaceful nature of the Moriori on the Chatham Island, and in 1835, the Taranaki Maori decided to migrate to the Chathams.

The Maori majority who stayed in New Zealand fought a long and often successful series of campaigns against the white invaders. Outnumbered by the whites, the New Zealand Maori invented a form of trench warfare, using timber and earthwork structures called pa. They Maori rapidly became expert in firearms and fought longer and more successfully than any other outnumbered indigenous group in the 19th century. It was only because of overwhelming white numerical superiority that the New Zealand Maori were finally defeated in the 1860s-and even then they won citizenship rights and designated seats in the parliament. In New Zealand, the readiness of the whites and the Maori to fight had resulted, after much bloodshed, in a political settlement whereby the majority was victorious, but some minority rights were established. While the gentle stone age Aborigines of Australia had been very quickly crushed and viciously subjugated, the fighting natives of New Zealand preserved a not-insubstantial degree of their rights.

Such was not the outcome in the Chatham Islands. Early in 1835, 400 Taranaki Maori sailed on the brig Rodney to the Chathams; 500 additional Maori arrived by the end of the year. Shortly after the last group disembarked, the Maoris began to take possession of the islands by their ceremony of "takahi," or "walking the land."

King describes the takeover: "Parties of warriors armed with muskets, clubs and tomahawks, led by their chiefs, walked through Moriori tribal territories and settlements without warning, permission or greeting. If the districts were wanted by the invaders, they curtly informed the inhabitants that their land had been taken and the Moriori living there were now vassals."

A council of Moriori elders was convened at the settlement called Te Awapatiki. Despite knowing of the Maori's predilection for killing and eating the conquered, and despite the admonition by some of the elder chiefs that the principle of Nunuku was not appropriate now, two chiefs — Tapata and Torea — declared that "the law of Nunuku was not a strategy for survival, to be varied as conditions changed; it was a moral imperative."

And so it was decided. There would be no resistance, no compromise with the principle of Nunuku. King continues: "Morioris were taken prisoners, the women and children were bound, and many of these, together with the men, were killed and eaten, so that the corpses lay scattered in the woods and over the plains. Those who were spared from death were herded like swine, and even killed from year to year."

King suggests that the Moriori decision not to fight back was a spur to Maori brutality, for Maoris confused Nunuku with cowardice, "and — by implication — worthlessness."

By 1862, only 101 Morioris out of an initial number of about 2,000 were left alive. The strategy "not designed for survival" led directly to the destruction of the Morioris. The Europeans watched the slaughter of Morioris by the Maoris, and did nothing to prevent it.

If Gandhi had known of the Moriori, he might have admired them: "To lay down one's life for what one considers to be right is the very core of satyagraha [resistance by non-violent means] . . . [In non-violence] the bravery consists in dying, not in killing," he said. But as King observes, "The Moriori had learned a tactical and philosophical truth that was to be articulated by other people from other cultures in the twentieth century: non-violence is an effective weapon only against an adversary who shares your conscience."

The last full-blooded Moriori, Tommy Solomon, died on March 19, 1933.

In the United States, Britain, and Australia, some pacifists proclaim their moral superiority to the soldiers who protect the pacifists' right to free speech. What happened to the Moriori would happen to these same pacifists, if not for the protection provided for many generations by the Anglosphere's soldiers and sailors. What the Maori did to the Moriori would have been done a thousand times over to the pacifists by Hitler, Tojo, Stalin, and bin Laden — and every other tyrant whom the pacifists condemned the military for resisting.

A popular bumper sticker says "If you can read this, thank a teacher." If you're a pacifist who hasn't been murdered or enslaved, thank a soldier.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: For those interested in reading more, we recommend the following books: Michael King, Moriori: A People Rediscovered (Penguin Books, 2000); Thomas Merton, ed., Gandhi on Non-Violence: A Selection from the Writings of Mahatma Gandhi (New Directions, 1965); Sheila Natusch, Hell and High Water: A German Occupation of the Chatham Islands 1843-1910 (NZ: Pegasus Press, 1977).

 

— Dave Kopel is research director and Paul Gallant and Joanne D. Eisen are senior fellows at the Independence Institute.