Free Republic

A genetic study helps confirm the theory that Polynesians, who settled islands across a vast swathe of ocean, started out in Taiwan, researchers reported on Monday. Mitochondrial DNA, which is passed along virtually unchanged from mothers to their children, provides a kind of genetic clock linking present-day Polynesians to the descendants of aboriginal residents of Taiwan. Samples taken from nine indigenous Taiwanese tribes -- who are different ethnically and genetically from the now-dominant Han Chinese -- show clear similarities between the Taiwan groups and ethnic Polynesians, Jean Trejaut and Marie Lin of Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taipei and colleagues reported....

Escalating rates of diabetes among indigenous cultures could make the Maori and Polynesian races "extinct" before the end of the century, an Australian expert warns. Professor Paul Zimmet, director of Monash University's International Diabetes Institute, said the rising number of diabetes victims among the world's indigenous communities would decimate entire cultures. "Without urgent action there certainly is a real risk major wipings out of indigenous communities, if not total extinction, within this century," he said. "Life expectancy is already low and dropping, diabetes is hitting them very hard and the infections, amputations and kidney disease will just wreak more havoc."...

MAORIS carry a "warrior" gene that makes them more prone to violence, criminal acts and risky behaviour, a scientist has controversially claimed. Dr Rod Lea, a New Zealand researcher, and his colleagues told an Australian genetics conference that Maori men had a "striking over-representation" of monoamine oxidase - dubbed the warrior gene - which they say is strongly associated with aggressive behaviour. He says the unpublished studies prove that Maoris have the highest prevalence of this strength gene, first discovered by US researchers but never linked to an ethnic group. This explains how Maoris migrated across the Pacific and survived,...

Maori have every right to enjoy smoking, gambling and eating fatty foods if they want to - and Maori health workers who say otherwise are just brainwashed "house niggers". That's according to the authors of a controversial new book on Maori health published by one of South Auckland's largest Maori health providers. The Kotahitanga Community Trust, a taxpayer-funded charitable organisation in Counties Manukau, provides health care for more than 5000 patients - 4000 of whom are Maori. The book, Maori Health, was co-authored by trust chairman Peter Caccioppoli and Rhys Cullen, a GP at the trust's Papakura practice and published...

The health gap between Maori and European New Zealanders is wider than between Native Americans and the United States majority white population, a researcher from Auckland University has found. The results of the study by senior lecturer Dale Bramley, comparing disparities in indigenous health, appeared in the May edition of the American Journal of Public Health. Dr Bramley believes the situation could be significantly improved in New Zealand by introducing policies to reduce inequalities, such as providing more services specifically to Maori. He compared a range of health indicators in the two countries, including life expectancy and infant mortality, immunisation,...

Maori prison inmates, many of them gang members, are converting to a militant, politicised brand of Islam, raising concerns among sections of the Muslim community. Converts are being drawn to the faith through anti-Pakeha sentiment and a fascination with al Qaeda and the radical chic of African-American Muslim icons such as Malcolm X. "The ones coming in, their reasons are they admire Osama bin Laden," says Te Amorangi Izhaq Kireka-Whaanga, leader of the Aotearoa Maori Muslim Association. "They think it's all about fighting Europeans." An Islamic convert of seven years and a staunch Maori nationalist, he sees tino rangatiratanga as...

Maori men and women from different homelands Thursday, 27 March 2003 "A New Zealand Warrior and his Wife", an engraving from the journal of Captain James Cook's 1784 visit on Endeavour (Pic: State Library of NSW) The male and female ancestors of today’s Maori people of New Zealand originated from different parts of the world, molecular biologists have said. Their claims, made by Masters student Adele Whyte, the Tuapapa Putaiao Maori Fellow at Victoria University in Wellington, and her supervisor Professor Geoff Chambers, will be aired on ABC-TV’s science program Catalyst tonight. By comparing the DNA of people from Asia,...

The Maori Party is already driving a larger and considerably more dangerous wedge into the New Zealand Left than anything so far inserted by the National Party. As it grows in strength and consolidates its already powerful grip on the Maori imagination, the Maori Party has the potential to split Labour into two hostile camps, aggravate racial sensitivities within the trade union movement, and push the Greens below the all-important 5% MMP threshold. The Left's vulnerability to the Maori Party is entirely of its own making. From the early-1980s, the critical "sites of struggle" for most progressive political activists shifted...

Delivered at the ACT New Zealand 10th Annual Conference Christchurch 6 March 2004 Don Brash has put the cat firmly in the middle of the political pigeons. How should ACT respond? Firstly by acknowledging that Brash was right in what he said. We have to ask ourselves why this one speech overshadowed 7 years of similar statements by ACT; why it reduced Peters from being a threat to National to being a non-entity. Answer - voters believed Brash meant what he said. That comes from having a consistent message which leads to credibility and ultimately confidence. Richard, in difficult circumstances,...

Prayers for staff stress relief The New Zealand Government has started daily Maori prayer sessions to help stressed-out parliamentary workers cope with their jobs. The 25-minute voluntary sessions, due to start this morning, are the brainchild of Oketopa Kuni Shepherd, the new Maori cultural services kaiwhakahaere (coordinator) for Parliamentary Services. "You've got to be creative with people under stress. I thought we'd start the hikoi (journey) to setting people going in a positive way." The session would help clear workers of "any negativity" before starting their day, he said. But National's internal affairs spokeswoman, Judith Collins, said the initiative was...