If we take the historical materialist approach, we don’t have to consider, say, the Pakeha takeover of Aotearoa in the nineteenth century as some sort of expression of the inherent evil of white people: we can see it as, in part at least, a consequence of historical forces like capitalism and imperialism that transcend individual humans and individual cultures. My Irish ancestors did not float to New Zealand and settle on confiscated land because they were racists who wanted to help push Maori to the margins of Te Ika a Maui – they came here because they were tired of struggling to survive by growing flax on a few acres of swampy land rented from wealthy Anglo-Irish families. They were part of an imperialist adventure in the south seas, but they had themselves experienced at least some of the realities of imperialism at home, and this experience is what prompted them to come south…

http://readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz/2010/02/how-evil-is-history.html

But when we’re talking about broad historical trends and broad sociological patterns, rather than esoteric matters like Te Kooti’s religion or seldom-studied subjects like Te Puea’s experiments in communal farming with her extended family, then the attempt to restrict open discussion is not about sensitivity, but about control.

Back in the 1980s Donna Awatere attacked both Pakeha and Maori Marxists for using a ‘non-Maori’ method of understanding history. She wasn’t happy when Marxists like Dave Bedggood talked about the link between colonialism and capitalism and related what happened in Aotearoa to what was happening in Europe in the nineteenth century. Awatere said that only Maori could talk about Maori history, and that Bedggood et al for racists for trying to do so. But her real concern was to create a monopoloy for herself, by making herself the person who spoke for all Maori and interpreted Maori history to non-Maori. And, once she had gone some way towards achieving this status, she made a nice profit out of running all sorts of Treaty sensitivity courses where she acted as the fount of all wisdom for white liberals too afraid to think for themselves about history.

I think that one of the strengths of Marxism – of a certain type of Marxism, anyway – is its emphasis on the relatively dispassionate analysis of broad trends in history and broad patterns in society. By getting this sort of ‘big picture’ we can escape from some of the emotionalism which folks like Awatere trade on. One of the problems with discussions of history in New Zealand is the way they tend to descend into arguments about the morality, or lack of morality, of certain groups. Maori are patronised and cast as the innocent victims of history, and Pakeha made into the big bad guys. Because it emphasises that history is, in the long run, the product of abstract forces like economics, the environment, demographics, and so on, and not of the moral decisions of individuals, Marxism can actually, if it is used properly, help to take some of the sting out of our history, and induce a bit of clarity.

As it happens, I’d generally agree with your comment that Māori tend to view the Treaty as a “tool” to advance group interests, however it is very much a double-edged tool, as Annette Sykes’ lecture on the Brown Table shows, the Crown has used the Treaty to create a fairly compliant bureaucracy in its own image.

The truth is that it’s completely impossible to study the history of Pakeha without studying the story of Maori, and vice versa. The two pasts are hopelessly intertwined, despite what redneck Pakeha and bourgeois Maori nationalists might suggest.

In Tonga, where the locals have never felt the pressure which comes from colonisation, it’s perfectly normal, and indeed expected, for scholars to bring European and Tongan subjects and themes together. Tonga’s first university, the ‘Atenisi Institute, taught Greek and Latin alongside Tongan culture and language. In New Zealand bourgeois Maori leaders like Donna Awatere in the 1980s and Tariana Turia today have tried to put up walls between Maori and Pakeha subjects, and derided both scholars and activists who have crossed these barriers. Hence Tariana recently attacked Hone and the Mana Party for talking about ‘Pakeha’ concerns like union rights. But the truth is that unions are the concern of both Maori and Pakeha workers – and the history of New Zealand is the concern of Maori and Pakeha alike.

FYI Maori don’t love the treaty for the sake of it, it is just a tool we can use with the current legal system. We are “using the masters tools” but that is just a meaningless rhetorical slogan, we use whatever tools we have to hand. Indigenous people in Australia don’t have a treaty and it has been much more difficult for them to get anywhere with the state.