Ki-o-Rahi (Maori football)

[Taha Maori]

ABoselli I'm wondering if you may have some residual attitudes from the past which prevailed in American society about who should be playing football. Are you familiar with the term 'stacking' or rather do you acknowlidge it? Historically do you acknowledge that your 'suntanned' countrymen were excluded from A'ball because of segregation and were seen as being intellectually inferior, remember those (good old?) days.

The same happened in baseball and basketball, can you SEE ABoselli how sports reflect the society they are in?

NOw ABoselli which ethnic groups dominate ALL of those sports? but ofcourse its because of their physical prowess isn't it no way could/would you attribute it to intelligence? If a non 'suntanned' player makes it in the leagues the emphasis then goes on how intelligently they have overcome the odds!

And with regard to Maori inventing all those wonderful paraphenalia that you so adore we have a system of beliefs here called "kaitikitanga" which is an holistic appraisal of our environment which we believe sees us as the caretakers only of the environment for our future generations to live in - it is a huge responsobility so we try to live and preserve "papatuanuku" and "te AO" not ravish and deplete its resources as some societies (do you know of any) uncaringly do.

I will try this on you ABoselli and see how fast you balk!
Consistent with Maori living with the environment and not against it the major environmentally non-threatening developments technologically for Maori were in the area of leisure.

1)Maori independantly invented surfing.

2)They had their own form of hang-gliding (yes manned flight)called Manu tangata before the arrival of Abel Tasman and other explorers (1400's).

3)They developed several types of ball games from poi toa to ki to tapu ae to ki-o-rahi to waka poi...

4)they had snow boards before Tasman arrived

5)they developed an equivalent to your mocassins with spikes for climbing our largest mountain range - the southern alps. See "Greenstone Trails".

6)they had huge 'meets' where 5-10,000 people would congregate to play sports - all pre-European times

7)they regularly powered their way across the Pacific for thousands of miles in canoes in pre-european times without sextants, compasses etc (was it by intelligence or fluke?)


..if interested in more please don't hisitate to reply but I guess the above is about as unbelieving as stacking in football? Regards Taha.