May 24, 2024
WILLIE JACKSON SPEECH Debate motion: This House believes British Museums are not very British.
Hon Willie Jackson
Debate motion: This House believes British Museums are not very British.
Side of debate: Opposition
For the proposition:
Bell Ribeiro-Abby MP
Rt Hon The Lord Vaizey of Didcot PC
In opposition:
Hon Willie Jackson
Mr Gary Vikan
Date: 23 May 2024, Oxford Union, UK.
Mihi:
Tuatahi e tika ki te mihi ki to tatau matua i te rangi nana nei nga mea katoa.
I tenei wa e tika ana kia maumahara te wahine toa, rangatira Makereti Papakura te Wahine Maori tuatahi i tae mai ki Oxford.
ka mihi matou ki a ia mo ana mahi whakamiharo kia okioki i runga i te Rangimarie
Kia Koutou tena koutoa mo tenei whai wahi ki te uru ki enei tautohtohe nui ka nui te mihi kia koutou katoa
Kia Ora Mr President, I started in our Maori language, to honour not just our people but the first Maori woman and in fact, indigenous woman Makareti Papakura to attend Oxford.
She opened the door for indigenous people and I dedicate my speech to her legacy the great Makareti Papakura.
Kia ora
I am Māori, and I cut my teeth politically as a union official on the shop floor with the blood, sweat and tears of working people.
My tribes are Ngati Porou and Ngati Maniapoto but I have been brought up in the city where I have proudly been part of a Movement that has represented Urban Māori.
I was honoured to serve as a Minister in both Jacinda Ardern and Chris Hipkins Labour government.
I have advocated and fought for workers rights, indigenous rights, equal rights and human rights all my life and Im here to do that again.
You might be slightly surprised that I am on the opposite side of the moot to my parliamentary friends but I feel confident that by the end of my speech they to will have no choice but to agree with me that British Museums are without any doubt very British.
As I speak to you now, I sense the presence of my ancestors who are trapped in your Museum prison. Therefore, I support what Former NZ National PM Jenny Shipley said in her 2021 Oxford debate speech where she asserted The British Empire Is A National Disgrace.
She said that relics for Maori are human they are people they are their whanau and family and they live in the basements of museums neglected and listed as if they were an item of irrelevance and that the right thing to do would be to return them. She was right.
As you enter the British Museum you are greeted by a dome of architectural conceit designed by a Knighted Smirke as the Empire hides its theft deep in the bowels of institution.
I stand before the brilliance and magnificent history of these most revered Oxford Debates to tell the house that British Museums ARE VERY British because it is very, very, very British to take from indigenous people and never hand it back!
To paraphrase our great former Prime Minister David Lange’s famous quip during the Nuclear weapons Oxford debate 39 years ago, “I can smell the Colonialism on your breath from here”.
The British Museum is without question a bastion and symbol of Imperial privilege and cultural condescension, and what I ask ladies and gentlemen of this great debating tradition is what is more British than Imperial privilege, and cultural condescension?
That’s very British!
These are difficult times for the British at the moment, Prime Minister Sunak knows this very well, and dominant white
cultures in general. They are constantly criticised by activists online for cultural appropriation.
I say it’s difficult because that’s what British and dominant white cultures do, take other peoples culture and proclaim it as their own!
The British steal indigenous culture – because they care. I get it. I think?
The entire cultural history of the British is stealing good ideas and culture from everyone they encountered!
Isaac Newton’s work on Gravity was based on a Muslim text 556 years before his apple fell!
The British stole from the Greeks, Indigenous peoples and Muslim scientists and when they don’t like something – they try to pack it off to Rwanda.
Who else has the audacity to arrive on distant shores, and declare that they now own everything in the name of their God, their King and their country no matter who was originally living there!
The British, that’s who.
The mindset that Britain must hold on to 2000 year old relics because the silly people they stole these treasures from won’t be able to look after them properly, is so British it may as well be having a cup of tea, draped in the Union Jack doing the Monty Python Ministry of Silly Walks skit routine.
Where on earth do you get off telling us we can’t have our treasures back?
That’s very British.
Last year it was revealed the British Museum lost 2000 items from its priceless collection and couldn’t remember where they had misplaced them.
Imagine having so many treasures plundered from around the planet that you lose 2000 of them and can’t find the paper work?
That’s very British.
The British Museum holds the largest Māori collections outside New Zealand, including items of major artistic and cultural significance.
Māori view these artefacts as our ancestors.
The British Museum has collected our ancestors together as curiosities, divorced from the culture that produced them – a little bit like a Chicken tikka masala is to the British.
That’s very British.
Lord Elgin insisted he had permission to remove the Elgin Marbles from the Ottoman Empire, but conveniently the original letter giving him permission has been lost and the wording of what remains is disputed.
That’s very British.
In 2022, the Greek culture minister accused Lord Elgin of “a blatant act of serial theft”.
A Greek accusing a Brit of stealing?
Wait until they hear what Locke and Hobbes stole from Plato and Socrates.
At least Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor, the British Museum stole from the indigenous and gave to scores of bored touring school students.
That’s very British!
To defend themselves from revisionist accusations of global theft, the British Museum has done that most British of things, claim a voice that speaks for the entire species!
They now claim to not just be the British Museum, they are in fact the WORLD Museum.
How convenient!
That’s Donald Trump level narcissism, only the British could have the presumptuousness to speak on behalf of the entire civilization to justify retaining ownership of everyone else’s plundered cultural treasures!
Rule, Britannia! Britannia, misbehaves
Britons never, never, never will pay for robbing graves?
That’s not the defence of global culture, that’s the argument of a deflated quartermaster from a broken empire that hasn’t realized it’s just a Kingdom with a Scotland wanting to leave.
At this stage I need to confess I have English ancestry on both my mother and fathers side. My great grandfather Fred Jackson came from Leicester and was a great rugby player. In 1908 he came to NZ with a team that was seen as the first
British Lions side to tour NZ the Anglo Welsh team who played our mighty All Blacks.
I’m declaring this because I want to be clear that while I am proudly indigenous, I also have the same DNA as most students here at Oxford which surely makes me completely unbiased, fair and uniquely qualified to comment on this issue given the history that the English have in terms of colonising indigenous peoples.
I am your prodigal son returning Britain, even if you didn’t know I existed!
For us, the most important treasure that are sitting in foreign museums are the mokomokai – the preserved heads of Māori, adorned with moko.
From Cook’s first visit, Europeans were fascinated by the heads, which had traditionally been preserved to remember honoured ancestors (and enemies). Such was the level of European demand to take mokomokai back home as curios, and such was the need of iwi to barter for muskets to defend themselves during the musket wars, that an awful trade in the mokomokai of slaves grew up until it was banned by Māori and British leaders.
For 200 years, the remains of our ancestors have lain in distant lands, in the archives of museums and other collections. Many have been returned but the British Museum still holds seven mokomokai
Many of our people believe those seven mokomokai speak to us and call out to us to come home.
I implore you, on behalf of my people, to honour the partnership agreement between Maori and the British Crown, that is the Treaty of Waitangi, and let our ancestors come home.
What is also very British, is the burning desire by each passing generation to do better than their previous generations attempts.
The British traditions of debate, democracy, will of the people and the entrenchment of human rights that respect the dignity of the individual makes the British people open to progress the visions of their Churchill’s and Queen Elizabeth’s and their heros with the language of Shakespeare.
They are a people willing to engage with reason and passion in equal measure and some would say they have been worthy guardians of our treasures.
I thank this historic space and powerful debating chamber for the privilege of allowing a working class son from the bottom of the planet to stand amongst you and remind you all of how awful you’ve been to us first nation peoples.
As you pass through those doors to vote, I implore you to acknowledge who you are as Britons and more importantly who you want to be as Britons.
Vote against this motion and accept British Museums ARE VERY British and we hope your British tradition of justice brings my ancestors home.
I thank the House.