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Datum: Sonntag, den 3. Februar 2002, um 23:56 Uhr

Betrifft: Hoppla ...

... da habe ich doch glatt etwas den australischen Aboriginals untergeschoben, was eigentlich die neuseelÃ¤ndischen Maori betrifft. Nun habe ich den Artikel wieder gefunden und mÃ¶chte mich deshalb korrigieren. Es sind die Maori, die sich davon entsetzt zeigen, dass die Regierung dem Vorschlag der HLT-Mormonen Ã¼berhaupt Beachtung geschenkt hat.

Wen es genauer interessiert, hier noch ein paar Artikel:

The New Zealand Herald
28.12.2001

Mormon proposal upsets Maori spokesman

Wellington Maori are fuming that a proposal which they say could have led to their ancestors being posthumously baptised into the Mormon church was ever considered.

Wellington Tenths Trust managing trustee Peter Love condemned both the proposed fee increases for birth and marriage certificates and a ditched plan to preserve them.

The Internal Affairs Department has revealed that it had considered handing over 4 million births and deaths records to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the United States as one option for preserving the old documents.

The church would have preserved the records on microfilm at a cost of $500,000.

The department abandoned the plan in favour of a $3.8 million commercial contract to digitise the certificates.

Mr Love said that while the church option had been discarded "we are alarmed that this proposal even saw the light of day".

It would have been abhorrent to most Maori who were not consulted over options to preserve the documents, he said.

"Whakapapa begins with the record of the birth of an individual Maori, and this record is a closely held taonga which is generally not given out beyond the immediate family.

"Least of all is it given out to a specific religion."

He said the Mormons used birth and death information to baptise the dead into the church.

A Mormon church representative could not be contacted last night.

But articles posted on the internet say a unique aspect of Mormonism is the practice of baptising on behalf of the dead - a baptism of a living person on behalf of a dead relative.

Mr Love said Maori would also be disproportionately affected by proposed fee increases for identity documents from about $9 a certificate to about $30.

"It is a passionate cultural necessity for most Maori to seek and find out about their own whakapapa. The Crown is damaging Maori ability to secure this most important information by lifting their charges for it."

An Internal Affairs spokeswoman said a hui was held at the early stages of the project.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storyprint.cfm?storyID=584137

The Otago Daily Times
Friday, 28-December 2001

$3.8m contract to digitise births and deaths
Mormons offered records
Wellington: The Government considered handing over four million historic births and deaths records to the Mormon Church in the United States to save money on preserving the documents.

The Internal Affairs Department has revealed the proposal in a report this month to Parliament’s regulations review committee, as it defends rising costs for accessing birth, death and marriage certificates.

The department said increased fees - $30 for a certificate, up from $9 - helped cover costs, including a $3.8 million commercial contract to digitise the certificates.

The $3.8 million contract with data company EDS was signed after the cabinet decided against a proposal last year to have the job done for $500,000 by the Church of the Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The certificates covered all registered births and deaths in New Zealand from 1848 to 1934, and all marriages from 1848 to 1950.

The proposal involved the Mormon Church microfilming the records and retaining the original film in Salt Lake City.

The Mormon Church has a religious interest in tracking genealogy, which has led it to build up an enormous database of births and deaths from around the world.

The New Zealand Society of Genealogists, which also worked on the proposal, would have used large numbers of volunteers to create a data index to the microfilm records.

In the report, Acting Internal Affairs Secretary Katrina Bach said converting the records to microfilm, rather than scanning them into a computer, was not the ideal option.

"However, the proposal did offer an opportunity to preserve the original paper records from further handling at relatively low cost," she said.

The cabinet had asked for an alternative proposal which did not directly involve the Mormons, but the Society of Genealogists said that would mean a higher cost to the department.

Ms Bach said the EDS proposal met the department’s requirements better in every area except cost, and included excellent data security, with strict controls over the handling of private information, including closed records such as adoption certificates. - NZPA

http://www1.odt.co.nz/cgi-bin/getitem?date=28Dec2001&object=1226592715&type=html

Mormon News
02 Jan 02

By Kent Larsen

LDS Attempt to Microfilm NZ Records Upsets Maori Leader

WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND -- A failed proposal to have the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints microfilm about 100 years of New Zealand birth, marriage and death records since 1848 has local Maori officials upset, both because the proposal was even considered, and because the alternative contract led to a fee increase on copies of the genealogical records. Wellington Tenths Trust managing trustee Peter Love condemned the proposal to microfilm records because he said it would lead to Maori ancestors posthumous baptism into the LDS Church.

Love, a Maori who manages the interests of Maori tribes in the land on which Wellington was built, criticized New Zealand’s Department of Internal Affairs, saying the Trust was "alarmed that this proposal even saw the light of day." He added that Maori’s were not consulted on how to preserve the records, but that the records are important to them, "Whakapapa [genealogies] begins with the record of the birth of an individual Maori, and this record is a closely held taonga [treasure] which is generally not given out beyond the immediate family. Least of all is it given out to a specific religion."

Under the Treaty of Waitangi, under which the Maori became citizens of New Zealand, the government agreed to protect the Maori taonga, which is believed to include their Whakapapa [genealogies]. Theoretically, an agreement with the LDS Church could lead to a lawsuit against the government.

The LDS proposal would have cost New Zealand’s government just $500,000, and included a proposed effort by the New Zealand Society of Genealogists to create a computer index to the records using large numbers of volunteers.

However, the Department of Internal Affairs rejected the LDS proposal for other reasons. Acting Internal Affairs Secretary Katrina Bach acknowledged that the LDS proposal did have advantages, "the proposal did offer an opportunity to preserve the original paper records from further handling at relatively low cost," but said converting the records to microfilm, rather than scanning them into a computer, was not the ideal option.

Instead, New Zealand’s cabinet asked for another option, one that didn’t involve the LDS Church, and recently signed a $3.8 million contract with giant computer services firm EDS to digitize the records. Acting Secretary Bach said EDS’s proposal included data security and strict controls over how private information, such as adoption certificates, was handled.

But the more expensive EDS proposal came along with higher fees for getting copies of the certificates. Identity document fees will now rise to $30 from $9, and the Wellington Tenths Trust’s Love says that the new fees will fall disproportionately on Maori’s because of the cultural importance of genealogy, "It is a passionate cultural necessity for most Maori to seek and find out about their own whakapapa. The Crown is damaging Maori ability to secure this most important information by lifting their charges for it," Love said.

The Maori incident may open a new difficulty for the LDS Church’s efforts to gather genealogical information and perform posthumous ordinances for the dead. In the past decade, Jews have objected to the practice of baptism for the dead, especially in the case of Holocaust victims, claiming that the practice mirrored the forced baptism of Jews in the middle ages. The Church has subsequently removed the names of thousands of Jews from Church records because of those objections.

The Church’s proposal to microfilm records is similar to proposals it has made in the past in many countries around the world. Under the proposal, the Church keeps a master copy of the microfilmed records and adds copies to its microfilm collections, which are available to the public. The Church then extracts names from the records and performs posthumous ordinances, generally for those born more than 110 years ago. However, members of the Church often submit the names of those born more recently.

http://www.mormonstoday.com/020104/N1MaoriGenea01.NZ.WE.Well.shtml