An imagined conversation:

Yes, we need the English text, because the Māori text came from the English text…

Hang on, the English text says Māori ceded sovereignty – but they didn’t! This confuses people visiting Te Papa museum.

They didn’t cede their hapū rangatiratanga, yes, but they ceded to the Crown the kāwanantanga (government) of the country.

But the Māori text is the main text signed by rangatira (chiefs)!

Yes, it was the main text, but the two texts can be reconciled if we understand what British ‘sovereignty’ was or what it was meant to do in 1840.

Well, the Māori text – te Tiriti – says Māori remained their own chiefs – independent and self-governing.

Yes, but te Tiriti also talks about law and order issues between Māori and Pākehā, and it makes the Crown the transactor (buyer) of land from Māori. Some chiefs saw the need for a protecting ‘shadow’ to control domestic threats (settlers, land speculators, and perhaps other tribes) and control foreign threats (‘the tribe of Marion’ – the French).

But hapū (tribes) remained fully in control of their own lands and people. That’s what article 2 of te Tiriti is about – guaranteeing tino rangatirantanga!

Yes, but we should also consider that tino rangatiratanga was protected, and individual rights in article 3, because kāwanatanga was granted to Queen Victoria. You cannot have active protection without the exercise of authority.

So you’re saying that you can have British sovereignty/government working in tandem with Māori tribal sovereignty/self-government?

Yes, but without a doubt they would be in tension at points, and the relationship needed to be worked out in years to come.

***

I ventured recently into the contested world of treaty interpretation – or rather, public discourse about the treaty. With the treaty principles bill apparently about to emerge into the public domain, and public sensitivities heightened over the current government’s treaty policies, the Treaty of Waitangi – or te Tiriti o Waitangi – has again become a big topic of public conversation.

In December 2023, in response partly it seems to such current political developments, protestors erased most of the English text display at Te Papa in Wellington. The reasons for this are outlined in the commentary from their spokesperson in the article linked below. Alongside this is my initial response to the Te Papa events – which I had actually written way back in December – together with a supplementary piece which responded to the piece by Hannah Kremmer.

Click here for these commentary pieces published in E-Tangata online in March.

These are not easy conversations to have, but we need to have them. History is complex and the treaty, or the Treaty, or te Tiriti, cannot be interpreted within a single cultural or political framework. This is because it was from the beginning an agreement debated by Crown and tribal leaders across two languages and cultural worlds, translated or interpreted by Anglican missionaries and officials, debated on the sidelines by Pākehā settlers and traders, and commented on by French Catholic priests! No one party had a monopoly on what it meant, and in fact its meaning was contested at the time. We are quite familiar now with the dismissal of it by a NZ Company agent as ‘a devise to amuse’ Māori.

And that’s just the position at 1840. Since then, the country has gone through any number of political, social, economic and cultural revolutions. These cannot be ignored in deciding what te Tiriti means for Aotearoa NZ in 2024. The British empire, many hapū groups, and limited Pākehā colonial settlement of the 1840s has been transformed into a modern nation-state or liberal democracy, society is multicultural and multiethnic, iwi rather than hapū are now more prominent tribal identities, and there is a large Māori urban population. At the same time, New Zealand is still, in formal terms, a constitutional monarchy, with a bicultural foundation, and with treaty obligations still relevant to today. In polity reality, those Crown obligations are now obligations of the New Zealand Government, which represents all New Zealanders or citizens of Aotearoa. This certainly does not diminish the treaty obligation, but it increases the complexity. While we need to keep the ‘Crown-Māori’ relationship clearly in view, that relationship means and looks something quite different in 2024 from what it did in 1840.

Let us continue to strive for quality, open, honest conversations that do not avoid complexity.

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