Treaty of Waitangi a test of our national character, says ex-diplomat

Author Peter Adams 05:00, Feb 06 2018

OPINION:  The Treaty of Waitangi, signed on 6 February 178 years ago, is probably the most denigrated and undermined founding document of any modern nation.

Excoriated in the 19th century for its promise to protect Māori resource ownership, "honoured" in the 20th century by politicians who did no such thing, insulted as a "fraud" this century by those insouciant about past wrongs, nevertheless the Treaty just won't go away. At its heart sit obligations, undertaken in good faith, which present a challenge to who we are as a nation.

From the outset the Treaty has been embroiled in controversy, but the facts are surprisingly clear.

The Treaty was the political act by which Britain gained sovereignty. Māori could not have understood how it would turn out, and for some people today that invalidates the cession.

However, New Zealand became legally British not through the Treaty but by Hobson's proclamations of May 1840.

Māori signatories placed their faith in the integrity of the Crown and its promise of protection for their land and other resources. Yet the Colonial Office did not know that it had promised Māori possession of the whole of New Zealand as all parts of it were claimed by one iwi or another.

By 1843 The New Zealand Company, wanting cheap land for colonisation, was labelling the Treaty nothing more than "a praiseworthy device for amusing and pacifying savages for the moment". The British Parliament merely called it "injudicious".

Cynically, the Colonial Office turned to the pre-emption provision to undercut the land guarantee. In 1846, Governor Grey was advised that the "evil" of having to recognise Māori land claims could "to a great degree be neutralised" by using the Crown's monopoly right to acquire land. Grey set about purchasing huge tracts.

Rather than protecting Māori rights to "the full, exclusive and undisturbed possession of their lands and estates, forests, fisheries and other properties", the British Government now sought to part Māori from their land quickly, quietly, and cheaply. The land wars of the 1860s, confiscations and the Māori Land Courts did the rest.

In return for giving up their sovereignty, Māori were also accorded "all the rights and privileges of British subjects" in article three.

For today's groups like The One New Zealand Foundation and Hobson's Pledge, that offer of equality is all that matters. They overlook more than a century of breaches of the Treaty and the inevitably discriminatory impact of an imported social and political system on Māori society.

Māori electorates, the Waitangi Tribunal, Treaty settlements and even the promotion of te reo are seen as "racial favouritism".

'Hobson's Pledge' takes its name from the observation, "He iwi tahi tatou" (We are now one people), which Hobson made to each chief as they signed the Treaty. It was not a pledge, but a well-intentioned though naive remark, made after a highly contentious debate.

There were two parties, Crown and Māori – not "one people" – and a Treaty partnership involving reciprocal obligations.

Even the promise of equality was an illusion.

As systematic coloniser Edward Gibbon Wakefield pointed out: "The establishment of the same rights and the same obligations can only be fair between parties who have the same power in the same field. Where one is 'immeasurably inferior' to the other, the weaker party will be destroyed under a 'show of justice'."

In ceding sovereignty, Māori lost all real authority. The 'kawanatanga' or 'governorship' they thought they had given to Hobson undercut the 'rangatiratanga' they had hoped to retain, compounding the loss of mana already occurring through loss of the land.

Over the next century, Māori made numerous efforts to find a political basis from which to negotiate their survival and the fulfilment of the Treaty: Kingitanga, Kotahitanga movements, Te Whiti and Parihaka, Rua, Rātana.

But it was not until the Māori-generated renaissance in language, culture and self-confidence from the 1970s onwards that dramatic change became possible.

Taking up the seemingly casual reference to "the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi" in the State Owned Enterprises Act 1986, the Court of Appeal decided in 1987 that the Treaty "signified a partnership between Pākeha and Māori requiring each other to act towards the other with reasonableness and with the utmost good faith".

Far from being unwarranted judicial activism, the court's decision was highly appropriate, given the failure of the New Zealand polity to interpret the Treaty other than in a way favourable to the dominant culture.

Some argue that Māori are now privileged over other ethnic communities. Yet it was the tangata whenua – the Treaty partner – who lost their land and other taonga despite a guarantee of protection that was more honoured in the breach than the observance.

No other community has paid such a price.

The partnership framework, along with the Treaty settlements process, have gone some way to redressing egregious historical injustices and putting iwi in a position to pursue economic empowerment, educational achievement, and social improvement.

The Treaty of Waitangi was signed in good faith.

Honouring the Treaty – albeit in the changed circumstances of today – is a challenge to our integrity and our aspirations to be a nation founded in equity and justice for all.

Peter Adams authored the award-winning book Fatal Necessity, on the Treaty of Waitangi period. He is a former senior diplomat and CEO of NZAID.

This article was featured in The Dominion Post and stuff.co.nz