WAITANGI DAY

Mana (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 14, 9 February 1978, Page 1

WAITANGI DAY

- The Lie should be Overturned -

by

Syd Jackson

TE RA WHAKAMAHARA KI TE TIRITI O WAITANGI! TE TEKA HOKI! ME PANGA ATU! Once again, the Government held its meaningless annual charade at Waitangi to celebrate the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, 138 years ago

This day of Government sponsored hypocrisy is no more than ‘a useless ritual for a covenant already broken!’ There has never been a time in our history when February 6 could justifiably be hailed and celebrated as the great day of harmony and equality between Maori and Pakeha; nor has there ever been any time when the claim that the Treaty of Waitangi set an example to the rest of the World on how to establish social harmony could be justified. Celebrating February 6 in these terms is at best an anomaly, at worst a lie. From the beginning many people acknowledged the Treaty as being a meaningless gesture. The N.Z. Company spokesman in 1843 called it “a praiseworthy device for amusing and pacifying the natives for the moment.” Two Supreme Court Judges in 1877 referred to it as “a simple nullity” while elsewhere, much later, it has been described as “a gentlemen’s agreement.” “Not worth the paper it is written on,” and “a testament to Pakeha racism.”

Early on too the Pakeha’s insincerity was recognised. At Waitangi, before the Treaty was signed, Rewa warned our people: “Do not sign the paper. If you do you will be reduced to the condition of slaves, and be compelled to break stones on the roads. Your land will be taken from you and your dignity as chiefs will be destroyed.”

No more need be said for the truth of this prophesy is selfevident. In the name of equality we have been deprived of our lands, we have been made the slaves in this capitalistic, dollar-dominated society and we have been forced onto the roads into the anonymity of the cities in our search for survival.

We know the hypocrisy which drove the Pakeha to devise the Treaty of Waitangi. It was drawn up because colonisation was desired by the British Colonial Office but as they did not relish the thought of a long and costly war they, therefore, sought a more “gentlemanly” way of extending their imperialist ambitions. The Treaty ignored the fact that many tribes did not sign and it ignored repudiations. Nc notice was taken of the fact that at least four different officia versions of the Treaty were offered for signature. Forgotten also .was the fact that the drafters of the document used meaingless transliterations such as “Kawanatanga” which implied rights of ownership, use and occupation no chief should ever have signed. Also studiously ignored is the fact that bribes wen given to induce signatures. It should be remembered tha, our people came to Waitangi from a position of strength. We wanted only responsible control of the white settlers by the white people themselves. We also wanted them to control the greed and avarice of their own people whether they be lay people or equally rapacious, land-hungry churchmen. We did not need to sign it. We weren’t so stupid as to sign away our inheritance in return for vague promises of no :hing so the First Article was agreed to only because we saw it as necessary for Pakehas to be able to enforce their own laws. Anc we would challenge, as other: have done, — that in doing sc our ancestors would have inter preted “Kawanatanga” as “sovereignty” and signed that away. Rather, we would have expected that they might agree to have signed away only the same leadership rights that our own ariki and rangatira enjoyed but which were not absolute by any means.

We signed the Treaty because the Pakehas promised to control their own people who had trodden all over Maori law with their drunken, disorderly behaviour. In New Zealand, as in the rest of the Pacific, they brought their diseases which decimated us. It was syphilisation, not civilisation that they brought us. In the guise of legality the Crown has ripped us off in blatant disregard of this Article. The Forests and Fisheries which were “gauranteed” to us were stolen from us without an objection even being allowed from us. Until now, successive Governments have done nothing with the Treaty of Waitangi, apart from repairing the edges of the original Treaty document which had, somewhat appropriately, been gnawed by rats. After Nga Tamatoa had wept beside the waters of Waitangi at the hypocritical Governmentsponsored Waitangi Day “celebrations” in 1971, the then National Government promised that the Minister of Justice would present a paper to the

Cabinet about what has been done with the Treaty of Waitangi just “to refresh our memories”.

As this would have been precisely a paper on nothing, it was hardly surprising that nothing came out of it!

The last Labour Government did little better. They passed legislation purpoting to “provide for the observance and confirmation of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. . .’’Yet this Act provided no remedy for us to rectify any of our past grievances, did nothing to amelior;ate present injustices, and provided no guarantee of protection for us against future wrong doings. It went no way to fulfilling the 1972 Labour Party policy that it would “examine a practical means of legally acknowledging the principles set out in the Treaty of Waitangi’’. Even worse, the criteria for selection of members of the Tribunal made it clear that we would not get justice. The Chief Judge of the Maori Land Court was designated as Chairman of the Waitangi Tribunal. His total lack of sympathy and incomprehension were illustrated by the fact that he chose to hold the first aearing of the tribunal not on a marae, or

any other situation where we would feel comfortable, but in the ballroom of the Hotel Intercontinental. Not content with that, however, he then told Maoris who were present that he was amazed they were unfamiliar with the Tribunal’s procedures, and told them to “have a bit of pride of your race”. Faced with such attitudes and an unworkable Act we are not going to achieve any degree of success.

The fact that the promise, that was Waitangi, has been continually betrayed by Pakehas has

kept Maori dissatisfaction simmering for 138 years and it is no foolish or idle threat, to say that one day this seething discontent will inevitably boil over. The Treaty of Waitangi remains the focus of our discontent as we continue to lose our land; as our people continue to be opporessed by a racist Police Force supported by outdated, irrelevant laws; as our language and culture continue to be given only token importance in the Education system ; as our tribal fishing grounds continue to be ravaged in the name of economic progress and our people continue to be made criminals for claiming part of their heritage from the sea; as our people continue to be forced into the lower work-force because of the failure of the education system to cater to our needs and because of discriminatory laws which prevent our people from building on their traditional lands and forces them into thecities where they are at the mercy of racketeering landlords; as the Government continues to do nothing to satisfy Maori demands for ratification of the Treaty of Waitangi; as the Government continues to fail to grant Maoris equality in the Parliamentary processes of this country by not bringing Maori electorates under the same laws that govern and continually revise the number and size of Pakeha electorates: as the Government continues to ignore the voice of Maoridom: so, the Treaty of Waitangi remains the symbol of our discontent.

Article the second of the Treaty, is the all-important and contentious part of the Treaty. The first half of this article contains the guarantee which Maoris, reasonably and intelligently, consider offered them the protection they required in return for the gift of so-called “sovereignty” they had ceded to the Crown in Article the First. It is a' protestation, an affirmation of Maori independence and should be recognised as such.

The second half of Article the Second gave the Crown first option on any land to be sold or alienated but then only after agreement as to price and compensation. However, it is the Crown thapks to legislation such as the 1953 Maori Affairs, the 1967 Maori Affairs Amendment Act, the Rating Act, the Maori Trustee Act 1953, the Public Works Act 1928, the Soil Conservation and Control Act 1941, the Town and Country Planning Act 1953, the Reserves Act, the Counties Amendment Act 1961, the Petroleum Act 1937,the Pespectual Leases and Claims Settlement, the Maori Welfare Act 1962, Fisheries General Regulations 1950 and others which have flagrantly abandoned the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. Ip spite of the promise of the Treaty our people become criminals while pakeha companies

become rich and fat on our seafood resources. The traditional attitude of Maoris regarding Fisheries is food and conservation while Pakeha interests appear to be commercial and pecuniary gain and the depletion of resources. The Fisheries Act contravenes the Treaty of Waitangi by ignoring Maori needs and stamping on traditional Maori values and philosophy. Article the Third, extended to us all the supposed privileges of British citizenship, and although we had to wait for some 20 years for even that dubious privilege. By the numbers of our people frequenting the prisons and arrested daily by the police it is obvious that we are enjoying “her royal protection” and the “best of British justice.” At least, therefore, it might be claimed that Article the third to that extent has been recognised and acted upon. All that we are saying has been said before. For example, “You brought us your civilisation, and you decimated our ranks with strange diseases and modern armaments. You supplied us with firearms, and when in the

lust of war we had slain almost half of the flower of our race (and a few of yours) you punished us as rebels and confiscated our lands. You gave us alcohol and then punished us and gave us an evil name for using it. Our fathers desired to be civilised, but because of your inconsistencies they opposed it with their heart’s blood. We retrograded and the gap between us widened. You have had to make up ground lost by the bad example of your fathers: We have had to overcome the distrust and suspicion engendered in the hearts of ours and transmitted to us, ere we could once more take up the broken thread of progress.” This profound statement by the Arawa chiefs articulates the same sense of bretrayal that still permeates the whole of Maoridom, the essence of which is the way the deep and profound commitment that the Maoris accord to the Treaty is demeaned by Pakeha abuse. The only value of this day is to provide a day when we can act on our grivances to dispel the colonial jargon and reveal the shortcomings and imperfections of the lie that is Waitangi Day.