“When I was a young man, nobody in New Zealand even talked about Te Tiriti o Waitangi, but look at us now.” Helmut Karewa Modlik, chief executive of Te Rūnanga Toa Rangatira. (Photo supplied)

On Tuesday, Ngāti Toa leader Helmut Modlik faced off against Act leader David Seymour in a debate about Seymour’s contentious Treaty Principles Bill. At the end of the month, he’ll be bringing Indigenous tribal leaders from the US to Aotearoa for a symposium on sovereignty and self-determination.

What do these two things have in common? David Seymour says the vision of shared sovereignty outlined in Te Tiriti o Waitangi is impossible. These tribal leaders are living proof that he’s wrong. Helmut explains.

Having been dragged back to the past with the coalition’s callous reversal of the trajectory we’ve been on, we now have to decide what we, as Ngāi Māori, want our future to look like.

Do we want to go back to what it was like in our parents’ and grandparents’ days, or will we do something else? It’s time to get serious about all of that.

That’s why I wanted to debate David Seymour this week. The whole exercise arose from David’s repeated claims that it was time for a national discussion. And I went: “Okay, cool. Let’s have it.”

It was really about getting some ideas and information out there so that our country could have both sides of the story, and go where we need to go.

David’s playing a different game. Act is a Libertarian party with a particular worldview, and it’s fair to say that they tend to have a bit of a fundamentalist flavour about them. And I think where David is at on Te Tiriti is a combination of an alignment with Act’s ideological preferences and a bit of naughtiness around playing to a populist rhetoric to drum up support. That’s just pure politics.

So far, all they’ve served up is a bunch of curated sound bites of what they think. What I wanted to do was highlight the non-controversial bits about our history — the facts — and some alternative ideas for our future.

I spoke a lot about our history because, first and foremost, what we’ve got to establish categorically, once and for all, is that the rangatira of the hapū of Aotearoa did not, could not, and would not, have surrendered their mana motuhake. What they gave to the British was kāwanatanga, which is the Māori word for governorship. And who was this governorship intended for? Well, of course, the 2,000-odd British people here at the time.

So, if hapū didn’t cede sovereignty, then on what basis did the British implement the New Zealand Constitution Act in 1852, by which the parliament and the courts of this land were established? There was none. They had no legitimate right to do that. So how can parliament be sovereign if it never had any authority to be established in the first place?

As I said, it’s kind of like telling someone they’re adopted, right? You’re still part of the family and still loved, but there’s a fundamental truth you have to reconcile.

But how? Well, thankfully, the answer lies in the Treaty. Our tūpuna granted the British the right to govern the British citizens who were here, and in return, the British acknowledged the rangatira’s authority over the tribes. So what we need to do is establish an agreed, partnered coexistence between kāwanatanga and rangatiratanga.

That’s the journey we’ve been on in the last few decades. You can already see examples of the positivity and the gains we’ve made, as hapū and iwi have worked with local governments, private enterprises, and central government agencies in an authentic, partnered way.

And those are the signals for where our future lies. Not in revolution or uprising, but in respectful dialogue between the parties to Te Tiriti.

David kept arguing that there are no examples anywhere in the world where that kind of partnership has worked, where people have successfully shared sovereignty under one nation.

Well, he’s wrong. There is. I’ve visited some of those people. I’ve spoken to their leaders. And it wasn’t in some far-flung little village in the middle of nowhere, it was in the US. In the biggest and oldest democracy in the world.

Last year, our senior leadership team responsible for a large group of integrated health and social services, went to visit Indigenous groups in the States just to build relationships and share mātauranga. When I caught up with them at the end of the trip in Oklahoma, to be honest, I was blown away by what I saw there.

The most significant difference between their situation and ours, which I was quite shocked to learn, is that from pretty much day one, since the late 1700s, their constitution has made provision for sovereignty to be shared across federal, state and Indian nations. So, from day one, their right to sovereign independence within their area was locked in. I didn’t know that.

For the most part, their poverty prevented them from being able to give effect to that sovereign right in any meaningful sense. But in recent decades, their economic development has been huge — and they’re certainly in a position to give effect to it now.

And so, what I saw in the places I went to, was tribal nations with their own legislature, their own judiciary, their own police force, their own hospitals and schools. And just to see tino rangatiratanga taken to that degree was so impressive and mind-boggling.

It’s not just Native people who live in these communities either. It looks like any other part of the regional US, but they’ve figured out how the federal, state, and local authorities can coexist.

For example, if we look at the parameters of jurisdiction, you’ve got federal jurisdiction which covers the whole country. Then state jurisdiction means that if you’re from Nevada, but something happens while you’re in Utah, then Utah law applies. If you belong to the Choctaw Nation and you’re on Ojibwe land, then Ojibwe jurisdiction applies. And if you’re not Indigenous, you’ll just come under state jurisdiction. Plus, tribal, state and federal jurisdiction can all work together depending on the nature of a crime.

That’s something we could do here in Aotearoa. It’s a bit different here because our people are all over the place, so our hapū or iwi jurisdiction can’t just be geography-based like it is in the US. But we could apply a similar system based on iwi or hapū membership, for example.

What’s cool, too, is that they genuinely think of themselves as independent nations within a nation — and they act like it. They have diplomats in Washington whose job is to interact with the federal government about what’s happening in their state and their nation, and it has the same logic, behaviour and inter-jurisdictional opportunities that you’d see with countries dealing with each other.

For me, what this shows is that — despite David’s insistence that shared sovereignty doesn’t work and only drives racial division — it actually has nothing to do with race. It’s about dual citizenship.

I’m a member of Ngāti Toa and a New Zealand citizen. I also happen to be a German citizen through my father. But nobody’s getting up in arms because there are some agreements between Germany and New Zealand, are they?

At the end of October, we have some US tribal leaders coming to Aotearoa for our Indigenous Tribal Leaders Symposium, to share more about their journey with us. It’s exciting because their journey has certainly opened my mind to what it might mean for us as an emergent Māori nation dealing with economic matters, legal matters, matters of membership, and so forth.

It’s also an opportunity to say: “Well, here’s your living proof that this can work.” Not just proof for David, or for Act, or the coalition, but for us too. Because I know that sometimes solutions like these can feel too good to be true, but I do believe it can work for us.

Why? Well, I’m 62 years old and when I was a boy, what was going on in the United States bore no resemblance to the America that I’ve just described to you now. When I was a young man just getting into the workforce, nobody in New Zealand even talked about Te Tiriti o Waitangi, but look at us now.

So, these things do change. What they require is determination, some clear eyes, some wisdom, and some hard work.

Here in Aotearoa, we’re now 40 to 50 years into our own truth and reconciliation project. And to be honest, I expected a bit of an Anglo-Saxon kickback. I expected that there would be a shift back the other way. It’s come in a rush and with an ill spirit that’s embarrassing to everybody involved, but it’s not entirely a surprise.

I have absolutely no doubt that we will realise the vision of a unified nation where we’re living harmoniously, because we’ve already shown that kāwanatanga and rangatiratanga can coexist. It will happen. It’s just a matter of time.

And I’ll tell you why I’m optimistic about it. Because a) we’ve got it all written in black and white, in Te Tiriti o Waitangi. And b) we’re Kiwis.

One of the great encouraging lessons of the miracle of the “Team of five million” during Covid is that we’re the only country in the world that pulled that off. That demonstrated that the homogeneity of values in this land is still significant. And New Zealanders, if nothing else, believe in what’s true, what’s just, and a fair go. That underlying goodness that’s in this land is what will see us through.

Helmut Modlik (Ngāti Toa) is the CEO of Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Toa Rangatira. He completed his BCA and MBA and has worked in accounting, finance, economic development (as the inaugural CEO of Poutama Trust) and management consulting.

The Indigenous Tribal Leaders Symposium takes place at Parliament Buildings in Wellington on October 29. It’s billed as “A dialogue with US Indigenous Tribal Leaders on Sovereignty, Treaty, Unity and Constitutional rights to learn from their experiences for our own journey.” Find out more here.

As told to Siena Yates and made possible by the Public Interest Journalism Fund.

E-Tangata, 2024