“By the time I left Aotearoa to head to London, I had started to understand how Te Tiriti is inextricably tied to my identity,” writes Charlotte Doyle.

Charlotte Doyle is a Pākehā expat living in London. Here, she reflects on what Te Tiriti means from a distance.

A few years ago, on the last weekend of January, a group of us who worked at a government agency slowly gathered on the edge of Ōrākei Marae.

We were about to be welcomed onto the whenua by Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, in preparation for a noho marae. Humid wind from the incoming storm that would surprise us all by flooding Tāmaki swirled softly behind Rangitoto. The vast green of Takaparawhau stretched out to the sea beneath us. We chatted about the holidays we’d had and the ones still to come.

Seeking shelter from the wind behind a bus, I turned to a Māori colleague and casually asked how she would be “celebrating Waitangi Day”. She delivered an amused yet firm side eye, pausing just long enough for me to recognise my thoughtlessness. “Charlotte,” she said, “I’m Ngāpuhi. Waitangi Day isn’t just time for celebrations. There’s work to do.”

It’s 185 years since Te Tiriti was signed, but Waitangi Day still invites this question of how to blend work and celebration. The need for both is clear. Settler colonialism continues to oppress, here and around the world. Collective work to move toward tino rangatiratanga by honouring Te Tiriti is critical. Defying divisiveness, dismantling colonial structures, and listening to Indigenous voices through open, joyful, and inquisitive celebration, can be a powerful part of the work.

This year, on Waitangi Day, I was in London. New Zealanders living in the city went to our workplaces as usual. We crossed bridges, travelled underground, and tried to work out if our English colleagues’ confounding behaviour was symptomatic of the workplace, the city, the nation or just general Britishness. “There must be something happening over there for Waitangi Day?” a friend back home said, but acknowledgement of the day was hard to find.

There was a Waitangi Ball with tickets at 200 pounds per head and an infamous pub crawl. Each seemed out of step with the movement and kōrero to honour Te Tiriti with its respective exclusivity and revelry.

Around the edges of these organised events, we absorbed Waitangi Day vicariously, through media coverage and images of whānau and friends in the sun on familiar whenua back home.

As the Toitū Te Tiriti movement has gained traction, reflections by non-Māori on being tangata Tiriti seem to have gained momentum. There is a stronger awareness of how we all hold responsibilities to uphold Te Tiriti, maintained by the threads of our relationships with Aotearoa, whatever their length and however they’re woven.

If there is any place other than Aotearoa to understand what this means, it’s London, where the streets and buildings and culture are saturated with representations of the Treaty partner, the Crown.

How can those of us at a physical distance turn our attention towards the motu in the Pacific Ocean that we call home and honour Te Tiriti through both work and celebration?

“God, I feel so homesick,” a friend said from beneath the folds of an umbrella, as we huddled outside the New Zealand High Commission on the Pall Mall last November to support Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti. Organised by Interisland Collective, a crowd of hundreds had crammed onto the footpath. We ignored the heavy, cold rain and focused on the warmth from waiata, haka and speeches.

Symbols of the British Empire swirled around us. Black taxis and tea party-themed double-decker tourist buses interrupted calls to action, beneath the grand facades of marble buildings. Men in navy suits holding umbrellas pushed their way along the curbs. They were gently guided past our protest by two women in purple vests emblazoned with the word “kaitiaki”.

Like my friend, I had felt acutely homesick in London, as I sat on the Jubilee Line watching video clips of the hīkoi swaying the Auckland Harbour Bridge. Friends and I in London had written submissions on the Treaty principles bill and shared Instagram posts. We encouraged our British colleagues to read about Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke’s haka in parliament in pieces written by Māori writers (rather than by the Daily Mail). These actions felt important, but I still longed to turn up to something where I could feel collective solidarity.

New Zealanders in London joining protests against ACT’s proposed bill to redefine the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.

Outside the High Commission, protest was expressed through waitata, kōrero and haka. The presence of te ao Māori in the heart of London was a welcome salve to being so far away. On the signs dotted among the crowd, the words “New Zealand” did not feature. Instead, they were rich with te reo Māori. Toitū Te Tiriti. He tangata Tiriti ahau. There was no confusion here about the word “Aotearoa”.

As tourists peered curiously at the crowd through the windows of the black taxis passing by, I felt a strong surge of pride and gratitude for being able to stand there as tangata Tiriti, and as a Pākehā person with British ancestry. To participate in an anti-colonial protest on the coloniser’s own land felt powerful.

In London, I’m constantly searching for signs of Aotearoa and Te Tiriti in museums, public squares, and wall texts. But in the museums I’ve visited so far, there are no references to Te Tiriti or Aotearoa at all. Not even among a sea of paintings in Tate Britain depicting the violence of colonialism and imperial conquest in the Caribbean, India, Afghanistan, Australia, West Africa, China.

In the National Portrait Gallery, a small corner dedicated to “Australia and the Pacific” features a single portrait of Captain James Cook and a wall text describing Indigenous peoples as “hostile”.

I spot oblique references to our colonial place names on plaques and memorials that mention Wellington, Christchurch, Nelson. In Greenwich, right next to the Thames, there’s a monument that simply states: “Erected by the surviving officers and men to the memory of their comrades who fell in action in New Zealand during the years 1863–1864.” These are the years when thousands of British imperial troops and colonial soldiers invaded the Waikato, with Māori and those troops dying for the eventual confiscation of more than one million acres of Māori land.

This absence of recognition for Te Tiriti and the impact of Britain’s colonisation on Māori, heightens the importance of New Zealanders in London understanding our identities as tangata Tiriti. These encounters with “New Zealand” tell limited stories.

A frequent topic of conversation among us expats in London is who might move back to Aotearoa, and when.

When I first arrived, a Pākehā friend told me over a coffee in Soho why she would never move back. “There’s nothing happening there — it’s just so small,” she said. It’s a sentiment I’ve heard frustratingly often.

Each time I hear this, I try to respond by saying that I felt that the grass was greener somewhere else in the past but no longer believe that to be true. Learning more about te ao Māori and Te Tiriti has been a significant part of my shift in perspective.

For example, on Waitangi Day a few years ago, before moving overseas, some friends and I landed canoes on the sunbathed banks of the Whanganui River to spend the night at Tīeke Marae. A wāhine met us at the top of the bank as we wound our way up carrying blue barrels full of our belongings. She greeted us warmly, asked how the day had been, and explained how to follow tikanga on the marae. No alcohol, shoes off inside, and please don’t go onto the marae ātea (the grass in front of the wharenui) until the pōwhiri later that afternoon when everyone has arrived.

As we gathered before the pōwhiri, our group of strangers worked out that most of us at least could sing “Te Aroha” to acknowledge the whaikōrero. Each group of travellers also nominated someone to share where we’d all come from and why we were visiting the Whanganui River.

Te Whānau o Tīeke welcomed us on to the marae, and shared with us the history of the land, of the river, of their ancestors buried on the hill behind the kāinga where we would be sleeping.

We learned about how the whānau reclaimed the land from the Department of Conservation by occupying it in the 1990s, sheltering for years under a blue tarp. We learned about the co-operative relationship that now exists between these two parties and how it led to the construction of the wharenui that we were sitting in front of. But we were also urged to understand that the land had still not been formally returned to Māori.

After the pōwhiri, we approached the pou carved with this history in the middle of the ātea. The grass was soft and thick beneath our bare feet. From there, we could also see a Pākehā family, who were also travelling down the river that weekend and had refused to comply with the rules of the marae. They sat down by the river, sipping Steinlagers in deck chairs, facing away from the marae and everyone else.

That night, as our group went to sleep in a small room on the marae, I reflected on the day. The extension of manaaki to us as manuhiri had grounded the experience in relationships — between the river, the land, Tīeke Marae, and the Department of Conservation. The pōwhiri on a highly popular tourist route opened my eyes to the possibilities of partnership between mana whenua and the Crown in spaces beyond what I had learned in my university courses or workplaces. It had brought to life what honouring Te Tiriti could mean.

Tieke Marae on the middle reaches of the Whanganui river. (Photo supplied)

I continued to pick up on these possibilities for change elsewhere. In the fluid and holistic ways of learning a new language in te reo Māori classes. Sharing kai after a mihi whakatau to welcome new colleagues. My sense of connection grew as I better understood the boundaries of my Pākehā worldview.

By the time I left Aotearoa to head to London, I had started to understand how Te Tiriti is inextricably tied to my identity.

What I had been learning from te ao Māori has strengthened how I navigate the world. I’m now more comfortable saying that I don’t know about something, and stepping aside to support others. I try to focus on inclusion through mutual respect and emotional resonance rather than technicalities — like focusing on the sentiment of a waiata, rather than knowing the literal meaning of the words. I can feel how my curiosity about landscapes and communities is enhanced, coupled with a strong desire to be more thoughtful in how I behave.

I’m not alone in this experience. In a London flat in Brixton, a Pākehā friend tells me how he misses learning te reo Māori, as he pulls Tesco ready-made pizzas out of the oven. “It’s taught me to put more effort into learning about the environments I’m in over here,” he says. He’s seeking out stories and information on the Windrush generation, those who migrated from Caribbean countries to help rebuild post-war Britain, and the increasing gentrification in his local areas. He visits Black-owned bookstores to find the books he’s researched. He’s eager to share with us what he’s learned.

New Zealanders in London often express pride in the ways we feel Aotearoa is more hospitable or collectively-minded. At home, we agree, there’s friendlier service, a stronger sense of teamwork in our workplaces. The things we value aren’t simply due to the smaller size of Aotearoa, but are informed by Māori, Pasifika and tauiwi cultures.

Te Tiriti is the framework that enables me to call Aotearoa home, even more so than my passport. It also gives me the foundations to work towards advancing a more just, principled and unified world.

British identity is also shaped by multifaceted cultural identities and relational underpinnings. It is a land of capitalism, monarchies and colonialism. It’s also a place of resistance to these forces with its unions, public healthcare, community halls. At an understated “caff” in Hackney, a kind man remembers my name and proudly tells me he also migrated to London from Turkey many years ago as he serves me a steaming cup of tea.

Learning how to engage with Te Tiriti as tangata Tiriti also involves making mistakes. Treading the path of decolonisation, especially as Pākehā, inevitably involves stumbles and knocks to your ego.

You learn to resist the urge to push forward and assert claims of knowledge, and to instead step back to leave space for others. To recognise which paths are not for you to walk on but to walk alongside. How to be humble and resist defensiveness.

And how to carry the knowledge you’ve been gifted. You start to learn how to acknowledge the harm you’ve caused along the way, and to always reflect on your relationship to the whenua you’re standing on, no matter where you are.

Charlotte Doyle (Photo supplied)

Charlotte is a Pākehā non-fiction writer from Aotearoa, currently based in London.

E-Tangata, 2025