Martin Williams: “Our future under Te Tiriti gives cause for huge opportunity and optimism, if only we Pākeha would simply get out of the way, and let that future come to greet us.”
What does honouring the Treaty look like for tangata Tiriti? Here’s Martin Williams, an environmental lawyer and second term Hawke’s Bay regional councillor, who has a whakapapa connection back to Henry Williams — the man who translated the Treaty into Te Tiriti in 1840.
A few weeks ago, I was privileged to be on a panel at the Tangata Tiriti Treaty and Me winter lecture series. We were asked to consider this question: “What does honouring the Treaty look like?”
Never could that question be more relevant as we reflect on the findings of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care, and the impending introduction of the Act Party’s long promised Treaty principles bill.
To me, the answer is actually very simple.
Our Treaty future isn’t about power or race. It’s not even about partnership or the “co-governance” narrative of recent times.
It’s instead about respecting the right of Māori to be Māori — and, so far as the Abuse in Care findings are concerned, getting the state out of Māori lives.
Let me explain.
I whakapapa back to the Reverend Henry Williams through his younger brother William, who together worked to establish the Church Missionary Society Mission in Paihia from 1823.
Henry was called on by Governor Hobson to prepare Te Tiriti — literally translating the text into Māori overnight, before explaining its terms to the many rangatira present at Waitangi on February 6, 1840. Henry encouraged the rangatira to sign Te Tiriti for their protection, not least from the unruly European settlers in Kororareka (Russell) at the time. He later described Te Tiriti as an “act of love” to Māori from Queen Victoria, and as their Magna Carta.
More and more in-depth research of this history is shedding light on the Crown’s true intentions for Te Tiriti — in the drafting instructions to Governor Hobson, and the way they were in turn translated by Henry. It’s becoming increasingly clear that those intentions were honourable, and that it’s the flagrant breach of Te Tiriti ever since 1840 which is the problem, not the wording of the document itself.
Reflecting that honourable intention, and as Henry explained to them at the time, Te Tiriti guaranteed to the rangatira that they would retain their full rights as chiefs — that is, full and exclusive domain to operate within their hapū and rohe. This promise is embraced by the guaranteed retention of tino rangatiratanga in Article 2.The kāwanatanga (or governance) ceded to the Crown under Article 1 was a highly qualified form of sovereignty, if indeed what we now think of as sovereignty was ceded at all.
Whatever now happens to the Treaty principles established by the Waitangi Tribunal and the courts to help make Te Tiriti work in a 20th (and now 21st) century context, it’s the founding document itself that we must go back to.
And what it said is patently clear. Tino rangatiratanga kept. Kāwanatanga ceded. Nothing about partnership. Nothing about co-governance (although this and the Treaty partnership principle, can be seen as steps towards the ultimate destination).
Drawing on this historical reality, and as I see it today and for the future, Te Tiriti is plainly and simply about self-determination: decision-making by Māori for Māori. If we respect that, we all have a place to stand, and it is to this future that I now turn.
We first need to accept that state-based systems that are premised on a “one size fits all” approach and on the belief that “we are all one people (and Pākehā at that)”, have demonstrably failed Māori across health, education, welfare, criminal justice — and, yes, as we now know, our most vulnerable of all, children in state care.
The unavoidable fact is that state care models of yesterday (and indeed continuing today) have had a truly disproportionate and inequitable impact on Māori. They represent an approach which is the dead opposite of what Te Tiriti guaranteed to Māori. An approach which has manifested as the nursery ground for gang formation and recruitment, spawned from a culture of violence and retribution within state care.
Remarkably, some now want to see that same culture replicated yet again by the police, the Ministry of Justice, and the courts, with the “boot camps” trial being a case in point.
We need to flip this model on its head and embrace an alternative future vision. A vision where hapū, whānau, and marae structures and tikanga Māori are the engine room of Māori support and empowerment across all the domains of state failure.
As we saw here in Hawke’s Bay after Cyclone Gabrielle, marae were the vanguard of the initial response, being immediately connected to their communities and equipped with industrial scale kitchens to feed those desperate folk arriving at the marae gate.
How much better it would be if we were to invest in the Māori economy through Treaty redress, creating opportunities for both employment and self-esteem — rather than for so many Māori to continue to be reliant on welfare.
Witness the success of the kōhanga reo movement, which has resulted in more and more tamariki standing proud in their culture and traditions, and ready to take on the world in their professional lives. Witness also the success of the rangatahi courts, where Māori youth are able to be accountable to their whānau and the elders they respect, far more so than any judge who is no part their lives, past or future.
Consider the potential of Māori-led housing schemes, such as the Treaty settlement backed Heretaunga Tamatea Pou Tahua development which will build 450 homes in Flaxmere, approved in February this year. Imagine how much more effective and meaningful health services could be, if a “by Māori for Māori” approach were adopted, with tikanga right at the centre.
With this kind of potential in mind for rangatahi wellbeing and protection, it’s no wonder the repeal of section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act is so strongly opposed by tangata whenua nationwide, as a truly retrograde step back to the failed approaches of the past.
To be equal in Aotearoa doesn’t mean we all have to be the same. As the French would say: “Viva la difference.” I strongly believe that if we would only embrace our unique cultural diversity and heritage as a nation, rather than crushing it as the coalition government seems determined to do, the benefits to all New Zealanders would be immense.
When we honour the Treaty in this way, we reclaim our standing as tangata Tiriti, to share these incredible islands with tangata whenua. At its core, Te Tiriti was a remarkably generous offer which we need to be considerably more gracious about as a nation.
Our future under Te Tiriti gives cause for huge opportunity and optimism, if only we Pākeha would simply get out of the way, and let that future come to greet us.
Martin Williams is an environmental lawyer practising in Napier and a second term regional councillor (Ahuriri Ward). He is descended from William Williams, the first Bishop of the Diocese of Waiapu, and the author of the first edition of the Williams Māori-English dictionary A Dictionary of the New Zealand Language, published in 1844.
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