Restoring the mana of the Treaty
“Before we can be reconciled by the Treaty, we need to reconcile the Treaty to itself and restore its mana.” — Alistair Reese.
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Tag: Treaty of Waitangi
Peter Meihana: The pervasive myth of Māori privilege
“When there’s a peak in these claims and assertions of Māori privilege, then historically at least, we’ve seen that Māori have lost things.” — Peter Meihana.
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Claudia Orange: The role of the Treaty today
“A change in mindsets and attitudes is needed if people in Aotearoa New Zealand are to grasp the revolutionary shifts that have occurred and continue to evolve.” — Claudia Orange, in ‘The Story of a Treaty/He Kōrero Tiriti’.
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Why did Māori leaders sign Te Tiriti?
“Māori expected Te Tiriti to be the start of a new relationship with Britain — one in which they would have an equal role. They expected that the kāwanatanga of the first article would enable officials in New Zealand to control troublesome Europeans.” — Claudia Orange.
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Pākehā identity and the Treaty
“Although Pākehā ‘enjoy’ the political, social, and economic advantages of a dominant people, in the deep area of our identity, we are insecure and somewhat challenged.” — Alistair Reese, Pākehā theologian and historian.
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What if the Treaty had been honoured?
“’You will honourably and scrupulously fulfil the conditions of the Treaty of Waitangi . . .’” — Lord Stanley, the Colonial Secretary in London, to Governor George Grey in New Zealand, after Grey asked him how far he had to abide by the Treaty.
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David Williams: The Treaty, in English or Māori, is still our best way forward
“If we look to what I now think is the historically-correct context — the Treaty as a genuine attempt at a relationship-building exercise — then it opens the possibility of doing things better in our society today.” — Professor David Williams.
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Ned Fletcher: There’s no clash between Te Tiriti and the Treaty
“The Māori text simply makes more explicit what was already implicit in the English text and well understood on the British side — that Māori self-government (rangatiratanga) can co-exist with Crown sovereignty (kāwanatanga).” — Ned Fletcher.
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Waitangi: An oral covenant
“Despite its historical and cultural significance, the fourth article of the Treaty, the oral, has often been neglected.” — Alistair Reese.
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Rangatiratanga and immigration
“Just as there is no transfer of tino rangatiratanga, there’s nothing in Te Tiriti that would prevent hapū Māori from controlling their own borders, from directing their own foreign policy, or from entering into new international treaties.” — Dr Arama Rata.
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The hope for change: imagining decolonisation here and now
“Just as colonisation began in the mind — as a set of ideas based on racial and cultural superiority — so must decolonisation begin with a mental deconstruction of those ideas.” — Kennedy Warne.
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Claudia Orange and the Treaty
“We need to acknowledge that this is a partnership that we can move further forward — and that there still needs to be an open-mindedness in government, and in the public at large.” — Claudia Orange.
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Claudia Orange: Questions of sovereignty
“The early plans for a British colony envisaged a Māori New Zealand in which settlers would somehow be accommodated,” writes Claudia Orange. But, by 1840, there’d been a shift in thinking, reflecting “reluctant official acknowledgement that the tide of British colonisation could not be held back forever”.
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Time for a new recipe for pandemic management
“Overall, a key issue is the need for the government to provide Māori and Pacific whānau with ‘choice and control’ rather than ‘forced and compulsory’ isolation management.” — Dr Elana Curtis.
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Who owns the water?
“Māori own the water because our customary native title has never been extinguished.” — John Tamihere.
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Doing the right thing in the post Covid-19 world
New Zealand’s response to the short-term Covid-19 crisis should guide our response to the long-term issues facing us, writes Kerensa Johnston.
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Becoming ‘really Pākehā’
“Regardless of personal politics or wealth, as Pākehā we all benefit from the dispossession of Māori. There are no exemptions from Pākehā privilege.”
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Restoring mana and confidence
“We want to work shoulder to shoulder with this government rather than head-to-head headbutting.” — Ngahiwi Tomoana, Kahungunu leader.
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How can there be justice if the process isn’t just?
“If someone had said to me in 2008, I’d be turning the Whanganui River into a legal person — or parliament would be — I would have laughed.” Chris Finlayson, former Treaty negotiations minister.
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