Waitangi Day 2020 – 180 wasted years: We have run out of time to solve the grievances of the past
Preamble
The English version states the British intentions were to protect Māori interests from the encroaching British settlement, provide for British settlement and establish a government to maintain peace and order.
The Māori text suggests that the Queen’s main promises to Māori were to provide a government while securing tribal rangatiratanga (chiefly autonomy or authority over their own area) and Māori land ownership for as long as they wished to retain it.
First article
In the English text, Māori leaders gave the Queen ‘all the rights and powers of sovereignty’ over their land. In the Māori text, Māori leaders gave the Queen ‘te kawanatanga katoa’ or the complete government over their land.
The word ‘sovereignty’ had no direct translation in Māori. Chiefs had authority over their own areas, but there was no central ruler over the country. The translators of the English text used the Māori word ‘kawanatanga’, a transliteration of the word ‘governance’, which was in current use. Māori knew this word from the Bible and from the ‘kawana’ or governor of New South Wales. Māori believe that they kept their authority to manage their own affairs and ceded a right of governance to the Queen in return for the promise of protection.
It is widely accepted that the use of the words ‘kawanatanga’ and ‘tino rangatiratanga’ (in Article 2) contributed to later differences of view between the Crown and Māori over how much authority the chiefs would retain and how much the governor would have. There can be little doubt that the chiefs who signed the Treaty expected to enter into some kind of partnership and power sharing in the new system.
Second article
In the English text, Māori leaders and people, collectively and individually, were confirmed and guaranteed ‘exclusive and undisturbed possession of their lands and estates, forests, fisheries and other properties’. Māori also agreed to the Crown’s exclusive right to purchase their land. Some Māori (and British) later stated that they understood the Crown to have a first option rather than an exclusive right to buy.
In the Māori text, Māori were guaranteed ‘te tino rangatiratanga’ or the unqualified exercise of their chieftainship over their lands, villages, and all their property and treasures. Māori also agreed to give the Crown the right to buy their land if they wished to sell it. It is not certain if the Maori text clearly conveyed the implications of exclusive Crown purchase.
Third article
In the Māori text, the Crown gave an assurance that Māori would have the Queen’s protection and all rights (tikanga) accorded to British subjects. This is considered a fair translation of the English. The Queen’s protection of Māori was emphasised here as it was in the preamble.
Epilogue
Both parties note that they have entered into the full spirit of the Treaty.
So it’s 180 wasted years.
A beautiful Treaty betrayed by Settler NZ who ignored that promise and built the economy of this country on stolen indigenous land with zero intention of doing anything more than pay a pittance in compensation.
In fact that ‘compensation’ paid has not healed the trauma of that loss, it’s actually compounded it.
Māori are 380% more likely to be convicted of a crime and 200% more likely to die from heart disease and suicide. Māori are paid 18% less and 34% leave school without a qualification. Māori die earlier and suffer more.
Māori own less homes. Māori are over 50% of those in prison. Māori are 5 times more likely to be taken into State ‘care’.
Māori lost 95% of their land in less than a century.
At the turn of the 19th Century, the experience of colonialism had almost wiped them out.
To have climbed back from cultural extinction is testament to their Mana, not Pakeha good will.
180 wasted years.
The Treaty hasn’t just failed Māori though, its intrinsic promise to protect the rights and agency and self sovereignty of all people in this land has been molested since the neoliberal reforms that fed the grotesque inequality we see around us today.
Pakeha and Māori have both been failed by the promise of the Treaty while the elites have prospered.
However, our quarrels of the past are meaningless compared to the struggle of our collective future. The naked truth of the apocalypse of the climate crisis is that we have simply run out of time to solve the grievances of the past and must now focus on the nemesis of our future.
Right now NZ has floods, drought and fires. The climate crisis catastrophe we face demands radical reforms that don’t have the luxury of time.
The current political spectrum in New Zealand can not radically adapt fast enough to adopt the changes we must make if we are to survive the climate crisis. It will require a radical Political Movement that elects a Party to implement Fortress Aotearoa…
- Move away from intensive farming and look to become domestically self sustainable in terms of food.
- Immediately ban all water exports.
- Empower local communities to make local decisions and set up resilience programs.
- 5 year Parliamentary term so Governments can actually plan for change.
- Upper and Lower House (Upper House 50-50 split between Māori & Pakeha that can hold up legislation if unhappy about Treaty issues)
- Massive investment into R&D from Government with the understanding research is to benefit NZ first before sold offshore.
- Large scale increase in Navy, Army & Airforce.
- Mass limiting of tourism numbers with huge increased tourist taxes.
- Only citizens can vote.
- Sustainable immigration and an end to exploitative migrant workers.
- Resettlement Programms for all pacific island neighbours.
- Increase refugee in take to 10 000 per year
- Fully funded public services focused on real welfare of people.
- Mass Green housing rebuild.
- 100% renewable energy for entire country.
- Massive tree planting across previous farming land.
- Wholesale re-write of state services act to end commercial values.
- Investment into basic pharmaceutical production.
- Financial transaction tax
- Wealth tax
- Multinational tax
- Inheritance tax
- Capitalist monopolies in energy, transport and finance have to be brought into public ownership and control. They should be subject to democratic plans drawn up by the whole community. Workers should have much stronger decision making powers within them.
- All economic sectors to be made take steps needed to decarbonise the economy as much as is needed to reach zero net emissions by 2030.
- Free and frequent public transport on electric buses and/or trains in all main cities.
- Health care and education for life should be free and universally accessible.
- Welfare, pensions, child allowances, should be universal wherever possible.
- Public housing at fixed and affordable rents should be a right of all not just the desperately poor.
- All workers should have a right to a job and the workweek reduced with no loss of pay to make that possible.
- Local communes should be supported for control and delivery of as many functions of the centralised state as possible – including housing, education, health care.
- Local communes to support cooperative forms of production of food, solar and wind energy, electric transport, and media.
On a rapidly warming planet, NZ will increasingly be the life boat for Earth and the tyranny of our distance will become our blessing.
As the climate crisis unfolds more and more people in fury will turn against the current political system too wedded to the economic profits margins of the polluters. It is just a matter of time before the NZ electorate, Māori AND Pakeha, rejects the limitations of the current political spectrum.
On this day 180 years ago each signing Chief was greeted by Hobson and told, ‘He iwi tahi tatou’ (We are [now] one people).
The climate crisis might change that to “We are now the last ones”.
Okay so Māori are getting there cut and they’re growing economic bases but how long is the earth going to be inhabitable and what is a treaty strategy for that?
So Māori has been pretty good at recognising there’s a pollution problem but is it enough? No it’s not enough but Māori and pakeha have taking some resources and people are doing some things.
So Māori are willing to skip all the dirty coal and all the dirty industrialization but Māori have to be given the economic wellbeing that crown already has. Māori has to be given a right to decide if legislation is good or not. Otherwise the economical argument to save the planet will be used to keep Māori in second place and that’s not a treaty partnership.
The Crown has to meet Māori halfway so that Māori have a chance to develop the standards of living of Māori with in the crown framework and maori can do that with in an Upper Parliamentary house, and that means the crown has to do more sacrifice than Māori because non-Māori consume more resources than Māori, a lot more because of the different standards of living.
The crown has set up the system to do 3 things, 1) get more profit, 2) grow your company, 3) get a larger market share. Those are the ABC’s of neoliberalism/capitalism. Corporations and Iwi entities survive by getting these objectives met. That’s what the boards have chosen to do, that’s what shareholders/stakeholders expect. That’s the how the system works.
If along the way the elites have to sacrifice either the wellbing of workers, or the well being of the planet, or the environmental conditions, elites may feel plenty bad about it, and I’v met plenty who do but they had no choice and they will explain it if they’re honest that that’s the ABC’s of capitalism and that’s the way the system works.
So I don’t think there is currently a place for Māori with in the system that can seriously deal with the limits of growth and with the need to preserve our environment and take care of our health and people because we have a system with an intensity that pushes Maori issues aside and that seriously needs to change.
It’s probably got to do with a disinterest in Māori and that has to stop because it’s having a negative effect on society and the profits in which the environment functions is greater than the profits for the relatively few and even more important is the jobs the environment creates.
There is more mahi to do in a pair of shorts
Beautiful speeches, eloquent orators, Waitangi on the telly. 180 years and we are now in a position to really address the occupation, theft, deception and institutional malfeasance that the previous racists and neoliberals were allowed to get away with. All of the planets are aligning; a progressive government, empathy and kindness, robust policy, more transparent information, open source platforms, social media. Surely now the indigenous people of NZ will get a fair go. Or will they? This government really haven’t done anything yet. How can this administration ignore professional working groups who recommend urgent action in the social sector, where Maori are overrepresented? Wtf is this government doing to properly provide for, protect and grow the 2/3 of the country who aren’t the property class? How can Ihumaotao be subject to claim and protest when all previous claims cannot then be reexamined and relitigated (just give every citizen with Maori ancestry $1 million so they can house themselves and be done with it, a trillion dollars should be enough)? Isn’t all this talk and promise just hot air? While Jacinda was raising and lowering her eyebrows with concern this week, China built a functioning hospital. This is the sort of dedication and planning we need. Let’s do…something.
Old news, NZ is now dedicated by the 1% to be a multicultural country and the treaty is out the window.
The Pacific is a very underpopulated area, ripe for resettlement. Prob only 744,800 Maori and pos 3 million Pakeha left here (who knows with the botched up census), why worry about the treaty, sarcasm!
Māori miss out in Census 2018
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/04/30/560052/maori-miss-out-in-census-2018
Here are some signs that the woke conveniently ignore!
Focus on housing squeeze, not refugees – Whanganui mayor
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/395707/focus-on-housing-squeeze-not-refugees-whanganui-mayor
More migrant aged parents expected than both Maori and Pacific Islanders https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12281479
and they are still bringing more aged migrants into NZ
which means that Gen X and Y generations who were forced into user pays education here, will end up paying taxes for aged migrants benefits that never contributed a bean, while also being forced to pay interest for their own tertiary studies post 1980’s and their own retirement savings with “Kiwisaver”!
It’s complete discrimination to the local population to force their taxes to pay for other people’s parents who don’t have to pay anything to get it! https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/119288609/pension-age-debate-crunch-coming
No wonder tertiary enrolments for domestic students down and I would guess that NZ has one of the highest rates of overseas people running our universities now. Meanwhile domestic students bodies lie undiscovered in university halls for a month, while the parents are billed for his accomodation.
The latest MSD data shows the number of people receiving a jobseeker benefit has increased by 13,000 or 10.9% in the last year.
And it isn’t evenly spread. The increase by key demographics is:
Maori +14.6%
Pasifika +15.9%
Under 25s +13.7%
25 – 40 year olds +16.7%
And even bigger growth with hardship assistance. The special needs grants are up 45% and advances up 53%.
https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2019/04/jobseeker_benefit_numbers_up_11_in_a_year.html
No voting in prison and Maori over represented.
More prisons being built. Prison building intentions triple in 2019 – Statistics New Zealand
Overseas Investment Authority consents over 18,000 in last 6 months…
Whenever a government official talks about employment exploitation they say “migrant exploitation”, not worker exploitation which has been ignored in NZ for 40 years since 1984! Domestic exploitation of workers is acceptable and encouraged here. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/365540/why-being-made-redundant-in-nz-is-so-tough
Non-Māori race relations commissioner ‘missed opportunity’
https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national/non-māori-race-relations-commissioner-missed-opportunity/ar-AAE8KiE
GUEST BLOG: Hone Harawira – The useless Race Relations Office
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/03/06/guest-blog-hone-harawira-the-useless-race-relations-office/
‘Silly, frustrating, insulting’: Princess Cruises slammed for fake Maori stunt
https://www.news.com.au/world/silly-frustrating-insulting-princess-cruises-slammed-for-fake-maori-stunt/news-story/1488027cff1919f85c1e45f2bafc5dab
Get some Meth and other drugs into the locals, take over the voting and bobs your uncle a ‘peaceful’ way to create ‘drugged out, lazy, people and rehome billions of other people into the Pacific.
The new drug highway: Pacific islands at centre of cocaine trafficking boom
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/24/the-new-drug-highway-pacific-islands-at-centre-of-cocaine-trafficking-boom
Asian drug links reach south with meth deals
https://www.scmp.com/article/724511/asian-drug-links-reach-south-meth-deals
I think it is pretty clear, NZ is not going in the direction of a bicultural country legally guided by the treaty anymore!
What is even worse, is that we have more Maori Maori/Pakeha in parliament than ever before and things are going down the toilet in real terms for domestic statistics… our politicians seem to automatically discriminate against domestic people in every policy while getting a lovely trip to China or more donations from overseas.
Lowering of wages for families since Rogernomics global policies have become the dominant thinking here and is one of the many problems in NZ and a huge contributor to poverty and the working poor and stopping Maori and Pakeha working together to eliminate poverty and pollution here and go back and create a new agreement such as a 50/50 bicultural parliament!
“Shortly after, I discovered that measured poverty in the country was dominated by children and their parents. This was a revolutionary finding at the time and it took only four decades for it to become the conventional wisdom. Even today, you will find people who focus their poverty discussions on beneficiaries, ethnic minorities, single-parent households, and those in rental accommodation. The research evidence points to the most common household in poverty is a Pakeha couple with children living in their own house (with a mortgage) and being dependent upon wages.”
https://www.pundit.co.nz/content/invisible-children
We now have growing evidence that many people coming to NZ are fraudulently paying to work here to get residency and earning well under the average wage of that industry as they are bought in, thus lowering the industry wages in NZ, year by year and creating less and less skills in industries. That is encouraged by our politicians.
NZ politicians and officials are captive to the lazy cash, impoverished working conditions to make us their dream of a low wage economy, and turning a blind eye to the growing international criminal rings operating here and recruiting the locals.
Locals are between a rock and a hard place, when it is becoming more secure to be on a benefit here, than have a job or train for one, as the wages in real terms, as well as skill and experience, decrease in NZ yearly.
We need to be opposed to rapid population growth driven by immigration for political expediency but not anti-migrant or xenophobic.
We need a new narrative.
The vast majority of NZers – Maori, Pakeha and new migrants – do not want to live in a NZ of 10, 20, 50 million.
Our small population and low population density is our greatest asset.
Let’s work together to keep Aotearoa small and beautiful.
Environmental Fascism Party?
We need to be ant-migrant and xenophobic with out sounding ant-migrant and xenophobic.
the planet is dying because of your false religion of infinite growth; let’s be sustainable, not join the rest of the world in its suicide pact
Growth is driven by Uber capitalists
We also need to be realistic that NZ is being shat upon by many criminals and dysfunctional people, around the world and stop it.
Criminal gangs from overseas are also recruiting local people. It’s a downwards spiral for many communities who families are being murdered, getting on drugs, becoming involved in complicated multinational child disputes, becoming homeless in our own country, can’t get through the courts because there is so much demand in the criminal justice system, etc.
We are turning into the Phillipines where oldies and kids live, while workers earn money overseas because the local jobs are poorly paid and they have too many people, and drugs have become a massive problem.
Our Government has not put in anything to stop disturbed or drugs smugglers coming here. The ease in which Tarrent blew away 51 people in cold blood, while he rented a place in NZ and apparently had no job for 3 years since he came! Oh, he could also vote here and be on a benefit. Yay, we really need those nice folks from overseas voting. Sarcasm.
Whose next, a Marae, a school, hospital, city? Who knows with a growing amount of internationals morons who seem to have zero skills, a sense of entitlement, race/gender/family violence, drug, mental health, political agendas, fraud and drugs, and who knows what other issues, and easily groomed into who knows what to act out their bizarre fantasies. Now the drugs people are recruiting the locals and it’s spiralling out of control.
This homestay 23yo https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/crime/student-filmed-host-shower-and-stole-underwear was found with the CHCH images on his phone for example. We seem to be attracting a lot of people who seem to be angry or disturbed coming here from around the world.
Even when foreign crims get caught they somehow still get to stay here! The NZ woke wants damaged people to flock here (cultural fit). Having a mental breakdown in NZ as a foreigner, the woke will be all over to help, while a Kiwi student will miss out on basic mental health services and we now have bodies turning up undiscovered for a month in student halls.
The woke governments response to Tarrant, was telling everyone to avoid micro racism on neighbourly and arm up police in South Auckland. Not really what anybody was expecting, when they find out new residents for no apparent reason were stockpiling weapons while living in CBD apartments after just arriving!
Woke thinking is more dangerous to society than a lot of other discourses and being risk adverse has gone out the window with neoliberalism.
The sniff of a tidy profit for a private individual is more important in NZ law, than a safe society or justice for victims born here and who have no other country to turn to.
SaveNZ & Martyn B : Your observations re: the dispossession of Maori and increasing numbers of working class Pakeha are obvious and class war is everywhere. But those pointing out such things (Winston Peters & Brian Tamaki) are immediately slandered with the worst calumnies. As if caring for New Zealanders is a hate crime.
A hundred poxes on the woke who enable a second wave of colonisation of NZ and the impoverishment of their own people. (And they don’t seem to care about the spread of a deadly virus either). Because they are so fucken enlightened and globally aware.
Charity begins at home. Actually having a home is step 1. Not selling off everything to the highest bidder, so that your kids can become housemaids to the new elite.
Neoliberal, globalist economics is a betrayal of Te Tiriti and selling out our own children.
100%
Instead of calling 44South a bigot, perhaps someone can tell me which of his statements are factually wrong. They look pretty good to me.
The war between Māori and the crown was a stale mate. As it turned out regametslism was a match for tribalism. The tactical economic war that proceeded over the next 180 years was of course won largely won by the crown because the crown requires the police and brute force to win. Māori, only require free market economics to win, and that’s something Māori are becoming more and more proficient at, much to the dismay of the already well housed and well fed.
The Maori party needs to become a truly transformative party. They need to stand on a platform of drastic immigration reduction in order for Maori to have a chance at becoming a demographic force to be reckoned with in Aotearoa. Maori make up 33% of births therefore without mass migration Maori would soon be on the way to being a large proportion of the population as opposed to at present being marginalised demographically through mass immigration.
The majority of Maori would support this (some such as Morgan Godfrey think that the treaty will be honoured even if immigration increases and Maori have nothing to worry about – history tells us otherwise).
The Maori party needs to then take back all the Maori seats but expressly not campaign for the party vote. This would create a major overhang and put them in the most powerful position in parliament – the King Maker! They can hold the country to ransom and they have every right to!
Oh pfft. They need donations and they need a bloody ground game like yesterday. That’s what they need.
The Maori Party helped the smiling assassin & Natz to create the immigration problem in the first place. And now COL are too gutless to do what they campaigned on and crack down to 10,000 high worth migrants only and stop the student and temp routs, while they SOLVE all the NZ problems like infrastructure, poverty pollution, low wages, treaty issues and housing.
‘Right now NZ has floods, drought and fires. The climate crisis catastrophe we face demands radical reforms that don’t have the luxury of time.’
The climate crisis catastrophe has ‘suddenly’ got a lot worse; new research indicates the warming potential of CO2 is greater than previously thought; peer-reviewed research published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters indicates the warming potential of CO2 is greater than previously thought. And ‘we’ are pumping more of it than ever into the atmosphere -more than 41 billion tonnes a year!
‘Scientists find carbon dioxide is more potent than thought, meaning the Paris climate goals on cutting greenhouse gases may be unattainable.’
‘LONDON, 23 January, 2020 − The fevered arguments about how the world can reach the Paris climate goals on cutting the greenhouse gases which are driving global heating may be a waste of time. An international team of scientists has learned more about the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2) − and it’s not good news.
Teams in six countries, using new climate models, say the warming potential of CO2 has been underestimated for years. The new models will be used in revised UN temperature projections next year. If they are accurate, the Paris targets of keeping temperature rise below 2°C − or preferably 1.5°C − will belong to a fantasy world.
Vastly more data and computing power has become available since the current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections were finalised in 2013. “We have better models now,” Olivier Boucher, head of the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace Climate Modelling Centre in Paris, told the French news agency AFP, and they “represent current climate trends more accurately”.
Projections from government-backed teams using the models in the US, UK, France and Canada suggest a much warmer future unless the world acts fast: CO2 concentrations which have till now been expected to produce a world only 3°C warmer than pre-industrial levels would more probably heat the Earth’s surface by four or five degrees Celsius.
“If you think the new models give a more realistic picture, then it will, of course, be harder to achieve the Paris targets, whether it is 1.5°C or two degrees Celsius,” Mark Zelinka told AFP. Dr Zelinka, from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, is the lead author of the first peer-reviewed assessment of the new generation of models, published earlier this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
“Climate sensitivity has been in the range of 1.5°C to 4.5°C for more than 30 years. If it is now moving to between 3°C and 7°C, that would be tremendously dangerous”
https://climatenewsnetwork.net/paris-climate-goals-may-be-beyond-reach/?fbclid=IwAR2OXShO4JJ2QAH8g5WDHQ-GyE9PhdhkkFfaoNvPWWlvEt0Va6iHxO0GZPQ
good to have solutions being offered up for climate change here. mayb a waste-2-energy plant would be a good idea also.
with > #climate.Action.nOw behind the idea.
> emissions controls technology removes 99.5 percent of the particulate matter from the flue gas.
> Auckland landfills at risk from sea level rise – rnz.
> In 2016 auckland sent 1.6 million tonnes of waste to landfill. it may b along time b4 rubbish can be 100% recycled.
The only solution is to drastically cut energy harvesting and use and don’t create waste.
It means a massive shift in how we live and population will reduce one way or another. Plan it or suffer it happening.
i see a well meaning vision John. and like having a recycle rate of 100% realised , will probably take a few hundred if not thousand years ..
consumerism is a facade , whenever i go buying for clothes it’s usually to the op-shop first then will look at other options if i can’t find what i’m looking for.
Complex recycling as we know it today takes energy and resources that we will not be able to call on as they just won’t be there.
Simple recycling such as composting, reusing wood and stone, sharing knowledge, reusing water, and similar tasks if well managed will have little detrimental effect on the environment.
Non of this stuff is new.
Kia ora Martyn
I am not enthused by the notion of “Fortress Aotearoa”.
It sounds strong, but is really an expression of fear for what the future may hold.
Better to approach the future with confidence even in the face of impending catastrophe.
Also, while many (not all) of the specific proposals have merit, the assumption seems to be that they can only be and will be implemented by the state.
It won’t happen that way. Local communities don’t need to be empowered by anyone, least of all by the very state which for the past 180 has striven to dis-empower them.
Self-sufficiency in food is something that ordinary people can achieve for themselves. They can also educate their own children, and provide a good standard of basic medical care.
They don’t want a more powerful, more heavily armed government and they certainly don’t want a system of government which is even less democratic than the current colonial regime.
I suggest that you forget about Fortress New Zealand (which is what it would be under a strengthened colonial system) and stick to growing your own spuds and sharing any surplus with your neighbours.
These constitutional matters are between Māori and non-Māori. Even communes would depend on property rights to protect them so you’d need a strong central state to protect those property rights. Especially in uncertain times.
But not the western understanding of property rights. Communal property and state owned and controlled land use.