In an article entitled “Pakeha Identity And The Treaty”, posted on the E Tangata website, “Pakeha theologian” Alastair Reese argues that those New Zealanders who are not tangata whenua can put an end to their “Pakeha existential dilemma” by acknowledging themselves tangata Tiriti – people of the Treaty.
Reece contends that: “Pākehā are gifted an identity in the Treaty, along with associated rights and responsibilities. Māori identity is affirmed in the Treaty, as are their rights and responsibilities.”
Did you spot the not-so-subtle distinction in Reese’s formula? Māori identity is “affirmed”, but the identity of Pakeha is “gifted”. Whatever the nature of the relationship Reese sees emerging from the Treaty “covenant” may be, it is not a partnership of equals.
There is something deeply offensive in the image of Pakeha New Zealanders, wracked with existential angst, drifting, like so many rudderless colonial ghost-ships, twelve thousand miles from “Home” in the terrifying vastnesses of the South Pacific. It is an insulting caricature of the men and women (my own ancestors included) who put all those dangerous miles behind them to find a better life, and to build a new and fairer society – one very different from the society they left behind.
Like many of the Scots who settled in Otago, my great, great, great, grandfather abandoned a Scotland whose hereditary clan chieftains were betraying and harrying their own people. While in the salons of London these great lords spoke movingly of the indissoluble bonds of duty that bound them to their dependents, their agents were busy evicting thousands of crofters from their homes to make way for the considerably more profitable flocks of Cheviot sheep.
This quest for a just society informs the history of Pakeha settlement in these islands. The impulse to build a “Better Britain”, where the injustices of the Clearances, and the state-sponsored violence of the “Peterloo Massacre”, could never be repeated. High on a hilltop, just 50 kilometres north of Dunedin, stands the memorial to John Mackenzie, Lands Minister in the Liberal Government of John Balance. It was Mackenzie who oversaw the breaking-up of the great landed estates belonging to the wealthy elites who historian Stephen Eldred-Grigg dubbed the “Southern Gentry”. Mackenzie had witnessed at first-hand what landed “gentlemen” could do.
Edward Gibbon Wakefield and his New Zealand Company may have dreamed of replicating Mother England, and all her proud injustices, in the South Pacific, but the story of Pakeha New Zealand is the story of the seekers, dreamers and political campaigners who constructed what foreigners would come to call (with a mixture of admiration and surprise) “the social laboratory of the world”.
Back in the 1980s my wife and I rented the upper-floor of the St Andrews Presbyterian Church manse, once home to Rutherford Waddell, the clergyman whose sermon against sweated labour, “The Sin of Cheapness”, sparked the formation of the Tailoresses Union of New Zealand. The Otago Daily Times itself led the campaign which culminated in its creation.
The quest for social justice, for a nation better than the benighted realms of Europe could ever hope to be, is woven into the fabric of Pakeha New Zealand. That it is being unpicked now by the very forces the Mackenzies and Waddells struggled against is the true tragedy of our times.
So, no thank-you, Mr Reese, Pakeha New Zealanders have no need of te Tiriti’s “gifts”. What we need is to break the neoliberal spell under which this country continues to languish – drifting without purpose or direction. That awakening will not be assisted by “historians” writing the achievements of the Mackenzies and Waddells, the Seddons and Savages, out of our children’s textbooks, and replacing them with decontextualised horror stories of colonial murder and mayhem.
The greatest gift of the Treaty of Waitangi was its pledge of equality for all New Zealanders. My identity as a Pakeha New Zealander is bound irrevocably to the fulfilment of that historical promise.
Chris Trotter is a political commentator who blogs at bowalleyroad.blogspot.co.nz.
19 comments:
Indeed this is what must be done.
The question is: who will do it?
National looks committed to doing as little as possible.
Totally had a gutsful of all the racist cultural bullshit being thrown at us. I'm 73 ,my father and my grandfather were born in NZ so nobody is gifting me my right to live in my birthplace. If Europeans hadn't settled in the South Island Ngai Tahu would have been killed and eaten or enslaved and raped by invading North Island tribes so they should be paying us for services rendered. When are hard working average New Zealanders going to stand up and tell their local MPs to get off their arses and stop this crap. Kiwialan.
Chris, is this not the delemma we face. Like you my extended family on both side left Britain for a country that had opportunities not shackled by a landed gentry. They arrived here with nothing. You succeeded on the basis of hard work and application. Some would argue that in many parts of New Zealand that was done by theft of Maori land. Not so in the South Island so much perhaps. But now we see the promotion of a system that once again beds in an elite not based on hard work and application but on the basis of race. I feel that is what is driving this resistance to the co governance proposal. And by the way I am Pakeha and proud of it and my families contribution to building this country. I will apologise to no one.
Indeed.
However no matter what ethnic background I may have I am not and never have been a 'Pakeha New Zealander'.
I am very distant from too many generations and as such I have always been since birth plainly a 'New Zealander'.
Well, Reese is wrong from the get go - for there are no identifiable tangata whenua, unless he means those now living that were born here, and then that would include people of all ethnicities including some part Maori. The Treaty recognises tangata Maori. They were to be British 'subjects', like those others living here - nothing more, nothing less. We've moved on, leastwise we should have and views like Reese's provide no assistance whatsoever to the issues that now confront us - self-inflicted though they may be. As Chris rightly identifies, the Treaty was about creating unity through equality. Attempting to identify and forever separating those involved will only ever result in further division. So best Reese keeps his views to himself and the Treaty, having long since served its purpose, be now rightly confined to history.
Completely agree, Co Governance is basically turning the clock back several hundred years.
Giving one minority rule of another creating a Feudal system of ownership and governance that Britain did away with long , long ago.
This is a key reason why studying British history is so valuable.
Re writing history teaches you nothing.
For the dividers in our society their fate is sealed, they just don’t know it.
A while back, deep in the Ardern era, I got the impression that Chris was resigned to co-governance, and indeed somewhat in favour of it.
This article puts paid to that and shows that even Left-leaning commentators can have an epiphany and revert to the side of democracy, rather than racist ethno-nationalism.
Good on you, mate!
Oh Alastair Reese - what a dingbat - God grant him sense puh-leese.
Nobody owns the planet. Human groups have been roaming all over it since they were ousted from the Garden. When travellers from the North came to these islands, it was plain to them that the 100/200,000 humans who were living on 103,000 square miles could not be said to 'occupy' all of it - just as it had seemed to Maori 500 years earlier. Some of it was patently 'owned', but much of it was not - no-mans-land.
Now this is not to say that the Wakefield family were not out to get their hands on as much as they could by hook or by crook, but it seems quite a few Maori chiefs were quick to grasp advantage for themselves as well. Morally speaking I'm not sure that the two groups were that far apart. Each had what the other wanted - land/timber/flax for muskets/blankets/food.
Maori, of course, were out-numbered, as became pretty soon plain to those who were aware of the advantages of a Treaty. It is just ridiculous - not to say BORING - for us still to be arguing the mutuality. I do blame Maori for rancorous utu and English for their hand-wringing need for self-justification - but like you Chris I'm 5th generation Scottish-descended from Otago - another story.
While it is possible that there exists (perhaps in a Wellington inner-city cyber cafe engaged in twitter ad hominem or straw man idiocy) someone who experiences “Pakeha existential dilemma”, but I am yet to meet one in real life. Most European decent NZ citizens I know are very happy in their NZ identity, and I'm yet to met anyone who wishes they were from a different DNA lineage. I fear this “Pakeha existential dilemma” may exist exclusively in the ideology of the woke.
So where does all this leave us Whites who are not of Anglo-Saxon descent?
I belong to the largest continental European immigrant population in NZ (Dutch). Given the contribution we have made to this country I think we should have our own moniker (NOT 'pakeha') and it had better be a respectful one!
Is this Alistair Reese for real or is this a spoof?
Hi DeeM
If Hipkins is now seriously opposed to co governace why does he not come out strright and say so and why and thus ensure re election (albeit with far fewer maori)? Sadly Luxon still sees a place for it in local government so that the disater of the Tupuna Maunga Authority can be repeated everywhere.
Robert Arthur
My comment was referring to Chris Trotter, not Chris Hipkins. Although, I can see how you made the connection.
Just for the record. NO, I don't think Hipkins has changed his mind on co-governance. He's trying to persuade the public he has and can rely on the MSM not to challenge him on it.
I take offence at being called a "Pakeha". My approach is to refuse to accept the label and I ask anyone who refers to me in such a manner to apologise for the offence they have caused!
I do not much care about the nationality or race of my ancestors - it is only of passing historical interest and of some interest in explaining medical predispositions.
My ancestors do not define my character - which is how I wish to be judged but even then the judgement of others is much less important to me than the judgement of oneself.
That opinion is my gift to those who believe race determines rights.
In reply to Barend Vlaardingerbroek...
Here is a suggested Monika...
"Ngati Tulip"
Agree Chris. Thank you
The treaty was originally written in English, then translated, however well or badly, into maori.
The English original version should be the only one used for all historical and legal purposes.
People of the Treaty? Give me a break! Who decided that?
'Tangata Tiriti' is fairly recent but fast growing nonsense from those wanting to rewrite history. The underlying idea manipulatively being seeded is that Te Tiriti somehow allowed non-Maori to be here. That is fabrication. The preamble to Te Tiriti as translated competently by Sir Apirana Ngata included:
'This is by reason of the fact that so many members of (Queen Victoria's) race were living in this land and many more were coming.'
European settlers would have continued to come whether or not Te Tiriti was signed by anyone. English rule would have been imposed regardless but probably would have left tribes to keep murdering and eating each other to their hearts' content. Uncontrolled, informal land purchases by settlers would have continued. If and when Maori tried to expell or attack settlers, English constabulatory and military would generally have defeated them. Sure, New Zealand would have become a very different place from what it now is, possibly with enduring race wars. However, neither European settlers nor English governance had ever needed a treaty in any of its other colonies and would not have needed one here.
The term 'Tangata Tiriti' when constrasted with 'Tangata Whenua' manipulatively imposes the idea that Maori have some superior moral right to be here or some more profound connection with the land. That's no more than a hollow assertion by those who would benefit from that belief.
Do not let yourself be a pawn in the Maori supremists' game by letting yourself be referred to as Tangata Tiriti without objecting, much less calling yourself that.
My ethnicity is New Zealander.
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