“The photos show that the smaller sheet was subsequently wax glued and paste glued, as well as pinned, to the large sheet . .. rendering the two pieces of paper adjoined into one treaty document,” he said.
“At some stage these two sheets of paper were torn apart, causing duplicate damage to both sheets.”
Doutré said “forensically, the important part of these two documents is the remains of a shattered wax blob at the top left-hand corner, as well as pin holes and frayed paper fibres.”
Those photos combined with an account of the treaty signing at Waikato Heads mission station on April 11, 1840, as recorded by T.L. Buick in The Treaty of Waitangi, published in 1914, provide evidence of what most likely happened.
In April 1840, Reverend Robert Maunsell faced a problem when he was scheduled to meet 1500 Maori on April 11, to collect signatures. The government’s official Maori language treaty text for the Waikato Heads assembly had not arrived. Reverend Maunsell waited “with no small anxiety”, according to Buick.
He did have a smaller 30cm x 21cm (A4) printed Maori text (the correct text). He also had a much larger 47cm x 61cm Formal Royal Style English text that had been ruined and discarded because it had a distorted, tortured signature done by Hobson at the height of his stroke-induced paralysis.
Hobson’s secretary James Freeman had sent this from Tamaki, along with the printed Maori copy.
So Reverend Maunsell made do. He used what he had on hand, the small printed Maori text to read from, which received the first five signatures, as well as his own witnessing signature, and the large sheet for the remaining signatures that wouldn’t fit on the Maori text sheet.
The other chiefs who put their marks on the space at the bottom of the large-page English text were in fact signing the Maori text.
“Maunsell could never have envisioned the Pandora's box of evil that would be unleashed 135 years later by his naïve and innocent choice of that particular piece of paper to accommodate the overflow signatures,” Doutré said.
Overlaid transparencies show that damage to both documents match perfectly at the tear or shear region. Go to: http://www.treatyofwaitangi.net.nz/Maunsell/MaunsellTreaty.html to see how the glued-on top sheet was torn away from the other, shearing fibres.
Substantial differences between this official English text and the Maori text created scope for mischief. At 568 words, this so-called official English text is much wordier than Te Tiriti's 480 words, and many words in the English are not in the Maori.
Doutré said the term “right of pre-emption” in article 2 of the English does not appear in Te Tiriti. Neither does the phrase “lands estates forests fisheries” or “royal favour”, etc.
“Other words in the English that do not appear in Te Tiriti are ‘Europe’, ‘United Kingdom’, ‘Ireland’, ‘Australia’ and ‘extension’”, he said.
Perhaps more importantly is the manner in which the newly elevated, official English text appears to write non-Maori out of the treaty.
Article 2 of the official English text appears to limit property rights to "chiefs and tribes of New Zealand and to the respective families and individuals" while Te Tiriti confirms property rights to "chiefs, tribes, and all the people of New Zealand" -- which included property-owning non-Maori.
“All back-translations of the Maori text state that the rights enshrined in the treaty include the 'chiefs and tribes and all the people of New Zealand' … and that positively includes the British or settlers, on behalf of whom Hobson had travelled halfway around the world to secure full rights,” Doutré said.
“Most people don’t know that the Maori language treaty guarantees equal rights for all the people of New Zealand,” Doutré said,
The English text used at Waikato Heads on April 11, 1840, is one of seven different Royal Style composite versions compiled by Freeman for overseas dispatch.
“A comparison of all English versions with the Maori text makes it clear that the Maori text was not a translation of any one of these English versions, nor was any of the English versions a translation of the Maori text”, treaty historian Ruth Ross wrote in 1972.
The English text signed at Waikato Heads has been used as justification for a stealthy reinterpretation of a simple statement of citizen and property rights for all New Zealanders to create an ideology that the treaty is a sacred document guaranteeing special rights for Maori, which it is not.
What made matters worse was that the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 granted to the Waitangi Tribunal the sole authority to interpret the treaty. Since then, tribunal members have been making this interpretation up as they go along.
“The Official English version, which is nowadays in our legislation, is actually a nothing. It shouldn't exist at all,” Doutré said.
“If government-paid treaty researchers wanted to clean up this mess, all they would need to do is a forensic analysis of the sort that I have done to confirm that the two Waikato Heads documents were glued together and have been forcibly separated, Doutré said. “Each will contain residues or marks of the other.”
Those photos combined with an account of the treaty signing at Waikato Heads mission station on April 11, 1840, as recorded by T.L. Buick in The Treaty of Waitangi, published in 1914, provide evidence of what most likely happened.
In April 1840, Reverend Robert Maunsell faced a problem when he was scheduled to meet 1500 Maori on April 11, to collect signatures. The government’s official Maori language treaty text for the Waikato Heads assembly had not arrived. Reverend Maunsell waited “with no small anxiety”, according to Buick.
He did have a smaller 30cm x 21cm (A4) printed Maori text (the correct text). He also had a much larger 47cm x 61cm Formal Royal Style English text that had been ruined and discarded because it had a distorted, tortured signature done by Hobson at the height of his stroke-induced paralysis.
Hobson’s secretary James Freeman had sent this from Tamaki, along with the printed Maori copy.
So Reverend Maunsell made do. He used what he had on hand, the small printed Maori text to read from, which received the first five signatures, as well as his own witnessing signature, and the large sheet for the remaining signatures that wouldn’t fit on the Maori text sheet.
The other chiefs who put their marks on the space at the bottom of the large-page English text were in fact signing the Maori text.
“Maunsell could never have envisioned the Pandora's box of evil that would be unleashed 135 years later by his naïve and innocent choice of that particular piece of paper to accommodate the overflow signatures,” Doutré said.
Overlaid transparencies show that damage to both documents match perfectly at the tear or shear region. Go to: http://www.treatyofwaitangi.net.nz/Maunsell/MaunsellTreaty.html to see how the glued-on top sheet was torn away from the other, shearing fibres.
Substantial differences between this official English text and the Maori text created scope for mischief. At 568 words, this so-called official English text is much wordier than Te Tiriti's 480 words, and many words in the English are not in the Maori.
Doutré said the term “right of pre-emption” in article 2 of the English does not appear in Te Tiriti. Neither does the phrase “lands estates forests fisheries” or “royal favour”, etc.
“Other words in the English that do not appear in Te Tiriti are ‘Europe’, ‘United Kingdom’, ‘Ireland’, ‘Australia’ and ‘extension’”, he said.
Perhaps more importantly is the manner in which the newly elevated, official English text appears to write non-Maori out of the treaty.
Article 2 of the official English text appears to limit property rights to "chiefs and tribes of New Zealand and to the respective families and individuals" while Te Tiriti confirms property rights to "chiefs, tribes, and all the people of New Zealand" -- which included property-owning non-Maori.
“All back-translations of the Maori text state that the rights enshrined in the treaty include the 'chiefs and tribes and all the people of New Zealand' … and that positively includes the British or settlers, on behalf of whom Hobson had travelled halfway around the world to secure full rights,” Doutré said.
“Most people don’t know that the Maori language treaty guarantees equal rights for all the people of New Zealand,” Doutré said,
The English text used at Waikato Heads on April 11, 1840, is one of seven different Royal Style composite versions compiled by Freeman for overseas dispatch.
“A comparison of all English versions with the Maori text makes it clear that the Maori text was not a translation of any one of these English versions, nor was any of the English versions a translation of the Maori text”, treaty historian Ruth Ross wrote in 1972.
The English text signed at Waikato Heads has been used as justification for a stealthy reinterpretation of a simple statement of citizen and property rights for all New Zealanders to create an ideology that the treaty is a sacred document guaranteeing special rights for Maori, which it is not.
What made matters worse was that the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 granted to the Waitangi Tribunal the sole authority to interpret the treaty. Since then, tribunal members have been making this interpretation up as they go along.
“The Official English version, which is nowadays in our legislation, is actually a nothing. It shouldn't exist at all,” Doutré said.
“If government-paid treaty researchers wanted to clean up this mess, all they would need to do is a forensic analysis of the sort that I have done to confirm that the two Waikato Heads documents were glued together and have been forcibly separated, Doutré said. “Each will contain residues or marks of the other.”
9 comments:
And then there's the Littlewood English version, which is in line with the Maori language version referred to. An interesting article, which will no doubt attract zero interest from the presstitutes.
Very interesting, thank you for the time you have put into this and for sharing.
Bruce Moon and John Robinson have written extensively on this false treaty and the abuse to which it is being put.
See https://www.stopcogovernance.kiwi/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Bruce-Moon-on-the-Treaty-Of-Waitangi-Act-1975.pdf
and Robinson's book 'Regaining a Nation: Equality and Democray' (Tross Publishing 2022)
Moon's article has a very good and explanatory assessment of the deficiencies in the so-called 'authorised text'.
Robinson analyses the way constitutional transformation, co-governance, and the inverting of our history is endangering our democracy.
God Bless you Alastair. God has already blessed me with the confidence that I know who I am, and it hasn't at all to do with the Treaty.
For 50 years New Zealanders have been deceived, lied to and treated as second class. In the name of perceived crimes against original Maori, all justified using the Trojan horse, The Treaty of Waitangi and the independent agency the Waitangi tribunal designed to extract as much money as possible from New Zealand taxpayers.
This full blown deception and
distortion of a simple unifying document designed in good faith for the good of all is set to bring down all that was decent that our ancestors fought for and many gave their lives for.
As a 70year old son of an English immigrant family, I have never felt less of a New Zealander than I do today.
Refer also Bruce Moon’s recent article on Treaty of Waitangi Act. And his book New Zealand the Fair Colony.
The basic Treaty story is not complex and is told simply by Hobson's Pledge and others. But such never appears in the msm. It is only the artful Waitangi Tribunal and other interpretations and re imaginings which we routinely hear and read. Modern journalists only handle what they are given, and then filter to meet the PIJFunding conditions and to avoid cancellation by the mighty maori economy and its army of activist agents infiltrated everywhere. The way in which academic and artful maori have contrived to engineer the takeover of NZ is remarkable. If there were not on offer so many other undermined failed and failing societies in history, NZ to Aotearoa would make a great study for students.
The ignorance of the general public is woeful. But not unreasonable when two successive PMs struggle to recall the basics of the Treaty. David Lange summed up succinctly when he stated that the very civilised Queen of England, leader of then the most powerful nation on earth, would never have considered an equal partnership with a bunch of mostly illiterate warring cannibals still emerging from the stone age. Neither party remotely imagined a world like today or considered the Treaty accordingly. The degree of consenting tribal and European intermarriage inconceivable. Also the notion that a 1/64 would be considered maori (or that they would choose to so identify!). Maori concept of the wider world was limited. The relatively young only moderately educated Europeans involved would also have had a limited view of the wider world and likely developments even as existed then. And had they known they were signing for protection from tribal war and slavery, for health care, schooling, payment for children, payments without working (an unfamiliar quirck), a provided house with running hot and cold water and light, not a single chief would have been able to resist iwi pressure to sign.
We need a Treaty Perspective Act to clarify and limit the original, plus severe curtailment of the runaway Tribunal. And a review of the RNZ Charter to limit the degree of pro maori propogandising, and scrapping of the pro maori conditions for PIJFund.
For anyone with more than a passing interest in the English version, Ned Fletcher’s recent book “The english text of the treaty of waitangi” gives an in depth analysis on the subject.
Doutré said “The Official English version, which is nowadays in our legislation, is actually a nothing. It shouldn't exist at all”. This however ignores the fact that it was signed by Māori, signed by Hobson, and recognised as the only official version at that time. Whatever the motives of getting Māori to sign an English version were, or the fact the wording of the two versions vary, makes no difference to the outcome…we have an English and te reo version of our official treaty.
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