Bruce Moon: Alas, Simone…

“Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.” - Simone de Beauvoir

There have been some rather curious commentaries in the news media lately and two in particular that one may note are by Andrea Vance of the “Sunday Star-Times” and Catherine Delahunty in “E-Tangata”, both on 9th July 2023.  Then we have had a seminar sponsored by the Nelson City Council on 17 and 21 June just passed, entitled “Understanding and Enacting Te Tiriti O Waitangi”.

“Understanding and Enacting Te Tiriti”?   “Te Tiriti”? - well, that’s clearly a maorification of the words “The Treaty”, which is fair enough, since classic Maori had no such concept and hence no words for it.

“Understanding” it? OK that’s not too hard, since in essence what was agreed by signatories was that Maori chiefs gave up absolutely and for ever to “the Queen of England”,[i] such sovereignty as each possessed. In return, all Maoris (their many slaves included) received the rights of the people of England and the property rights of everyone were affirmed.  That, note, was just about all!

“Enacting” it?  Well, Hobson did as much on 21st May 1840 when, with nearly unanimous support from hundreds of chiefs who had been approached – and more to come – he declared British sovereignty over all the islands of New Zealand.  At that point, the “Treaty of Waitangi” had done its job and might properly have received a decent burial to become a footnote to history.  But no!

Some things called “principles of the treaty” have been invented in recent times and used to justify (if that is the correct word) a great variety of rights and privileges for Maori tribes never at any stage envisaged by those who wrote and signed that document in 1840 – and one of them is “co-governance” which is, says Vance, a “shared model of decision-making that sees Crown and iwi partners having equal rights around the table.”  That is a gross negation of democracy.  If New Zealanders want to go down that path, then the way is open for them: more rights for those with a smidgen of Maori blood, less for those of many other lines of descent.  It also treats with contempt Article Third of the Treaty of Waitangi which gave all Maoris – women and slaves included – the same rights as the people of England.

Referring to the ACT Party, Vance states also that “In ACT’s narrative, a left-wing and iwi ‘elite’ are imposing an undemocratic system of power into institutions that cannot be challenged. “It shares”, she says, “a key component of right-wing populism: to denigrate others based on race, nationality, religion, sexual orientations or gender identity.”  Funny that, since it is “co-governance” as envisaged by the “iwi elite” which does exactly some such things!

She does, it is true, acknowledge that “Seymour [Leader of the Act Party] is entitled to question the extension of co-governance from the management of rivers, lakes and forests to public services and institutions (such as Māori wards in local councils, the creation of the Māori Health Authority, or Three Waters Reform)” and ends her piece “[m]any on both sides of the argument are questioning how the Treaty had been interpreted by the courts over the last 50 years, and would prefer Parliament to legislate. Giving the courts free rein has sidelined debate and hasn't helped public understanding.”  With that we truly agree, albeit Parliament’s acceptance of one of Freeman’s fake “treaties in English” in 1975 leads us to question seriously its competence to date to carry out this process in the interests of “tangata katoa o Nu Tirani” - “all the people of New Zealand” in the precise words of Article Second of the treaty.

*   *   *   *   *

Delahunty, in a somewhat longer piece, seems puzzled that “we [i.e. New Zealanders of European descent] hardly ever talk about ourselves as Pākehā.”  It’s pretty stupid if anyone thinks that we should identify ourselves with a word of Maori origin often used with gratuitous offensive connotations!  That in itself is racist.[ii]

She goes on: “The national narrative I was raised on was benign invasion. Other Indigenous peoples around the world had it far worse under their colonisers, this narrative goes, so what have Māori got to moan about?”  Leaving aside the fact that Maoris simply are not indigenous,[iii] the answer is to look at and understand European arrival in New Zealand and the actual consequences for Maoris.  Undoubtedly this was occasionally less than satisfactory on both sides.[iv]  Nevertheless, European settlement as a whole did ultimately change a brutal hierarchical tribal social structure with the limitations of stone age technology[v] into one with better food, housing and health.[vi] There was certainly enough intermarriage to indicate compatibility!

Notwithstanding the fake implication that Maoris are “indigenous”,[vii]  Delahunty seems to object to describing our early settlers, mostly from the British Isles,[viii] as “pioneers”.  Well, one of the meanings of “pioneer” in my Concise Oxford Dictionary[ix] is “one who begins some enterprise” and that, I feel, is a fair enough description of her own ancestors who arrived in Nelson in the very early days of the province, whatever it “evokes” in her mind.  But we’ll let that pass.

And so she goes on to discuss Edward Gibbon Wakefield in the most negative of terms.  Now actually, Wakefield was a complex character who did not do everything right and indeed he served time in Newgate Prison for one serious transgression. 

Be that as it may, to Delahunty “Wakefield was a speculator and a liar. His company ... acquired land cheaply or illegally from tangata whenua and sold it on to potential migrants.”  Now that is blatantly false.  Most of the land deals of “his” New Zealand Company were carried out scrupulously fairly with Maori sellers, all too eager to exchange land for the tools and technology of the white man, with gardens and villages excluded from sale and other provisions fair to the sellers.[x]  It was Wakefield’s insight that roads, bridges and other facilities would be needed (and used by settlers and Maoris alike) so land was on sold to settlers at a higher price than had been paid for it in order to provide funds for such purposes.[xi]  We learnt all that at school in my day!   Does it feature in the new history syllabus??

*   *   *   *   *

Delahunty then turns her attention to the so-called “Wairau Affray”, a somewhat understated latter-day term for what was formerly and more correctly termed the “Wairau Massacre”, when Te Rangihaeata, one of whose wives had been killed by a stray bullet, murdered eighteen helpless prisoners, including Wakefield’s brother Arthur, in revenge (utu).[xii]   In due course, Governor Fitzroy, impotent to do anything else, pardoned this murderer.

With somewhat cooler reflection than that of its day, we note that possibly Ngatitoa, the tribe concerned, led by Te Rauparaha, did have a fair case for ownership of the land which was the cause of the dispute.  But then we should reflect that only about ten years earlier, in “the Maori way” Ngatitoa in a bloody encounter, had taken it from Rangitane who, in their turn, had wrested it in a similar manner from its earlier occupants.[xiii]  Te Rauparaha, leaving a trail of murderous butchery behind him in the North Island, had, not long before, massacred Ngai Tahu at Kaikoura, Kaiapohia and Onawe.  That was “the Maori way”.

Delahunty continues “No wonder we’re still unable to accept positive change to rectify past wrongs, when our official history is so sanitised and inaccurate.”

Really?  Does not the whopping $3,554,000,000 paid out in “Treaty Settlements” to date September 2018 by New Zealand taxpayers, primarily Delahunty’s “Pakehas”, with a nice little payout to Ngapuhi in the pipeline, constitute something “to rectify past wrongs”?[xiv] 

There is more in this way from Delahunty, on what indeed appears to be something of a guilt trip.

“It’s up to us Pākehā who’ve benefited from Tiriti education to ... work for Tiriti justice” she says. She says nothing of the destructiveness of Maoris upon themselves prior to European settlement ‒ so bad in fact that their own warring behaviour was resulting in their own population being well on the way to extinction.[xv]

For ourselves, we see a greater need to work for truth, fairness and democracy, leaving Delahunty’s fantasies aside as we strive to counter the rampant racism implicit in current moves: in He Puapua, changes to health priorities, transfer of our precious and unique conservation estate to tribes and distortion of our history in the recently introduced compulsory school syllabus.  Racism is rampantly on the march in our once fair country of New Zealand, not least in our universities, and it is others besides Delahunty’s “Pākehā” who are largely responsible for it. 

Footnotes: 

[i]  Not the actual title of Queen Victoria but we can let that one pass.
[ii] American vernacular has a graphic example of gratuitous race based discrimination focussed on one feature of a group of people - ultimately from Latin niger (“black”). More appropriately, this Latin word forms the basis of colour description in several European languages today eg ‘noir’ in French, ‘nero/nera’ in Italian and in Spanish ‘negra’.
[iii] Since we know when, whence and how they got here, they are disqualified on all counts.
[iv] A.Plover, “Blood and Tears”, Tross, 2018, ISBN 97818729700583, should be read in this context
[v] That is, technology based on use of stone tools without understanding of metals or even of pottery! Even technology for heating water was unknown to them.
[vi] For some data on reduction of neo-natal mortality amongst Maoris, see Robinson, “When two cultures meet”, ISBN 1 872970-31-,1, Tross, 2012, p.233
[vii] Since we know when, whence and how they got here, none of which apply to truly indigenous people.
[viii] And the Channel Islands in my own case.
[ix] 1956 ed., p. 1589
[x] J.Jackson, Mistaken Maori Land Claims”, Book Seven,  Treaty Series, Vol 2, 2002.  Jackson herself had a considerable quota of Ngai Tahu blood but was barred from being heard by the Waitangi Tribunal, presumably because she had evidence that some of the tribe’s claims were false.
[xi]  Rates levied on property do that sort of thing today.  Strong allegations have been made of Maori landowners in Northland refusing to pay their rates though no doubt continuing to use roads and bridges.
[xii] Te Ara, Encyclopedia of New Zeeland
[xiii] As the NZETC describes it on page 182, “their presence in the country was due to the many successive waves of   victory and defeat, the working of the stern law of the survival of the fittest, which operated with relentless     vigor amongst the Maori tribes of that day.”
[xiv] With the payout of $472 million in cash and property to Ngai Tahu, identified by several authors as a “swindle”, (references available)  and more in “relativity payments” since.
[xv] Robinson, op.cit., p.66 gives details

Bruce Moon is a retired computer pioneer who wrote "Real Treaty; False Treaty - The True Waitangi Story".