Bruce Moon: The Elephant in the Room?

“Democracy must belong to all of us” Dennis Chavez 

For a hotbed of racist propaganda and dubious history one need look no further than a publication called “E-Tangata”. And for an extreme example from it, one need look no further that the article by Moana Maniapoto dated 12 November 2023.

The subject of her ire is the proposal by David Seymour for a referendum on the (so-called) Treaty of Waitangi,  Seymour’s objective being to “to ensure that ‘all citizens have the same political rights’”.  It is a cause for some reflection by ourselves that any senior politician would think such a referendum necessary but it surely indicates just how far democracy has degenerated under the recent but unlamented Labour government.  However, to Maniapoto, it appears, the real problem is otherwise: there is an “elephant in the room” which is  “ongoing colonization” and she sees Seymour’s proposal as something like “a call to war”.  Well, well, they do sound a bit like fighting words.

 

Continuing, Maniapoto, asserts that “the thing is, most people with a handle on Te Tiriti say context is everything. History, too.”   Well, Madam Maniapoto, that would, I presume, include Maori history.  Do you know that it was of an excessively warlike tribal society which, having acquired firearms, was, in the Musket Wars of 1807-1837 well on the way to exterminating itself, the very effective practice of the victors being to eat the conquered?  So much of the breeding population was killed that their numbers decreased in the first decades of the colonial period.  Only extensive cross-breeding with the wicked, wicked colonials brought about a slow recovery about 1890.[i]

 

“In the 1800s”,says Maniapoto, stating the obvious, the “Māori were the majority.” “[T] hey were”,  she continues,  incredibly generous to the migrant minority.” Hmm.  Had that generosity been extended to the twentyseven members of the expedition of Marion du Fresne who innocently broke a “tapu” and were killed and eaten?   Oh, but that was in 1776, before 1800.  Well, how about the 1804 massacre of the crew of the shipwrecked “Boyd” in which only four survived – or that of the “Harriet” in 1834 when the captured Elizabeth Guard was offered the flesh of her own brother to eat?  In fairness, we note that consequent reprisals were rather rough!

 

And then: “some of the newcomers became hōhā and others became landsharks.” Goodness!  What on earth is “hōhā’?  Well, it’s just a common twister’s trick, actually, to slip in quite unnecessarily an alleged Maori word, complete with macrons – as if they had any – in the pretence, one supposes, that there is not a word in English which will do!  My dictionary[ii] gives its meaning as “bored, boring”.  To be boring, it is true, is to many of us about as bad as one can get but we’ll let that pass.  But “landsharks”?  That’s a different matter.

 

The reality is that the Maori chiefs practically fell over themselves in their eagerness to sell raw land which was now largely redundant, as their former hunting and fishing lifestyle became unnecessary with the advent of European consumer goods.  As we observed some time ago,[iii] no less than 179 pre-Treaty sales in the South Island alone were registered in Sydney.  Moreover the New Zealand Company, a major buyer, was meticulous in setting aside from sales the native villages, gardens and burial plots, with reserves of up to 666 acres for principal chiefs and 75 acres for free men but zero for their slaves.[iv]  So don’t hand me that baloney about “landsharks”, Ms Maniapoto, even if there were a few “would-bes”.

 

Moreover (again), the very day after his arrival, Hobson issued a proclamation placing all land sales on hold and declaring that all prior sales would be subject to review.  A committee was set up in due course for this purpose.  Some sales were declared void and possession returned to the Maori sellers.[v]  It would be difficult to imagine a more honest and honourable way to deal with the chaotic matter of land sales than that of the early colonial government.  So, Ms Maniapoto and your fellow-travellers – quit moaning about it!

Well, to go back a bit,  Ms Maniapoto raises the matter of “He Whakaputanga: the Declaration of Independence of the United Tribes of New Zealand” which was, as she indicates, the brainchild of Busby, but an exercise in futility for whose acceptance the chiefs who signed it on the day were rewarded with  “a cauldron of porridge”.   It did, as she says, follow Busby’s flag-choosing exercise for which the chiefs had already been treated to a cauldron of porridge.  Seldom if ever has porridge playing such a major role in diplomatic proceedings anywhere!  Refer to King’s “Penguin History”[vi] for an accurate account of these largely inane activities, a “bloodless puerility” in the words of Pember Reeves in 1898; an “attempt to federate man-eaters under parliamentary institutions.”[vii]

 

Ms Maniapoto’s claim that it “represented ... Crown understandings” is nonsense.  As a Foreign Office official described it, it was “silly and unauthorised”. Whether it “represented Māori expectations” as she likewise claims, is anybody’s guess.  She is joined in chorus by the outspoken Margaret Mutu who called this rubbish document “immensely important”.[viii]

 

Then, to quote her again, “five years later, came Te Tiriti o Waitangi. ... It reaffirmed chiefly tino rangatiratanga and granted the Crown authority to govern their own people. Yes, there were English and Māori versions. Some people cite the English text and insist Māori ceded sovereignty.”

 

Well here we go again; Ms Maniapoto slipping an alleged Maori expression, “tino rangatiratanga” into a text otherwise in English, as if no English words existed for it, a frequent trick of treaty-twisters established in the infamous “Treaty of Waitangi Act”, 1975.  It would be hard to write a more distorted version of the truth than her assertions in the preceding paragraph, albeit there is a legion of treaty-twisters who do so. 

 

Nota Bene!

 

As  Lord Normanby’s instructions to Hobson of 14 August 1839[ix] make perfectly clear, Hobson was to invite the Maori chiefs to surrender such sovereignty as each possessed in return for the great benefits of becoming British subjects.   Hobson’s final text of 4th February 1840 does just this quite explicitly, thus:

 

Article First: The chiefs of the Confederation of the United Tribes and the other chiefs who have not joined the confederation, cede to the Queen of England for ever the entire Sovreignty of their country.[x]

 

Article Third: In return for the cession of the Sovreignty to the Queen, the people of New Zealand shall be protected by the Queen of England and the rights and privileges of British subjects will be granted to them.

 

What a wonderful offer to a people just emerging from a state of utmost barbarism with slavery, cannibalism and female infanticide rampant in their society!  That corrupt body, the Waitangi Tribunal, asserts of course that sovereignty wasn’t ceded.

 

Well, friends, just look at Hobson’s wording whose meaning, senior Ngapuhi chief Graham Rankin asserted in 2000, said the same thing as the actual treaty in his native language,[xi]  ... “the chiefs ... cede to the Queen for ever the entire Sovereignty of their country.”

 

Maniapoto proceeds: “Records at the time suggest that the British didn’t view sovereignty as absolute, but co-existing with tino rangatiratanga held by rangatira.” With work of dubious quality, in our opinion, Ned Fletcher appears to agree.  What nonsense!

 

In the treaty itself, the expression “tino rangatiratanga” occurs just once, in Article Second, which reads in part:  “Ko te Kuini o Ingarani ka wakarite ka wakaae ki nga Rangatira ki nga hapu-ki nga tangata katoa o Nu Tirani te tino rangatiratanga o ratou wenua o ratou kainga me a ratou taonga.”  This is the Williams’ direct translation of Hobson’s: “The Queen of England confirms and guarantees to the chiefs & tribes and to all the people of New Zealand the possession of their lands, dwellings and all their property.”

 

Note, indeed let it burn into your brain and that of all politicians, that Article Second refers explicitly to “nga tangata katoa o Nu Tirani”, that is “all the people of New Zealand” and “all” means “all”!  There is simply nothing in Article Second which assures any rights to anybody of Maori descent which are not those of all our citizens!! Note equally that “tino rangatiratanga” which appears just once in the Treaty, again in Article Second, means “possession” or “ownership” in the ordinary sense, having been coined by the Williams in default of an existing concept which did not exist in classic Maori culture.[xii]  Any recent meaning invented by activists is more baloney.

 

Well, Maniapoto isn’t done at that point of course.  She proceeds: “[the] ‘everybody is the same’ argument is an ideological position that has nothing to do with the history, context and spirit of Te Tiriti. Nor does it reflect the principles or resemble the actual text. It’s reductive. It erases our Indigeneity.”.

 

Doesn’t it? Well,  Hobson’s text of 4th February says simply: “the rights and privileges of British subjects will be granted to them.”  What generosity, never before extended to a “native” people!  Again, T.E.Young’s official translation of 1869 reads: “All the rights will be given to them the same as her doings to the people of England”.  Well, compare this with Maniapoto’s words quoted directly above that this “has nothing to do with the history, context and spirit of Te Tiriti.”  Yeah, right!!

 

And “It erases our Indigeneity”, yet another fake argument as Maoris were never “indigenous”.  As we have noted elsewhere, we know when, how and whence they got here.  We even know the names of the vessels they came in – Tainui, Takitimu, &c., &c!  They are disqualified on all counts.

 

In brief, Ms Maniapoto’s facts are so faulty and her arguments so shaky that we must have grave doubts about most of what she says about future action.   We do agree that if, as she suggests, the incoming government “set about quietly unpicking all that’s been advanced in the last two terms, [this] will only serve to take us back”. Indeed that is devoutly to be hoped for!  If our democracy is to survive, “unpicking” “Three Waters”, the dubious new history curriculum for schools[xiii] and other iniquitous racist plans of the outgoing government must be a critically urgent requirement.

 

It is surely to be devoutly hoped by all New Zealanders whole love their country that the incoming government has the vision, ability, determination and strength to make it once again the model of truth, fairness and democracy of which once, legitimately, we were so proud.

 

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

 

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[i]           J.Robinson, “When two cultures meet”, ISBN 1-872970-31-1, 2012, pp.53ff

[ii]          P.M.Ryan, 1983, ISBN 0868635642

[iii]         B.Moon, “New Zealand; the fair colony”, 2nd Ed., 2020, ISBN 978-0-473-53728-9, p.37

[iv]         J.Jackson, “Mistaken Maori Land Claims”, Book Seven, Treaty Series,Vol.2,2002

[v]          Thus two purchases by one George Stephenson on 17 February 1839 in the Kaipara were disallowed.         B.Byrne,“The unknown Kaipara”,, 2202, ISBN0-473-08831-2, this book lent me by a Maori friend 

[vi]         M.King, “The Penguin History of New Zealand”,ISBN 0-14-301867-1, 2003, pp 153-5.

[vii]        W.PemberReeves, “The Long White Cloud”, 1898,  one of “Mr. Busby’s bloodless puerilities”, p.133

[viii]       M.Mutu, Robson Lecture, Napier, 22 April 2013

[ix]         Readily obtained by “googling”

[x]          Note the egregious error of scribe Busby in his mis-spelling “Sovreignty” twice.  This minor drafting error does not invalidate the document.

[xi]         With the sole addition of the word “maori” in Article Third by the Williams to make it more explicit.

[xii]        Classic Maori practices with respect to property rights, archaic to modern eyes, are well described by Frederick       Maning in his classic book: “Old New Zealand”, 1863.

[xiii]       R.Childs, “New Zealand’s History Curriculum Education or Indoctrination?”, ISBN9781872970 88 5,2023