Bruce Moon: The New Zealand School Trustees Association and the Treaty

“Could do better, really must work harder, paying more attention to the facts concerned.”

Well, yes!  A report along those lines would be appropriate for the essay entitled “An introduction to Te Tiriti o Waitangi by the New Zealand School Trustees Association”, last revised in June 2024 and presumably to be used within schools for the indoctrination of the children of New Zealand. Here's why.

 

So, if it is to be used for this important purpose, its substance needs to be of the highest relevance and quality.  Let us have a look.

 

“Much has been ... said”, says the report, “about the differences between the English and Maori texts (of the Treaty of Waitangi) and the difficulties in understanding its meaning and implications.”

 

Oh?  Well, the “Maori text” is that of the document signed at Waitangi on 6th February 1840 by 52 chiefs (by Hobson’s count), by Hobson himself on behalf of the Queen and by sundry other Englishmen, principally as witnesses to signing or application of their moko marks in lieu by chiefs.

 

The so-called “English text”, legislated as such in the “Treaty of Waitangi Act”, 1975, sponsored by Matt Rata of Northern Maori, is however, essentially a fake, written in flowery prose by Hobson’s private secretary, Freeman, who had not participated in Hobson’s drafting session on 4th February.  Freeman’s text did not even exist on 5th February 1840!  That Hobson did sign it subsequently does not make it a substitute for what was actually presented by Hobson to the chiefs on 5th February as recorded by Colenso and discussed below.

 

In stark contrast, the substance of Hobson’s final text in English, correctly dated 4th February 1840, which disappeared until rediscovered in 1989 and dubbed the “Littlewood Treaty”, corresponds almost exactly with that of the treaty itself to which it was translated by the Williams, the sole difference being their addition of the word “maori” in  Article Third of the actual treaty text to specify those people to whom it applied.[i]  The “Littlewood” text – let us not be misled by the treaty-twisters –  is the TRUE English text of the Treaty.

 

Consider also the timeline.  Hobson delivered his English text to the Williams at about 4p.m. on the afternoon of 4th February.  The Williams completed their Maori text overnight – by candlelight(?).  After proof-reading in the morning with one word changed at Busby’s suggestion (to describe the so-called “confederation of chiefs”[ii]),  Hobson, at about noon, proceeded to read his English text, followed by Henry Williams reading the actual treaty text in Maori to the chiefs who had already assembled.  It would be ludicrous to suggest that Hobson read any other text than his own of 4th.

 

Nevertheless, officialdom has strenuously and quite falsely denied the legitimacy of the so-called “Littlewood treaty”, that is, Hobson’s final English text of 4th February.  Thus, on 27th September 2004, Margaret Wilson, the then Associate Minister of Justice dismissed it because “it wasn’t signed”, repeating that the Freeman fake (not her term!) legislated as such in 1975 was “the official English text”.  Of course a draft in any language is not signed officially!

 

So do our legislators betray the legitimate interests of the people of New Zealand.

 

The Trustees’ report says none of this.

 

And so today?

 

They say: “Under the Education and Training Act 2020 (the Act) your board is obliged to honour and give effect to Te Tiriti.”

Just remember, friends, that Te Tiriti was written and signed not much less than two hundred years ago when conditions in New Zealand were about as far removed from those of today as can be imagined.  If after a mere 200 years, we have to “give effect” to it we have been very slack indeed![iii] Perhaps we should look once again at what was actually agreed when it was signed.

 

And on the day: ...

Note that both the English and Ngapuhi texts[iv] were read out at Waitangi on that fateful day, 5th February 1840.  Nobody doubted Hobson’s integrity and nobody said that their meanings were different; a point confirmed in 2000 by Ngapuhi elder, Graham Rankin.[v]  Article first:  the chiefs cede to the Queen the entire sovereignty of the country.  In default of an established Maori word for “sovereignty”, the Williams in their translation chose “Kawanatanga”. There have been almost endless claims recently that the chiefs ceded only “governorship, not sovereignty”[vi]  But get this, friends: a point very few people hitherto seem able to grasp:  Translation is not the same as derivation.  Many examples can and have been given.[vii]  And the considerable number of chiefs who had visited Sydney knew well the authority of the Governor who exercised the absolute authority of his sovereign there.

 

Indeed, as Hobson stated explicitly at the time:  “as the law of England gives no civil power to Her Majesty out of her dominions, her efforts to do you good will be futile unless you consent.”  That this was understood and accepted was confirmed beyond doubt at the great meeting of chiefs at Kohimarama in August 1860[viii]

 

So the chief ceded such sovereignty as each possessed to the Queen, completely and forever and they knew it.  There can be no shadow of a doubt about it.

 

Article third:  “the rights and privileges of British subjects will be granted to them”, i.e. to “tangata maori katoa o Nu Tirani.”

 

Note that this was an unprecedented privilege (as far as I know) granted to a native race anywhere, a consequence of the benevolent movements in Britain of such people as James Stephen, permanent secretary to the Colonial office and a member of the Church Missionary Society who drafted Colonial Secretary Normanby’s brief to Hobson.[ix]

 

Article second:  “The Queen ... guarantees ... to all the people of New Zealand the possession of their lands, dwellings and all their property.  

 

In translating this provision, the Williams had something of a quandary in choosing a translation of  

“possession”  since unqualified personal possession of land or other property was not a general Maori practice.[x]  They chose “tino rangatiratanga”, since few if any high chiefs had any privileges of personal possession.  Again, this was a significant endeavour to ensure that the concept was immediately recognizable and understood by the chiefs.

 

Our multitude of treaty-twisters today of course make much play upon this choice, frequently making the absurd claim,  directly contradicting Article first, that “tino rangatiratanga” meant “sovereignty” and that this remained in the hands of the chiefs!

 

One thing is certain. If Hobson had failed to achieve unqualified cession of sovereignty, he would have sailed away and unprecedented chaos and misery would have descended upon the Maoris of New Zealand, and probably British settlers, too, some of whom had already arrived in Wellington a week ahead of Hobson,[xi]

 

And so, friends, treatywise, that is just about it!

 

But, as Geoffrey Palmer would have it  “it’s a document that is so vague that that is its primary problem.”[xii]  He seems unaware that naval officer Hobson was fully accustomed to speaking precisely, giving orders at sea when men’s lives would depend on it.[xiii]

 

So what utter nonsense it is that, given such authoritative opinions, under the Education and Training Act 2020, school boards, we are told, are “obliged to honour and give effect to Te Tiriti?”

 

In a real world it would have been dead and buried on 21st May 1840 with a decent headstone when Hobson formally declared British sovereignty over all the islands of New Zealand.  After that, all New Zealanders, Maori and settlers alike had the same rights and significantly, the wholesale Maori practices of slaughter and slavery were abolished.

 

So what next?

 

The Trustees Association then goes on to raise the so-called “Declaration of Independence”, asserting that “the British government acknowledged” it.  Well, yes it did, in a way.  Thus a Foreign Office official called it “silly and unauthorized”.  Governor Bourke in Sydney called it “a paper pellet.”  As Jerningham Wakefield observed, “The new government was found so unreal, that no meeting of the confederated chiefs ever took place.”[xiv]  Very soon there was war amongst them and chief Titore was killed.  So why in these circumstances, did the Trustees Association even mention it without elucidating the truth about it???  Busby, in actively assisting Hobson, did not nag on about the “Declaration”, whose day, he had undoubtedly recognized, was well and truly over.

 

So what actually does the Treaty of Waitangi say?

 

Say the trustees: “Article 1. Kawanatanga

                           ‘The right of the British to govern.”

 

FALSE!!  The words of Hobson’s final text of 4th February of which the actual treaty is a competent translation are:

 

“Article first: The chiefs ... cede to the Queen of England for ever the entire Sovreignty of their country.”

 

Here scribe Busby mis-spelled “sovereignty” which however does not invalidate the document.[xv]

 

Lest anyone doubt that the chiefs understood that by signing they would become subordinate to the Governor and hence more so to the Queen, Colenso’s account of proceedings that day, duly checked by Busby at the time, gives a full account.[xvi]  No Maori nor Edward Williams, Treaty translator and later Native Court Judge, disputed Colenso’s account.  The chiefs ceded sovereignty and they knew it!

 

But:-

 

Hobson’s words: “Article second: The Queen ... guarantees to ... all the people of New Zealand the possession of ...all their property.”

 

Say the Trustees: “Article 2. Tino rangatiratanga. The right of hapu to retain sovereignty”

 

Here, my friends, the Trustees collude in stating what is perhaps the most gross falsehood about the Treaty spread about today.

 

The Williams knew that Maoris of the day had very little conception of the ownership of property and no word expressing it clearly.[xvii]  They chose “tino rangatiratanga”  because in practice, only chiefs had property rights.  But get this: Article second guaranteed property rights to “all the people of New Zealand” -  “tangata katoa Nu Tirani”.  Article second says nothing about sovereignty!!

 

But to continue with the Trustees’ “introduction to Te Tiriti o Waitangi”:

 

There can be no doubt that Article third conferred the same rights on Maoris (women and their many slaves included, be it noted) as the people of England – an unprecedented provision, as far as I know.  To this however, the trustees claim even more.  To them, the rights must be conferred “in culturally appropriate ways” which “in education”, they say, “means ... enjoying and achieving educational success as Maori ... in ...  Aotearoa, and the wider world”.  

 

Well, do those trustees even exist in the real world?  No treaty, as far as I know, has ever treated  “culture” and no genuine educational system, as far as I know, guarantees “success”, let alone “as Maori” or “in Aotearoa” [actually only the North Island[xviii]] or anywhere else.

 

So the Trustees ask “What is your board’s primary objective (their emphasis) about giving effect to Te Tiriti”- a bit late, one would have thought, by nearly 200 years. It is, they say, “under the Education and Training Act 2020 to ensure that(my underlining) your school gives effect to Te Tiriti by: “[w]orking to ensure that your plans ...  reflect local tikanga Maori, matauranga Maori and te ao Maori ... [making] instruction available in te reo Maori and tikanga Maori [and] achieving equitable outcomes for Maori students.”

 

Do the trustees really think that telling Maori schoolchildren how to prepare a cannibal feast – or anything else – in accordance with “tikanga”[xix] is appropriate, rather than ensuring that they achieve basic competence in literacy and numeracy?

 

One wonders indeed just how ignorant and ill-informed the Parliament of 2020 was in requiring such absurd provisions, light years distant from the substance and intent of the Treaty of Waitangi. No reputable educational institution on earth would undertake to achieve “equitable outcomes” for anybody, merely equitable opportunities which, judging by the almost astronomical figures for Maori absenteeism, far too many of them fail to take.

 

And do the trustees really imagine that instructing children in te reo Maori and tikanga Maori, inevitably crowding out other subjects more relevant in the modern world, is beneficial to those young people?  I am reminded that more enlightened Maori parents around the 1880s petitioned Parliament that “not a word of Maori [be] allowed to be spoken in the [native] school” and that teaching be solely in English!! [xx]

 

The trustees go on to discuss a variety of concepts – tikanga Maori, matauranga Maori, te ao Maori, taonga and te reo.  This article is not the place to discuss most of these, words which do not even appear in Te Tiriti.  An exception[xxi] is “taonga” which to Hongi Hika in 1822 meant “property procured by the spear” and in William Williams dictionary of 1842 simply “property”; thirteen Maori chiefs, writing to King William in 1831stating that their “taonga” consisted only of “timber, flax, pork and potatoes”, two of which, note, they owed to wicked white men!  The trustees, in stark contrast list modern meanings including “treasure”, irrelevant to the Treaty but used by Professor Sir Hugh Kawharu in his translation to include “all dimensions of a tribal group’s estate”, flagrantly breaking an academic rule to use only the meaning current in its time.  Of course, the modern usage of “treasure” has been expanded by treaty-twisters to include almost everything but the blue of the sky.  Even of that I am not so sure!

 

So much for education in New Zealand in 2024.

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

 

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[i]As Doutré has observed, addition of the word “maori” in the treaty text establishes beyond reasonable doubt that it was written after the English text which was correctly dated 4th February 1840, indeed the only possible date for it.

[ii]In which one word, ‘whakaminenga’ was substituted for ‘huihuinga’ at Busby’s suggestion,

[iii]As a historical fact, the effect of very few treaties anywhere has been as long as 200 years!

[iv]Indeed the only two complete texts in existence that day,

[v]When shown both texts by Allan Titford in 2000

[vi]Indeed we have had the absurd claim by part-Maori Associate Professor Sandy Morrison telling her students: “The chiefs do allow the Queen to have kawanatanga, a nominal and delegated authority so that she can control her people” which would be laughable were it not for the damaging consequences upon the minds of impressionable young people.

[vii]B.Moon.,op.cit., p.68

[viii]Proc. Kohimarama Conference, reprinted NZETC, VUW

[ix]This may be “googled” easily.  One may note the considerable privileges granted today to part-Maoris and not to the rest of us.  Segregated waiting rooms in public hospitals are just one example.

[x]F.E.Maning, “Old New Zealand”, Creighton & Scales, 1863, illustrates the intricacies of archaic Maori practice.

[xi]Compare the Wellington and Auckland provincial holidays!

[xii]G.Palmer, on Australian television, 6th March 1990.

[xiii]Holding a permanent naval commission – in the Volunteer Reserve –  I believe that I can speak with some authority on this point.

[xiv]E.J.Wakefield, “Adventures in New Zealand”, John Murray London, 1845

[xv]This is accepted practice in law.

[xvi]W.Colenso, Government Printer 1890.  While this was fifty years later, the printed word endures. No theorist today can match the knowledge and experience of Colenso.

[xvii]Maning, op.cit.

[xviii]A.Ngata,”The Treaty: an Explanation”, 1922

[xix]M.King,”Moriori”, 1989, ISBN0-670-82655-3, p.66

[xx]Petition to Parliament  of Wi Te Hakiro and 336 others, 1876, is one example

[xxi]‘tikanga” is the other