The main problem with that view is that there was no record in any of the treaty debates and signings of any British functionary telling the chiefs just that.
Moreover, chiefs at the February 5, 1840, treaty debate were recorded as objecting to the prospect of having a chief over them, which is clear evidence that the treaty contemplated a government over settlers and Maori alike.
Fletcher does include this inconvenient fact but carries on with his argument, unfazed.
Fawning reviews two years ago, show that this book sent a shiver of excitement through the small coterie of self-approved treaty experts who jealously guard control of the New Zealand treaty narrative.
Back then, Bridget Williams Books didn’t send a review copy for publication on this site and I didn’t rush to get one.
But it did feature in the widely broadcast Peewee vs Iwi treaty principles debate between ACT leader David Seymour and Ngati Toa chief executive Helmut Modlik, who literally waved Fletcher’s book to the camera in the way a preacher brandishes a Bible.
The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi began as author Ned Fletcher’s 2014 PhD thesis in history. Fletcher’s day job is as a Crown prosecutor.
A Crown prosecutor is a criminal court functionary who selectively arranges evidence to prove a predetermined view that the accused is guilty. In a trial, he defence counsel starts from the premise that the accused is innocent. That is how our adversarial court system is supposed to work.
In his book, Fletcher arranges his selectively chosen evidence to support his predetermined belief that “the governor was to govern wayward Brits only while the chiefs could carry on being chiefs”.
How does he do this?
In a nutshell, he argues that because some administrative set-ups in the British Empire left some control in the hands of natives, and because some officials with some responsibility for affairs in New Zealand advocated delegating control to chiefs, that was what the Treaty of Waitangi intended.
Fletcher declares that “those who framed the English text intended Maori to have continuing rights to self-government (rangatiratanga) and ownership of their lands”.
He says that “this original understanding of the Treaty, however, was then lost in the face of powerful forces in the British Empire post-1840, as hostility towards indigenous peoples grew alongside increased intolerance of plural systems of government”.
The belief that the British government only really intended to set up a government to control wayward British subjects while the chiefs could carry on being chiefs is not new.
That ideology was circulating more than 10 years ago while the Waitangi Tribunal collected oral testimony that the northern chiefs did not cede sovereignty.
That belief probably has its roots in the 1986 Kawharu retranslation of Te Tiriti, in which the word “rangatiratanga” in Article 2 was reimagined as “chiefly authority” instead of translating the word “possession” in the English final draft.
Without looking at the Maori text, which he said is outside his scope, Fletcher declares that the Maori and English texts of the Treaty reconcile - even though the English text is far wordier, and even though it has words that don’t appear in the Maori text, including “pre-emption”, “lands, estates, forests, fisheries”.
The treaty texts in English reproduced in Fletcher’s appendices are what he calls the Freeman draft, Busby’s first draft, Busby’s fair copy, and Hobson’s preamble.
Fletcher agrees with historian Ruth Ross, and others, that the final English draft of the treaty has gone missing.
Curiously, he does not mention the existence of the Busby February 4 draft, also known as the Littlewood Treaty, which is held at National Archives.
This text is identical to Te Tiriti but for a single missing word, “Maori” in Article 3, which was added to the Maori text to be clear that the Maori people of New Zealand would gain the rights of British subjects.
Fletcher’s non-inclusion of any reference to the Littlewood treaty contrasts with treatment of the topic in another current treaty book, being Ewen McQueen’s One Sun in the Sky.
McQueen records the existence of the Busby February 4 draft, calls it a distraction, and says “there is no certainty that it is the final English draft of the treaty”.
The absence of an English text of the treaty, confirmed to have been written a person who drafted the treaty, in a study of the English text of the treaty, that claims to be comprehensive, is conspicuous.
Fletcher’s book is not without value. His trawl through Colonial Office archives provides a useful resource of references for future scholars.
However, since New Zealand has become a place where dissident views on the treaty are not permitted in public discourse, Fletcher the prosecutor has no defence counsel to face, there will be no debate, and little of value would result.
His “new truth” is enthusiastically touted by the treaty narrative controllers, like Helmut Modlik in the debate with Seymour, but mostly without the benefit of the counter view.
Fletcher’s one-sided view is endorsed and views critical of that are smeared as racist.
But the days of tight control of a treaty narrative by a small, like-minded elite of academics and jurists may be numbered courtesy of Seymour’s treaty principles bill and campaign to allow voters to have a say.
That say is on whether we agree that the government has the right to govern, that we all are guaranteed ownership of what we own, and that we are all entitled to equal treatment . . . or whether the government may only govern those without a Maori ancestor.
By the way, Seymour’s revised second treaty principle had a test run in the Peewee vs Iwi debate.
That revised second principle now says that “the Crown recognises the rights that iwi hapu had when they signed the treaty”, and that “the Crown will respect and protect those rights. Those rights differ from the rights everyone has a reasonable expectation to enjoy only when they are specified in legislation, treaty settlements, or other agreement with the Crown.
The apparent back-peddle by Cabinet on the wording failed to appease the talkative CEO of the Ngati Toa iwi that was reborn courtesy of a generous treaty settlement.
Modlik scornfully said: “What your bill says, David, is that we acknowledge what the treaty said you have but if they differ from what everyone else has got, that will only apply if we say so. David, your democracy only exists because our chiefs said you could come here and establish it. And the terms of that legitimate establishment were that hapu would be able to rule themselves”.
The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi, Ned Fletcher, Bridget Williams Books, 723 pages, illustrated, $69.99. https://www.bwb.co.nz/books/the-english-text-of-the-treaty-of-waitangi/
Mike Butler wrote The Treaty: Basic Facts, available at https://trosspublishing.com/product/the-treaty-basic-facts/
Back then, Bridget Williams Books didn’t send a review copy for publication on this site and I didn’t rush to get one.
But it did feature in the widely broadcast Peewee vs Iwi treaty principles debate between ACT leader David Seymour and Ngati Toa chief executive Helmut Modlik, who literally waved Fletcher’s book to the camera in the way a preacher brandishes a Bible.
The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi began as author Ned Fletcher’s 2014 PhD thesis in history. Fletcher’s day job is as a Crown prosecutor.
A Crown prosecutor is a criminal court functionary who selectively arranges evidence to prove a predetermined view that the accused is guilty. In a trial, he defence counsel starts from the premise that the accused is innocent. That is how our adversarial court system is supposed to work.
In his book, Fletcher arranges his selectively chosen evidence to support his predetermined belief that “the governor was to govern wayward Brits only while the chiefs could carry on being chiefs”.
How does he do this?
In a nutshell, he argues that because some administrative set-ups in the British Empire left some control in the hands of natives, and because some officials with some responsibility for affairs in New Zealand advocated delegating control to chiefs, that was what the Treaty of Waitangi intended.
Fletcher declares that “those who framed the English text intended Maori to have continuing rights to self-government (rangatiratanga) and ownership of their lands”.
He says that “this original understanding of the Treaty, however, was then lost in the face of powerful forces in the British Empire post-1840, as hostility towards indigenous peoples grew alongside increased intolerance of plural systems of government”.
The belief that the British government only really intended to set up a government to control wayward British subjects while the chiefs could carry on being chiefs is not new.
That ideology was circulating more than 10 years ago while the Waitangi Tribunal collected oral testimony that the northern chiefs did not cede sovereignty.
That belief probably has its roots in the 1986 Kawharu retranslation of Te Tiriti, in which the word “rangatiratanga” in Article 2 was reimagined as “chiefly authority” instead of translating the word “possession” in the English final draft.
Without looking at the Maori text, which he said is outside his scope, Fletcher declares that the Maori and English texts of the Treaty reconcile - even though the English text is far wordier, and even though it has words that don’t appear in the Maori text, including “pre-emption”, “lands, estates, forests, fisheries”.
The treaty texts in English reproduced in Fletcher’s appendices are what he calls the Freeman draft, Busby’s first draft, Busby’s fair copy, and Hobson’s preamble.
Fletcher agrees with historian Ruth Ross, and others, that the final English draft of the treaty has gone missing.
Curiously, he does not mention the existence of the Busby February 4 draft, also known as the Littlewood Treaty, which is held at National Archives.
This text is identical to Te Tiriti but for a single missing word, “Maori” in Article 3, which was added to the Maori text to be clear that the Maori people of New Zealand would gain the rights of British subjects.
Fletcher’s non-inclusion of any reference to the Littlewood treaty contrasts with treatment of the topic in another current treaty book, being Ewen McQueen’s One Sun in the Sky.
McQueen records the existence of the Busby February 4 draft, calls it a distraction, and says “there is no certainty that it is the final English draft of the treaty”.
The absence of an English text of the treaty, confirmed to have been written a person who drafted the treaty, in a study of the English text of the treaty, that claims to be comprehensive, is conspicuous.
Fletcher’s book is not without value. His trawl through Colonial Office archives provides a useful resource of references for future scholars.
However, since New Zealand has become a place where dissident views on the treaty are not permitted in public discourse, Fletcher the prosecutor has no defence counsel to face, there will be no debate, and little of value would result.
His “new truth” is enthusiastically touted by the treaty narrative controllers, like Helmut Modlik in the debate with Seymour, but mostly without the benefit of the counter view.
Fletcher’s one-sided view is endorsed and views critical of that are smeared as racist.
But the days of tight control of a treaty narrative by a small, like-minded elite of academics and jurists may be numbered courtesy of Seymour’s treaty principles bill and campaign to allow voters to have a say.
That say is on whether we agree that the government has the right to govern, that we all are guaranteed ownership of what we own, and that we are all entitled to equal treatment . . . or whether the government may only govern those without a Maori ancestor.
By the way, Seymour’s revised second treaty principle had a test run in the Peewee vs Iwi debate.
That revised second principle now says that “the Crown recognises the rights that iwi hapu had when they signed the treaty”, and that “the Crown will respect and protect those rights. Those rights differ from the rights everyone has a reasonable expectation to enjoy only when they are specified in legislation, treaty settlements, or other agreement with the Crown.
The apparent back-peddle by Cabinet on the wording failed to appease the talkative CEO of the Ngati Toa iwi that was reborn courtesy of a generous treaty settlement.
Modlik scornfully said: “What your bill says, David, is that we acknowledge what the treaty said you have but if they differ from what everyone else has got, that will only apply if we say so. David, your democracy only exists because our chiefs said you could come here and establish it. And the terms of that legitimate establishment were that hapu would be able to rule themselves”.
The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi, Ned Fletcher, Bridget Williams Books, 723 pages, illustrated, $69.99. https://www.bwb.co.nz/books/the-english-text-of-the-treaty-of-waitangi/
Mike Butler wrote The Treaty: Basic Facts, available at https://trosspublishing.com/product/the-treaty-basic-facts/
15 comments:
I like what you did there, right at the end.
Maybe Fletcher et al need to acquaint themselves with Queen Victoria’s Royal Charter/Letters Patent for New Zealand and New South Wales dated 30th July 1839, where the British Empire extended the boundaries of New South Wales to include all the Islands of New Zealand, by her Majesty’s command, Lord Normandy.
Thank you for Mike for reviewing this ponderous one eyed tome . Indeed the fact that Ned Fletcher is a Crown Prosecutor explains the volume of waffle produced by Mr Fletcher. He is NOT an Historian he is just another arrogant know it all member of the world's most reviled profession.Skews everything he writes to his slanted myopic view, and refuses to acknowledge the contrary view. What a drop kick!
NZers must understand in very clear and simple language the key issue addressed by this debate .
A one-word review of Fletcher's tome sums up his assertions: CRAP.
An entirely academic - and irrelevant - argument.
That was then. This is now.
What NZ does in the future is what counts. What was signed back then and what various people say it means doesn’t matter.
What basis do we want for our society now and in the future?
Do we want each one of us to be treated the same, with the same rights and responsibilities?
Or do we want one section to have different, or greater, rights?
Simple as that.
It’s likely we will all be asked those questions in the near future.
Time to get your thinking straight.
From the publicity when it came out I seem to recall some close relative had skin in the treaty game. Poorly reasoned or unreasoned mana seeking rants from maori/trace maori are the norm, but even allowing for his day job, his selective lack of objectivity in such a large tome is curious. Perhaps he is seeking to curry favour with many he prosecutes; a safety precaution..
All the activists, including the Waitangi Tribunal, rely on Article the Second's mention of "tino rangatiratanga" as being that term which gave Maori Chiefs and Hapu this claimed right to self-determination and governance. But that very same provision also goes on to include all the people of New Zealand - "...ki nga tangata katoa o Nu Tirani...". Can anyone explain why that is never mentioned, and why then we all don't have the right to self-govern? Or was it, as the vast majority of us always understood it to mean - you're in charge of your own property and possessions, but by virtue of the other two Articles the Crown has overarching authority (as in being sovereign), with individual Maori to have the protection and rights (and with those the obligations) of a British subject?
To suggest that the Crown would enter any other arrangement giving away such benefits and the obligations of protection, without the power of full governance, is surely farcical?
Just a few salient points to ponder:
1. Ruth Ross passed away before the Littlewood draft surfaced, so while she was correct in that it had gone missing, it is missing no more!
2. It is only weak politicians who do not want to admit that previous governments of all parties stuffed up keep Hobsons draft (the Littlewood document) 'filed' when it should be up on the wall in in Te Papa as the original English draft from which the Maori text was translated.
3. Fletcher's Treaty book is bollocks. QED.
Perhaps Fletcher sensed a certainty settling on Treaty matters so, to meet the commonly assumed obligation to prop the profession, decided to stir the pot and so help ensure a continued flow of lucrative make work for colleagues.
Why so called clever academics like Fletcher, have all the answers to everything is beyond me. Why we give them air is anyone guess.
Why they dont just shut the F up and let the people on the ground sort it and get on with life.
There are almost no issues at ground level between races to warrant continual race baiting and stirring at higher levels on both sides.
I'm no historian but it seems reasonable to believe, even on the basis of the wording of Te Tiriti, that the Crown agents envisioned an overriding rule by the British sovereign who would leave Maori to carry on their own ways, applying their own laws in their own areas. It's inconceivable that the Crown would have envisaged allowing Maori to breach English-derived laws against colonial settlers including British soldiers and notaries. Very fairly, Te Tiriti assured Maori that they would retain their own areas (that they happened to control in 1840) except for any they chose to sell to the Crown.
As an example, the Native Exemption Ordinance 1844 clearly shows the envisaged situation in which Maori would largely be left to their own devices in their own areas under chiefly authority. In 1840 it may have been believed that such a dichotomous social structure might endure for many decades to come; this had been the case in some other British colonies. However, it would always be a time-limited arrangement if New Zealand were to become a successful colony or state. Ironically due to Article 3 according full status to Maori as British subjects, the context changed rapidly with Maori selling land (and pre-1840 sales being either confirmed or cancelled by the William Spain Lands Claim Commission), and with Maori moving in to immigrant settlements to earn immigrant money and desirables. To promote security and prosperity, it became increasingly necessary for overriding British rule to be applied to Maori. What was envisioned in 1840 always had a use-by date, as indeed did Te Tiriti. But the document is doggedly kept in the political pantry, its perished substance polluting and damaging all fresh resources there.
To this day, processes on marae continue to function in a Maori way, very different from those in non-Maori society. Would it be possible or desirable to specify certain rights and authority in marae and their settlements that differ from those elsewhere? Crimes committed within the marae jurisdictions and towards other hapu members might be dealt with through a chiefly process rather than NZ Courts. Many risks from this come to mind, such as the development of paramilitary groups weaponizing themselves for future attacks against the surrounding society, or against other hapu to prosecute longstanding utu. Also, world views and habits fostered within the marae areas would present increasing risk to surrounding society. That happens already, evident in the codes and values that gangs will readily apply to outsiders who cross them or any of their members. Further, the ramifications of different identity-based rights are dire for the security of a country. It seems clear that moving forward as one people under law will provide the best future for all in New Zealand. However, the 'one people' and their law could well and safely incorporate a lot more Maori world view and process than the current 'colonial' systems do. That perhaps was a righteous aim of some previous administrations, but with insufficient care to bring all along as well as to avoid a two-tier society on the basis of race.
Anyway, just a few thoughts, probably to little worthwhile end...
I did review this Fletcher tome a year or so ago. My conclusion: it would make an excellent doorstop
Cede, means to give up, to hand over. Pre 1840 there was no one authority, no person who had authority over all of New Zealand, Maori were a number of tribes, frequently in conflict with each other. How could they cede sovereignty when it wasn't theirs to cede, it's quite possible that they didn't understand the concept of one person having authority over the whole land. The fact that there is no Maori word in the Treaty meaning sovereignty suggests that they didn't have a word for it, but then why would they have a word for something they had no idea existed?
This doesn't mean that they didn't accept Queen Victoria as their sovereign, the first person having authority over all New Zealand and all it's people.
Excellenct conclusion Bruce, at about $70 it would be an expensive one, a ream of blank paper would do the job better/cheaper.
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