“A copy of a new book about the Treaty of Waitangi by lawyer Roimata Smail has been gifted to every secondary school in the country. An anonymous donor has paid for Understanding Te Tiriti: a handbook of basic facts about Te Tiriti o Waitangi to be sent to the schools.”
Two things immediately came to mind. (1) It’s great that every school will have a copy of what is reportedly a short - 34 pages - and easy to read publication. (2) This is written by a lawyer specialising in Treaty issues who recently created a template to help people submit their opposition to the Treaty Principles Bill. Therefore it’s pretty obvious what the editorial slant of this booklet will be and whether the “facts” presented will be factual.
Every school which receives this publication should tell its students that while this is a contribution to the debate on the Treaty, there are other works which present a different perspective. For instance Sir Apirana Ngata’s 1922 The Treaty of Waitangi: An Explanation or Ewan McQueen’s more recent One Sun in The Sky.
In today’s doctrinaire education environment we know that will not happen. Smail’s book and the views expressed in it will remain unchallenged by teachers and students. The works by Ngata and McQueen will be dismissed as irrelevant, out of touch with modern times or just plain wrong.
The long march through the institutions will continue.
As yet I haven’t read Understanding Te Tiriti but I have ordered a copy ($25 plus postage) and I’ll report on its contents in due course.
But a look at Ms Smail’s website gives me a fairly good indication of the approach she will take.
She has put together a template submission on the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill which anyone can use to make a submission to the Select Committee.
The template is set out in a legal format with numbered paragraphs and covers all three principles that David Seymour included in his bill.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Principle 1 claims Crown absolute power to make laws over everyone and govern, or in other words enforce those laws. This is wrong. This is not a principle of what was agreed in 1840. It was only ever discussed that the Queen would govern non-Maori.”
So right from the off Ms Smail is actively promoting the idea that Chiefs in 1840 did not cede government of the country to the Crown. This is the quite absurd notion that the Waitangi Tribunal foisted upon us a decade ago. It is contrary to all contemporary accounts from February 1840, reports from the Kohimarama Conference of 1860 and Ngata’s book from 1922. It also flies in the face of what Sir Hugh Kawharu wrote in his 1989 back translation of the Treaty – Maori to English - which to this day remains on the Tribunal website.
“The Chiefs of the Confederation and all the Chiefs who have not joined that Confederation give absolutely to the Queen of England for ever the complete government over their land.”
More from Ms Smail’s submission template:
“Today laws control an education system where Māori children get less opportunities, a health system where Māori face substandard care, a criminal system that mostly imprisons Māori and a ‘Child Protection’ system that mostly takes Māori children from their whanau.”
Whew.
Where do Māori children get less education opportunities? Only when their useless parents don’t insist on them going to school to learn literacy and numeracy skills. What is the health system where Māori face substandard care? The one where they whinge about delays in ED or getting to a GP just like the rest of us? Why does the criminal system mostly imprison Māori? Because it would seem they commit the most crime. Just why they do that is a matter beyond the sociological cope of this essay. And why does a Child Protection system take mostly Māori children from their whanau? To stop even more deaths like those of Baby Ru and Nia Glassie and the Kahui twins.
One final quote from the template: “the Crown consistently makes and enforces laws that discriminate against and harm Māori …”
So you can see the tenor of Roimata Smail’s thinking about the Treaty of Waitangi and what she’s likely to have written in her book. I will reserve final judgement until my copy arrives in the mail.
But I find it more than disturbing that such an obviously biased and most likely non-referenced publication is being distributed around our high schools.
Teaching around the Treaty of Waitangi is highly problematical because of the lack of balance in the perspectives being taught. What the Waitangi Tribunal concludes is being taken more and more as gospel. Yet we know that body has made some absurd conclusions – the matter of sovereignty and government over these lands being the most fundamental and serious.
I asked my 14 year old grandson, coming towards the end of Year 9 at a fee-paying Wellington private school, what they did at their school around the time of the hikoi arriving in the capital. He said that in his Māori language class they were asked to make banners for the march and were given the opportunity the attend the hikoi. He declined.
While a non-state school arguably has the right to teach what it likes, young (and not-so-young) minds should always be given a balance of competing perspectives. It’s what that era called The Enlightenment was about.
It’s patently obvious that when it comes to teaching the Treaty of Waitangi in our secondary schools, that concept has flown the coop. It’s a distressing outlook for our future.
I await Roimata Smail’s book in the mail.
Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack - where this article was sourced.
Every school which receives this publication should tell its students that while this is a contribution to the debate on the Treaty, there are other works which present a different perspective. For instance Sir Apirana Ngata’s 1922 The Treaty of Waitangi: An Explanation or Ewan McQueen’s more recent One Sun in The Sky.
In today’s doctrinaire education environment we know that will not happen. Smail’s book and the views expressed in it will remain unchallenged by teachers and students. The works by Ngata and McQueen will be dismissed as irrelevant, out of touch with modern times or just plain wrong.
The long march through the institutions will continue.
As yet I haven’t read Understanding Te Tiriti but I have ordered a copy ($25 plus postage) and I’ll report on its contents in due course.
But a look at Ms Smail’s website gives me a fairly good indication of the approach she will take.
She has put together a template submission on the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill which anyone can use to make a submission to the Select Committee.
The template is set out in a legal format with numbered paragraphs and covers all three principles that David Seymour included in his bill.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Principle 1 claims Crown absolute power to make laws over everyone and govern, or in other words enforce those laws. This is wrong. This is not a principle of what was agreed in 1840. It was only ever discussed that the Queen would govern non-Maori.”
So right from the off Ms Smail is actively promoting the idea that Chiefs in 1840 did not cede government of the country to the Crown. This is the quite absurd notion that the Waitangi Tribunal foisted upon us a decade ago. It is contrary to all contemporary accounts from February 1840, reports from the Kohimarama Conference of 1860 and Ngata’s book from 1922. It also flies in the face of what Sir Hugh Kawharu wrote in his 1989 back translation of the Treaty – Maori to English - which to this day remains on the Tribunal website.
“The Chiefs of the Confederation and all the Chiefs who have not joined that Confederation give absolutely to the Queen of England for ever the complete government over their land.”
More from Ms Smail’s submission template:
“Today laws control an education system where Māori children get less opportunities, a health system where Māori face substandard care, a criminal system that mostly imprisons Māori and a ‘Child Protection’ system that mostly takes Māori children from their whanau.”
Whew.
Where do Māori children get less education opportunities? Only when their useless parents don’t insist on them going to school to learn literacy and numeracy skills. What is the health system where Māori face substandard care? The one where they whinge about delays in ED or getting to a GP just like the rest of us? Why does the criminal system mostly imprison Māori? Because it would seem they commit the most crime. Just why they do that is a matter beyond the sociological cope of this essay. And why does a Child Protection system take mostly Māori children from their whanau? To stop even more deaths like those of Baby Ru and Nia Glassie and the Kahui twins.
One final quote from the template: “the Crown consistently makes and enforces laws that discriminate against and harm Māori …”
So you can see the tenor of Roimata Smail’s thinking about the Treaty of Waitangi and what she’s likely to have written in her book. I will reserve final judgement until my copy arrives in the mail.
But I find it more than disturbing that such an obviously biased and most likely non-referenced publication is being distributed around our high schools.
Teaching around the Treaty of Waitangi is highly problematical because of the lack of balance in the perspectives being taught. What the Waitangi Tribunal concludes is being taken more and more as gospel. Yet we know that body has made some absurd conclusions – the matter of sovereignty and government over these lands being the most fundamental and serious.
I asked my 14 year old grandson, coming towards the end of Year 9 at a fee-paying Wellington private school, what they did at their school around the time of the hikoi arriving in the capital. He said that in his Māori language class they were asked to make banners for the march and were given the opportunity the attend the hikoi. He declined.
While a non-state school arguably has the right to teach what it likes, young (and not-so-young) minds should always be given a balance of competing perspectives. It’s what that era called The Enlightenment was about.
It’s patently obvious that when it comes to teaching the Treaty of Waitangi in our secondary schools, that concept has flown the coop. It’s a distressing outlook for our future.
I await Roimata Smail’s book in the mail.
Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack - where this article was sourced.
7 comments:
Indoctrination is now blatant - right in your face and ruthlessly forced on all educational contexts. Unless there is some sort of counter publication for balance, great damage will be done - and noone in authority stops it.
It always amazes me how the likes of Roimata Smaill claim their works are fact! Show me one person who was present at the signing of the Treaty who could verify the facts. All we can ever hope for is an honest interpretation-something we are definitely not seeing now.
Ms. Smail is simply just another activist.
Sadly she and the complicit teaching hegemony with the MSM will push this book to further the indoctrination.
The interesting thing would be to know who the anonymous 'donor' is............
Clearly this unilateral and totally unsolicited distribution of activist-sponsored booklets into our schools is a deliberate act of political-activism , totally without authority or approval . It is politically motivated activism at its very worst , aimed at indoctrinating and brainwashing our youngsters in ‘contrived for purpose’ invented pro-Maori ‘bullshit’ ( LIES ) , targeted at preconditioning / predisposing our youngsters to support Maori-activist political ambitions for future Maori control and governance of New Zealand .
How did this get past Headmasters and Headmistresses , our education authorities and our Ministers of Education . THIS IS TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE UNILATERAL ACTION by this Group of activists and THESE BOOKLETS MUST BE IMMEDIATELY TOTALLY PULLED / WITHDRAWN. AND DESTROYED .
The perpetrators should be charged with unauthorised and unwarranted interference in our Education System / Program , and at the very least VERY heavily fined .
For goodness sake who is running this Country’s Education System —- Maori activism ?
Hugh Perrett
Answering Anonymous (1)' There was one person present at the signing who recorded his eye-witness observation of the farce .
William Colenso was a missionary for many years, fluent in Maori and with a Maori wife he had their confidence and his questions to various chiefs were answered honestly and recorded without bias. A printer by trade, he printed the document used for the signing. I commend his commentary and cannot understand why anyone who reads it can have much confidence in the veracity of the event. It was a valuable tool to stop tribal warfare and the consequent wholesale massacre of Maori by Maori but as a founding document for government it is useless since that was not its purpose.
I see Massey Uni now has all its staff members having to add an endorsement of the Toitu Te Treaty campaign on their emails and it is in their banner. According to Hobson's Pledge, with examples. And the Herald is deleting all comments on articles if those comments disgree with the ''correct'' narrative. I wonder how many readers or people in this country know (it is not publicised in msm channels of course) or if they even care. If they live in a world where news is only from NZ TV and Stuff or Herald or RNZ they will think all is OK...as long as they have their rugby, dope and booze all is fine. Some folk I know avoid the topic, saying they do not care or it doesn't affect them. Anything that differs from msm is of course conspiracy. If and when they vote the previous Govt back in because ''it gives people more'', as one told me, they will get more than they expect.
It is not a Ministry of Education we have but a Ministry of Indoctrination into Marxism and the woke . Destroying Western Culture through schools is their agenda.. They are not at all interested in actual academic schooling and cultivating an intellectual mindset and haven't been for many decades.
It is safe to for anything this ministry does or says - do the opposite. They are unsafe places for children in every respect.
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