Geoff Parker: Three Flags, One Country

How missionary ensigns and modern protest symbols came to fly over a single civic state

Before European contact, Māori had no flags or symbols representing a single nation or tribe. Identity and authority were expressed through iwi, hapū, and hapū-based networks, not emblems. Yet today New Zealand naively — and without public mandate — flies flags from public buildings that are not the flag of New Zealand. We are told this reflects history, respect, and recognition. In reality, it reflects the modern imposition of symbols to advance political claims they were never designed to carry.

The United Tribes Flag Was a Missionary Creation

The so-called United Tribes flag did not arise from an ancient Māori nationhood. Its origins lie with the Anglican Church Missionary Society. From the 1820s, under Henry Williams — a former Royal Navy officer with a strong interest in naval protocol — the flag closely mirrored the British White Ensign: a St George’s Cross with an emblem in the canton. It flew on mission ships and at mission stations. It was, in effect, a house flag: ecclesiastical, practical, and British in conception.

This was not a pan-tribal political symbol. It was a European-derived ensign created by missionaries operating under British assumptions of hierarchy and authority.

The Maritime Problem — Not Sovereignty

In 1830, a New Zealand-built vessel, the Sir George Murray, was seized in Sydney for flying no recognised ensign. New Zealand was not yet a colony and could not legally use the British flag. When it returned under a makeshift “New Zealand colours” flag — again resembling missionary designs — it still lacked formal recognition.

The maritime disputes over unrecognised flags were among the administrative issues James Busby faced when he arrived in 1833 as British Resident. His task was not to recognise Māori sovereignty, but to impose enough order to protect British trade. Busby argued that a flag would solve customs issues and give Māori “a sense of collective nationality” — a revealing phrase: nationality was to be encouraged, externally, for administrative convenience.

A Managed Vote Under British Auspices

With New South Wales’ approval, Busby organised a flag vote. Henry Williams designed three options, manufactured in Sydney, and returned aboard HMS Alligator. On 20 March 1834, about thirty northern rangatira attended the vote at Busby’s residence. Missionaries, naval officers, and foreign observers were present. Only the chiefs could vote — but debate among them was curtailed, and European attendees openly suggested which flag should be chosen.

The former Church Missionary Society flag won by two votes.

As Michael King records in The Penguin History of New Zealand, Austrian Baron von Hügel, an independent eyewitness, described the ceremony as confused and largely performative. Several chiefs appeared uncertain and simply voted for all three designs. The episode bore little resemblance to a decisive act of national self-determination.

Busby declared it the first “national act” of the chiefs. HMS Alligator fired a 21-gun salute. King William IV later gave formal recognition — not to a Māori nation, but to a flag useful for British purposes.

Superseded — Then Politicised

By 1840, the arrangement was obsolete. The Treaty of Waitangi and Crown proclamations made the United Tribes flag redundant as a national ensign. Governor Hobson treated it as a symbol of independence when it was flown by the New Zealand Company and ordered it removed.

Notably, if the flag had carried ongoing constitutional or sovereign significance, one would expect Busby — its architect — to have raised it during the Treaty process. He did not.

After the Treaty, the British Union Jack became the de facto flag of the colony. The current New Zealand flag was designed and adopted for restricted use in 1869 and formally became the national flag in 1902. There was a clear, continuous line of state authority, leaving no role for the United Tribes flag.

The conflicts that followed — including Hōne Heke’s repeated cutting down of the flagstaff — were not about restoring a Māori nation-state. They reflected dissatisfaction with British rule, including the Crown’s shifting of the main port from Kororāreka to Auckland, transferring trade and influence to Ngāti Whātua, longstanding rivals.

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the flag’s meaning shifted. Along with other flags used in Māori political movements, it was adopted by Kingitanga and Te Kotahitanga and eventually came to be regarded as a Māori flag rather than a national one. That transformation was retrospective, not original.

Its later use as a commercial house flag by the Shaw, Savill & Albion shipping line further underscores its lack of constitutional standing. No flag possessing recognised legal authority would have been freely appropriated for private corporate use.

The Second Flag: An Explicit Protest Symbol

The Tino Rangatiratanga flag leaves no doubt about its purpose.

Designed in 1989 by three Māori designers, it is not historical, customary, or representative by mandate. It was created explicitly as a political statement — a symbol of resistance and alternative sovereignty. It does not claim continuity with 1834 so much as it claims correction of 1840. That is the flag now flown on some government buildings.

The State Should Not Fly the Flags of Opposition Movements

There is nothing wrong with protest flags. There is something deeply wrong with the state adopting them.

Government buildings are not cultural display cabinets. They are instruments of authority. When the state flies flags that symbolise ethnic political claims or parallel sovereignty, it is not “recognising history” — it is endorsing a contested ideology.

No referendum approved this. No constitutional process authorised it. Many Māori do not support it. Most New Zealanders were never asked.

A civic nation cannot endure if its institutions speak in contradictory symbols. One law, one citizenship, one flag.

Anything else is not unity.

It is fragmentation — dressed up as respect.

Geoff Parker is a long-standing advocate for truth, equal rights, and equality before the law.

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