Geoff Parker: Alternative Facts And New Zealand's Selective History

There is something deeply ironic about accusations that the Coalition Government wants to teach New Zealand children “alternative facts” while some of those making the accusation present an extraordinarily selective version of our history.

The latest example in a letter to the Editor of the Waikato Times 22/8/26  is the claim that Māori had already established a sovereign nation before the Treaty of Waitangi and that British involvement simply destroyed an existing system of independent government.

The historical record is considerably more complicated.

THE CHIEFS ASKED THE BRITISH KING FOR PROTECTION

In 1831, thirteen northern chiefs wrote to King William IV.

Their concerns included foreign threats, conflict with other tribes and the behaviour of British subjects living in New Zealand. They sought the King's friendship and protection.

This was years before the Treaty of Waitangi.

The letter does not prove that Māori lacked authority within their own tribal territories. Of course they possessed authority. Different chiefs and hapū exercised control over their own people and lands.

But that is precisely the point.

There was no single Māori government exercising authority over the whole of New Zealand. There was no national parliament, no national executive, no unified legal system and no national authority capable of enforcing laws from Northland to Stewart Island.

New Zealand was a collection of independent tribal societies.

The problems arising from increasing European settlement, international trade, foreign interest and continuing tribal conflict were among the reasons British intervention eventually became a serious matter.

THE MYTH OF THE 1834 “NATION”

We are now increasingly told that Māori established a sovereign nation in 1834.

That is an enormous exaggeration.

The immediate reason for selecting the United Tribes flag was remarkably practical. A New Zealand-built trading vessel had encountered difficulties because it could not sail under a recognised national flag or registration. Without recognised nationality, New Zealand-built ships and their cargoes were vulnerable to seizure.

British Resident James Busby took up the problem. Three designs were produced, and in March 1834 a gathering of some 25 northern chiefs selected one.

The flag was subsequently recognised for maritime purposes.

Busby also hoped that the exercise might encourage northern chiefs to develop some form of collective organisation.

That was the context.

The following year's Declaration of Independence was, in practical terms, largely a non-event. It did not create a sovereign nation, establish a national government or produce a central authority exercising control over New Zealand.

The United Tribes did not become a New Zealand-wide state. There was no parliament, executive, judiciary or unified system of law, and no central authority capable of enforcing decisions beyond the independent tribes and hapū that retained control over their own territories.

Indeed, the very existence of numerous independent tribes and hapū, each exercising authority within its own territory, demonstrates the problem with the modern attempt to retrospectively describe pre-Treaty New Zealand as a unified Māori nation.

WHAT DID ARTICLE 1 OF THE TREATY SAY?

The Treaty debate is often conducted as though the English text did not exist - It does.

Article 1 states that the chiefs ceded to Queen Victoria “absolutely and without reservation all the rights and powers of Sovereignty” which they exercised, possessed, or were supposed to exercise.

That is not ambiguous English.

There remains legitimate debate about the Māori translation, particularly the meaning and implications of kawanatanga, and about precisely what individual chiefs understood when they signed.

Those questions should be openly debated.

But it is simply wrong to suggest that the transfer of sovereign authority was invented later by historians or colonial officials. The British Government sent Hobson to New Zealand to establish civil government and obtain sovereign authority.

That was the purpose of the Treaty from the British perspective.

Article 1 addressed governmental authority. Article 2 guaranteed the possession of property. Article 3 extended the rights and privileges of British subjects.

That was the constitutional structure of the English text.

KORORĀREKA AND THE HISTORY WE ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO DISCUSS

The story of Kororāreka is another example of selective history.

European sailors, whalers and traders certainly contributed to the development of prostitution in the Bay of Islands. Their behaviour was often appalling.

But it is historically inaccurate to portray Māori women simply as passive victims of Europeans while ignoring the role played by Māori men who sometimes negotiated sexual arrangements in exchange for muskets, clothing and other goods.

That is an uncomfortable fact - It is also history.

If history is to be taught honestly, uncomfortable facts cannot be deleted merely because they reflect badly on one group rather than another.

THE ROAD TO WAIKATO

The same applies to the New Zealand Wars.

Land confiscations, Crown military action and subsequent Māori loss of land are all legitimate and important subjects.

But they are not the entire story.

The Kīngitanga emerged as a powerful political movement and increasingly represented an alternative centre of authority within New Zealand. Some of its supporters became involved in fighting in Taranaki, while militant factions and reported threats of attacks on Auckland heightened Government concerns about the security of settlers.

Governor Grey responded to this challenge to Crown authority by issuing ultimatums and, when these failed to resolve the situation, sending British forces across the Mangatāwhiri to restore government authority and secure Auckland and its surrounding settlements.

The Waikato campaign cannot honestly be portrayed as a simple, unprovoked attack on peaceful Māori. Nor, following the cession of sovereignty under the Treaty, was it an “invasion” of a foreign country. It was a military campaign within territory over which the Crown exercised and claimed sovereign authority.

Equally, it should not be used to excuse everything that followed.

History is rarely that simple.

TEACH THE WHOLE STORY

The real danger is not that children will learn inconvenient facts about colonisation - They should.

They should learn about land confiscations, Crown actions and promises made in difficult circumstances, military campaigns and the suffering caused by war.

But they should also learn about intertribal warfare before 1840, the 1831 request by northern chiefs for British protection, the fragmented nature of pre-Treaty political authority, the practical commercial reason for the 1834 flag, the actual wording of Article 1, and the actions of Kīngitanga supporters before the Waikato campaign.

Teaching only those facts which support a modern political narrative is not history education; it is the indoctrination of a cherry-picked version of history.

Geoff Parker is a passionate advocate for equal rights and a colour blind society.