Gerry Eckhoff: Waitangi - Treaty or Taniwha

I suspect most of us don’t understand why, after almost 200 years, the Treaty of Waitangi still engenders emotive reaction from all sides of the debate. The treaty solved some problems in 1840 yet created the lingering question as to what it all means, and to whom. Since time immemorial treaties have been enacted to bring peace to warring factions within countries rather than to colonize another country. There has been a number of well recorded treaties that have, for the most part, been very successful. They were all effectively - peace treaties.

Barend Vlaardingerbroek: A treaty for the Australian Aboriginal?

Treaties are accepted around the world as a way of reaching a settlement between Indigenous people and those who have colonised their lands. New Zealand, for example, has the Treaty of Waitangi, an agreement signed in 1840 between the British Crown and over 500 Maori chiefs, while Canada and the United States have hundreds of treaties dating back as far as the 1600s…

A treaty could provide, among other things:

- a symbolic recognition of Indigenous sovereignty and prior occupation of this land…

- a basis for regional self-government guidelines for local or regional treaties…

Barend Vlaardingerbroek: The Kings and Chiefs of Old Calabar and Old NZ

Treaties have been around for a very long time. There’s a boundary treaty inscribed on stone between the city-states of Lagash and Umma dating back over 4,000 years. The Egyptians and Hittites concluded a comprehensive treaty concerning territorial demarcation and defence around 3,000 years ago. 

Winding the clock forward, one of my favourites is the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 when the Pope carved the world up into two halves by drawing a line running down the middle of the Atlantic – the Spanish were to take one half, the Portuguese the other. It didn’t quite work out that way!