Treaties principle bill in New Zealand

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The anger is clear, a furious haka in parliament and 35 thousand descending on parliament.

I don't understand the issue and would like the Māori perspective. I know the "everyone should be equal under the law argument".

From 1840, The Treaty of Waitangi has been the founding document of between Maori and Pakeha (white people) in NZ.

Almost as soon as the ink was dry, the English broke their promises and abused Maori sovereignty and rights agreed in the treaty. Very shamefully.

In the 1970s, law was passed by the NZ parliament, recognising officially that the Treaty had been breached by Pakeha.
Compensation and apologies were made and this has been ongoing to the present time as the theft of Maori land and the abuse of rights agreed in the 1840 treaty has been huge.

In the 1980s, a new political party, libertarian and white right wing, managed to get into parliament after NZ changed its electoral process to "MMP". This party (called ACT) is still a minority in parliament today, though quite influential. The current leader wants to "redesign" the Treaty - to the detriment of Maori rights, and hypocritically pretends that the Treaty is irrelevant now, no-one should have any "special rights" - which essentially means the Treaty would be cancelled by an Act of law passed by a dominantly Pakeha government. (I don't believe this will happen).

The march (hikoi) was to demonstrate the anger of Maori people at this further attack on the Treaty and their opposition to such a heinous new betrayal of the foundation Treaty principles.

Unfortunately NZ has become more racist during the era of Trump in the USA, and that is not a coincidence. There are equivalents to "Magas" in NZ now, who want to "Make New Zealand Great" again, who support the political attempt to render the Treaty of Waitangi void.

I am not Maori, though I hope you will get a Maori response to your question.

I asked co pilot (an AI) and it said "During the New Zealand Wars in the 1860s, the government confiscated over 4 million acres of Māori land, including large areas in Waikato". That's about 10% of the North island.

This took me so long to write that someone else already wrote a long response, but I think some of the points I made are still worth making.

New Zealand, Aotearoa, already had a government before Europeans showed up. The Treaty of Waitangi is the agreement between the Maori and the British (with its responsibilities passing to the NZ government upon independence) upon which the legitimacy of the modern NZ state depends. With it, NZ is one country consisting of "two peoples", the Maori and the immigrants. Without it, NZ is a colonialist endeavour, like China's occupation of Tibet.

The tribal chiefs who signed the treaty thought that they were giving up "the shadow of the land" in exchange for protection, while still being able to govern themselves. Today, in practice this means that the Crown (the government) can make laws, as long as they account for the preserved interests that the Maori kept for themselves. This includes self-management (which is different from full self-government), Maori rights to property, preservation of Maori culture, equality before the law, co-operation between the peoples, and the opportunity to legal redress if the treaty is breached.

Generally, when one makes a contract, the contract ceases to be legitimate if one side attempts to unilaterally change it. If the Crown wanted to pass a law to re-interpret the Principles *after consulting properly with Maori*, then that would be within their right. But unilaterally redefining Maori words is not a right they have.

I can't pretend to be an expert, but I'm not sure whether we have any Maori users who would chime in.

I get the feeling Māori want to do things there way

With respect, Walrus, the Treaty is not considered by anyone in NZ as a contract; it is viewed solely as an agreement between two countries signed between many Rangitira (chiefs) of NZ and the British Crown (Queen Victoria). Nothing in much later created NZ contract law applies to it. The Treaty (Tiriti in Maori) is nearly always referred to as "the foundation document of NZ" by both parties even now.

Overall this is a huge topic of much complexity, and - as you noted - hard to define here.

A book called "Ask That Mountain" by Dick Scott gives a poignant representative example of the actions that hid behind the "NZ wars" - that terminology is discredited in NZ now and has been replaced by "Land wars". A bit of political correctness perhaps though it has a lot of meaning to the victims.

I was pleasantly surprised to see interest in NZ history and current events on WP and thanks to you both.

That's fair. I knew contract wasn't quite the right term, but thought comparing changing the terms of the agreement unilaterally to changing a contract unilaterally was a useful analogy. Thanks for the correction.

I enjoy all your posts because they are always thoughtful and interesting. I do have a slight advantage in this thread having spent a large part of my life down under! No need for an apology though it was gracious of you.

Enz, in 1840, Maori owned more than 66 million acres of land. By 1975, 97% of this had been taken (mostly) or bought by Pakeha. Maori were discriminated against in all sorts of other ways, but the loss of the land was the most deeply painful and damaging to the quality of life. Also in 1975, a large Hikoi (a journey of protest) took place, under the slogan of "NOT ONE MORE ACRE" led by an very elderly wahine (woman) of high descent named Whina Cooper. (Later Dame Whina Cooper). They walked all the way from the top of the North Island to Parliament - about 750 miles to confront parliament with their grievance directly. It was peaceful and conveyed the strong message of "shame on pakeha for breaching the Treaty in bad faith and for the unlawful seizure of so much tribal land".

This hikoi led the prime minister of the time, David Lange, (a pakeha) to begin to work for meaningful redress via compensation for stolen land. His genuine efforts for a pathway to compensation were resented by some Pakeha but were successful in creating a special Court to administer redress for Maori tribes. Each tribe was entitled to make their claim separately, as different amounts of land were stolen from different tribes.

PS I delayed writing this part as I hoped that there would be a Maori response, though this is unlikely. Great progress and return of "Mana" (dignity) to Maori has been made. Which of course was, and still is, bitterly resented by some white people (a minority). Yet on the whole, reasonable Pakeha supported the long awaited move toward justice. Daily discrimination still continued however, often in petty ways (eg police continually stopping Maori drivers for example, as a deliberate form of harrassment). Maori received harsher penalties for the same crimes that Pakehas committed ... the "justice system" was biased against Maori all through the 20th century and to a lesser extent, it still is.

For a long time NZ got away with hiding under the internationally promoted myth that NZ was "the least racist country in the World". Yet in fact, England's impact, as a coloniser, was a stark, severe and appalling tyranny of racism for well over a century after the Treaty of Waitangi was signed. NZ has made much progress toward equality in the past 40 years by real efforts to honour the treaty. We must keep moving forward to complete the work to full equality. To go backwards now - a regression the minority party Act is trying to achieve, to basically destroy the Treaty of Waitangi rights once again ! !! ! would be tragic, shameful, hypocritical and repulsive.

So I youtubed "what is the treaties principle bill" and came across this video.

To which I say "ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"