Mā te kite ka mōhio,
Mā te mōhio ka mārama.
Seek and discover,
Discover and know,
Know and become enlightened.
I am writing this submission to express how much I oppose the Treaty Principles Bill.
I am a teacher. As teachers, we are expected to demonstrate our commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. In Our Code, Our Standards - Ngā Tikanga Matatika, Ngā Paerewa it says:
Signed in 1840 by leaders of hapū and the Crown, Te Tiriti o Waitangi affirmed Māori rights as tangata whenua and provided a place and a shape of governance for Pākehā in Aotearoa.
Te Tiriti o Waitangi provided a basis for ongoing, peaceful power-sharing relationships between the first peoples and all others who would come in later years.
Today Te Tiriti o Waitangi is seen as a commitment under which Māori and all other New Zealanders may live together in the spirit of honourable relationships, with the promise to take the best possible care of each other. This requires the injustices caused by colonisation to be addressed and all New Zealanders to engage in creating a positive future that honours Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
New Zealand is an increasingly multicultural nation, and Te Tiriti o Waitangi is inclusive of today’s new settlers. As with earlier immigrants, their ‘place to stand’ comes with an expectation that they will live here in a way that respects the commitments of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the position of Māori as tangata whenua.
As teachers, we are committed to honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi and we understand this has implications in all of our practice.
In the Code, I have highlighted some key phrases. And below I will explain why.
I am descended from Ururoa, a Ngāpuhi rangatira, the second chief to sign He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tirene or the Declaration of Independence of the United Tribes of New Zealand. He did not sign Te Tiriti o Waitangi, but Hone Heke, my great, great, great, great uncle did, the first signatory. I put this in to show that this country was not given to England, but that the goal was to be our own country, with our own sovereignty, but under Te Tiriti to allow the British representatives to manage their own people so all could live together peacefully. As Prof Margaret Mutu says, this invited people to live in New Zealand under the protection of Te Tiriti and in no way was sovereignty ceded to the British Government.
In the text of Te Tiriti, it is clear that the Treaty is signed by the people of New Zealand and the Crown. The people of New Zealand at the time were what we now call Māori. At the time, Māori was defined by themselves as “ordinary people” to differentiate themselves from those who had come from other lands. It is not a Treaty between Māori and every single ethnicity who entered New Zealand in 1840 or since. It is an agreement between the New Zealanders of the day (aka Māori, because non-Māori of the day defined themselves as British or French or wherever they were from) and the Crown, the representatives of Queen Victoria. So for Mr Seymour today to claim that this Treaty is between two races is wrong, has been proved wrong by the text of Te Tiriti itself, translators and academics far more knowledgeable on Te Tiriti than Mr Seymour.
Today, the invitation Te Tiriti provides applies to those who are immigrating to New Zealand as much as this did to my first Pākehā ancestors coming over from Sydney Australia, one of whom married Ururoa’s daughter Erana, thus creating the ultimate Tiriti partnership within my own ancestry.
Today, any class I teach will have a mixture of children who identify as Māori or Pākehā or both, children whose ancestors arrived here 150 years or 60 years ago or even this last year. They all have the right to be here under Te Tiriti o Waitangi. I may also be teaching children from Africa, Asia, the Americas, Pasifika nations, Europe… and they all have the same invitation to come to New Zealand as my earliest Pākehā ancestors from Australia, as well as the ones to come over the next sixty years from England, Ireland, Switzerland and Prussia.
When I grew up and went to school in the 1980s, things Māori were not valued. A whole section of my ancestry was not valued, and if utilised in public life, was for show. The haka of the All Blacks of the 1980s is an excellent example of this - it was perfunctory at best and very amateur in comparison to the haka I see performed by primary school children in the 2020s.
Over my lifetime, we have seen the recognition of Te Tiriti o Waitangi like never before. The first time Waitangi Day was a public holiday I was two months old. Just fifteen months before I was born, on my adored cousin’s day of birth, a landmark petition for te reo Māori was presented on the steps of parliament. The Waitangi Tribunal was established by the time I was four years old, and by the time I was eleven years old the Waitangi Tribunal was able to accept historical claims of breaches against Te Tiriti. I was 13 years old when te reo Māori was made an official language of New Zealand - by this time I was learning te reo Māori at high school, a choice I made, and this was the first real teaching I had had on things Māori in all my schooling so far. Apart from English, te reo Māori was the only subject I continued through all five years of high school.
When I began University to train as a teacher, I continued my learning about te reo Māori and te Ao Māori through various papers. It was made clear to me and my fellow students that we were expected to nurture the language and provide learning opportunities for all students in our classes throughout the curriculum. I have continued this learning to this very day, be it watching te reo teaching tv shows, attending night classes a the local College (until National destroyed Adult Learning Night Classes), PLD within my school or Kāhui Ako, or, for the last three years, through the Wānanga o Aotearoa.
As a teacher, as a New Zealander, as a human, I have this to my core. Te reo Māori and things Māori have always been part of my teaching. As much of my teaching has been at small rural schools, I have often been the teacher on staff with the most resources and knowledge. But I have seen a significant shift over the last seven years. Under the previous Labour government they introduced Te Ahu o te Reo Māori to enable teachers to improve their knowledge and use of te reo Māori, learn basic tikanga, and grow their confidence to use te reo as an every day language in their classes, professional and personal lives. I’ve seen more total immersion and bilingual classes established, more kapa haka groups, more use of tikanga Māori with pōwhiri and whakatau implemented, karakia, pepeha, waiata, better pronunciation, children excited to participate in things Māori because they have more understanding and taking that learning and excitement home.
I will never forget when I introduced singing the National Anthem in te reo (before Dame Hinewehi Mohi did so in 1999 controversially). The mostly very Pākehā dairy farming community children were happy to learn it. But what warmed my heart was when very Pākahā rural grandparents came to me on Calf Club Day to tell me how much they enjoyed hearing their three grandchildren sing the Anthem in te reo in the backseat of their car - that, in 1999 showed me how far New Zealand had come… and I thought New Zealand had come even further until the disgusting rhetoric came out during the 2023 Election Campaign in regards to the use of te reo Māori for government entities and road signs from National and the appalling ideas Mr Seymour had for Te Tiriti.
Today I go into rural schools, with Māori, Pākehā and immigrant children all reciting their pepeha, leading karakia, performing waiata and haka like it is second nature. Get a bunch of Kiwis together overseas and what you will soon get is a haka or a loud rendition of Tutira Mai Ngā Iwi. This is our identity and we do not like it being degraded.
The rhetoric against things Māori over the last two years has been extremely divisive and allowed ignorant prejudices to be presented as facts. Mr Seymour has yet to show who his experts are who helped him present this despicable Treaty Principles Bill to our Parliament. His rubbishing of actual experts who have studied Te Tiriti for decades or worked within the law with the Waitangi Tribunal has been disrespectful at best. His interpretation and translation has been debunked by the most expert translators, academics, lawyers and now even the descendents of the original translators, Henry and William Williams, have said that Mr Seymour has the intent and translation of Te Tiriti o Waitangi wrong.
Mr Seymour also ignores international law that states the te reo version is the legal version of Te Tiriti o Waitangi as well as the fact the vast majority of rangatira signed the te reo versions (only one group did not, because they were only supplied the English version and were incorrectly assured it as a exactly the same as the te reo version). In regards to Mr Peters harking back to Sir Apirana Ngata’s writings on Te Tiriti o Waitangi, like our knowledge of agriculture and how electricity is generated, supplied and used, our knowledge and application has moved on.
The Principles of the Treaty are to promote Partnership, Participation and Protection. These were defined after the establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal to allow for the passage of about 140 years since the Treaty was initially signed. These Principles are not set in law and do not rewrite the Treaty, but enhance the fact Te Tiriti o Waitangi is and continues to be a living document, evolving as the world and New Zealand society evolves. They are in fact a compromise because there can be no full redress for all the breaches of the Treaty since 1840; it is economically, socially and politically too damaging for all New Zealanders to do so. In that regard, Māori have been compromised again.
Let’s now look at what Mr Seymour is proposing. Under Partnership, the first Principle, it is stated Māori (or the 1840 New Zealanders as written in the original text) and the Crown have a relationship and both parties must act with the utmost good faith. Under Mr Seymour’s version, The government has full power to govern and the government has the power to make laws in the best interest of everyone. This completely cuts Māori, as the original New Zealanders, out of the process, a rather authoritarian move and not in good faith.
Participation is the second Principle. Within the current Principle, the Crown is to provide opportunities to engage with the decision making processes at all levels. This has already been broken within the last year with the government legislating to remove Māori wards from local bodies and make them go through a costly referendum in 2025 if they want to retain them, as well as the dubious actions of the Fast Track Act. Under Mr Seymour’s version of Principle 2, he wants hapū and iwi rights recognised as they were when they were signed in 1840 and those rights only differ when they are specified in legislation, Treaty Agreements or other specific agreements with the Crown. This disregards the fact Te Tiriti is a living document. It ignores the fact that this is a Treaty between the people who owned the land in 1840, the original New Zealanders aka Māori, and the Crown and freezes Māori out of all decision making. This will especially have a detrimental effect on our environment. Traditional Pākehā governing decision making has left environmental disasters all over New Zealand and put flora and fauna in endangered categories as a result of ignoring one of the Treaty partners for the last 180 odd years. Also, the government is currently going through a process of removing Treaty clauses from numerous pieces of legislation - clauses that were put in to prevent further breaches of the Treaty!! The stupidity of it all!!
Principle three addresses Protection. Currently this understanding is the government actively protects Māori interests, rights, taonga and rangatiratanga. Mr Seymour wants to state everyone is equal before the law, has equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination. Firstly, under the Bill of Rights, all New Zealanders, no matter their ethnicity or whatever else, are seen as equal before the law. Māori, as the original New Zealanders as stated within the text and as one of the signatories, has particular rights over stated things under the Treaty that other people who became New Zealanders as a result of the Treaty do not have. Mr Seymour is trying to place a person who steps off the plane today as equal as Māori were on 6 February 1840 - this is a breach of the Principles of the Treaty. This is trying to push Māori out of the way so New Zealand’s resources can be plundered and Māori have no say in it as kaitiaki of Papatūānuku.
As some wise person said in the Stuff comments (believe it or not) a few months ago:
Imagine you own some land.
You lease out the land to some tenants with a contract that states you still own the land, but they get the right to sublet the land out.
The tenants of that land, as well as the people they lease the land to now decide that they want to vote on what the contract actually meant (i.e. did they really lease the land or did they mean to buy the land).
You, as the land owner, have no vote in the matter. That’s pretty much what Act is wanting to do.
This Bill has not been properly consulted on. It has been shown in multiple ways that it constitutes a new breach of the Treaty of Waitangi as well as the current Principles and will result in huge legislative upheaval. It breaches international law. It completely ignores one signatory of the Treaty who has had the raw end of the deal for nearly 185 years already. It is creating misinformation and division in New Zealand and allowing the worst sorts of individuals and opinions to be platformed. This Bill opens New Zealand up for uncontrolled exploitation of the natural resources and the people for the benefit of the few and not the benefit of all.
I therefore oppose this Treaty Principles Bill.
