Hobson’s real (and historic) pledge
Attempting to interpret what someone has said in a language not their own 178 years ago is risky at best. When Lieutenant-Governor William Hobson said ‘‘he iwi tahi tatau’’ (we are one people) at the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, he used some of the few Ma¯ ori words he knew, but do we really know what message he was trying to convey?
Hobson’s comment probably reflected the then common assumption that all Ma¯ ori would eventually be assimilated into a new, homogenous British European society and their customs and folklore would eventually be replaced by British law and Christianity.
It was a naı¨ve attitude which permeated all British colonies and, sadly, still exists in some quarters of New Zealand today.
We are not one people, never will be and should not try to be. More importantly, Ma¯ ori in 1840 were not one people and Nga¯ puhi leaders who signed the Treaty would never have presumed to be signing for anyone but themselves. To be one people with people as strange as Pa¯ keha¯ would have been simply unthinkable.
Many senior Nga¯ puhi leaders had not wanted to sign the Treaty or have a governor who would be senior to them. They were paramount leaders of their people. They recognised few equals and no superiors. They wanted the British Governor to go home.
Significantly, their ariki leaders Nene and Patuone said that had they been asked to expel the British 20 years earlier, they would have done so with little difficulty. But by 1840, many of their grandchildren had Pa¯ keha¯ fathers and it was then too late. Faced with that reality, they wanted British law to control British people in New Zealand and nothing more than that. That all people in New Zealand became British subjects whether they wanted to be or not, understood it, or even cared one way or the other, is without question. Also without question is the systematic, deliberate and cynical dishonesty with which Ma¯ ori people were denied their rights as British subjects by officials and authorities for most of the century and half which followed. Unimaginably huge tracts of land were simply stolen under a range of official and legal but morally wrong instruments, including armed invasion. One of the most important principles of the Treaty of Waitangi was the right to own property either collectively or privately, free from interference of the state. That principle was established by the Magna Carter in 1215, encapsulated in British law in 1582, and simply repeated in Article Two of the Treaty of Waitangi of 1840; it should apply to all New Zealanders equally. It does not.
The right of Ma¯ ori to own land and resources is a common law right, established in New Zealand by the Treaty of Waitangi when British law was introduced, rather than a ‘‘Treaty right’’, which is a concept without the same robust legal foundation. A right they have been denied many times. Many traditions were outlawed and many unjust restrictions were placed on a free living people. Some of these are still applied to Ma¯ ori tribal land and activities today.
In effect, all Ma¯ ori people have ever asked for was to be treated the same as all other New Zealanders, to have their pre1840 property rights recognised and protected as common law rights and to have the same freedom to manage their own affairs without interference, as do all other people. Ma¯ ori have never asked to be treated as special or different, only that those things which properly belonged to them prior to 1840 should still be safe in their ownership after 1840.
That reasonable and lawful expectation has been and still is denied them in many instances today. No other sector of New Zealand society would tolerate that imposition.
As various governments attempted to address these very real issues over the years a number of flawed concepts have been generated. As settlements of Ma¯ ori claims against the Crown have gained publicity in the past few decades, one of those concepts without any basis in logic is that we now have separate laws and rules which give Ma¯ ori advantages that non-Ma¯ ori don’t have.
But paying a debt is not giving unfair advantage.
We are not one people; we are many people who make up one nation with one form of citizenship and one set of laws which bind all of us. That one group of our fellow New Zealanders has been unlawfully dispossessed is a fact of history. Redressing that dispossession is not separate treatment. It is an attempt to give back some of what was unlawfully taken.