Protesting only way
On the face of it, Waitangi Day 2019 was a relatively peaceful one around the country compared with Waitangi Days of past. The Government’s entrance on to the marae in Waitangi was peaceful.
A few heckles, a female protester escorted away, but nothing of the nature of past years such as throwing a T-shirt at Queen Elizabeth, mud thrown at Don Brash, fish thrown at John Key, a dildo thrown at Steven Joyce and Helen Clark being reduced to tears.
There is not one thing that Ma¯ori have gained in their own country without protest or argument, not one thing.
Before the signing the Treaty, Pa¯keha and Ma¯ori relationships were very good. Since the signing, the relationship has been very bad.
The Waitangi Treaty is our founding document for New Zealand. Its purpose was to allow Victoria to govern her colonial settlers while they lived in Aotearoa and to share resources back to the Queen, to have a partnership with the natives, while protecting native land and rights, as natives, to their own resources.
The argument that native Ma¯ori woke up one morning and suddenly decided to give away their sovereignty to another country and to a queen they’d never heard of, has worn thin in this day and age. Especially so nowadays, when we all know that James Cook was under orders to look for land to harness for Mother England, in order to extend her empire.
The results of this, as history shows, were the New Zealand land grab wars which only started immediately after the signing of the Treaty. However, the land grab has never stopped. The records will say they ended in 1870. History tells another story.
In recent times we’ve had Nga¯ Tama Toa in 1972 pitching their tent on Parliament lawns, protesting against the colonial policies continuing to manage Ma¯ori language and race into extinction. Such as the breast suppression feeding policy forbidding Ma¯ori to breastfeed their own children, only to wet nurse children of colonial settlers. The language suppression policy forbidding Ma¯ori to speak their own language, and the eagerness to build prisons for Ma¯ori under the police policy of protecting the settlers and securing lands for them — this was printed on the walls of the Hastings Police Station 1886 now restored
I myself have been restricted under the pepper-potting policy in the late ’70s and early ’80s as to where I could live in Wellington suburbs when applying for flats. Only so many Ma¯ori were allowed to live in inner-city suburbs so as not to have too many of the native kind under foot.
All of these policies give rise to the definition of the song by David Grace titled The Treaty is a Fraud.
In 1982 when Judge Joe Williams sang a song on Radio with Pictures with the band Aotearoa titled Stand up for your Rights I, along with producer Brent Hansen, were summoned to court by the Race Relations Office for broadcasting racist songs to the New Zealand public.
So what does all of this mean on Waitangi Day when we celebrate one nation, one people? Thoughts go back to the fact that Ma¯ori have never gained any benefits, not one, without protest or argument.
Waitangi Day is the main platform where Ma¯ori can have a say, to protest, to argue for the true essence of the Treaty, for equal equity and the best chance of being heard by the Government and have eye-to-eye contact with the Prime Minister.
When Pa¯keha New Zealanders realise they too can make claims to the Treaty Office, to protect and make gains for our country, rather than thinking it’s solely for Ma¯ori to utilise, we will move forward for the better, together. Ma¯ori have put in claims to protect the waterways, why don’t Pa¯keha, too?
Ma¯ori do not want Pa¯keha to leave. The Treaty of Waitangi is a document to share everything equally, not for anyone to hold sovereignty over the other. Besides, it’s hard for me to separate myself in two. As Whina Cooper said, “Race relations will be solved in the bedroom” and I am the result of just that.
And I can say this as a Pa¯keha as well. I would not exist if my ancestors did not leave Worth of Kent in the 1860s to come to the Land of the Long White Cloud.
Na reira, mauriora kia tatau katoa.