Sovereignty ceded

In ceding full sovereignty to the Queen of England in Article 1 of the Treaty of Waitangi it is clear-cut that the Queen is not a chief amongst chiefs, as Anahera Herbert-Graves writes (May 4). The Queen is sovereign, and Herbert-Graves’ chiefs are the Queen’s subjects.

The ToW was not our constitutional founding document, as Herbert-Graves claims. It was a simple ceding of sovereignty agreement.

If a constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organisation is governed, thus constituting what the entity is, the November 16, 1840 Royal Charter is the first statement on how the governance of New Zealand was to be organised. This has to be our constitutional founding document.

Noted pro-Ma¯ ori historians concur that the 1835 Declaration of Independence (He Whakaputanga) was a non-event, which was abandoned in the face of continued fighting between confederation members. The chiefs never met yearly, in congress, as Clause 3 of the document required. In short, the 1835 DOI never got off the ground.

I wonder what she is referring to when she hints at ‘exploitation.’ Very little if any exploitation occurred in New Zealand. The chiefs, of their own free will, ceded sovereignty to the Queen of England for protection from other foreigners, for law and order, legal land ownership and British governance. They then sold most of the land, much of it under Article 2, where they could only sell to the Queen, this to protect the