Experts: You are wrong, Sir William
Sir William Gallagher is woefully illinformed about the Treaty of Waitangi, notable academics say.
The fencing magnate caused a stir during a speech to Waikato businesspeople on Friday night, proclaiming the Treaty of Waitangi both a fraud and a rort.
Sir William expanded on his comments in an interview with the Waikato Times on Sunday sparking widespread concern and apologies. Now his assertions have been dismantled point by point.
University of Auckland professor Dame Anne Salmond, one of the country’s most distinguished historians, said it was sad to see such unbalanced views given airtime.
‘‘If you haven’t taken the trouble to get a balanced view, your views aren’t worth a lot. We need to stop having double standards, and stop allowing people who really don’t know much to be given some sort of credence, because the fact they claim the authority on such matters is worrying.’’
Ma¯ ori didn’t cede sovereignty
As with any contract, it’s the signed version of the Treaty of Waitangi that counts, Dame Anne said. There is no questioning the legitimacy of the Treaty of Waitangi, signed and marked with moko, and since validated by scholars.
The Ma¯ ori version of the Treaty of Waitangi was the most important for understanding the contract, as the agreement was debated in Ma¯ ori, Dame Anne said.
It shows Ma¯ ori did not cede sovereignty, but instead agreed to a gift exchange: kawanatanga for tino rangatiratanga.
‘‘Kawanatanga was given to the Queen, and that was very clearly the right to have a governor, but a governor was not the same as a sovereign. The chiefs were granted tino rangatiratanga too, and those are the absolute powers of a chief.
‘‘Working out how those things balance out, and how they’ve balanced out over time, is really what we’re dealing with in discussions around the Treaty .’’
National co-ordinator for education programme Tangata Tiriti, Dr Ingrid Huygens, said it was ignorance that put Sir William so wrong.
‘‘The 2014 Waitangi Tribunal found Ma¯ ori did not give up sovereignty, in Te Tiriti, the Ma¯ ori text.
‘‘I’m guessing that William Gallagher will only ever have read the English version of the Treaty, which does say that Ma¯ ori hereby cede sovereignty. But Te Tiriti o Waitangi doesn’t say that, in fact it affirms that Ma¯ ori retain their rangatiratanga.’’
Ma¯ ori and Aotearoa are legitimate terms
Sir William further claimed there is no definition of Ma¯ ori, saying ‘‘you are Ma¯ ori if you feel you are Ma¯ ori’’. Not everyone can be Ma¯ ori, Huygens said.
‘‘To be Ma¯ ori is to have a whakapapa which related back to a certain iwi and certain ancestors. Even today that has to be verified. You have to prove your ancestry.’’
Huygens said while Sir William was correct in saying Ma¯ ori in 1840 meant ‘‘normal’’ or ‘‘common’’, he was incorrect in saying the term wasn’t used to describe indigenous New Zealanders until ten years later.
‘‘It is used in 1840 – because it is in the Treaty. In Tiriti, the word Ma¯ ori is referred to the native New Zealanders as tangata Ma¯ ori. The Treaty actually says the words, tangata Ma¯ ori – he’s just not reading or understanding the Ma¯ ori text.
‘‘The phrase ‘nga¯ tangata Ma¯ ori’ appears in both the preamble and article three of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, so clearly it was well understood in 1840 .’’
Waikato University associate professor of Ma¯ ori and Indigenous studies Sandy Morrison, of Maniapoto, Te Arawa and Tainui, said the British were struggling to find a name to address Ma¯ ori at the time of signing. Tangata Ma¯ ori was a phrase constructed to describe the people of New Zealand from a settlers perspective.
‘‘Ma¯ ori were often called New Zealanders,’’ Morrison said. ‘‘The settlers weren’t called New Zealanders. In most of the writing, they always meant Ma¯ ori. [Sir William] clearly doesn’t know that either.’’
Sir William also said Aotearoa was the creation of ‘‘a guy called Smith’’, in apparent reference to Judge Thomas H Smith of the Native Land Court, who used the term in his 1878 translation of the national anthem.
Huygens said it was a Ma¯ ori word, not a term created by Smith. She said the word Aotearoa was introduced through traditional stories of creation, not those of a Native Land Court judge.
‘‘My understanding is that it was a name used by some to describe the islands of New Zealand,’’ she said.
‘‘Iwi held different names of both the North and South Island, and indeed, New Zealand as a whole, so there was no one accepted name.’’
New Zealand isn’t ‘‘fenced off’’
Sir William gave an example of a ‘‘fenced off’’ Whiritoa beach as ‘‘apartheid’’ by Ma¯ ori when describing the Foreshore and Seabed Act as ‘‘handing over the rights of all New Zealanders’’.
Dr Ingrid Huygens said the comparison was incorrect and around the wrong way.
‘‘Apartheid refers to a system where small white minority denied the rights of the brown majority in the country of those indigenous people.
‘‘There’s way more riparian areas that have been fenced off by private owners, many of whom who are foreign.’’
A spokesperson for the Waikato Regional Council said, ‘‘as we understand it, the public certainly does have access to the beach’’.
Morrison said, ‘‘there’re huge tracts of the coastline that are in private nonMa¯ ori ownership and they are all inaccessible that we don’t hear about’’.
Sir William also took issue with ‘‘these bloody reparations’’, referring to Treaty settlements.
‘‘That is all about reparation for historical injustices and as a civilised, advanced nation, we should be doing that,’’ Morrison said.
‘‘The Treaty settlement process is one way to make reparations, and reparation should not be mistaken for separatism.
‘‘And to call it separatism is to deny all the inequities that exist now, all the historical injustices, all the historical trauma that was left.’’
She said the reparation of Ma¯ ori was one to two per cent of the value of what was lost through breaches of the Treaty.
‘‘In other words, Ma¯ ori are donating roughly 98 per cent of wealth to the common good. They’re not claiming it back.’’
Sir William also said the Treaty papers at Te Papa were fraudulent documents – when they are actually copies, Huygens explained.
‘‘Since March, the originals have a permanent exhibit at He Tohu National Library of New Zealand.’’
Further reading
Both Huygens and Morrison encouraged people to read the English translation of the Ma¯ ori text of the Treaty, Dr Claudia Orange’s The Treaty of Waitangi, and illustrated The Story of a Treaty.
For a full explanation on the te reo Ma¯ ori text of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, they recommended the 2014 Waitangi Tribunal report, He Whakaputanga me te Tiriti. They also recommended the 2012 independent report on the same hearing, Ngapuhi Speaks: He Wakaputanga and Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Other recommended authorities include Ranginui Walker’s Ka Whawhai
Tonu Ma¯ tou, and Michael King’s The
Penguin History of New Zealand.
‘‘If you haven’t taken the trouble to get a balanced view, your views aren’t worth a lot. We need to stop having double standards, and stop allowing people who really don’t know much to be given some sort of credence.’’
Dame Anne Salmond