"I will not consent. If you give me what is not life, I shall know. Of what is the use of the land after it is broken? When the land is broken the owner perishes. This is my place, why do you seek after it? It is only a little piece. Let it remain to me."
These words, aimed at stopping the lease of further land for gold mining and kauri logging, were said by Te Hira Te Tuiri, chief of a Coromandel iwi, Ngati Tamatera, in 1869. The speech came just 29 years after the Treaty of Waitangi.
Like similar statements around New Zealand at the time, and since, his speech failed. In complex and quite devious Native Land Court moves including individualising titles, the Crown ignored the treaty, and Ngati Tamatera lost its land. Mining and kauri logging continued unchecked.
Waitangi 2002
With the history of the Coromandel and many other parts of New Zealand in mind, the three of us - Jeanette, Sue and Nandor - travelled to Waitangi in early February this year, responding to an invitation to visit Te Tii Marae.
Other, mainly younger, Greens had already joined with young Maori and Pakeha attending a nationhood-building workshop there followed by both Maori and - for the first time - Pakeha discussion forums on treaty issues. These hui were hardly reported on by mainstream media, but Nandor was a participant over five days, and describes the process, and results, as "awesome" and "ground-breaking".
Some elders, during the warm welcome to the three of us, commented on issues we have in common - the knowledge that the foundation of our existence is respect for the natural world - land, water, and other living things.
A point made at Waitangi was that the treaty can protect us all. If it had not been for the treaty, land under our railways and under state plantation forests would have been sold when the rail company and the forests were sold. It was not. The treaty gives us an argument that counts internationally to prevent privatisation of national assets, growing of GE food and patenting of New Zealand plants and animals by multinationals. It is in all our interests to support it.
Avoidance is no option
Sue has summed up well, in a report to Auckland Greens, that "issues around Te Tiriti o Waitangi and decolonisation are among the most divisive in our society, as they touch our entire history and our deepest psyche".
Does the fact that people are afraid mean we shouldn't talk about our history and the treaty? Does it mean that as a party we should fear taking a public position on a document which is absolutely fundamental to who we are and where we are in the world?
An important part of the treaty in Maori can be translated as: "The Queen of England confirms and guarantees to the chiefs, to the tribes, and to all the people of New Zealand, the absolute chieftainship (tino rangatiratanga) of their lands, of their homes and all their treasured possessions".
People often translate this as meaning "Maori sovereignty". This is frightening for some. They say it means "handing over everything to Maori". This is certainly not our understanding of what is being asked for. It may not even be an adequate translation as it raises as many questions as it answers. It is probably better not to use the words until we have an agreement on what they mean. What we do know they mean is that Maori did not sign away their authority over their people, their resources or their treasures.
How this can be given effect in 21st century New Zealand is the real issue - that discussion will be part of the journey, and it is a difficult one.
Generally, as a population, we were not taught what the Maori version of the treaty said, were not taught the truth about land confiscations... not even taught the incredible story of Te Whiti-o-Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi and their non-violent resistance in Taranaki.
The "myths" continue - that injustices against Maori have been more than compensated for by "special treatment" and by land and fisheries settlements. In fact, for example, most educational grants to Maori children come from small iwi trust funds, not the Government, and most hapu and iwi land claims have yet to be heard.
Loss of Maori resources
Let us now dispel, once and for all, the biggest myth - that Maori statistics of deprivation stem from a poor stone-age people grappling with a new economy, and not from the breaking of that contract.
The region of greater Auckland the three of us live in, and help represent, once contained arguably the largest organic gardens in New Zealand history, and huge Maori wealth.
Immediately after the treaty, tribes around the Hauraki Gulf and North Auckland expanded their agricultural base to service the booming settlers' town of Auckland and it is recorded in one year alone 1792 waka carried into Auckland Harbour 1400 baskets of onions, 1700 baskets of maize, 1200 baskets of peaches, and unknown quantities of other fruit, pumpkins, potatoes, kumara, pigs and fish.
By the late 1840s, 43 Maori-owned sailing vessels were based at Auckland alone. Meanwhile other iwi-owned ships in both the North and South Islands carried produce including those which brought flour from the Waikato and Coromandel, ground at mills various hapu built themselves.
The wealth of two Hauraki iwi is perhaps best shown in a report of a hui in 1853, where Ngati Paoa arrived in a fleet of 30 canoes plus "several small sailing vessels" at a beach near Coromandel town and the hosts Ngati Tamatera provided a feast including 3000 baskets of potatoes and kumara and 80 pigs.
Land confiscations took that wealth, and we believe the effects are evident today. Last year, for example, in a "needs assessment" report by the Waikato District Health Board, deprivation statistics showed 76.2 percent of Maori over age 15 in the Hauraki District had an annual income of less than $20,000 and the district unemployment rate for Maori was 22.4 percent. The board said almost two thirds of Maori deaths in Waikato occurred under age 64, while for the total population of the region the figure was only about one quarter.
The real treaty
For several years – as described in the accompanying timeline - the Green Party has formally recognised the Maori version as taking precedence, but Waitangi Day this year appears to be the first time the wider public - and even some of our members - have been aware of that.
The international legal doctrine of contra preferentum means indigenous language versions of treaties between indigenous peoples and colonising powers are the ones that must be adhered to where there is disagreement. Added to this, both Governor Hobson and most of the Maori chiefs signed the Maori language version. It is significantly different from the English. It guaranteed tino rangatiratanga at hapu level - the authority for a hapu to manage its own affairs.
For those of us who are keen on developing policy, as the 160 or so at the January 2002 Coromandel policy conference were, it is also important we debate how the treaty can be applied in a meaningful way to all the different areas we are working on.
The discussion must include what the treaty cannot mean now. For example, most Pakeha as well as most Maori, we suspect, would hold the view that it must not detract from ordinary home and farm ownership. The majority of Maori and their personal assets are now outside traditional tribal areas.
Discussion must also address attempts by a few Maori corporate leaders to use the treaty as a strategy for environmentally-damaging money-making schemes. The treaty has been cited in recent years as a reason to again kill whales, albatrosses and seals, for logging native forest, for aquaculture in pristine bays and for proposed invasive tourism developments in or near national parks. We must be as wary of Maori corporatisation as we are of the Pakeha equivalent, especially when such corporates are outside the control of traditional structures, which protect the natural world, or are in partnership with
multinational firms.
But most Maori claims of injustice are genuine, and many remain hidden from a Pakeha-dominated media. There are still wahi tapu - Maori sacred places - being desecrated. A Thames swimming pool is permanently out of bounds to some children of the Hauraki and Thames iwi Ngati Maru. It was built on a burial ground. Sewage is still discharged over traditional shellfish beds. Nandor has examples which show how the justice and police systems work differently for Maori, or anyone such as himself who "looks different". Young Maori are more likely to be picked up from the street for questioning because of that - and statistics show they are more likely to be imprisoned.
The journey
As Green MPs embrace the party's tiriti policies, we are not "going back to 1840", do not romanticise society then and are aware of practices in both cultures at that time which would not be acceptable today.
We are on a new mission that weaves an exciting, and long overdue indigenous dimension to our party fabric of ecological wisdom, social and economic justice, non-violence and participatory democracy. No doubt we will gain, as individuals and as a party, much more than we will give in such a task.
We need to act, and learn, together. There is a whakatauki, a proverb, which says: Ko te totara totika ki roto i te wao - the straightest, tallest totara (are) in the heart of the forest - in other words, leaders are nothing without others around to support them.
And it should be said here; how can we truly understand the natural history of this country without the hundreds of years of Maori knowledge of it; of the poetry about native birds, animals and trees; the widely-ignored herbal remedies from plants, and indeed the spiritual reverence for mountains, lakes and rivers? Merely learning the meanings behind a local place name can be enriching. Tamaki-makau-rau - Tamaki of a hundred lovers: Maori name for Auckland - describes an area which commanded people's affections because of its physical location and fertile soils, but it also evokes the image of a hundred or so small volcanic cones, all in close proximity.
As a political party however, our main work in honouring the treaty must be at Parliament.
Late in the 19th century Maori revolutionary fighter and Ringatu Church founder Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki said just before he died: "The canoe to paddle, for you who follow me, is the law. Only the law can be pitched against the law." Te Whiti-o-Rongomai said at around the same time: "What the law has torn asunder, only the law can sew together. What legislation has broken and shattered, only legislation can put together."
It has to happen. Me tu tangata tatou - "let us stand tall"- and make it happen soon.
Kia ora, tatou katoa.
