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Governments in New Zealand have legislated a large number of settlements extinguishing many hundreds of claims taken by Māori against the Crown for breaches of the country’s founding document, Te Tiriti o Waitangi. They portray settlements as a great success for Māori and the Crown. Māori disagree. Settlements are government-determined and imposed on Māori using a smoke and mirrors approach that masks successive governments’ true intentions: to claw back Māori legal rights; to extinguish all claims; and to maintain White control over Māori. In short, to uphold the Doctrine of Discovery in further breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Māori claimants and negotiators report being enticed into the process by false promises only to become traumatised and disenchanted. Yet many take a pragmatic stance and sign settlements, making the best they can out of a bad deal that goes nowhere near compensating for their actual loss. They know that despite what legislation may say, the settlements are not full, not fair and not final and that, like all previous settlements, they will be revisited. They also know that unless fundamental changes are made to the constitutional makeup of the country, there is no prospect of justice and reconciliation for Māori.
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The State of Maori Rights brings together a set of articles written between 1994 and 2009. It places on record the Maori view of events and issues that took place over these years, issues that have been more typically reported to the general public from a 'mainstream' media perspective. It is an important documentation of these fifteen years of New Zealand history, recording the assertion of Maori rights as the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand, focusing on Maori issues and experiences and written from a Maori perspective.
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“The need for constitutional transformation has become quite clear in the Māori world over the last 12 or 13 years.” — Professor Margaret Mutu.
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From 1840 to this day Māori have protested that English immigrants to New Zealand were acting far in excess of the rights they had been afforded. Those rights derived from acknowledgement made by the King of England in 1836 of the paramount authority of Māori chiefs in New Zealand as set out in He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o nga Hapu o Nu Tireni (the Māori version of the Declaration of Independence) and the subsequent signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, a Māori language treaty made between Māori and the Queen of England. The rights conveyed included allowing the Queen of England to take responsibility for maintaining peace and good order amongst English immigrants while they lived under the paramount authority of Māori chiefs as the rulers of their own country. Examination of the original nineteenth-century documents setting out these rights and conditions reveals that mistranslation has played a significant role in allowing the suppression of the protests of Māori by English settlers. While the Māori versions of official documents uphold the Māori understandings, the English versions do not. The English versions convey the erroneous notion that Māori were unsophisticated, child-like and desperately seeking English protection. Written histories of New Zealand almost all either disregard or refute the Māori language versions of these documents and Māori understandings of the nature of the Declaration and the Treaty. Oral traditions of many Māori tribal groups around the country, on the other hand, have maintained these understandings. As a result Māori continue to assert their sovereignty over New Zealand despite the severe disadvantages they now live under both numerically and in terms of all officially measured socio-economic indicators.
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Environmental Politics and Policy in Aotearoa New Zealand is a comprehensive introduction to confronting some of today's most urgent challenges. Global warming, threats to biodiversity, contamination of waterways and other environmental issues confront today's citizens with critical challenges that are fundamentally political. Power, authority and state action enable current practices - and through politics and policy that power can be harnessed to create a more ecologically sustainable planet. In this book, leading scholars from around Aotearoa introduce students to environmental politics and policy based in this country's unique institutional, cultural and resource context. The text focuses on the key importance of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the characteristics of the natural environment in Aotearoa and the role of gender dynamics in the distribution of power, before turning to how this unique setting informs and is, in turn, informed by the global context of environmental politics. The authors take a systemic view of environmental politics and governance in New Zealand, addressing the philosophical and ideational debates about who and what matters (both human and non-human), the political institutions that embed and enact these ideas, and how these ideas then manifest in particular arenas - from climate and freshwater to energy and farming. Practical tips - how to make a submission, organise a protest, write a policy brief or a press release - are woven throughout.
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The British relied on the legal fiction known as the Doctrine of Discovery to dispossess Māori of Aotearoa New Zealand and the Indigenous Peoples of Canada, the United States and Australia and to violently take over their territories. British colonisation continues to severely disadvantage these Indigenous Peoples who have never given up their fight to recover their lands, resources, and power. This chapter draws on the work of Indigenous scholars to provide a very brief overview of just some of the methods adopted by the British to dispossess the Indigenous Peoples of Canada, the United States and Australia and the struggles in those countries to achieve land restitution. It then considers the situation for Māori in more detail. It provides an overview of the schemes the British dreamt up to steal Māori land and the steps Māori have taken as we tried to achieve land and resource restitution over the past century.
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