The Humpty Dumpty Principle at work: The role of mistranslation in the British Settlement of Aotearoa. 'The Declaration of Independence' and 'He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o nga hapu o Nu Tireni'

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.