“We were here first,” is no justification for anything
10 July’s The Platform debate between Julian Batchelor and Buddy Mikaere, skillfully moderated by Sean Plunket, helped to highlight some of the issues in the co-governance controversy with particular reference to Batchelor’s meetings around the country.
Hopefully, New Zealanders may be starting to have a debate we should have had a long time ago. Major credit must go to The Platform for enabling discussion to take place. There are many places -- such as much mainstream media and, I regret to say, within legal organisations such as the New Zealand Law Society and the New Zealand Bar Association -- which promote one side of the debate but refuse to share the platforms they have with those who disagree.
”To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility…. [Those] who are accustomed to unlimited deference, usually feel this complete confidence in their own opinions on nearly all subjects.” So said John Stuart Mill 165 years ago, in On Liberty. It is a specific example of the historic struggle between liberty and authority.
I want to take Julian Batchelor to task for his emphasis on cultures and cultures being represented – 160 cultures in New Zealand, consulting with 160 cultures, he said several times, to indicate why he disagreed with co-governance involving a special position for the Māori culture. I take him to task, not because he claims infallibility but because he was undermining his own position.
It may seem technical or semantic at first sight, but it is crucial to note that a culture does not have a physical presence and does not represent views. Culture in the relevant sense means “The distinctive ideas, customs, social behaviour, products, or way of life of a particular nation, society, people, or period” (Oxford English Dictionary). These ideas and behaviour are the ideas and behaviour of individual people which become distinctive because many individuals within the nation, society, people or period have the same ideas or behave in a similar way.
A culture represents the dominant ideas. That a culture exists does not mean that everyone subscribes to the ideas, although authority figures and regimes, confident of their own infallibility, may suppress dissenting voices.
Only individual human beings have a physical presence within a community. Only individuals may consult or be consulted. Only individuals may represent others. They may do so as a group, with one or more spokespersons, with whom others agree, but they nevertheless speak and agree, as individuals. There is no such thing as a collective mind. Such a thing does not exist.
That, at root, is why racism is irrational and evil. It pretends that a category of people distinguished in some way by the nature of their ancestry are a collective mass with collective ideas, behaviour, etc. It proceeds as if there were one mind doing the thinking for all persons with that ancestry, dictating the ideas and actions of them all. A moment’s thought reveals this to be a ridiculous proposition.
Buddy Mikaere’s claim that Māori have a special entitlement because they were “here first” is incapable of rational justification; so, also, is Julian Batchelor’s claim that other cultures are entitled to participate. The only valid entitlement to anything is an individual entitlement. In a rational and just society, that entitlement must be earned by achievement.
No one can claim an entitlement derived from something done by someone else. The exploration of the Pacific and the discovery of New Zealand some 800 years ago by those great Polynesian navigators and explorers were monumental achievements. They are entitled to admiration and honour. They earned it.
Their achievements are not the achievements of their progeny, even of their children. No one living today is entitled to anything by reason of that achievement. Nor can someone claim an entitlement because they are of English, Chinese, Indian, Māori or any particular ancestry.
Glen McConnell's comment does not refute or even mention my explanation why the "we were here first" argument is illegitimate.
The 1835 Declaration is a completely different point but is also spurious. Mr McConnell is asserting that some Maori chiefs. and some settlers "created an entire nation of sovereign people operating together in a federation of and for all people of all races who settle here." It did no such thing. The 1835 Declaration was instigated by the British Resident James Busby, in response to a declaration by Charles Philippe Hippolyte de Thierry who was purporting (in dispatches from Tahiti) to declare independence for New Zealand, "that is my own Independence as Sovereign Chief."
In response, Busby called 34 northern chiefs together, at Waitangi, on 28 October 1835 to persuade them De Thierry's claims should be denied. The result of the meeting was the chiefs' declaration that they (the Confederation of the United Tribes) were sovereign over their territories (from about Thames northwards).
This exercise created some understanding of such matters by those chiefs and no doubt smoothed the way for the 1840 Treaty which was presented to "the chiefs of the Confederation chiefs of the subtribes of New Zealand and other chiefs." The short point is that whatever status ought properly to be attributed to the 1935 Declaration, it was overtaken by the Treaty, which ended: "So we, the Chiefs of the Confederation of the subtribes of New Zealand meeting here at Waitangi having seen the shape of these words which we accept and agree to record our names and our marks thus. Was done at Waitangi on the sixth of February in the year of our Lord 1840."
Regarding te tino rangatiratanga, it is in Article 2 by which the Crown agreed to "protect the chiefs, the subtribes and all the people of New Zealand in the unqualified exercise of their chieftainship over their lands, villages and all their treasures." By Article 1 they had "give[n] absolutely to the Queen of England forever the complete government over their land."
The quotations from the Treaty are Sir Hugh Kawharu's translation of the text signed by the chiefs. The words speak for themselves and give the lie to those who now try to maintain that governmental authority is vested elsewhere than in the Crown.
Sir Apirana Ngata stated it as clearly as may be in his 1922 booklet The Treaty of Waitangi An Explanation. (written as an explanation to "an old lady who asked me quite recently, "Now
you tell me what are its conditions and why is it the subject of discussion on the maraes?".) Of Article 1, he said:
"These are but a few words but they indicate a complete cession. This was the transfer by the Maori Chiefs to the Queen of England for ever of the Government of all their lands. What was the thing they transferred? What was the thing which they gave away so freely for ever? It was the Government of their lands. You are somewhat confused with the purport of those words "their lands" as being just a land matter. No, the real meaning includes "their boundaries or territories". The English word in the
English version of the Treaty, "territories". What is a "Government?" The English word is "Sovereignty". The English word for such a personage as a King or Queen is "Sovereign". This is the same as the Maori words "Ariki Tapairu" and is referred to as the absolute authority. The "Sovereign Power" of the English rests with the King or Queen and his or her Council called Parliament. This gives a clearer understanding of the term "Government" as used in this article of the Treaty, that is, it is the
absolute authority over the people which the article transmits into the hands of the Queen and her
Parliamentary Council."
Personally I doubt Maori were the first people here. It may be that Europeans settled here before the Maori but the government would rather the archaeological sites in Waipoua Forest were swept under the rug.
https://www.elocal.co.nz/Articles/2107
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Reaping+the+whirlwind+united+we+stand%2C+divided+we+fall%3A+the+Ngapuhi...-a0341131895
https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/Documents/WT/wt_DOC_111494834/Wai%2038%2C%20D022(a).pdf