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Jack Vowles's avatar

Optimistic!

On: ‘it’s become increasingly recognised that the many chiefs who signed the Treaty in 1840 weren’t ceding their sovereignty’. The problem is, the concept of sovereignty is not well understood, and was in flux at the time.

If one wants to be textualist, the 1835 Māori Declaration of Independence claimed both kawanatanga and rangatiratanga. Te Te Tiriti signed away kawanatanga to the Crown which was more than ‘custodianship’. It means ‘government’ and indeed the surrounding test says ‘complete government forever’. That said, recognition of rangatiratanga did promise that Māori would continue to govern their own affairs.

On ‘Māori would be treated equally with all non-Māori’. Article 3 has traditionally been interpreted as Māori as individuals having equal rights as British subjects, morphing into equal rights as citizens as time went on. Most people still understand it in this way.

Equal treatment collectively on a 50:50 Māori-non-Māori basis has emerged more recently, which has become known as co-governance. This is the big sticking point and goes well beyond the Tiriti text and, I would argue, the understanding at the time. If it were applied to the highest levels of government, as some people want, it’s simply not consistent with liberal democracy.

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