Denis Hall
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Opinion
The Treaty is a worn and tattered document from 182 years ago, nearly ten generations and its relevance is long since gone. We live in a completely different world now. We are no longer a country of only two races.
There was a time when we cared so little about that Treaty document that it was lost and then found water damaged. All the people who wrote it and signed it are dead and gone. It served its purpose in 1840.
The collective difference between the two cultures was as great as it could possibly be back then, but in modern times Maori have been fully assimilated into Western culture.
The British didn’t adopt the Stone Age culture of the Maori – their culture was adopted by the Maori.
At the time when the Treaty was signed there were at most only 2500 British in New Zealand and 60,000 Maori.
The newcomers came from a highly advanced civilisation in comparison to the stone age culture of the Maori and brought with them the exciting opportunity for the Maori people to leapfrog hundreds of years of development.
Do some of us actually think that none of them was smart enough to see that amazing opportunity for what it was?
The benefits of colonisation for their culture were immense. Metals, glass, ceramics, pottery, and fabric to name but a few – not to mention cows, sheep, pigs and chooks and the wheel as well as a written language, education and so much more.
A treaty with promises of the Queen’s protection and equality under the law must have seemed pretty good when you were facing constant inter-tribal warfare, cannibalism and slavery. When you are living in the stone age with only feather cloaks and flax skirts, imagine how good wool blankets, warm clothes and shoes would seem in comparison. Not to mention having access to steel implements like an axe, knife or chisel enabling the building of a superior home.
That was back then though. We are in a totally different world now and it is a civilisation created by Western culture.
There is at large in the wider world, a highly developed and rapidly advancing civilisation and culture that encompasses the entire planet, and that culture and technological civilisation emanated from Europe. Yes, Europe is where European New Zealanders came from, and those cultural and technological values have been adopted by all the great nations on the planet including such ancient and confident cultures as China, Japan and India.
It’s true: don’t believe me, go and look. Their world is ruled by the motor car, electricity, the computer and the TV just like ours is. All of these wonders were developed in Europe and the USA.
The inventions and creations of the West influence every nation on the planet every single day.
The Chinese and Japanese adopted the modern civilisation as fast as they could and they were both ancient and highly developed cultures already, so why can’t Maori activists put aside their resentment and see all the benefits they enjoy every day for what they are?
Unfortunately, we are choosing to live to the drumbeat of a distant and savage past. A past of tribal wars and cannibalism when they were only interested in the present and not trying to anticipate what people in a future time might need.
Back then it was survival of the fittest. There was no co-governance. It was a life and death struggle where only the most warlike tribes survived.
Today’s New Zealanders with Maori heritage and New Zealanders with non-Maori heritage live in the same society. There are poor ones and rich ones but all with access to the advances and advantages of the great modern global society and culture.
Yet here we are trying to debate what relatively uneducated men in 1840 meant by a few words on a water damaged scrap of paper.
This battered and outmoded piece of parchment is an anachronism. It is the cause of all the worst divisions in New Zealand society and has been interpreted and reinterpreted by so many people of debatable integrity over so many years and in so many ways, that its sheer simplicity has been turned into a great national conundrum.
It’s time to put it in a glass case (give it a blessing) and learn to ignore it.
We have to remember that many of the Maori who signed the Treaty were new to the concept of giving gravitas to a mark on a document – a simple piece of paper – since most could neither read nor write. They needed to take their understanding of what they were scratching their mark on from the oral discussions around its contents rather than being able to take a copy home and read it for themselves, because they couldn’t read. And we have to remember that few of the people in attendance were bilingual.
The lives of all of us, be we white, brown, black, or brindle, today live in a society that prides itself in some kind of mythical adherence to the indefinable principles of the Treaty of Waitangi – while with great abandon ignoring the simple baseline principles of fair play, truth and equality.
Our governmental and politically blatant racism is being enshrined in legislation We use the Treaty to legislate against all kinds of basic principles every day and our future generations will have to live by it while lamenting our distinct lack of logic and integrity.
It is illogical and wrong to enact legislation that discriminates on the basis of race. It seems that racism is the enemy of all. Unless it can be found in the Treaty with a magnifying glass of lies and deception.
It is time to stop raking over the bones of long-dead arguments that have no relevance to our nationhood in today’s world.
It is time for New Zealand to grow up.
There is nothing in the lives of today’s Maori or European, Chinese or Indian, South American or Russian or Middle Eastern New Zealanders that even vaguely resembles the Maori way of life at the time the Treaty was conceived, written and signed.
Nothing!
They didn’t have co-governance; they had constant tribal wars and lived in forts to defend themselves from each other.
That’s why they were called “Maori Warriors”.
As for Maori Governance, it was non-existent when the Europeans arrived because all was settled by the power of the club and conquest until a stronger group came along and settled it with yet more blood. People need to read and understand New Zealand’s history.
Enough – it’s gone on long enough. It is time to grow up and join the rest of the civilised world as one united and equal group of New Zealanders.
