Remember Donna Awatere-Huata?
Donna was a former ACT list MP from 1996-2003. In 2003 Awatere-Huata was expelled from the ACT party due to allegations of fraud regarding an educational charity.
In the 1970s Donna was one of the earlier activists for Maori causes becoming heavily involved in the Maori protest movement.
In 1984 Donna published Maori Sovereignty, a prominent text in the Maori protest movement.
In Maori Sovereignty she argued the cost to Maori of cultural imperialism and the importance of indigenous peoples recovering their own cultures, outlined what Maori sovereignty meant to her and illustrated the violence of white imperialism.
I reference Donna Awatere-Huata because I think she was one of the smarter Maori activists of her time!
Back in the early 80s, the antagonistic Muldoon led an interventionist, socially conservative National government. Remember Think Big and wage and price freezes?
How many of us had Maori activism, let alone Maori sovereignty, front and centre of our minds?
Political awareness for Joe Average was most likely to be confined to tax increases on beer, cigarettes and petrol at budget time!
Political apathy?
But not our Donna, she was accurately attuned to the Kiwi psyche. Observing, “Pakeha politicians will continue to remain blind to virtually every aspect of the nationalists’ project, and that it is this, the Pakeha’s racist refusal to take Maori sovereignty seriously that offers its promoters their best chance of success.”
Fast forward to the 16th of November, 2008, and Prime Minister-Designate John Key announced the details of the confidence and supply arrangement reached between the National Party and the Maori Party.
From this point, Maori activists started achieving serious traction towards their goal of:
- A New Constitution,
- Dual Sovereignty,
- Full Maori control by 2040.
And how were they going to do this?
Could it be, as Donna Awatere predicted, simply by the continued apathy of the voting public of New Zealand?
Apathetic voters are making this goal easy and, worryingly, inevitable. But political deceit was beginning to play a feature role.
Key explained:
“The agreement includes the establishment of a group to consider constitutional issues including Maori representation. The National Party agrees it will not seek to remove the Maori seats without the consent of the Maori people.”
“On the foreshore and seabed legislation, National recognises the concerns of the Maori Party. The National-led government will in this term review the application of the legislation to ascertain whether it adequately maintains and enhances mana whenua. If repeal is necessary, the Government will ensure there is appropriate protection in place to ensure all New Zealanders enjoy access to the foreshore and seabed, through existing and potentially new legislation.”
Two years later Key topped up the fuel tank of activists by, on 20 April 2010, announcing:
“…the New Zealand Government has given its support to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Maori activists could really feel the rubber hitting the road now!
The decision to support the declaration was conveyed in a speech to the United Nations in New York by the Minister of Maori Affairs, Dr Pita Sharples.
Did we, the voting public, know Key had authorised this trip by Sharples?
Did we heck! Pita Sharples’ trip to New York to sign the declaration on behalf of New Zealand was kept secret!
That’s not political apathy. That is political deceit!
“New Zealand has always supported the overall aspirations of the declaration, and we already implement most provisions contained within it,” said Mr Key.
The statement in support of the declaration:
- acknowledges that Maori hold a special status as tangata whenua, the indigenous people of New Zealand and have an interest in all policy and legislative matters;
- affirms New Zealand’s commitment to the common objectives of the declaration and the Treaty of Waitangi; and
- reaffirms the legal and constitutional frameworks that underpin New Zealand’s legal system, noting that those existing frameworks define the bounds of New Zealand’s engagement with the declaration.
“While the declaration is non-binding, it both affirms accepted rights and establishes future aspirations. My objective is to build better relationships between Maori and the Crown, and I believe that supporting the declaration is a small but significant step in that direction.” said Key.
So, when Key was making this wonderful announcement about the National/Maori Party, we can only deduce one of the conditions of the “confidence and supply arrangement” was that National would allow Sharples to sign the UNDRIP declaration!
Political deceit afoot?
We should also not forget Labour’s Helen Clark refused to sign UNDRIP because she understood that the Declaration posed a direct threat to the constitutional integrity of the sovereign New Zealand state.
We must also note crucial wording in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
“The Declaration is an affirmation of accepted international human rights and also expresses new, and non-binding, aspirations.”
Non-binding! Yet, on the 25th January, one Will Trafford wrote in Te Ao Maori News:
“National’s Key government, bound future administrations to enact co-governance.”
Spin = belief = enabled by political apathy and political deceit?
The signing of UNDRIP in 2010 dramatically incentivised activists and this led to the Iwi Forum commissioning the Independent Working Group on Constitutional Transformation to produce a report, subsequently called Matike Mai.
Matike Mai was framed to clarify priorities for Maori self-determination and the pathways, including legislative, towards Maori sovereignty.
The project was mainly funded by the J R McKenzie Trust.
The Terms of Reference were deliberately broad:
To develop and implement a model for an inclusive Constitution for Aotearoa based on tikanga and kawa, He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Niu Tireni of 1835, Te Tiriti o Waitangi of 1840, and other indigenous human rights instruments which enjoy a wide degree of international recognition.
In February 2016 the group presented its report on its findings and recommendations on models for a new constitution and steps to be taken towards such a transformation.
Matike Mai states, “It also recognises that there will be opposition to the ideas presented and that more work needs to be done.”
Unsurprisingly, the writers acknowledge that the non-Maori members of the populace will not be happy that Maori propose to rule in their own right.
Matike Mai shows 3 spheres – “We call those spheres of influence the ‘rangatiratanga sphere’, where Maori make decisions for Maori and the ‘kawanatanga sphere’ where the Crown will make decisions for its people”. “The sphere where they will work together as equals, we call the ‘relational sphere’ because it is where the Tiriti partnership will operate”.
Throughout Matike Mai the fallacy that the treaty was a partnership is a core theme.
Matike Mai was to become the framework for what eventually morphed into the He Puapua Report.
In 2019, a group of Auckland University academics were commissioned by the NZ Labour party to prepare and release the report called He Puapua and this is where Maori sovereignty aspirations were crystalised.
He Puapua is an activist-driven blueprint, constructed on the myth that the treaty was a partnership. A blueprint to replace our present form of government, a radical restructure that is comprised of a Maori Government and a Government for Non-Maori.
So volatile were the proposals contained in He Puapua that Ardern’s government found it necessary to keep it hidden from the public until after the 2020 election.
An act of unprecedented political deceit!
Political deceit assisted by political apathy has enabled tribal influence and control to be embedded into New Zealand’s governance.
Te Ao Maori is being entrenched deeper and deeper into young minds and is dominating our education syllabus.
Matike Mai expressed, “Concerns related to constitutional conventions such as transparency and mechanisms to ensure that the authority of Maori was not subordinated to that of the majority”.
This is probably exactly where the country is now. Legislation being passed where, in the event that Maori disagree with the majority, the government will not have the final say.
The time is upon us to cast off our political apathy!
Democracy is being dismantled by apathy and deceit!
“The price of apathy towards public affairs, is to be ruled by evil men.”
