Michael Bassett
Political historian Michael Bassett CNZM is the author of 15 books and was a regular columnist for the Fairfax newspapers and a former minister in the 1984–1990 governments.
In Newsroom on 6 March Dame Anne Salmond made a fool of herself when she lectured Richard Prebble about the two versions of the Treaty of Waitangi. She grandly informed him that Māori signed the version written in Māori, and proceeded to give us her take on what those words meant when translated into English.
Richard Prebble took a double degree at the University of Auckland in History and in Law. He knows that Māori signed the Māori version of the Treaty, and that that is the version that we should all use when discussing what the Treaty means. Funnily enough, it was a colleague of Anne Salmond’s at Auckland University, Sir Hugh Kāwharu, who was a professor of Māori studies and a Ngāti Whātua elder, who carefully translated the Māori version of the Treaty in the 1980s.
That translation was endorsed by the then Māori Queen and used by the 1990 Commission of which I was the chair, when New Zealand celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Treaty’s signing. Queen Elizabeth II, great grand-daughter of Queen Victoria, in whose name the original Treaty was signed, also accepted the Kāwharu translation when she was present at Waitangi on 6 February 1990.
We have no need of Anne Salmond’s ruminations on the subject, nor her insults to Richard Prebble. She demeans herself and all the others who, since Sir Āpirana Ngata’s comments about the Treaty in 1922, have known about the importance of the Māori version of the Treaty and its meanings. What Anne Salmond should be explaining to us is how, and why, she seems now to be at odds with Ngata, Kāwharu, the Māori Queen, and all the others who have been content to use the translations of the Māori version of the Treaty that have been readily available for more than a century. They form the basis for the principles that David Seymour wants recognition for in his bill that is before parliament. What does Anne Salmond know about the Māori language that Āpirana Ngata, Hugh Kāwharu and the late Māori Queen didn’t know? She should tell us.
New Zealand does not need modern, radical Māori make-believe, designed to turn the Treaty into an instrument of racial advantage for people who are nearly all more European than Māori in their ancestry.
This article was originally published by Bassett, Brash and Hide.
