Waitangi Day

Acknowledging the people of Ngaapuhi as the mana whenua of the district that embraces Waitangi. [Mana whenua are the Maaori of their own particular area on Aotearoa who maintain as much of their customary rights as is possible, while managing responsibilities and obligations to the people of their area.]

Considered as the founding document of New Zealand, the Treaty of Waitangi has been a controversial wounding for many Maaori. It’s difficult to accurately convey the volume of betrayal, mistrust and bewilderment many Maaori retain today as a result of the speed in which the British from 1840 onwards methodically consumed our sovereignty, our understandings of the world, our language, our customs, our natural resources, our ancient systems of education, health, housing, science. We now know that this very process is structured to be rapid moving, brutal, violent, erasing, psychologically and physically destabilising and distorting. It is a process of assimilation that through no cause of our own doing effectively made us the living property of the British.

2020 was my first visit to the grounds of Waitangi during commemorations. I was standing a mere few meters from the home of James Busby, who co-authored the treaty alongside William Hobson. The treaty was translated into Maaori by Henry and Edward Williams, and then presented to an invited gathering of Maaori chiefs on the 6th of February, 1840, out on the front lawn and home of Busby. The entire process written, translated and presented in four days.

(image supplied)

Approximately 40 Maaori chiefs became the first treaty signatories. Over the next several months, copies of the treaty were made and taken around Aotearoa that gathered a further 500 Maaori signatures. Many Maaori chiefs both male and female, declined to sign. Copies of the treaty were not taken to all areas of Aotearoa. 

The ongoing impacts have been devastating for Maaori. I do not wish to see many more of us having to survive gentrified mashups of romanticised brutality that’s allowed for the replacement of our identity. Successive NZ governments have embedded into society stagnant patterns that at times show signs of a quickening pace in which satisfactory acknowledgements and reparations are being made that include the return of sovereignty and land to Maaori.

The first Waitangi Day celebration came about in 1934, two years after a Governor-General had gifted the private residence and grounds of Busby to the people of New Zealand. The iconic house and surrounding grounds became known as ‘The Treaty House’. Shambolic restorations were made to the house prior to the treaty signing centenary and new additions to the treaty grounds included flagpoles and a canon. 

The treaty grounds have witnessed much architectural change and development in recent decades. There are now two museums on site; Te Rau Aroha and Te Koongahu Museum of Waitangi, there’s Treaty House, a carving studio, Te Whare Ruunanga and traditional waka taua are on display. 

(image supplied)

The festivities, kai stalls, tents set up for specific religious talks, flags of nearly every country flapping about in the breeze, kapa haka and other Pasifika groups performing on multiple stages set up around Waitangi grounds... seriously - there are stalls for practically everything from air to fill a tyre tube to float in the surrounding waters to traditional Maaori healing sessions to the NZ Fire Service doing live demonstrations re 'how to put out kitchen fires'! For as informal as the hive of activity on the grounds seem, there are also formalities each year that the government and other dignitaries are obligated to attend. Serious talks are had with leaders of Ngaapuhi and other esteemed guests including the NZ government and other political party leaders. 

My acute awareness of how colonial harm is still being perpetuated and unseen by so many of us Maaori and non-Maaori allowed me to come away from my first Waitangi Day celebrations feeling discombobulated and fractured yet at the same time, bedazzled and almost taken captive by the huge presence of technology, colour, sound, graphics, story-boards, music, atmosphere, images. My responses were alarming to me. I realised just how easy it could still be to allow my identity to be replaced if it were not for my vigilance to maintain a firm resistance against normalising a gaslit embroidered tapestry of history. 

This year I am celebrating the ways I’ve pulled myself through colonial impacts to have become fiercely passionate, loyal and loving to the mana of these glorious islands my ancient ancestry connects me to.

Generations of Maaori before me, my own and generations after me will continue to hold a firm resistance against the slow burn of planned extinction of our culture, of us as a people. 

William Hobson was said to have greeted each Maaori who signed with a handshake afterwards saying 'He iwi tahi tatou' (We are [now] one people). 

181 years later, are we there yet? No. 

Te Ataarangi Waaka 

No Ngaati Kahungunu, Muauupoko, Rangitaane ki Wairarapa