Saturday was the 160th Anniversary of the attack by the British military on the settlement of Rangiaowhia in Waikato. It was also that day in 2024 that I realized how little I know about the events of the New Zealand Wars, the major participants and the outcomes of those events.
As I think about what it must have been like in Rangiaowhia to be under attack from a vastly superior armed force in 1864, I am starting to ask myself why my generally very good memory of what I was taught draws a near complete blank on Te Tiriti O Waitangi and the New Zealand Wars. In 14 years in the N.Z. education system, once lauded as one of the best in the world, I can only recall a couple of weeks during intermediate school being spent on these two very relevant subjects. Social studies, as the part of the curriculum dedicated to social sciences in Years 7-10 (when I was in the N.Z. school system) was called, covered a wide array of material, but my recollection of New Zealand material in general is pretty poor.
Thus, a whole lot of questions about Te Tiriti o Waitangi and New Zealand Wars that I have only started to find the answers for in recent years, have sprung to mind:
- Was there a general agreement to end the clashes between Maori and the Crown?
- What losses were there other than confiscation of land, and obviously people killed in fighting?
- Which iwi or hapu collaborated with the British; how did they think they would fare as opposed to how the collaboration actually went?
- What really happened with the Moriori?
There is this perception of the Treaty of Waitangi grievance settlement process being some kind of gravy train, an idea particularly espoused by New Zealand First and A.C.T. Party leaders Winston Peters and David Seymour. It has been given a boost by Hobson’s Pledge, an activist group that oppose affirmative actions for Maori, including redress under the Treaty of Waitangi.
But is the grievance settlement process really that bad?
For me, no it is not. When we commit crimes against a person or people, we expect there to be consequences and in giving the victims some kind of justice, redress or punishment is expected. As punishment is not generally applicable with none of the then perpetrators still around to atone for their crimes, and significant part of the sum of losses being economic or material, redress is appropriate along with an apology that acknowledges the losses. The settlements that have been done in Parliament enable this.
But it is more than just the material losses that need to be addressed. The decades of institutional racism that have followed nearly caused the demise of te reo Maori, and an understanding of te ao Maori by tangata whenua. Maori and anyone else who dared were actively and often physically discouraged from speaking the language in public.
I did not know anything about this institutionalized discrimination against Maori until a few years ago. Do I know enough about it now? No I do not. I never learnt in Legal Studies at High School what the Treaty means for New Zealand law. I never learnt in any respectable depth even for high school about people like Dame Whina Cooper or Kupe. I never learnt anything significant about pa sites, whare’s or Marae’s except from my parents taking my brother and I to the Buried Village of Te Wairoa, which was buried in scalding mud thrown up during the 1886 eruption of Mt. Tarawera.
I have to be honest that for a country whose education system until the early 2000’s was lauded as one of the best in the world, we have not done a very good job of teaching our own history. It sort of helps to explain why, without justifying the ignorance of those in high places, so few New Zealanders seem to respect the grievance settlement process and the role of the Waitangi Tribunal. Along with many not trusting mainstream media for various reasons based around perceived biases, there has been a tendency to always cast treaty issues in some kind of neutral or negative manner as opposed to being “in need of fixing for our greater benefit”.
Unfortunately the new Government does not seem very interested in improving New Zealanders knowledge of the Land Wars or of the Treaty of Waitangi. Indeed some of the current Ministers, despite having Maori ancestry seem to be keen on blocking further socio-economic progress for tangata whenua.
Another thing I don’t understand…
Leftist Kiwi Writes 