Losing sleep over Treaty principles

I’m lying awake tossing and turning trying to make sense of ACT leader David Seymour’s revised Treaty principles. First on my right side, then my left side then on my back surrendering to utter confusion.

I’m turning the light on so I can read them again:

1. That the Government has the right to govern for all New Zealanders.

2. That the Government will honour all New Zealanders in the chieftainship of their land and all their property.

3. That all New Zealanders are equal under the law with the same rights and duties.

I’m no expert but wasn’t the Treaty an agreement between Māori and the Crown? So how come the word Māori isn’t mentioned once in David’s new Treaty principles?

These principles read more like a universal human rights act. Haven’t we got one of those?

I’m picking up my phone in the dark. Ah, there it is Te Kāhui Tika Tangata Human Rights Commission. I’m feeling calmer already at the thought of tika, some rules of profound human decency and regard for each other. And I’m looking up kāhui on Te Aka Māori Dictionary: it can be a flock, a company or a constellation of stars, which is an uplifting mix of seemingly different things.

Back on the commission’s website, I’m reading about ka whakamana tāngata, a life of dignity for all, which is sounding a bit like one of David’s principles.

My mind wanders because demonstrating whakamana tāngata is one of the requirements in our clinical exam for GPs. It’s a concept which has really shifted our understanding of power in the medical consultation, who holds the mana and how can the doctor increase the mana of the whānau/patient. It’s shifting the way we do all consultations, with all people.

In the peace of 2am, I can’t help a side wander imagining what Aotearoa would have been like if we had honoured the Treaty

But I’m on my right side back with David Seymour and seriously wondering if his three new Treaty principles are more about universal human rights and would he achieve his aim if he put more funding into the Te Kāhui Tika Tangata Human Rights Commission?

Now I faintly recall he doesn’t like Te Kāhui Tika Tangata, maybe because they have co-commissioners, one Pākehā and one Māori. He doesn’t like “co-” things much: no cocommissioners, no co-governance and probably no co-housing (well NIMBY), or co-ownership or co-sovereignty.

Now I’m up out of bed, checking the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary; the prefix “co-” means “the sense of with others, jointly, mutually”. I’m looking out at the kāhui of stars and thinking, yeah I’m not sure co- is David’s thing, he’s perhaps more “I” than “we”.

The individual as the sole foundation of some new order is chilling me, so back under the duvet I go. We need some “we”, David.

I’m over to my left side having a wee giggle in the dark. Thanks to David I’ve read more about Te Tiriti in the last month than ever before.

I’m on my phone again reading nzhistory. govt.nz. The first article of Te Tiriti is about allowing the Crown to govern, ironically to stamp down on crime, and create law and order amongst the lawless Pākehā settlers. And to protect Māori from greedy land speculators who might steal Māori land or buy it cheaply and dodgily, perhaps hoping that their descendants would all be able to own seven houses?

The English version of Article 1 says Māori “cede sovereignty” but there’s no word for sovereignty in Māori so they used kāwanatanga; Māori understood the idea of Pākehā governors.

As Moana Jackson so eloquently points out (view the interview at natlib.govt.nz) there is no way the rangatira were ceding sovereignty, why would they do that? They were expressing some manaakitanga to the settlers and probably wanted a bit of co- (you know, working with others jointly).

Article 2 in the English version is about Māori “having exclusive and undisturbed possession of their lands and estates, forests, fisheries and other properties” and, in the Māori version, tino rangatiratanga. This might in the modern world mean things like creating health services by and for Māori in an effort to change the appalling health inequities in our land. Does David think that is unfair? It might be unfair when Māori health outcomes are way better than ours, which they sure aren’t.

Article 3 is about ensuring Māori had the same rights as British subjects, ie, the settlers. Non-Māori New Zealanders were going to be well protected by Her Majesty’s Government so they weren’t part of the Treaty and they don’t need to be now.

In the peace of 2am, I can’t help a side wander imagining what Aotearoa would have been like if we had honoured the Treaty. Māori would have retained possession of most of their land, set up their own industry and trading economy, maybe uniting hapu and iwi together with some sort of national kāwanatanga body of their own.

Pākehā and tauiwi would have resided in areas sold legally to them. We would have all been bilingual and as such all able to inhabit another way of seeing and being, where we would have values about looking after water, land, fisheries and each other.

Maybe I’m now actually asleep, and just dreaming?

But no, I’ve turned onto my right side fully “a woke” remembering a funny story Jean told me about her elderly dad, a Cockney who immigrated from the east end of London. A decent fellow. He’d recently been in hospital in a room with an older Māori fellow and they’d spent a lot of time together, smoking and sharing their lives.

Jean’s dad possibly hadn’t met many Māori men with carved tokotoko. One day when she arrived, he exclaimed in an agitated tone “Jean, have you heard about colonisation? Terrible stuff has happened. Terrible stuff. I’m so upset. Something has to be done about it.”

Have you heard of colonisation, David? Terrible stuff has happened, loss of land, loss of mana tangata, loss of language or as you might call it “division by race”-ism, for nearly 200 years.

I’ve heard white men in blue suits say we don’t want to dwell in the past and I’m wondering if what they really mean is, “Look Māori we took your land because we are more clever and devious, and you just need to suck it up because we are the winners, we are now in control and we are the majority so we can always say ‘no’ to you in a referendum, especially as we have vast sums of money to saturate social media with clever slogans like, ‘If in doubt, vote “No”’, rather than think too hard about what is fair and decent.’”

I’ve turned to my left side which is more comfy, my hotel grade sheets are smooth and cool, my ensuite is mould free and I’m imagining a future scenario where some foreign country decides to invade Aotearoa and they kick us out of our seven homes, give us some sheds to live in, stop us speaking English, and keep us in the class that cleans their offices, fixes their potholes and launders their sheets.

In that scenario, would the men who no longer had blue suits be saying from their sheds after cleaning toilets all day, “We need to forget the past, they won, we just need to accept our new homeless, landless, poverty-stricken reality. We just need to work harder to get ahead.”? I think they might be wishing they had a Treaty.

And anyway, aren’t we all decent Kiwis who look out for each other, give people a fair go, honour our word and acknowledge when terrible things have happened? Some seem to want to turn us into working hard, getting-ahead folks in a way that values wealth over decency. Is that what we want as a nation? Individual riches before individual decency, I before co-?

I’m getting agitated now, on my back remembering the first time someone showed me the list of acts of Parliament that breached the Treaty of Waitangi: pages and pages of them, banning tohunga, not allowing Māori to get old age pensions, the Public Works Act, on and on it went, greed without decency.

Maybe David’s lot are really saying Māori have had enough compensation and we don’t need to co- with them, we’ve got a government and it’s working well. For us.

Yeah, nah, David maybe we can talk about that when life expectancy, prison numbers, homelessness and wealth are starting to look a bit more ‘equal’.

Now I’m pondering the advantages of honouring Te Tiriti, other than being decent? Imagine what our country would be like now if Māori had been wiped out completely? We’d be heading towards a poor imitation of Trump’s America.

I love being Kiwi, living in a small island in the Pacific, where because of Te Tiriti, I am constantly enveloped in another way of seeing which quite honestly has a bit to recommend it in terms of decency: manaakitanga (welcoming others, even those we disagree with), kaitiakitanga (caring for things especially people and the natural world), and whakamana tāngata (upholding the mana of others).

I work for an iwi health provider; they truly do value those things.

David Seymour claims no country has ever successfully had co-government where two ways of seeing, work together. But we are Kiwis, and we know we can do what others have never been able to.

Anyway, David, it’s too late, we already are.

Lucy O’Hagan is a medical educator and specialist GP working in the Wellington region