DEAR SELECT COMMITTEE

JANUARY 2025 by RACHEL JANE LIEBERT ON BELHALF OF TE RŌPŪ PĀKEHĀ*

Re. Principles of The Treaty of Waitangi Bill

We are the Pākehā collective of The Tīpuna Project (TTP) – a community-based project to research the decolonial possibilities of communing with our settler ancestors, as funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. Since our project began in January 2023, we have been collecting data with and/or from hundreds of Pākehā throughout Aotearoa as well as engaged with individuals, groups and the public across England, Ireland and Scotland.

We wholeheartedly oppose this bill, which undermines Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Te Tiriti) and thus both the sovereign rights of Māori and the rights of Pākehā and other tauiwi to be living in and caring for Aotearoa – a land and country that we all fiercely love. 

As you know, Te Tiriti – written in te reo Māori and signed by rangatira Māori – is the only valid version of our founding covenant as per international law, and it was what welcomed settlers to these shores on the condition that we respect Māori sovereignty. To honour Te Tiriti is therefore to honour the labour and dreams of our Pākehā ancestors.

This bill does not honour Te Tiriti. Firstly, it reduces the text to a set of principles – a flawed approach that mindlessly repeats the flawed approach of The Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975, which incorrectly assumed that there were two valid versions of the treaty (not one). 

Secondly, the proposed principles all disrespect Māori sovereignty: the principle of ‘civil government’ ignores that Te Tiriti only gave permission for the Pākehā Crown to have partial governance and ignores the 2014 finding of the Pākehā Crown’s own Waitangi Tribunal that Māori never ceded sovereignty; the principle of ‘rights of hapū and iwi Māori’ ignores that these rights are inherent according to international law on Indigenous self-determination; the principle of ‘right to equality’ ignores the need for equity given historic injustices caused by breaches of Te Tiriti and ignores the inherent coloniality of the Pākehā Crown and therefore their inherent incapacity to address Māori needs (indeed, the very attempt to effectively redefine Te Tiriti demonstrates their ongoing disrespectful, unequal, inequitable treatment of Māori).

In short, the bill is ignorant. In this sense, it risks repeating the violent mistakes of some of our settler ancestors, who also made decisions that ignored and breached Te Tiriti and therefore that continue to harm Māori and to invalidate our belonging and identity as Pākehā.

As Pākehā today, we are responsible for upholding the mana of our settler ancestors, including by cleaning up after their mistakes – not making things worse.

Yet this bill would make things worse. Te Tiriti affords a level of protection for the lands and natural resources of Aotearoa that is urgently needed in these times of climate crisis – a crisis that is affecting all of us. In addition, Te Tiriti is world-leading in terms of its protections of relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, but this bill would have devastating social consequences for Māori – remembering that Māori are not just the Indigenous peoples of these lands who our settler ancestors promised to respect, but also the descendants of those very rangatira who welcomed our settler ancestors when they were desperately seeking a place to make a better life for their families and descendants: us. Is this bill really what your ancestors would want?

In sum, this bill will create – not counter – confusion and division. Indeed, it is the original text of Te Tiriti itself that clearly states how Māori, Pākehā and other tauiwi can live together harmoniously. While we therefore agree with David Seymour and his colleagues that there needs to be national conversation on Te Tiriti, this bill is not the way. Matike Mai, for example, is a powerful Māori-led nationwide movement that has been drawing directly on the Te Tiriti text to carefully make community spaces for tens of thousands of New Zealanders to consider how the Pākehā Crown can step into authentic relationship with iwi and hapū Māori. This is what we should be resourcing – not this bill.

We do not need this bill. We do not want this bill. 

Sincerely, 

TTP Pākehā Collective (and our ancestors)

*MIHI IN PARTICULAR TO THIS EXPLAINER BY TINA NGATA

Rachel’s 5yo kid, Musa - the next generation of tangata Tiriti (people of Te Tiriti) - who would not be here if their settler ancestors had not been welcomed through Te Tiriti <3