Prominent Maori Fire A Shot Across The Crown's Bow: Objections to the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary, though couched in terms of the sanctity of contract, are much more likely to be motivated by the political and constitutional implications of the Government’s unilateral action. If the Crown is permitted to arrogate unto itself the power to decide when it is obligated to negotiate with the Maori elites, and when it is not, then the growing economic and political influence of those elites will stand exposed as, at best, conditional; and, at worst, reversible.
WHAT HAS a Nineteenth Century Waikato village called
Rangiaowhia got to do with the price of fish? As an example of Maori and Pakeha
talking past one another – quite a lot. As the current impasse over the
Government’s creation of a Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary, and Maori fishery rights,
attests, the scope for misunderstanding, even conflict, between Maori and
Pakeha remains ominously latent in New Zealand’s constitution.
These latent difficulties are often made worse by the
well-intentioned interventions of Pakeha
New Zealanders. Historians, in particular, seem especially keen to atone for
the sins of their nation’s colonial past. All too often this manifests itself
in professional historians affixing an academic seal of approval to what can
only be described as outlandish and historically unjustifiable claims.
At Rangiaowhia, for example, Maori and Pakeha clashed in a
confused military encounter that ended with the deaths of ten Maori civilians
and three Pakeha soldiers. Even advantaged with the far more exacting standards
of the Twenty-First Century, the lawyers of today would struggle to convince a
court that what happened on the morning of Saturday, 20 February 1864 was a
war-crime.
The New Zealand History website of the Ministry of Heritage
and Culture cites the judgement of historian, David Green, who rejects the
notion that what happened at Rangiaowhia was ‘a premeditated massacre’, arguing
instead that it was the result of ‘a breakdown of discipline among troops who
had psyched themselves up to face much stronger resistance.’”
The Military Engagement At Rangiaowhia, Saturday, 20 February 1864
If “premeditated massacre” can be ruled out, then using the word "genocide" to describe the tragic loss of life at Rangiaowhia – as a senior
New Zealand historian, Jock Phillips, did on the 2 April broadcast of TV3’s The Nation – is simply insupportable.
The nationwide furore which engulfed the former Maori Party
co-leader, Tariana Turia, when she used the word “genocide” to describe the fate
of Taranaki Maori – especially those forcibly evicted from the settlement of
Parihaka on 5 November 1881 – should have deterred any further use of such
historical hyperbole. The only recorded case of genocide in New Zealand history
occurred in the Chatham Islands in 1835. Pakeha were not responsible.
It is, however, entirely understandable that Maori continue
to avail themselves of every opportunity to paint their dispossession in the
most lurid of historical hues. To recover even a small fraction of the resources
seized by New Zealand’s Settler State, the tactic of inducing the maximum
possible degree of Pakeha guilt and remorse is indisputably necessary – and has
proved astonishingly successful.
Such recovery as has been made, however, could not have been
accomplished without the collusion of Pakeha elites. The price of their
cooperation? That the transfer of Crown resources to Maori can only be from one
collection of elites to another. The result, Neo-Tribal Capitalism, has
shielded the Crown from the much more radical Pan-Maori Nationalism with which
it was briefly threatened in the 1980s and 90s. The Iwi Leaders Group is a much
more congenial partner for the Crown than a revolutionary Maori parliament – or
army.
Even so, the increasingly close relationship between the
Crown and the corporate entities arising out of Treaty of Waitangi-based
settlements, is beginning to encroach upon the freedom-of-action of elected
governments. The National-led Government’s announcement of the Kermadec Ocean
Sanctuary, which has elicited furious protests from Te Ohu Kaimoana (the Maori
Fisheries Commission) is a case in point.
The Commission’s objections, though couched in terms of the
sanctity of contract, are much more likely to be motivated by the political and
constitutional implications of the Government’s unilateral action. If the Crown
is permitted to arrogate unto itself the power to decide when it is obligated
to negotiate with the Maori elites, and when it is not, then the growing economic
and political influence of those elites will stand exposed as, at best,
conditional; and, at worst, reversible.
At Rangiaowhia, the contingency of the Maori people’s
freedom-of-action was demonstrated with deadly force. The Kingitanga’s (Maori
King Movement’s) assertion of its people’s economic and political autonomy,
under the formula of two flags and one treaty, was met with the unanswerable
rejoinder of fire and steel. If contemporary Maori leaders do not wish to see
their hard-won partnership of elites similarly dissolved, then it might be
wiser for them to acquiesce in the matter of the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary – and
let sleeping fish lie.
This essay was
originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The
Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 15 April 2016.
