Cecily McNeill shows how understanding Te Tiriti o Waitangi can help Aotearoa recover from racism.

The director of the choir to which I belong recently decided against programming a much-loved Christmas hymn, Te Harinui. New Zealand singer/songwriter Willow Macky wrote this song in the late 1950s and it was recorded by Kiwi Pacific in 1964. It was then presented to the direct descendant of Samuel Marsden.

Our choir has sung it at Christmas many times but this time the words “the Māori people heard / the great and glorious word” and later “…heard the preacher say, / ‘I bring to you this day’…” struck the ear with their paternalism. They seemed to express the very heart of colonisation — the belief that the colonisers were bringing something better, uplifting even, to the “savages”.

Colonial Beginnings Revisited

Gordon McLauchlan in A Short History of the New Zealand Wars describes the confusion of soldiers when they saw “Māori demonstrations of tactical and psychological superiority . . . especially the colonists for whom it was essential to believe that . . . they were bringing enlightenment and civilisation to a backward people.”

Pākehā New Zealanders are slowly realising that they are not the superior race but descendants of a migrant people who must now learn to share the land with those who were here centuries earlier.

Not many years ago te reo was rarely heard outside the marae. But, today, there has been a swing towards learning the language and the Government has a goal of one million basic speakers by 2040. But is learning te reo enough to right the wrongs a colonising nation has visited on tangata whenua? To what extent do te reo classes give an understanding of te ao Māori? How many of those rushing to learn te reo understand Te Tiriti o Waitangi — that it was an agreement or partnership between the British Crown and tangata whenua of Aotearoa New Zealand when a degree of lawlessness reigned over the land, courtesy of marauding whalers?

Twists in Framing Te Tiriti

Dame Anne Salmond has written extensively on the Treaty’s context and how, until 1986, Te Tiriti was understood as a partnership between two peoples. It was only when the Court of Appeal heard a New Zealand Māori Council case to test a Government plan to transfer some 10 million hectares of land and other assets owned by the Crown to State Owned Enterprises that the Treaty changed. Bearing in mind that this was happening during the neoliberal experiment we came to know as “Rogernomics”, when privatisation was in vogue, the Council feared that once this transfer had been achieved, the land would no longer be available for Treaty settlements. Was this plan consistent with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi?

The Appeal Court practically rewrote the Treaty as a “partnership between races”, “between Pākehā and Māori” or “between the Crown and the Māori race”, one that creates responsibilities analogous to fiduciary duties” and “requires the Pākehā and Māori Treaty partners to act towards each other reasonably and in the utmost good faith”, to find a “true path to progress for both races.” There was no mention of race or ethnicity in the original Treaty. Yet here the two partners are reduced to cultural differences.

Analysts have attributed the growth of racism in this country to the 1986 judgement of the Court of Appeal led by Lord Cooke of Thorndon. As well as the dichotomy of Māori/Pākehā, it introduces white/black, civilised/savage, the West/the rest, science/superstition and Kiwi/iwi which are at the heart of racist thinking in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Challenge to Our Racism

As Christians, called to see everyone as equal — "no longer Jew nor Greek, no longer slave nor free, no longer male and female for all are one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:28) — this poses a challenge. How can Aotearoa undo some 35 years of overtly racist thinking on top of the land confiscations, wars and wrongful treatment that arrived with settlers from Britain in the early 1900s?

We have seen how Māori were regarded as uncivilised in the ways of “wiser” colonisers. A Christian response might be a complete reversal of this. As our country undergoes increasingly catastrophic storms with escalating global warming, we could start a partner’s honouring of Te Tiriti by listening to the connection Māori show with te whenua. How does the land tell us of its suffering? How can we be sensitive to the pain of the whenua? How can we evolve from the Christian thinking manifest in the Catholic Church of Aotearoa New Zealand which promotes, in practice at least, the racism inherent in the country’s cultural as well as economic and political systems?

New Ways Open to Us

We need to leave the old ways in the past and seek a new way of being Christ to others in our country. American theologian Ilia Delio in The Emergent Christ writes of a new expansive consciousness, attuned to science and ecologically oriented. “A new way of being Christian in the world that includes shared power between women and men … recognition and respect of indigenous people … and development of needed reforms in the Church initiated by Vatican II.” In short, Christianity needs to evolve.

In a partnership between tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti, we tangata Tiriti need to practise listening compassionately to the whenua and its tangata. We need to reinvent ourselves as beings of the universe, halting long-distance travel to stay local and preserve our environment — listening, quietening, watching with awesome respect our planetary space. This new attitude is one that evolves to meet the demands of the environment and the call of Māori into te ao Māori.

I am part of a small group devising a series of online workshops for 2023 and growing a movement where we explore the concept of two peoples living relationally with each other and with the environment. Our thinking is based on the whāriki or woven mat which is open-ended to encompass change in every direction. The three main themes are — mana motuhake/ending colonisation, papatūānuku/care for Earth and whakawhanaungatanga/working relationally to mesh with ko wai a tātou/our identity, he aha to tātou pono/beliefs and he aha te kaupapa/our mission.

We will focus on informing ourselves politically, economically and culturally. We aim to support each other to end colonisation in Aotearoa, transform ourselves in our humanity to become fully integrated within the natural world and to encourage action from our shared reflection, working for environmental justice at all levels.

We aim to create a safe space where we can learn to understand the crises that face us — a space of connection between tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti and between humanity and the environment. From there we can encourage action, always taking care to question who holds power, who makes decisions, who stands to benefit and what the long-term consequences will be — for those on the margins and for our world.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 267 November 2022: 8-9