SYMHC Classics: Treaty of Waitangi

This 2014 episode covers the Treaty of Waitangi, a treaty between the British and the Maori that established New Zealand as a nation. The goal was to benefit both parties, but a hurried translation of the document led to some confusion.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. The Treaty of Waitangi became international news late
last week after Maori MP Hanaahiti Mighty Clark started a
hakka at the end of a vote on the Treaty
Principles Bill. So footage of Maori members of Parliament and
people in the public gallery joining this hakka as some

(00:23):
of the other people in the room either rolled their
eyes or looked uncomfortable very quickly went viral. This is
part of ongoing advocacy on the part of Maori people
to get the terms of this treaty respected, and thousands
of people have also been marching to Wellington in protest
of the Treaty Principal's Bill. That march is expected to

(00:45):
arrive at the Capitol after we record this intro, but
before this Saturday Classic will come out into our podcast feed.
Our episode on the Treaty of Waitangi came out on
June fourth, twenty fourteen, and it talks about some of
the context for this bill, which is that the English
and Maori versions of this treaty have significant and meaningful

(01:06):
differences from one another. If the Treaty Principal's Bill became law,
it would move interpretations of the Treaty from the Courts
to Parliament, which critics say would drastically undermine its terms.
This bill's progression through Parliament is still ongoing, as Tracy said,
as of when we are recording this. Also, I just
want to add that in the original version of this episode,

(01:30):
I made a brief reference to Eddie Izzard kind of
on the fly, and that was before she began using
she her pronouns, so that information and the way I
reference her is outdated. So enjoy the episode. Welcome to
Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello,

(01:57):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy Wilson. I'm Holly fry. So.
We've had a lot of people who have asked us
to talk about the Treaty of Why Tangy, and this
is including a listener mail that we read on the
podcast a very long time ago in which I pronounced
why Tangy terribly, like really, really badly. Somebody later wrote

(02:21):
in and said that I did a good job, and
I'm pretty sure that person was kidding, because I did
a very bad job. I'm training behind. Yes, I'm hoping
to do a better job. Today. I have been listening
to a whole lot of film from New Zealand. So
this is a treaty that was signed by representatives of
the British Government and the Maoring of New Zealand, or

(02:45):
as it's known in the Maori language Aoteroa, and that
means land of the long White Cloud. So this is
the document that established New Zealand as a nation. And
unlike with many, many, many other treaties between the British
government and indigenous peoples that had happened earlier in history,

(03:06):
the spirit of this agreement was really to see to
the best interests of both the Maori and the Crown,
which makes it kind of an anomaly and kind of
groundbreaking in the words are in the world of like
colonial and indigenous relations. However, the English and Maori texts

(03:28):
of this treaty are so different that they're almost fundamentally
different documents, and so debate over exactly what the treaty
meant and how it should be interpreted started almost immediately,
And given the history of mankind on the earth, it
should also be a surprise to no one that not
everything afterward followed the original spirit of the treaty anyway,

(03:53):
So that's what we're going to talk about today, this
treaty and how it came about and some of what
it led to you. And as with any treaty, there
are pros and cons to it. But when you look
at the grand spectrum of relations between colonizing governments and
indigenous peoples, this one was a lot of different, a

(04:14):
lot different than a lot of what came before. So
we're gonna do a little bit of groundwork here about
New Zealand. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman first cited New Zealand
in sixteen forty two, and then James Cook's cabin boy,
who was called Young Nick, spotted it again in seventeen

(04:36):
sixty nine. Europeans were fairly slow to arrive in New
Zealand from that point, so the whalers and the sealers
came first, and then missionaries followed not long after. By
the eighteen thirties, there were approximately one hundred and twenty
five thousand Maori living in New Zealand, and a few
British settlers made it a frontier outpost of New South Wales,

(04:59):
which at the time was a British penal colony. Overall,
for the most part, early relations between the Maori and
The Europeans who were arriving in New Zealand were mostly peaceful.
There were occasional disputes and fights. However, the British law
did not extend to New Zealand because New Zealand wasn't

(05:20):
British territory, and so this meant that there really was
not any law governing the British subjects who wound up there,
who naturally did not feel like they were beholden to
Maori law. And so this was especially problematic given that
many of the subjects of the Crown who made their
way to New Zealand were convicts who had escaped from

(05:40):
New South Wales. So you had people who were convicted
criminals making their way to this other island where there
were no laws to govern them. And as more people
moved in, trading efforts started to grow because people need things,
and so more than one thousand British ships began visiting
New Zealand every year, and New Zealand started to become

(06:02):
more appealing to other European governments as a consequence, including France. Eventually,
as the population of Europeans started to grow, some of
them asked the British government to help establish some kind
of official system to try to maintain order. It was
this kind of lawless place among the European settlers at

(06:24):
this point. They were also a lot of the British
subjects were hoping for protection that would prevent the encroachment
of other European governments, and at first the British were
really not eager to do this. They did not really
want to extend their holdings into New Zealand at all.

(06:45):
So eventually, in eighteen thirty five, a man named James
Busby was given the official post of British Resident in
New Zealand, and this was sort of like being a
consular official. He was there to represent the Crown. That
was his job, but he really didn't have any actual
power and he had almost no support from the British government,

(07:06):
so consequently people called him the Man of War without guns.
One of Busby's acts as British residents, which kind of
cracks me up as a title for some reason, although
one that was done without any authority to do so,
was to draw up a Declaration of Independence of the
Northern Chiefs, and this document declared New Zealand a sovereign

(07:28):
nation under the absolute rule of its hereditary chiefs and
tribal leaders, and his goal wasn't so much to make
the Maori independent as to try to block the French
from making their own treaty and taking the colony over.
Yes that Britain was not currently at war at prith
Prance when this was going on, but they had been

(07:48):
in the recent past and for many many years, so
they were at best a little wary of each other.
All I can think of is the Eddie Izzard bit
where he does do you have a flag? This is
actually a lot like this for you. Yes, there is
real There was real discussion about we need to get
the flag. We need to get a flag for the

(08:09):
New Zealanders. People will be more respectful of New Zealand
if it has a flag like that was a real
step in this whole process that we're not going into
a lot of detail about today. So Busby presented this
declaration to thirty four Maori chiefs at his home on

(08:32):
the North Island. So additional chiefs then were originally present
eventually signed the document, and then in nineteen thirty six,
the Crown officially acknowledged Maori nationhood based on the existence
of this declaration, and before this point, the Mawori had
not really had the concept of the state as part
of their worldview. In their social structure, each tribe governed

(08:55):
itself under the leadership of a chief known as rangetira. However,
as word of the declaration of independence spread, it solidified
the idea among the Maori that they were in fact
in charge of their own affairs and able to govern themselves.
So this declaration, though only gave New Zealand a temporary
respite from the influence of all these political factions from Europe.

(09:20):
By the late eighteen thirties, there were about two thousand
settlers from Europe living in New Zealand, and a number
of British businesses and shipping companies were planning to scale
up their operations there, and there of course was also
interest substantially from France. There were also huge amounts of
trade going on between New Zealand and New South Wales,

(09:41):
so the Mallori wanted to begin trading with other nations themselves,
but doing so was difficult without being first officially recognized
as a nation, which brings us back to the question
of whether they had a flag, which was a real
point of discussion in all of this in a move
that was definitely as much about protecting its own interest
from France as protecting the Mawori from anybody. In eighteen

(10:04):
thirty nine, the British government dispatched William Hobson of the
Royal Navy to go to New Zealand and negotiate on
behalf of the crown. And his assignment was to establish
a treaty with the Maori, and once that was done,
he was to act as Lieutenant governor for any part
of New Zealand that would agree to become a British colony.
Hobson got a lot of direction about exactly what he

(10:27):
was supposed to do, and included in all of this
were these instructions from Lord normanby the Colonial Secretary regarding
this assignment. This is quote, All dealings with the Aborigines
for their lands must be conducted on the same principles
of sincerity, justice, and good faith as must govern your
transactions with them for the recognition of Her Majesty's sovereignty

(10:50):
in these islands. Nor is this all. They must not
be permitted to into any contracts in which they might
be ignorant and unintended authors of injuries to themselves you
will not, for example, purchase from them any territory the
retention of which by them would be essential or highly

(11:10):
conducive to their own comfort, safety, or substance. The acquisition
of land by the Crown for the future settlement of
British subjects must be confined to such districts as the
natives can alienate without distress or serious inconvenience to themselves.
To secure the observance of this rule will be one
of the first duties of their official protector. So if

(11:34):
you know anything about relations with indigenous people in the
world before this point, this is basically the opposite of
how a lot of these treaties were previously carried out.
Like there were many many treaties in the settlement of
what is now the United States and in Africa and
in the South Pacific and in South America that were

(11:54):
basically like, here is this treaty where we're going to
make you think you're getting a good deal, but we
the people who were colonizing or actually taking you for
a giant ride. So this was specifically at this point
the world having learned that this was a bad thing
to do against the rules, like he was supposed to

(12:15):
get down there and actually put a treaty together in
good faith, and so, considering the tone of a lot
of earlier treaties between the British and indigenous peoples, or
later Americans and Indigenous peoples, or whoever and indigenous peoples,
this was hugely progressive. But at the same time some

(12:36):
of the flavor of the instruction was also kind of racist,
since a big underlying tone of all of it was
that from the British point of view, the Mallori were
not actually capable of handling their own affairs. So there,
although it was a big step forward in relations with
indigenous people, it was not entirely free from problems. Hobson

(12:59):
awry on January twenty ninth of eighteen forty, and he
had been corresponding with George Gipps, who was Governor of
New South Wales, about what exactly should go into the treaty,
and once he arrived, Hobson also worked with his secretary,
who was named James Freeman, as well as James Buzzby,
who we discussed earlier on completing this treaty. So they
basically got completely down to the wire on putting the

(13:21):
treaty together. They had summoned all of these chiefs to
a big meeting, but they didn't have a draft of
the treaty to actually have translated until the night before,
So on the eve of this meeting they handed the
treaty over to Henry Williams, who was a missionary, and
Williams translated the text into Mauri with the help of

(13:42):
his son Edward. At this point, the Williamses had established
relationships with the Mallory and they spoke the Maori language,
but they really did not have a lot of time
to put their translation together. On February fifth, once again
in Busby's home, the representatives of Britain prison the treaty
to about five hundred assembled Maori. Then, while there was

(14:04):
extensive discussion, no agreement was actually signed. The next day,
which was February sixth, after a little more discussion, forty
five chiefs did sign the treaty. The first to sign
was a chief named Honahicke, who was also called hone Polkai,
and he felt a treaty with the British was their
best option. The day before the treaty was signed, he

(14:26):
reportedly said to Hobson, Governor, you should stay with us
and be like a father. If you go away, then
the French and the rum sellers will take us Maori over.
So Hona Heke's support was really instrumental in getting a
lot of the other chiefs to sign the treaty, and
from there the original treaty as well as copies of it,
were sent around the islands to gather additional signatures, and

(14:49):
in the end more than five hundred Maori signatures replied
to the document, and thirteen of the signatures were from women,
overwhelmingly the Maori who signed the tree he signed a
Maori language version with at least one British subject signing
as well, and who this British signatory was varied from
place to place. Not every rangatira signed the document. Some

(15:14):
of them never got a chance to because while copies
of the treaty were distributed, they didn't make it to
every single part of the islands that make up New Zealand.
There were also definitely chiefs who opposed the treaty on
the grounds that the protections that were being granted were
just not enough to outweigh the independence that they would
be giving up. There were also chiefs who were suspicious

(15:35):
of the British government's intent about the whole thing, and
then farther inland there were chiefs who just didn't see
the point because they, not being from the more coastal areas,
hadn't actually had a lot of contact with people from
Europe by then. And even though not every chief had signed,
the British government felt that the treaty applied to all Maori,
whether they had signed it or not. They also almost

(15:58):
universally viewed the English language version of the text as
the true version of the texts. Within a few years,
British officials admitted that crown sovereignty would outweigh Maori leadership
when the two were in conflict. So to get back

(16:20):
to this treaty itself, the Treaty of Waitangi opens with
the preamble and that's followed by three articles. Article one
quote the chiefs of the Confederation of the United Tribes
of New Zealand and the separate and independent Chiefs who
have not become members of the Confederation, cede to Her Majesty,
the Queen of England, absolutely and without reservation, all the

(16:42):
rights and powers of sovereignty which the said Confederation or
individual chiefs respectively exercise or possess, or may be supposed
to exercise or to possess over their respective territories as
the sole sovereign thereof. So the extremely short and oversimplified
version this is basically, you, the British, are the boss
of us the Maori as of now. Yeah. So Article

(17:07):
two reads, Her Majesty, the Queen of England confirms and
guarantees to the chiefs and tribes of New Zealand, and
to the respective families and individuals thereof, the full exclusive
and undisturbed possessions of their lands and estates, forest, fisheries,
and other properties which they may collectively or individually possess,

(17:28):
so long it is as it is their wish and
desire to retain the same in their possession. But the
chiefs of the united Tribes and the individual chiefs yield
to Her Majesty the exclusive right of preemption over such
lands as the proprietors thereof may be disposed to alienate
at such prices as may be agreed upon between the
respective proprietors and the persons appointed by Her Majesty to

(17:52):
treat with them on that behalf, So the oversimplified summation
on that one is you can keep your land and
your stuff unless you want to give it to us,
and if you want to do that, we'll figure out
a price. Article three is in consideration thereof her Majesty,
the Queen of England extends to the natives of New

(18:13):
Zealand her royal protection and imparts to them all the
rights and privileges of British subjects. That one's already pretty short,
but it basically it exchange for giving up their sovereignty,
the Maori get the protection of the crown and the
rights and privileges that are due to British subjects. And
the document ends with an epilogue which essentially states that

(18:34):
both parties have entered into the spirit of the treaty,
which has been important in determining whether future acts violated
the treaty. It's the spirit, not the letter. So that's
the English parts. But there are some huge and important
and meaningful differences between the English and the Maori texts
in almost every part of the entire treaty, and those

(18:56):
differences start right from the beginning. The English pre is
focused on providing for British settlement of New Zealand while
also protecting the Maori's interests as well as setting up
a government in the interest of maintaining peace and order.
But the Maori preamble is focused on securing Maori claims
to land and tribal governance and autonomy or tino rangatira tanga.

(19:18):
In Article one of the English version, the Maori chiefs
are seating quote the rights and powers of sovereignty to
the Queen of England. But in the Maori translation, the
word sovereignty was translated to a word that's closer to governorship,
which is a much less encompassing concept than sovereignty. There
was no exact translation for the word sovereignty in the

(19:41):
Maori language. The English version of the article of Article
two grants the Maori quote the full, exclusive and undisturbed
possession of their lands and estates, forests, fisheries and other properties,
but the Maori translation used a phrase that meant quote
the full essence of chief ship, again suggesting that the

(20:02):
Maori were more or less getting full control over their
own affairs. The translation of forest, fisheries and other properties
is problematic too, since it was translated into a Maori
word that more closely means treasures. Yeah, there's been a
lot of discussions about what is included in treasures. Its like,
is the Maori language a treasure? Yeah, that's a pretty culture,

(20:25):
that treasure. Yeah, that's a word of nebulous, meaning it's
very nebulous. And so, with huge differences, like huge meaningful
differences in the overwhelming bulk of this treaty, the debate
about what the treaty was really supposed to mean and
about what the Maori believed that they were signing started
almost immediately. And on top of that, there is significant

(20:48):
speculation about how exactly those discrepancies between the two texts
came to be. There. Was it a simple error, you know,
due to this sort of rush translation that had to happen,
or was it actually a more orchestrated effort to slant
the texts in an effort to make it more palatable
to the Maori And there is really no clear documentation,

(21:10):
although there's loads of speculation. There's also a big subject
of speculation around how much the British signatories were even
aware that these discrepancies existed. There had been lengthy meetings
and discussions about the treaty and the text, and the
Williamses were, as we said before, familiar with the Maori language,

(21:32):
but you know, they didn't have a lot of time
to put this all together, so you know, at this
point in history, it's kind of unclear exactly how much
both sides knew about the differences between what one was
signing and what the other was signing. But regardless of
the differences, with this treaty in place, New Zealand became
a British colony, at first as part of New South

(21:54):
Wales and later that same year as its own colony. So,
because this was the document that established New Zealand as
a nation, to try to recap everything that happened as
a result of the Treaty of Waitangi would basically require
summing up basically the entire history of New Zealand from

(22:14):
the time that it was signed, so to extremely briefly summarize.
With the door now opened to settling from Britain, a
lot of settlers from England, to Ireland and Scotland started
making their way to New Zealand, with thousands of people
arriving over the next decade. Within a few years, Hona

(22:36):
Heke had withdrawn his support for the treaty. He was
feeling disillusioned that it was not in fact as beneficial
for the Maori as he had believed it was going
to be. As an active protest, he had the flagpole
at a British settlement repeatedly cut down. In the eighteen fifties,
the European settlers in New Zealand established their own government

(22:57):
and in eighteen fifty three the first Parliament can be
in New Zealand. But at that point the Maori were
completely excluded from holding seats or from voting, following a
pretty British tradition. Land ownership was a requirement for both
of these, and most property ownership among the Maori at
that point was communal instead of individual, so it took

(23:20):
a while for that to shift so that it was
more compatible with the Maori worldview to allow the Maori
to participate in the government. In eighteen sixty seven, Maori
men gained the right to vote and the Maori people
actually gained four seats, and that was intended to be
a temporary move. Today, however, the Mawori continue to have
seats in Parliament and can choose to vote among the

(23:42):
general or the Maori electorate. The number of Maori seats
in Parliament varies depending on how many choose to vote
in the Maori electorate. I think right now there are
seven based on that number, and there's a lot of
debate about whether having specifically Maori seats are whether that
it's a good thing or a bad thing. There's a
debate on both sides, and I can see both sides

(24:04):
of that argument. There are people who feel like maybe
the Maori would have more representation if they did not
have these pre arraigned seats, or people who feel like
having these seats at all is racist in some way.
Like there's a lot of ongoing discussion about that. In
nineteen seventy five, the Waitangi Tribunal was established, and this

(24:24):
investigates claims by Maori on breaches of the Treaty. For
the first ten years of its existence, this tribunal only
investigated issues that happened since it was established. However, in
nineteen eighty five its scope was expanded to include everything
that has happened since the Treaty was signed in eighteen
forty and only Maori can make claims, and these are

(24:48):
against either the Crown or against legislation. They can be
contemporary or historical. There's also a special Land Court to
deal specifically with Maori land. So today New zeal has
grown into a parliamentary democracy with three official languages, English,
Maori and sign language. The House of Representatives, which is

(25:08):
a body of elected officials, makes the laws. It's also
simultaneously a constitutional monarchy, with the reigning Sovereign of Great
Britain being the Sovereign of New Zealand as well. So
as we are recording this, Queen Elizabeth two is the
Queen of the United Kingdom as well as being Queen
of New Zealand. So in this whole arrangement, that's a

(25:29):
separate thing. New Zealand is not just part of the
United Kingdom. The Queen's involvement in the government is also
mostly symbolic. She's represented by the Governor General, but a
Prime Minister handles the day to day running of the government.
I know most of our listeners are from the United States,
and the sounds like very complicated system of government considering

(25:52):
what a lot of our listeners are used to. Yeah,
it's a lot of layers of different branches of government
sort of all theoretically playing nice together. Yeah. To make
it even a little bit more complex, the name New
Zealand does not even come from the British. It comes
from the Dutch. So when the Dutch cited it, they
named it after the Netherlands province of Zealand because at

(26:16):
that point Australia was called New Holland, which you know
is another part of Netherlands. And the treaty itself was
actually almost lost or destroyed a number of times over
the years, including by fire and by efforts to preserve
the document that we're actually damaging. Now. These documents are
in the Constitution Room at the Archives of New Zealand

(26:37):
in Wellington. I like this story because it does represent
such a big step forward in relationships between colonial governments
and indigenous peoples, but at the same time, like it's
not perfect and there's still colonialism happening in this whole situation,
so like I'm really of two minds about it. But

(26:57):
without this treaty, like when you look at documents about
New Zealand or if you ever visit New Zealand, like
you see it's sort of a multicultural place in a
lot of ways at this time, and I don't think
that would exist without this treaty having been created and signed.
And this story is also a sort of a nice
snapshot of how issues of government can become extremely complex,

(27:24):
you know, based on one thing like that one translation
led to a great deal of discussion in all of
these sort of bizarre layers of government that happened as
a consequence. Yeah, So when when the Waitangi Tribunal looks
at cases where people have filed a grievance against the
government or against a law, it's sort of looking at Okay,
what was the spirit of the treaty supposed to be

(27:46):
in this case? And was the spirit of the treaty followed.
I tried to find some data about how many cases
the Tribunal has heard, and I was not able to
find that before we recorded. So if someone knows and
you send us, we will probably read it on a
future listener mail. Thanks so much for joining us on

(28:11):
this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note,
our email addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and
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