The Rua Rautau Lecture 2005, Rangiätea Church, Otaki, 30 January 2005

The Reconciliation of Käwanatanga and Tino Rangatiratanga

Professor Whatarangi Winiata, Ngäti Raukawa

1.0            Introduction

This lecture is given 35 years ahead of the 200th anniversary of Te Tiriti o Waitangi/The Treaty of Waitangi.  It is about the major and natural source of tension between the two signatories.  We will refer to this as the co-existence between käwanatanga and rangatiratanga. This relationship has been under strain from the early days of the Treaty until now with the latest point of contention being the claim of rangatiratanga over the foreshore and seabed and the assertion of käwanatanga over the same spaces.

This was the second confiscation this century, the first being the usurpation of radio spectrum management rights.  A majority of the Waitangi Tribunal members declared that Mäori have an interest in these rights but the Crown turned its back on the recommendation.

This paper offers comment on contrasting views on the käwanatanga-rangatiratanga relationship and follows this with some thoughts on the Mäori world view and the role of Mäori survival experience in forming their outlook.  We will give some time to the forming of intellectual property and suggest that the protection of intangible taonga will give impetus to debate on the subject of this presentation.

We will revisit, briefly, the 1835 He Wakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni/A Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand and the 1840 document, Te Tiriti o Wäitangi/The Treaty of Waitangi to find evidence on the importance of rangatiratanga in Mäori thinking and then move on to rangatiratanga in the Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi.

 Beyond this is a section on the growing enlightenment as more New Zealanders come to understand the Treaty of Waitangi and the particular importance of Article Two to the long term survival of Mäori as a people.  The concluding paragraphs are on the relevance of the Mixed Member Proportional, MMP, system of voting to the reconciliation of käwanatanga and rangatiratanga.                                                                                                                                                                                                           

2.0           Käwanatanga and Rangatiratanga: British constitutional theory and law and a view from the Mäori side

A view

• drawn from British constitutional theory and law 
• implied in constitutional revisions of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia[1] and
• made explicit by Paul McHugh

tells us that sovereignty (or käwanatanga) of the Crown ceded by Article One of the Tiriti/Treaty is exclusive and exhaustive except for rangatiratanga when this is seen as political sovereignty; which in turn may be manifested in at least two ways, namely, through constitutional conventions and the electoral process.[2]   An example of a constitutional convention would be an understanding that any proposal affecting guarantees under Article Two of the Tiriti/Treaty would require approval of Mäori.  There are instances of this in our history but there are stunning exceptions too.  An example of an electoral process is the use of the Mäori electorates.  Should the Crown consider action to disestablish these, compensating constitutional arrangements would need to be implemented.[3]

In contrast to the influence over Mäori that this position gives to käwanatanga we have a view attributed to Ani Mikaere[4] to the effect that  rangatiratanga constitutes a substantial sphere of power and immunity[5] which sits comfortably with the following statement from Richard Hill[6]

There is considerable evidence to suggest that Mäori have frequently regarded the Treaty’s endorsement of rangatiratanga as a guarantee to Mäori of the type of sovereignty that the Crown saw itself as holding.  It seems, at the very least, that for Mäori Article Two was in effect an affirmation that two sets of sovereignties could co-exist in some kind of partnership arrangement, a ‘declaration of interdependence’.[7]

 This presentation has a closer association with the latter view as we rely on the notion of co-existence between two quite different world views.

 Despite the passage of nearly 200 years, the constitutional arrangements of our Nation have not provided mechanisms to predict the outbreak of tensions in this relationship and to facilitate resolution that is orderly and acceptable to both the Crown and Mäori.[8]  There have not been any winning prescriptions in this direction.  This lecture anticipates that a permanent solution to protect the Nation against the Crown or Mäori crossing the boundaries of legal sovereignty or political sovereignty will emerge before the 200th anniversary of Te Tiriti/The Treaty.  Tension in the relationship will remain for as long as there are tangible and intangible taonga Mäori and Mäori insist on rangatiranga over these.

3.0        Mäori world view

As voyagers in the Pacific our people traveled light.  We can surmise that on the waka of our tüpuna were the essentials for survival; and, we know that this included the intellectual capacity to observe and conceptualize what their eyes, senses and emotions were recording.  They were empiricists with the ability to order and catalogue what was being recorded; moreover, they had the intellectual capacity to store their accumulating knowledge with integrity and to broaden and deepen the mätauranga continuum, a vital item in the taonga set embraced by Article Two.

On these islands, principally Te Ika a Mäui, Te Waka a Mäui and Wharekauri, under vastly different climatic and other conditions they learned how to accommodate to their new surroundings to advantage.  They developed a new maramataka, varied their practices accordingly and named every landmark, waterway, rakau and wild life to facilitate their occupation of this part of the globe.  This activity is evidence of the empiricist with plenty of intellectual storage capacity that was essential to their physical survival a primary source of self perception and idea formation. 

There was more than sustenance and protection from the elements to occupy the active minds of our tüpuna.  With the ability to conceptualise one set of phenomena, namely, the environment, an irresistible activity for our tüpuna was to apply their minds to other domains including the world at large in all of its dimensions from creation to extinction. With the technique of whakapapa having been conceived, the possibilities for the accumulation of knowledge was unlimited.  This technique[9] proved to be extendible beyond the human family to everything, animate and inanimate, and our people did just that.    

With a language available to them to convert concepts (and conceptualisations) into words then waiata, karakia, whakatauki and so on, a huge oral literature, became outlets for the fertile mind triggered by experience and invigorated by its own latent energy and creativity – reflected in the emergence of the reo itself as a critical element of the mätauranga continuum.

The exercise of tino rangatiratanga over taonga, including the tangible and the intangible is central to the survival of Mäori as a people.

The risk of extinction is familiar to Mäori and a confident response to this is reflected in the pepeha E kore au e ngaro; he käkano i ruia mai i Rangiätea.  This is a statement about the survivability of Te käkano i ruia mai i Rangiätea.  The Mäori world view has been shaped by having

·                    traversed Te Moananui a Kiwa for centuries

·                    settled a new land, Aotearoa-New Zealand, with all of the differences from their previous kainga (and the challenges to survival inherent in these differences

·                    escaped the dying pillow predicted for them at their entry to the 20th century[10] after experiencing a  population decline of at least half in the fifty years following the signing of the Tiriti/Treaty[11]

·                    retained only a small proportion of their taonga

·                    been subjected to powerful, incessant and subtle assimilative initiatives of the Crown

·                    multiplied their population fifteen times in the last one hundred years despite their

unfavourable, occasionally devastating, experience with the käwanatanga-rangatiratanga relationship on which this paper dwells.

Mäori are aware that their survival as a people is not guaranteed. 

This awareness is not about toto Mäori.  That was the concern either side of the year 1900.  At this time there are more people of Mäori ancestry than ever before.  Moreover, we are distributed all around the world and, statistically speaking, as long as there are humans on this earth there is the prospect that there will be some with Mäori ancestry, toto Mäori. 

Instead, this notion of survival is about there being a substantial number of Te käkano i ruia mai i Rangiätea living according to kaupapa and tikanga tuku iho that are distinctive in the global cultural mosaic.  It is right here that we observe the importance of Article Two of Te Tiriti o Waitangi/The Treaty of Waitangi.  Its expression is central to the survival and prosperity of Mäori as a people.  Every time the fulfillment of the guarantees given by the Crown in Article Two are diminished so is the prospect of survival of Mäori as a people.  It is likely that Mäori participation in the knowledge society will mean that intangible taonga will grow faster than the tangible.  Intellectual property is already a matter of contention between käwanatanga and rangatiratanga.

Each generation of Mäori must make their contribution to the long term survival mentioned here.  Integral to the effective discharge of this obligation will be effective Mäori retention of tino rangatiratanga over taonga Mäori, including mätauranga Mäori which has emerged from unique experience and unique conceptualisation.  Appropriate constitutional arrangements that ensure the compatibility of käwanatanga and tino rangatiratanga have to be found.

4.0              Rangatiratanga in

·        He Wakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni/A Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand  and

·        Te Tiriti o Waitangi/The Treaty of Waitangi

Whereas in 1835, He Wakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni/A Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand described a Nation to Nation relationship between 34 rangatira (subsequently 52) and William IV, King of England,[12] five years later Te Tiriti o Waitangi/The Treaty of Waitangi proposed a different relationship between William’s successor, Victoria, and 550 representatives of Mäori.  Käwanatanga/sovereignty and tino rangatiratanga within the one Nation is the understanding in the 1840 document.  Both documents anticipated that the Crown would provide protection for these islands and for the small but growing population, including the rangatiratanga of the Mäori signatory to each of these documents.      

With the passage of time He Wakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni/A Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand lost its prominence in the minds of Päkehä and Mäori although some people, particularly in Te Taitokerau, continue to hold that it is pre-eminent as the parent document.   

This document lingers in the hearts and minds of mokopuna of the chiefs who, jointly with William IV, consummated it.  There is the view that He Wakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni/A Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand has not been formally set aside; it has not been put to sleep; it has been ignored but not floored.   Others, the more pragmatic, would say that a knock out punch landed a long time ago.

There is the view within Te Röpü Kaumätua o Ngä Puhi Nui Tonu[13] that the offspring of the 1835 document, namely, the Tiriti/Treaty, is a lesser document that has not superseded He Wakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni/A Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand under which there is the understanding that each signatory would respect the others flag; each signatory would protect the citizens of the other in their respective jurisdictions; and, each signatory would govern their respective lands.  With the inclusion of rangatiratanga in both documents we have a clear hint about the importance to Mäori of rangatiratanga. 

It is obvious that the protection and exercise of tino rangatiratanga as defined by Richard Hill has not been the experience for going on 200 years, and Crown attempts to suppress Mäori autonomy and Mäori resistance to this

…became the most fundamental and ongoing relational nexus between state and indigenous people in New Zealand.  The Waitangi Tribunal, in its account of the relationship between the state and the Taranaki people, has in effect summed up the thrust of modern historiography on Crown-Mäori dynamics as follows: the ‘single thread that most illuminates the historical fabric of Mäori and Päkehä contact has been the Mäori determination to maintain Mäori authority and the Government’s desire to destroy it’.[14]

Given my earlier proposition concerning the central role of ‘survival as a people’ in the Mäori world view, I find it easy to understand the disappointment of Mäori about the status to which tino rangatiratanga has been relegated and the continuing advocacy by Mäori for its restoration.

As an aside, the status of He Wakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni/A Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand in the constitutional arrangements of this Land does need to be addressed.  It is possible that the more effective expression of its child, Te Tiriti o Waitangi/The Treaty of Waitangi, will take us in this direction.

4.0              Rangatiratanga under Te Tiriti o Waitangi

Throughout the Land, Mäori signatories and their descendants have maintained their commitment to seeking the full expression of the Tiriti/Treaty while the Crown and the rest of the population have waxed and waned on its relevance to the Nation's future.  For much of the first century of the existence of the Tiriti/Treaty, disregard and disrespect by other than Mäori was in the ascendancy; and for a century up to the 1980s the legal profession, the judiciary and the Crown gave precedence to the questionable judgement by Chief Justice Prendergast whose ruling that the Tiriti/Treaty was simply a “legal nullity”[15] consigned it to a state of insignificance in the minds of many, but not Mäori.[16] 

Sustained by a pre-occupation with survival, it has never been in the Mäori mind to give up, such is the importance to Mäori of rangatiratanga.  The message in the pepeha E kore au e ngaro, he käkano i ruia mai i Rangiätea is deeply imbedded in their mind as a forever statement.  It is a central idea in the knowledge continuum of Te käkano i ruia mai i Rangiätea of whom there were 42,000 in 1891 and who numbered 586,000 in 2001 and who are expected to reach 750,000 by 2021.[17]

Despite the behaviour of the Crown toward the Tiriti/Treaty, Mäori have continued to proclaim their rangatiratanga over their taonga.  At Ratana Pä earlier this week we were reminded that it is seventy years since the Ratana Movement came to political prominence with the Bible in one hand and the Tiriti/Treaty in the other.   Those present at Ratana Pä  heard about the Crown’s neglect of the pleadings of the Movement’s founder, Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana, regarding the Tiriti/Treaty.  A focal point, in the orations was the recurring encounter between käwanatanga and tino rangatiratanga.  The use of force, the manipulation of the law and the influence of the electorate are prominent explanations for the subservient place of tino rangatiratanga in this Treaty-based relationship.  We know that it is now seven decades since Eruera Tirikatene, the first person in the Ratana Movement to be elected to Parliament, called for the full expression to the Tiriti/Treaty in the affairs of the Nation.  Included in this was käwanatanga and tino rangatiratanga in a state of co-existence and equality of treatment for all in pursuit of the aspirations set out in the preamble.

In her book, The Treaty of Waitangi, Claudia Orange in speaking of the government in the 1930s and Tirikatene’s initiative tells us

...like all New Zealand governments before and since, it would not advance Mäori interests at the expense of electoral support.  One casualty was Tirikatene's petition on the Treaty.  The original intent, to enforce treaty promises by having it incorporated in legislation, was supplanted in 1945 by a government decision to print the treaty and hang copies of it in every school and Mäori meeting place in the country, 'as a sacred re-affirmation' of the 1840             agreement.  The recommendation had come from the Mäori Affairs Committee of the House, which had finally considered Tirikatene's petition (and two similar petitions) after a thirteen year delay.[18]

5.0            Growing enlightenment and understanding

The outcome of the foreshore and seabed collision between the signatories to the Tiriti/Treaty is the latest sign that the käwanatanga-rangatiratanga relationship is being lived out to the continuing disadvantage of the Mäori partner.  Only a year or two ago, the Crown showed little regard for the Mäori partner by simply dismissing the recommendations, favourable to the Mäori claimant, of the Waitangi Tribunal in regard to Mäori interest in radio spectrum management rights.  Käwanatanga walked over tino rangatiratanga and what should be available to Mäori as a right is having to be bought. Though only five years old the 21st century has seen two denials of rangatiratanga.  We have witnessed the inability of Mäori to persuade the other signatory to not abuse their authority so as to impose käwanatanga on rangatiratanga.  Sovereignty has been claimed and asserted.  The electoral support on which käwanatanga has relied has multiplied and the less numerous partner has become more vulnerable and its abuse by käwanatanga more daring. 

The latest National hïkoi protest was over the foreshore and seabed.  Estimates of between 25,000 and 45,000 participants including many Päkehä have come from police and other sources.  For many this was a show of disapproval of the

·                    abuse of käwanatanga in contravention of Article 1,

·                    denial of tino rangatiratanga in contravention of Article 2, and

·                    rejection of equal treatment for Mäori, notwithstanding the promise of Article 3. 

The breaking of one condition of a deal is often sufficient to render the arrangement null and void.  Acting in ways that demean all three articles of the Tiriti/Treaty will be cause for revisiting the 2004 experience for decades to come.  

Despite the hïkoi and 4000 submissions on the foreshore and seabed bill, including 90 percent opposed to the legislation, the bill proceeded and is now law.  The Mäori partner led the protest; the General Synod of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia and others opposed the bill as did many individual Päkehä.  There are signs that the community at large will become the source of energy for the more considerate expression of the Tiriti/Treaty.

A most important phenomenon that could add strength to this is the concern expressed by Päkehä New Zealanders that the foreshore and seabed action by käwanatanga was simply a denial of justice: denial of the opportunity to be heard in court despite a judgement of the Court of Appeal that this should occur.  Heightened interest in the Tiriti/Treaty has been a consequence and the search for ways to demonstrate disapproval is likely to be in the minds of caring New Zealanders.

An Auckland Päkehä accountant and consultant has been in heavy demand as a speaker on the subject “Päkehä and the Treaty – Why it’s our Treaty too”[19].  In a widely circulated address accountant Pat Snedden invites his audience, after saying why he is not tangata whenua even with 140 years of whakapapa in this land (none of it Mäori), to contemplate the following:

As tauiwi, we have an obligation to recognise rangatiratanga, because it provided us with the corresponding right of citizenship of this country.  Clearly, a subsequent denial of this legitimacy is not what any of us want.  Nor should we be afraid of the implications of such recognition, which requires first and foremost acceptance and understanding, not the wholesale transfer of resources.

A comment by Pat Snedden concerning Mäori sovereignty and Crown sovereignty provides insight into the potential of the käwanatanga and rangatiratanga relationship:

In recent times it has been usual to juxtapose Mäori sovereignty with Crown sovereignty, both in direct competition for precedence.  It does not have to be so.  There is evidence that the original intent of the parties to the Treaty allowed for joint protection under the law but separate sovereignty over assets and taonga.  If this was the case are there contemporary examples of this working today?  The answer is yes.

And, Pat Snedden goes on to describe an example:

Suffice to record that Ngati Whatua o Orakei, the once proud people of the Tamaki isthmus, at 1840 holding sway over the whole of Auckland; the people who invited and induced Hobson to Auckland to form the seat of government; were reduced in precisely 112 years to a landless few living off the state.  By 1951 they were without a marae on which to fulfil their customary obligations and were left with a quarter acre cemetery being the last piece of land they could tribally claim as their own.

In his second claim before the Waitangi Tribunal Joe Hawke outlined the case relating to the disposal of the Orakei Block, the land ordered by the court in 1869 to be forever inalienable.  The outcome was unequivocally in their favour and Bastion Point in 1991 was finally transferred back into Ngati Whatua’s hand by Act of Parliament.  The area vested included the whenua rangatira now known as Takaparawhau park and the smaller Okahu Park comprising the original papakainga and the foreshore.

The first thing [Ngäti Whätua][20] did was to give a huge chunk of Bastion Point back to Aucklanders.  That’s right, they gave it back to you and me for our unimpeded use.  I refer to the most expensive land with the best views in all of Auckland.  The land where Michael Joseph Savage rests.  Ngati Whatua agreed to manage this jointly with the Auckland City Council for the benefit of all the people of Tamaki Makaurau.

What therefore is it that enables a people who sought for 150 years to get some form of justice that recognised their cultural destitution, to react in their moment of triumph with such generosity to those who had dispossessed them?

What underpins such an act of munificence?  To put it simply; the recovery of the hapu rangatiratanga.

 In the middle years of the 1980s, the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, reminded by its Mäori arm (Te Pïhopatanga o Aotearoa) of the trust placed by Mäori in the missionaries in the drafting and signing of the Tiriti/Treaty, chose to assess the Church’s own performance with respect to this historical document.  It concluded that

·                    partnership and two cultures development were embodied in the Tiriti/Treaty,

·                    these features of the Tiriti/Treaty are Christian and

·                    the Church should take steps to embrace these dimensions of the Tiriti/Treaty in all of the Church’s activity. 

 In its report[21] to the General Synod, the Commission formed to consider the Church's role in giving expression to the Treaty, identified käwanatanga and rangatiratanga as two distinct sources of authority for the ordering of future relationships.  Consideration of the Commission's report led to much work and the capturing, in 1992, of the Commission's recommendations through revisions to the 1857 Constitution of the Church.  A form of tino rangatiratanga, acceptable to Te Pïhopatanga o Aotearoa, is provided for.  The partners to the Tiriti/Treaty agreed that there would be space for each to travel their own cultural route in their lives within the Church where there is no impediment or disadvantage created for the other; and, that when there are implications for the other, the partners would not move without the approval of both.  There were worries that in the decision making of the legislative body of the Church, namely, Te Hinota Whänui/The General Synod, bottlenecks would result.  However, since the constitutional revisions have taken effect, there has not been one division (and the associated voting procedures) instituted in seven sessions of the General Synod at which have been present between 70 and 80 Mäori and Päkehä.

 Occasionally, Tikanga Mäori and Tikanga Päkehä[22] come face to face over operational matters.  One such gathering that was revealing for Päkehä and Mäori was when Päkehä joined Mäori to discuss the sharing of the annual educational funding of about $7,000,000 from the St John's College Trust Board.  Comment from Tikanga Päkehä was that they had dominated the allocation for many decades and that now they should stand back (not ask for any funding) for ten years and in that time look for a system that was fair, just and appropriate.  The Mäori response was that they wanted tino rangatiratanga (which they now had under the revised constitution), manaakitanga and whakakotahitanga.  They concluded that the Päkehä proposal was unacceptable in light of two of these three kaupapa.  In the Päkehä proposal, Mäori saw manaakitanga not being expressed (if Mäori were to accept funding while Päkehä stood back from the distribution) and, also in the Päkehä proposal, the reverse of whakakotahitanga would be occurring.  The parties came to a mutually acceptable arrangement that sees both Mäori and Päkehä at the table annually.  This would not have occurred with such ease and sincerity without having in place the expression of rangatiratanga in the affairs of the Church.

 6.0       Mixed Member Proportional, MMP, Voting System 

Dominant in the voting system of the Nation is the number of votes attracted by political parties.  For the most part the 120 seats in Parliament are allocated to political parties in accordance with the number of party votes received by each.[23]  A consequence is that a party, that has appeal to voters for what its membership believes, can win seats without “first past the post” victories in electorates providing the party meets certain criteria, namely, winning one electorate seat or attracting upwards of 5 percent of the total number of party votes exercised across the Nation.[24]

 The MMP voting system provides the opportunity for a modest percentage of the voters to gain seats and create the situation where käwanatanga must be attentive to the party holding these seats.  A party with 15 percent of the total party vote would be entitled to close to 20 seats.  Such a collective in Parliament can be very influential. 

 If käwanatanga and tino rangatiratanga occupy the same space, and I have in mind Parliament, co-existence of these two phenomena and their reconciliation will receive daily attention.  Reconciliation, including opportunities for the full expression of rangatiratanga has not occurred outside Parliament, nor is it likely to, given what we know from nearly 200 years of käwanatanga-rangatiratanga engagement.  The Crown and a majority of the population has not shown any disposition toward supporting the kind of relationship described by Ani Mikaere and Richard Hill early in this paper.

 It is my prayer that, well within the next 35 years, significant numbers across the electorates will recognise, and want to express support for, the legitimacy of the determination of their whanaunga Mäori and their hoa tata Mäori to achieve the tino rangatiratanga over taonga provided for in Article Two.  They will discover that through the exercise of their vote under the current voting system they are able to give support to any political party that is committed to bring to an end the disadvantage suffered by Mäori since the Tiriti/Treaty; in particular, the denial of rangatiratanga.  The Nation will discover that relief for rangatiratanga can be delivered without the initiative coming from käwanatanga.  Moreover, they will see that the action to achieve the relief will not require a majority of voters to lead it. A critical ingredient in here is the MMP voting system that the Nation adopted slightly less than a decade ago.  Regrettably, there could be attempts on its life because of the opportunity that it offers rangatiratanga.

 It is clear to a significant number of citizens of this Country, including accountant Pat Snedden, that the käwanatanga-rangatiratanga nexus has, too often, produced a denial of the Tiriti/Treaty.  At best embarrassment for many citizens and at worst a travesty of justice for Mäori has been the experience.  It will be on the minds of an increasing number of voters that the pursuit of käwanatanga cannot be allowed full and unfettered freedom to act devoid of the tino rangatiratanga constraint prescribed by the Tiriti/Treaty.

 A consequence of the recent and major repudiation of the guarantee and tino rangatiratanga promises of the Tiriti/Treaty was the resignation from Parliament (and subsequent re-election) of Te Awa o Whanganui in the person of Tariana Turia, and the formation of a new political phenomenon, namely, the Mäori Party with eight kaupapa Mäori, including rangatiratanga, imbedded in its Constitution.  Should the favourable reception extended to this Party at Ratana Pa a few days ago be a foreshadowing of the way in which a significant proportion of the Ratana Movement (of 40,000 to 60,000 people) and other voters will express themselves at the polls later this year, we will see tino rangatiratanga enter Parliament and occupy the same space as käwanatanga.  If the Mäori Party were seen to be attractive with its kaupapa Mäori orientation and its commitment to the Tiriti/Treaty, then it would carry rangatiratanga into the debating chamber and its surrounds.  The reconciliation process that this presentation addresses will have taken a significant step. 

Question asked at the end of the lecture

How does this relate to the 3-house model for parliamentary arrangements that you have been encouraging discussion on for a decade or more? 

 Response

The 3-house model[25] was developed here (at Te Wänanga-o-Raukawa) by the iwi of this region in 1984 as a contribution to a hui at Türangawaewae that year on the Treaty of Waitangi called by the New Zealand Mäori Council and Te Rünanga Whakawhanaunga i ngä Hähi.  The big issue that came out of that gathering was the unanimous call for the Waitangi Tribunal to be given statutory authority to extend its coverage of claims from 1976 onward to 1840 onward.[26]

 In a review of their 1857 Constitution, The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia adapted the 3-house model to their use.  Their revised Constitution became effective in 1992.  In the last six years Te Pihopatanga o Aotearoa has encouraged the Church to present the 3-house model to the Nation for its use.  The Päkehä side of the Church has been hesitant to take this step, believing that the Nation “is not ready” and that an initiative in this direction would lead to adverse effects on the Church and could be damaging to the Nation.

 The prescription that I have offered today would put the two “lower” houses of the 3-house model into one house that we know as Parliament.  This prescription is being opportunistic in light of the new phenomenon on the political scene – a distinctly Mäori political party with a constitution, policies and practices that are kaupapa driven with the real possibility of having sufficient representation in parliament to be influential in that context.  The Mäori Party, jointly with all other parties, would be responsible for käwanatanga and rangatiratanga, with the latter having a greater presence than it has had for nearly two centuries. 

List of Information Sources

 Dawson, Richard The Treaty of Waitangi and the Control of Language, Institute of Policy Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, 2001

Durie, E.T.J. “The Treaty in the Constitution” Building the Constitution Edited by Colin James Institute of Policy Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, 2000

Hill, Richard S. State Authority, Indigenous Autonomy: Crown-Mäori Relations in New Zealand/Aotearoa 1900-1950 Victoria University Press Wellington, 2004

McHugh, P.G. “Constitutional Theory and Mäori Claims” Waitangi: Maori and Pakeha Perspectives of the Treaty of Waitangi Edited by I.H. Kawharu Oxford University Press Oxford 1989

 Orange, Claudia The Treaty of Waitangi Allen and Unwin New Zealand Limited Wellington 1987

 Pool, Ian Te Iwi Mäori: A New Zealand Population Past, Present and Projected Auckland University Press Auckland  1991

 Provincial Secretary of the Church of the Province of New Zealand Te Kaupapa Tikanga Rua: Bi-cultural Development Provincial Secretary of the Church of the Province of New Zealand Auckland 1986

 Roberts, Roma Mere, and Peter R. Wills “Understanding Maori Epistemology: A Scientific Perpective” Tribal Epistemologies: Essays in the Philosophy of Anthropoly Edited by Helmut Wautischer Ashgate Publishing Hants 1998

 Slack, David Bullshit, Backlash & Bleeding Hearts Penguin Auckland 2004

 Snedden, Pat “Pakeha and the Treaty: Why it’s Our Treaty too” An address given at Tairawhiti Polytechnic Gisborne 16 June 2004

 Statistics New Zealand “Media Release” Wellington 15 May 2003

 Wood, G. A., and Chris Rudd The Politics and Government of New Zealand  University of Otago Press Dunedin 2004