Treaty ‘not worth marching about’

Press, 3 February 1984, Page 17

Treaty ‘not worth marching about’

Bill Nepia, a lecturer in Maori Studies at the University of Canterbury, believes the Treaty of Waitangi is not even worth protesting about.

He accepts that the motives of the people who framed the treaty were honourable, and that there was no deliberate attempt to defraud the Maori people. “The fact of the treaty is not very important. It is what has happened since. More important still is the situation now.

"The situation now is, briefly, that the people who are the masters of this land are the servants of the late arrivals. They are underprivileged in every way.” He says that the Maori people saw the treaty as a special agreement which meant the British would treat them better than other native peoples. But the successive actions of various Governments led to lost faith and great disappointment.

“The Maori people are not in a very happy state at the moment. The protesters about the treaty are really only symptomatic of .the general deterioration of the relationship between Maori and pakeha and the awareness of the Maori of the situation with their land,” he says.

"Maoris now see themselves as a conquered people. Not in the usual sense where there was a planned invasion, but for practical purposes they have been conquered and have lost the power in this land — the economic power, political power, everything is lost.” He is not only referring to the confiscation of Maori land, but to the fact that all New Zealand land ultimately belongs to the Crown. If needed for motorways or development projects, it can be taken, and the forests, rivers, and fisheries along with it.

“While Maoris retain an everdiminishing part of New Zealand, the control of the land rests with the pakeha. We have lost that ultimate power. We have lost the mana of the country.” Bill Nepia’s own view is that the treaty is “not worth the bother, not worth marching about, not worth anything.” What is important is the “here and now” — what can be done about Maoris who do not achieve at schools, who fill the prisons, who are unemployed, and what can be done about the political weakness of the Maori people. Mr Nepia is one of those who see the celebration of Waitangi Day each year as a symbol of European dominance of New Zealand. He believes it also stands for hypocrisy.

“I think it is significant that the celebration at Waitangi is essentially a military display. And to me that is a statement about pakeha pretentions. I don’t know how you can preach about love and peace in

a military display." Although the celebration "obviously means a great deal to the Maori people of Northland." he does not accept it as a celebration of New Zealand's nationhood. "I don't know if we have anything to celebrate because of New Zealand's continued dependence on other countries — the United Kingdom, now America and Japan. We are still like infants groping around for a wet nurse. The British tit has run dry, so we try the Yankee one."

He adds that the idea of celebrating a national day is a pakeha idea. “The question of what is New Zealand and what is the New Zealand identity is a recurring theme in our national life. The only people who are secure in that are the Maori." He believes the idea of nationhood is a fallacy. "We have never been a united country in the way that people like to think. It is characteristic of any nation that it is split along all sorts of cleavages — religious, political, ethnic, the socio-economic status, and so on." What is needed for New Zealand’s “national integrity" is recognition of the multi-cultural mixture and the formulation of policies to accommodate the different views.

Like the Waitangi Day protesters and many others, Mr Nepia says he has realised that the proclamation of British sovereignty over New Zealand in May, 1840, meant "bugger all.” “All Captain Hobson did was to wave his arm around and say: ‘All this belongs to Queen Victoria.’ That is the basis of our nation and I think that is an arrogant thing.

“Those who follow this line of questions end up questioning the rule of law in New Zealand — like Don Mihaka, who bared his buttocks in a Wellington court to show he did not recognise its authority.”