Waitangi Tribunal Hearing

Tu Tangata, Issue 25, 1 August 1985, Page 10

Waitangi Tribunal Hearing

Toi te kupu, toi te whenua toi te mana. Cherish the word and retain and nurture the land, by doing so you will uplift your mana.

The logical conclusion of this Wanganui whakatauki is currently under question by the Waitangi Tribunal, a three man tribunal that is empowered to look at government policies and acts in light of the spirit and intent of the Treaty of Waitangi.

Before them is a case brought by Nga Kaiwhakapumau I Te Reo, the Maori Language Board of Wellington.

Chairman, Huirangi Waikerepuru has claimed that he and Nga Kaiwhakapumau are denied rights in respect of the use of Maori language as guaranteed in the Treaty of Waitangi.

The Tribunal has met on Waiwhetu Marae, Wellington to hear oral submissions by possibly the tino rangatira of this country.

The hearing has adjourned with a right of reply still to be given to the government bodies specified in the claim as having allegedly acted contrary to the provisions of the Treaty of Waitangi.

In attempting to sum up a week of oral submissions before the Tribunal, one thing becomes clear.

The brief of the Tribunal is as wide as the flexibility of Tribunal procedures. All Tribunal members felt free to offer their learned opinion both to those making submissions and to legal counsel, so as to focus in on matters they could legally look at.

An early indication of this was the comment by Tribunal member, Mr Paul Temm who suggested it was one thing to say the Treaty guaranteed and another to say it was obliged to foster certain rights.

Another feature of the hearing was the practical difficulties raised by the use of Maori langauge, not only in the Maori text of the Treaty, but also in the original claim which was in Maori, and the need for an interpreter so that the Tribunal v could fully understand those making submissions in Maori.

As one person put it, ‘‘English is very inadequate for carrying Maori ideas”. Tu Tangata acknowledges this in its coverage of the case.

However as several speakers noted, it was more important that what was said was understood by the Tribunal and so English was used by most.

Professor Sid Mead, Ngati Awa, of Victoria University examined the Maori wording of the Treaty and spent some time giving his meaning of what taonga meant.

He saw the guaranteed possession of ‘‘o ratou taonga katoa,” as meaning indispensable customs. He said the ‘o’ signified this importance and the ‘taonga katoa’ meant all the valued possessions and customs, of which the Maori language would be central.

He saw the ‘tino rangatiratanga’ as meaning the hereditary chieftainship that would stay with the Maori people as in ‘home rule’. For the Maori right to self-government, the use of the Maori language was essential.

Quoting from letters between Governor Hobson and Waka Nene around the time of the Treaty, Professor Mead said Waka Nene had specifically asked Hobson ‘‘you must preserve our customs and lands”.

Professor Mead maintained that the addition of ‘o ratou taonga katoa’, encompassed this desire.

Article three of the Maori text was seen as the most confusing part of what is generally seen as most confusing use of inadequate missionary Maori. Article three talks about the Queen agreeing to ‘tiaki’ nga ‘tikanga katoa’. Professor Mead saw it as more than protecting but also preserving all the correct customs of the Maori people of which the language was an integral part.

He was asked by Mr Paul Temm to give his translation of article three which Professor Mead saw as giving Maori people their just rights and privileges according to their customs, authorities and contracts ‘just like those afforded to the people of England.’ Kaumatua were then called to back up the claim that the Maori language was a taonga handed down generations.

Maori Marsden from Te Aupouri spoke of the language as the vehicle for transmission of a culture, the transmission of knowledge and that made it a reality, not an abstraction that couldn’t be found in a treaty. “Is it possible to think without words?” For the first time the Tribunal heard about what happens when a language is suppressed. “Over 60 years ago I was caned for speaking Maori at school.” Maori Marsden said if the language is suppressed, so is the mana. He’s started to work with children in the North, to give them their tribal identity,

but without the transmission vehicle, the language, total rehabilitation isn’t possible. John Rangihau was next speaking in Maori. Miria Simpson interpreted saying there had been too much beating about the bush. “If we don’t retain our language we are nothing.” “I don’t wish to ignore the pakeha... I don’t expect him to even learn mine (my language)... he wants me to give up mine.”

Wiremu Ohia from Tauranga Moana district Maori Council spoke of the mounting concern for the disappearance of the language and the worsening effect that was having on the Maori people.

Monita Delamere then voiced his concern and spoke of the need to support the take of Nga Kaiwhakapumau.

Koro Dewes of Ngati Porou then spoke of te reo, ‘‘he kaakano i ruia mai i Rangiatea,” a treasure that came from our ancestors.

To him the Treaty guaranteed ‘te tino rangatiratanga’ which he interpreted as ‘mana motuhake’, Maori people controlling their own affairs according to their own customs.

Without that control he said Maori beliefs about their ancestors have been relegated to the area of myths.

Te Arawa elder, Tamati Wharehuia next said his piece thanking the Tribunal for their favourable decision in stopping the flow of effluent into the Kaituna River. He told the members that they had looked at how our tupuna saw things in that case and he was confident of their powers of judgement. Sonny Warn of Taranaki took his legal argument out of the bible. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God.”

Mr Warn took this to mean that God has his own language. At the time of the building of the tower of Babel, different languages were given out, and Mr Warn saw this as meaning the Maori language was approved by God. He said that at the time the first pakeha missionaries arrived, 90% of the bible was already written into carvings with 10% retained orally. Sonny Warn maintained that as language is a God-given right, it is wrong to supress it as has been done to Maori. He also said that a Patea Maori Club request for money for a royal command performance had been recently turned down by the government on the grounds that Maori culture is not New Zealand culture. Mr Warn contended that there needed to be equity in culture as well as language.

Miro Stevens of Taitokerau followed with an eloquent testimony to the central place that her language had in her life.

It was then the turn of two Hawaiians to lay their experience before the Tribunal.

Moses Keale and Malcolm Chun had come to New Zealand from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to tell of the endangered state of the Hawaiian language and what measures were being taken to revive its use.

They told of how since the annexation of Hawaii in 1900 by the United States the use of Hawaiian has dropped, just as the non-native population has increased. English government schools started in 1854 to service the growing number of foreigners in the government service who dismantled the Hawaiian property tradition and voting rights to benefit themselves. Some laws have been passed to foster Hawaiian language and culture but Malcolm Chun spoke of no teeth in the legislation.

He said the Hawaiian Department of Education had ignored the letter and the spirit of those laws but the resistance to English continued in the churches with at least the last twenty years’ bi-lingual services being the norm with only now accomodation of English onlyspeaking Hawaiians taking place. Native Hawaiians numbering around one hundred and forty five thousand were half the total population in 1900 but in 1980 numbering the same were only 17% of the total population.

Both Malcolm and Moses spoke of a resurgence of interest today in Hawaiian culture with a recent needs assessment survey of Hawaiian households showing that for 92% Hawaiian language was most important. They said this showed a turnaround in the thinking of the Hawaiian people despite the low level of language proficiency.

They spoke of the wider community’s realisation that most tourists come to Hawaii so that they can experience the unique Hawaiian culture of which the language is the main transmitter.

And on the state of transmitting the Hawaiian culture through radio and television waves, both Malcolm and Moses spoke of hugh interest and support from Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian.

It was timely that the plight today of the Maori language was then outlined to the Waitangi Tribunal.

Dr Richard Benton told of the decline in the use of Maori since the 1930 s under the impact of assimilation. He said a massive salvage operation was underway with schemes such as kohanga reo but the central problem was the Maori has not been able to exercise the right to use Maori language in day to day living.

“English speakers can always get around the Maori language but not vice versa.”

To Dr Benton, official recognition of the Maori langauge and a language commissioner whose job it would be to promote and safeguard the language, is needed.

Alex Frame, a lecturer in law at Victoria University then backed up Nga Kaiwhakapumau’s claim that the broadcasting service in New Zealand was an agent of the crown and was therefore duty bound by the Treaty’s provisions. Mr Frame spoke of ‘ministerial control’ of the broadcasting service and how the minister was accountable to parliament. Mr Frame also spoke of the broadcasting service being responsible ‘in so far as it allocates resources for Maori language’.

The ‘cultural capital’ of the dominant culture was then explained by Dr Ranginui Walker. He backgrounded the effect of pakeha education on the Maori people and drew the analogy that the price of pakeha success was Maori assimilation.

He pointed to a century of suppression of language and culture. He said awareness of identity is usually realised by a pakeha child at age four or five but that a Maori child takes until age nine. Before this the Maori child is ambivalent about identity sometimes settling for a pakeha identity.

Dr Walker faced questions from the Tribunal about a possible public backlash on the promotion of Maori language and said it was more important that there was a choice.

Derek Fox then spoke from twenty years experience in radio and television of how the Maori peole had been “grossly cheated” from their fair share of representation in the media. He spoke of nine minutes a day on radio and ten minutes on television for Maori

language, less than one half of one per cent of total media time. He spoke of 200 Maori out of fifteen thousand employed by the Broadcasting Corporation of New Zealand; of no Maori people in senior management positions; of no Maori language speakers in senior positions; of no acknowledgement of bi-lingual skills in broadcasting.

He said three reviews looking at television were underway at the moment. One was looking at applications for a third channel. Another had come out of the Hui Taumata and under the Maori Economic Development Commission was looking at a viable Aotearoa Broadcasting System.

The third was a review by the broadcasting corporation itself.

Mr Fox stressed that the Aotearoa Broadcasting System he was proposing would have Maori programmes, not necessarily in Maori language.

Maori psychologist, Donna Awatere then explained what the ‘cultural absence’ in the media had done for the Maori people. She said her professional work in Otara for the past eight years had shown her that a sense of hopelessness is the outcome.

She said the information in most systems is geared to giving Maori people low self esteem. She said the legacy of grandparents having the language in themselves suppressed has persisted into today’s children who sometimes have neither Maori nor adequate English.

And she said the pervasive medium of television not only created a foreign culture but also the advertising created artificial desires for consumer goods out of economic reach of the Maori people. She saw the need for the Aotearpa

Broadcasting Service where Maori people could have autonomy in how they wanted to be represented.

The total environment of Aotearoa was the concern of the next speaker supporting increased status of the Maori language.

The commissioner for the Environment, Ken Piddington homed in on Maori language survival being part of being a New Zealander. He said “if the language is lost, we will be seen to have denied our Pacific origins”.

In answering a concern of Tribunal member, Mr Paul Temm, about the pakeha reaction to moves to push Maori language, Mr Piddington said he was encouraged by ‘the greening of NZ’.

He said he detected a rising level of support from the pakeha community but it would take personal example such as the use of ‘kia ora’ in speech and letter.

Joe Williams and Ngahiwi Apanui both of Wellington eloquently told of the dreams of previous generations that would be made reality.

Joe told of the decline of the language that had been halted and reversed in three generations of his own family. He said the Maori news, Te Karere epitomised the revolution taking place amongst Maori people who were now asking the other partner in the Treaty to be a partner as was intended.

Piripi Walker who works with Radio New Zealand and Whatarangi Winiata of Victoria University were also speakers on the final day. Piripi Walker making the point that any decision by the Tribunal would be too late to influence the granting of the third television channel then before the Broadcasting Tribunal.

Whatarangi Winiata spoke about the need for a Trustee for the Maori language.

Manuka Henare representing Te Runanga Whakawhanaunga, the Maori sections of the main Christian churches, brought to light an oral submission made just prior to the time of the Treaty signing. He said both William Colenso and Bishop Pompellier had recorded that the Maori people were granted freedom of religious expression.

Ritchie Luke of Waiwhetu Marae was able to explain the Maori kaupapa of kohanga reo and from his experience with his kohanga, speak about what happened when the children went on to the local primary school.

A further speaker from the international committee of jurists Mr Dawson then gave a summary of constitutional law and existing conventions relating to aboriginal rights.

The hearing was adjourned and reconvenes, beginning Monday October 7, on Waiwhetu Marae to hear further submission by Nga Kai whakapumau I Te Reo.