Posts by Tom Semmens
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
@Lucy Stewart:
My point is that since 1769 the story of Maori has been the story of their response to contact and colonisation. the idea that the Maori Culture of today is a pure artifact of that of 1769 - or 1840 - is nonsense. What is Maori culture today has to be an evolution of what it was 240 years ago in 1769, similarly, what will be vibrant Maori culture in the year 2249 will be quite different to what it is now.
-
you can't force them into it.
My Dad is half Maori, there didn't seem to be a lot coercion in the creation of me.
Assimilation is always taken as given that it means obliteration. I am not so sure. maybe it can mean creation. I was at a BBQ in London the year before last and the New Zealanders, all white, were doing fire poi in the backyard, and they had put down a hangi. I was walking down Queen Street a few years back and I saw a Maori girl arm-in-arm with a Chinese one, in that way Asians do, as naturally as if we've always done it here. I've recently had a newly arrived Polish girl introduce me to her sister as her "Whanau."
The point, Danielle, iis that in another hundred years from now no one and everyone will be a "Maori".
Whither then the "principles of the Treaty of Waitangi?"
-
So anything we may have once deemed legally/socially/ethically useful as a society needs to be ignored once it passes some nebulous, agreed-upon* use-by date? Like yoghurt?
Actually, yes. We do not live in a time warp where the world of 1840 has been locked in forever. Time is a valid and legitimate actor in history. Are you arguing we should forever be in thrall to the actions of our ancestors? There is coming a day when the idea of Maori (whatever THAT will mean in 2140, or even 2040) being seen as the only indigenous people will be regarded as a joke, a simple rejection of common sense and common fact. And that day, if it hasn't already arrived, is a lot closer than you seem to believe.
Sounds great, we could enshrine Te Tiriti in a written constitution - would that make you happy ?
No.
Or do you actually cleave to this quaintly colonial notion that it's OK for the state to embody Pakeha culture, but not OK for it to embody Maori culture ? IOW, Pakeha good, Maori bad ?
I don't recall commenting on this. You seem to be trapped in the twentieth century. Do you wish to trap us forever divided between Pakeha and Maori? perhaps it is time for you to move on? Intermarriage and time will see inevitably the blending of peoples that has already created something new, and that will in turn evolve into something else. "Pure" Maori culture died on the 6th October 1769. The rest has been the story of New Zealand.
We still recognise the Magna Carta, signed in 1215
Actually, Magna Carta is instructive of how I think the treaty should be approached. No one seriously seeks to limit the application of Clause 29 to those who can trace their ancestry back to 1297, or deny it to Welshmen and Scotsmen, which is what a literal interpretation would do. Magna Carter nowadays establishes a series of important PRINCIPLES around the limitations of Royal perogative and the right of Habeus Corpus. For example, to my thinking, article two of the treaty of Waitangi will eventually simply establish the rights of those who are New Zealanders to their sovereign rights to their land. To think otherwise is to apply an intellectually bankrupt and reactionary straitjacket that flies in the face of reality in New Zealand 170 years after the signing, let alone what the country will be like 200 or 300 years after the signing of the treaty of Waitangi.
And, rather curiously, appear to hanker for a perpetual NZ circa 1950
I think you'll find I hanker for a New Zealand Republic circa 2140. The reactionaries of the elite left are the ones who want to freeze us into an 1840 time warp.
-
OK. But remember that "de facto rights" boil down to rights assumed by force, or the threat of force. And these aren't really sound foundations on which to base any claim to a rule of law that binds us all. If your ancestors were quelled by force alone, surely it behooves you to resist the state by applying a countervailing force of your own?
Which is why I was careful to say I believe the DE JURE basis of the government of this land no longer needs, because of the passage of time, the validation of the treaty. But the best way to be sure would be to simply for us to do the right thing snd create another, absolutely valid state entity - the REPUBLIC of New Zealand.
I was playing with my ten year old nephew the other week and it occured to me that if, as I fervently hope, he lives to a great age in his home town then I could conceivably be gazing fondly upon the representative of a quarter of a millenia of the recorded presence of our family name in that place.
The idea that the specific articles of the treaty of Waitangi could still apply to him and - hopefully - his descendants at that time would be a functional absurdity.
-
I'd see this as a step to having a general "right-to-roam" on uncultivated land and forest, similar to the Swedish concept of Allemansrätt.
Now that is something even Brother Cavill could believe in.
-
I think we're safer leaving it up to the Courts, frankly. There's a much higher proportion of first-class minds on the bench than there is in the New Zealand voting population right now. And if that sounds elitist, well, sorry.
Last time I looked Parliament was the highest court, and for better or for worse I prefer decisions with deep real world political implications to be made by that institution than by elite experts informed only from within the narrow blinkers of the law.
-
Danielle, my feeling is you would find a only a slim majority oppose the treaty process - most thoughtful New Zealanders understand that past wrongs need to be put right, as long as it is with money and kind.
Where you run into a wall of Pakeha hostility is the idea of bi-culturalism and the relevance of the treaty as a living document. The treaty is between Maori and the British crown and its successor.
The elephant in that room are four million people who now simply call themselves New Zealanders, and who are not addressed in the treaty.I am going to be deeply un-politically correct here and say I have sympathy for the idea the treaty is the original basis for de jure government. But the realities of New Zealand 170 years on from 1840 makes the current New Zealand state de jure and de facto without need for recourse to the treaty of Waitangi. To my mind, most of the treaty is now relevant only to academics.
-
Personally, I think the best way out is a populist response of legislating to enshrine and extend a common law property right of access to all beaches for all New Zealanders.
The representatives of vested private property interests like the ACT Party, property developers, farmers and Maori corporate interests would shriek at the legalised theft of it all and Maori sovereignty troublemakers would be outraged at the "treaty breach".
Everyone else would agree it was a "Mom and apple pie" idea whose time had come and feel all warm inside that the Kiwi dream was alive, well and being guarded by our wise lawmakers.
-
The problem with letting it go to court is a ruling in favour of Maori would almost certainly see the electoral destruction of the current political consensus around all aspects of the Treaty Settlement process.
Let's not forget that by and large a huge majority of New Zealanders are opposed to the idea that the treaty may have any relevance today, and I would suggest a significant majority of New Zealanders are opposed to any treaty settlement process.
This issue requires a political solution. Abdicating that clear political responsibility and letting the courts decide would be irresponsible and risks pushing the Pakeha majority one bridge to far, and that would be a disaster for race relations.
-
Clearly, that word "remaining" was very significant.
And unacceptable to the vast majority of Pakeha New Zealanders, who are just as convinced of the fiction of free access to all the beaches as many Maori are of the fiction they have a property right.
A property right would be worth a lot of money, and that is just aquaculture - God knows what access would be worth. The Maori Party seems to largely reflect the views of a tribalised brown corporate elite who are happy to use race if it adds to their bottom line. They may yet decide to hang tough on the issue. As it is, there are plenty of Maori with time on their hands and chips on their shoulders who will happily shit stir by making demands for a proscriptive property right and threaten to charge campers and beach goers over the summer - demands which the media will gleefully report in detail.
From Labour's point of view the temptation to play race politics over this must be overwhelming. They owe National nothing on this issue, given the rank racism and hypocricy of National when in opposition. Given how she takes things so personally, goading Tariana Turia would be easy to do, and pushing her into a hardline position would play straight into a Pakeha backlash that Labour would benefit electorally from. Make no mistake - get this wrong and this is an election losing issue for National with the Pakeha majority. I've noticed people seem uncommonly interested in the issue. The beach has an iconic cultural status for Pakeha New Zealanders - the concept of open access to the beaches may just be our first purely New Zealand common law right. Any perception of an attempt to modify that would to my mind produce an explosive backlash.
I doubt though there can be a fully satisfactory solution. Maori expectations seem to have been raised to an expectation that they've got a property right, and anything less constitutes a grievance. Pakeha opinion would be radicalised if such a property right was allowed to such an extent that it would mean the end of the treaty consensus that currently exists amongst the political elites.
National will be hoping that Labour isn't as irresponsible and opportunist an opposition as they were on this issue.