Bruce Moon | NZCPR | 3 Feb 2015

The essence of the Treaty is that by this document in the Ngapuhi dialect, the chiefs ceded sovereignty to the Queen completely and forever.
In return, all Maoris, including the many slaves of other Maoris, became British subjects with their full rights and privileges – a magnificent gift.

Claims today that the chiefs never ceded sovereignty to the Queen show contempt for the truth.It was accepted at Waitangi by numerous English-speaking chiefs that the word “kawanatanga” used for “sovereignty” in the Treaty meant exactly that. Claims to the contrary today are based on the false idea that translation is the same as derivation. It is not.

Hobson’s brief was “to treat with the aborigines of New Zealand in the recognition of Her Majesty’s sovereign ‘authority over the whole or any part of those islands which they may be willing to place under Her Majesty’s dominion” but only with “the free intelligent consent of the natives”.

Without it, he would have sailed away and who knows what the outcome would have been?
The written record of events at Waitangi on February 6, 1840 is totally clear. The chiefs ceded sovereignty completely and forever to the Queen and knew that they were doing so. This was confirmed fully by the chiefs’ own words at the Kohimarama Conference in 1860 and corroborated by missionary Samuel Warren, who worked subsequently amongst the northern tribes for 15 years. It was confirmed yet again by outstanding Maori scholar, Sir Apirana Ngata in 1920.

By Article third of the Treaty, all Maoris – “tangata Maori, katoa o Nu Tirani” – received full citizen’s rights and this included the many slaves of other Maoris, most being held in abject conditions and often the victims of cannibal feasts. Descendants of those slaves today should be singing the praises of the British for their liberation but we never hear a word. Many chiefs dishonoured the Treaty of Waitangi by being very slow to release their slaves, often taking years.

It is Article second of the Treaty which perhaps has been most twisted in recent times by racists and revisionists. Yet in essence this article is redundant since all it does is guarantee the right of citizens to own private property – land, dwellings and chattels – and British subjects have these rights anyway. Looking more closely at it, some things stand out..First, the guarantee is made to all the people of New Zealand – “tangata katoa o Nu Tirani” – in clear distinction to Article third which applied only to Maoris – and “all” means “all”.

The vital point to note before we even look at the meanings of words such as “rangatiratanga” and “taonga” is that rights of ownership were guaranteed to all – equality of rights is a fundamental aspect of the Treaty in which we should all rejoice, not make spurious claims based on ancestry or sometimes a very small part of it. Since, in pre-Treaty days, Maori property was only what could be held by force of arms and then only by few people except chiefs, for Maori citizens to own property in their own right, with assurances of permanence and inheritance, was a considerable boon.
Nevertheless, “tino rangatiratanga” propaganda continues unabated with the flagrantly false idea that it applies only to those with some Maori blood.

The words were hardly ever used by anybody for decades after 1840, Parkinson noting “a single late and remarkable exception” being “tino rangatira” as one title amongst many by which Queen Victoria was addressed in a petition by some Rotorua Maori residents. As Parkinson has also said: “Kawharu’s mistranslation of `tino rangatiratanga’ as ‘the unqualified exercise of ‘chieftainship’ is not merely erroneous but preposterous”.

Two things are certain: Article first of the Treaty stating that the chiefs ceded sovereignty, neither Hobson nor anybody else would have, imagined that it was contradicted a few lines later in Article second, so whatever the meaning of “tino rangatiratanga”, it was nothing like “sovereignty”. “Full possession” is the only meaning which makes sense in context.

So Maori “aspirations for tino rangatiratanga” which Gareth Morgan says will never be over, are all modern day-dreaming about fantasies of the past with no existence except in their imagination.
Even more abused than this is the meaning of “taonga”. In 1820, Hongi Hika asserted that it meant “property procured by the spear”.

When 13 Ngapuhi chiefs wrote to King William in 1831, they stated that their only possessions were “timber, flax, pork and potatoes” and the word used for “possessions” was “taonga”.

With the range of European material goods such as iron cooking pots, steel knives and so on becoming available to the tribes, it was natural that the meaning of “taonga” be extended to include them but it still only meant “property” in William Williams’ 1844 dictionary, i.e. after the Treaty was signed.

Given that some 10 years later its meaning was again extended to include “treasure” it is as equally preposterous as misuse of the meaning of “tino rangatiratanga” to claim that that was its meaning in 1840.

Yet, ignoring the genuine meaning of Article second today, the claims are rampant that only people with Maori ancestry are somehow entitled to natural water, the electromagnetic spectrum, special treatment by health authorities, and indeed special fishing quotas (which are not even mentioned in the Treaty).

More and more are compliant government departments, local bodies educational. institutes and hospital boards kowtowing before this onslaught, the rights of most New Zealanders being swamped in a sea of political correctness.

It is high time that all New Zealanders of whatever ethnic origin or mixed race put the Treaty back in 1840 where it belongs as one step in our progress towards nationhood, and moved forward in harmony as equals in a democratic state with no racist privileges of any kind for anybody.

This article was written with with assistance from Chris Lee and first published in the The Weekend Sun.