This Waitangi Day, let's celebrate our differences

Tuesday, 21 January 2020

OPINION: As a New Zealander who moves between the Māori, Pākehā and Asian New Zealand worlds, let me tell you we're not 'one people'.

But that's a good thing. I like my milk homogenised but not my communities.

New Zealand is a partnership of different peoples, bound by a common citizenship.

For all it has been abused and breached in the past, we can thank the ideals of the Treaty of Waitangi for how we live together successfully. And yes, overall we do live together successfully.

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The Polynesian people who discovered the world's most geographically isolated inhabitable islands nearly 1000 years ago were the most skilled, talented and adventurous seafarers the world had then ever known.

It was certainly a land of plenty but not an idyllic paradise. The settlers negatively affected some aspects of the environment, like people everywhere have tended to do.

And, just like the tribes of Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, they had their battles over land and resources.

These will make great adventure stories in the compulsory history curriculum the Prime Minister has promised.

But the people who became the Māori also forged a unique culture. Among their most important values were kaitiakitanga and manaakitanga: environmental guardianship and hospitality.

That meant the people who came next were welcomed. They too were the most skilled, talented and adventurous seafarers the world had then ever known, and representatives from its greatest (and hopefully last!) Empire.

Few countries – Thailand is one – avoided colonisation. New Zealand could have been colonised by the Dutch, the French, the Spanish or perhaps even the Mongols. In the end, we were probably lucky it was the British.

Both sides tried, but first encounters between people with no knowledge of one another are difficult and sometimes disastrous. 

Motivations for the Treaty varied. Some British colonialists wanted to subdue the original inhabitants who obviously couldn't be defeated in battle. Missionaries wanted to save Māori souls.

True believers in the Empire really did see British citizenship as a great gift. For their part, Māori wanted the Treaty because many of the early settlers were ratbags. Māori wanted their rangatira wahine Kuini Wikitoria to sort them out.

The Treaty was not about conquest but living together. It did not transfer sovereignty. It was about government administration, property rights and citizenship.

The British certainly broke their word, stealing lands, property and even heads, and failing to recognise the enduring tino rangatiratanga of the chiefs and tribes. Schools sought to destroy Māori language and culture.

But the Treaty stood the test of time. When Māori protesters have declared its signing a fraud, they nevertheless sought not its revocation but its honouring.

It was the basis for their loyalty to the Empire in the First and Second World Wars, in which the Māori Pioneer Battalion and Māori Battalion and served so bravely and gloriously in Gallipoli, the Somme, Messines, Palestine, Greece, Crete, North Africa and Italy.

From the 1800s, Asian and other New Zealanders also came to New Zealand, working in the gold mines and the dairy industry in particular.

Since then, others have bravely searched out New Zealand from the likes of Vietnam, Cambodia and the Middle East. Like the original Polynesian and European settlers, others have come to apply their entrepreneurial talents to build a better life. Today, many – perhaps most – were born here.

Historically, Asian New Zealanders have suffered a poll tax and much worse. Some Māori and Pākehā continue to blame Asians for everything from house price inflation to the traffic.

But whatever we think about further immigration, anyone who has been granted citizenship is as Kiwi as anyone else.

As a Māori New Zealander, I have been subject to racism by white New Zealanders. Proud also of my Pākehā heritage, I have sometimes been called plastic by more radical Māori.

As an Asian New Zealander, my wife has been subject to racism and to a lesser extent our kids. Let me tell you when someone once asked my daughter at our marae where she was 'really from', man did my Mum let it rip.

We've both been told by some in our respective communities that we married wrong – and she probably did! But mostly, New Zealanders are 'good-hearted, practical, commonsensical and tolerant'.

It is a remarkable fact about New Zealand that our white people today mostly understand and accept the historical account above.

Contrast that to the attitude of white Australians and North Americans to their indigenous people and the English towards to the Irish, Welsh and Scots.

And most Māori understand and accept the benefits from connection to a wider world, and many other things from rugby to the common law.

My experience is that Asian New Zealanders are proud to be part of our 1000-year story. They appreciate how quickly Phil Twyford's Chinese-sounding-names stunt was slammed by their neighbours.

Even our radicals – like Don Brash and Hone Harawira – can sit down and have a laugh together. And while there are certainly a handful of locals that our police and intelligence services need to keep a close eye on, it took an Australian to commit the worst crime we've ever known.

This Waitangi Day, let's celebrate our differences, accept we'll always have disagreements and even disputes, but be proud that we're all part of something bigger today.

Te au o Waitangi e hora nei me he pīpīwharauroa, takoto te pai, takoto te pai.

May the calm of Waitangi be as broad as the flight of the shiny cuckoo, harbinger of new growth.

Shane Te Pou is a former Labour activist, and political commentator