Where do Chinese fit in Te Tiriti o Waitangi?

Wednesday, 2 February 2022

Stuff's NZ Made/Nā Nīu Tīreni project: When the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, Māori owned more than 66 million acres of land. By 1975, almost 97 per cent had been sold or taken. (Last published February 1, 2021.)

Te Tiriti o Waitangi is known as a bicultural agreement between the British Crown and Māori and was signed in 1840 when the Māori population was just over 100, 000 and the settler population was 2000.

In 2018, Census data reported 231,387 Chinese-identifying people living in Aotearoa New Zealand. Where does the larger percentage of New Zealand’s Asian population sit in this constitution, and who is included in the interests of the British Crown?

From 1881 to 1920, a poll tax equivalent to about $1770 today (later raised to about $20,000) was imposed on Chinese migrants and limited their entry to New Zealand. This was implemented after the Chinese Immigrants Act received Royal Assent.

Asians Supporting Tino Rangatiratanga (ASTR) is a collective for people with pan-Asian whakapapa supporting Māori sovereignty. (Image description: members of ASTR gathered in photo at a wānanga in front of the stage. Above the stage there is a banner that reads 'Asians Supporting Tino Rangatiratanga', and one of the members is holding a Tino Rangatiratanga flag.)

Kirsty Fong from Asians Supporting Tino Rangatiratanga (ASTR) said “conversations about Te Tiriti have historically been framed as between Māori and Pākehā, with Chinese, tauiwi [non-Māori] or other racialised people of colour excluded from the relationship. However, as Te Tiriti is the first immigration document of Aotearoa New Zealand, we are implicitly entangled in this relationship.”

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In 2018, Census data reported 231,387 Chinese-identifying people living in Aotearoa New Zealand. (Image description: Chinese consul Yu Zhang shares a hongi with Te Mahurehure Cultural Marae Society chairperson Christine Panapa at a Matariki celebration. Yu is wearing a navy suit, and Panapa is wearing a bright floral top.)

* Immigration reset allows us to honour the bargain struck in te Tiriti

* It's madness that we don't teach our ākonga the history of Aotearoa

* This Waitangi Day, let's celebrate our differences

Kathleen Yang, a second-generation New Zealand-born Chinese migrant, said: “I’ve never thought that this place belongs to me.” (Image description: A young Chinese girl around age 6 is smiling at the camera while holding a teddy bear in her arm. She is wearing a pink top, red skirt and is wearing pigtail buns.)

* Don't vilify minorities to make your political point

While the term Pākehā is widely known to refer to European migrants, Dr Tze Ming Mok, a New Zealand Chinese writer and social scientist, said in her 2004 Landfall Essay, “we have to take on the reality of our legal (if not ethnic) role as 'Pākehā' and reject the longstanding fallacy that the Treaty is 'not our business'. The principles of the Treaty give us rules of engagement; if we accede to them, we will access our right to be different.”

“Just imagine – you could assert your right to belong here based not on the length of time you've lived here, or the proximity of your homeland to New Zealand, or the turns of your accent, or the amount of money you've paid to the Government, or the colour of your skin, but on your commitment to the place's founding principles. I know it sounds crazy, but it just might work.”

Kathleen Yang, a second-generation Chinese migrant, said that growing up there was a Chinese perception among her whānau that “hard work will get you anywhere”. There was an implicit attitude that the inequities that Māori faced were consequences of personal actions and were not related to violations of Te Tiriti. While her parents modelled an appreciation for Māori arts, language and culture, Yang said that excluded “everything else, like the history”.

Mengzhu Fu from ASTR said that when there is sometimes an anti-Māori sentiment among some members of the New Zealand Chinese community, “I think it comes from racist depictions of Māori in the Pākehā media, which then get translated into Chinese media. The root of all this comes from colonisation and white supremacy, which has thrived on creating divisions between Māori and Chinese.”

Fu said that the best way to honour Te Tiriti on an everyday level is to “learn about Te Tiriti, He Whakaputanga and the history of colonisation and Māori resistance in Aotearoa. We need to find ways, collectively, of divesting from colonial structures and be in service of Māori fighting for land reclamation and water protection.”

Learning about New Zealand history and taking academic papers about it has changed Yang’s perception of being part of a model minority. She says that her way of honouring Te Tiriti is educating herself and others in her family and close circles.

Yang was born in New Zealand but sees herself as an outsider. “I will never be part of the people of New Zealand,” she said. “I’ve never thought that this place belongs to me.”

“We cannot eliminate anti-Asian racism if Indigenous sovereignty and land are not respected in Aotearoa. Our path to overcoming racism needs to be built on solidarity between racialised communities, between tauiwi people of colour and tangata whenua,” said Fu.

Fong said “it is important that we have a critical understanding of the history of this land and our positionality as tangata tiriti (people who have been granted access here by Te Tiriti o Waitangi).”

In Chinese, Waitangi is transliterated to Huái Táng Yī (怀唐伊). The meaning of ‘huái’ (怀) is to be pregnant. Hapū (pregnant) also means the primary political unit in traditional Māori society. There are at least 27 versions of the word ‘huai’ in Chinese, so could the choice of ‘huái’ (怀) be a mere coincidence or imply a potential for growth from Te Kore (The Void – the beginning of the Māori creation story)?