Protesters call for Treaty of Waitangi to be at heart of government

Tuesday, 5 December 2023

As hundreds of protesters gathered around her at Christchurch’s Bridge of Remembrance, Teresa Butler clutched her mother’s death certificate tightly.

It lists her mother’s death as being caused by over 50 years of smoking - and Butler is horrified at the government’s new policies on making the country smoke-free, which she says are unwinding a struggle that began with New Zealand’s colonisation.

“Since tobacco was bought into this country, that’s how long we’ve been fighting for, and now you want to take that away from us? Are you serious?” Butler, who stood for Te Pāti Māori at the election, asked of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

Butler was among about 1000 people at the protest in Christchurch on Tuesday evening, which mirrored the thousands of Kiwis who gathered across the country for National Māori Action Day, to protest the new government’s policies on the Treaty of Waitangi and co-governance.

“It’s the next generation of tamariki that are here, there’s so many of them,” she said of the turnout, hours after MPs were sworn in at Parliament. “Everyone believes in a Te Tiriti-centric Aotearoa.”

The protest was also about keeping Ta Aka Whai Ora (The Māori Health Authority), she said.

“We want our people to be healthy, we want our people to have housing, to have kai, to have all those inequities pulled apart - we were on track and now they want to wipe that away.”

Protesters at The Bridge of Remembrance sang waiata and made their grievances heard before marching through the city.

Among them was an anonymous researcher and artist who joined the protest as she believes Māori lives are in danger.

“The Treaty is the founding constitutional document of our country, and bringing that into question is creating not only huge division but it’s literally risking lives of our people.”

The Canterbury visual artist said the Treaty ensures longevity of life and the environment, and the equality of her people.

“Bringing all of that into question is really bringing into question the worth that this government has on human life, and I don’t think that’s something that deserves to be questioned.”

She quoted a lawyer who specialised in The Treaty of Waitangi: “Moana Jackson describes that if Māori have shown anything in our protests over the years, it’s that we are brave. We are brave and we are generous and we are hopeful.”

Pauline Aquitania Crofts, 83, also attended the protest and said Māori had never conceded sovereignty to colonisers.

“It’s my land, it’s my right and I don’t want anyone taking it away,” she said. “They’ve taken most of it - they’re not going to get the rest.”

Crofts’ great-great-grandfather refused to pay the dog tax introduced in the late 1800s - a fee for simply owning a dog - and was thrown in prison for months.

She said the government hasn’t recognized that Māori never wanted to be governed by them.

Luxon said on Tuesday that the Government was determined to ensure Māori would do better than they had in the past six years.

The new Government would work closely with Māori and other community leaders to try to get away from big bureaucracy solutions, he said.

However, the turnout across the country suggested many people have little faith the Prime Minister will deliver for Māori.