The Waitangi Treaty is our founding document for New Zealand. Its purpose was to allow Victoria to govern her colonial settlers while they lived in Aotearoa and to share resources back to the queen, to have a partnership with the natives, while protecting native land and rights, as natives, to their own resources.
The argument that native Māori woke up one morning and suddenly decided to give away their sovereignty to another country and to a queen that they'd never heard of, has worn thin in this day and age. Especially so nowadays, when we all know that James Cook was under orders to look for land to harness for Mother England, in order to extend her empire.
The results of this, as history shows, were the New Zealand land grab wars which only started immediately after the signing of the Treaty. However the land grab has never stopped. The records will say they ended in 1870 - history tells another story.
In recent times we've had Ngā Tama Toa in 1972 pitching their tent on Parliament lawns, protesting against the colonial policies continuing to manage Māori language and race into extinction. Such as the Breast Suppression Feeding Policy forbidding Māori to breastfeed their own children, only to wet nurse children of colonial settlers. The Language Suppression Policy forbidding Māori to speak their own language, and the eagerness to build prisons for Māori under the police policy of protecting the settlers and securing lands for them - this was printed on the walls of the Hastings Police Station 1886 now restored and able to be viewed in the Police Museum at Porirua.
In the early 1970s Sid and Hana Jackson asked the government to recognise Māori as an official language.
Whina Cooper marched in 1975 from Panguru to Parliament to tell the government "not one more acre of Maori Land" to be surveyed, taken and sold.
The Foreshore and Seabed Act in 2004 gave rise to Pita Sharples leading a protest through the streets of Wellington and Tariana Turia crossing the floor leaving the Labour Party.
The Bastion Point protest in 1978, after the government sent in the militia and the police to throw Ngāti Whātua off the country's most expensive real estate, took until 1987 to settle. And that was after they were burnt out of their pā along scenic driveway, Orakei in 1951 and forced to settle on Bastion Point.
This, so Queen Elizabeth would not see the eyesore of local Māori and their marae, on her Auckland city tour. This action coined the name Boot Hill for Bastion Point, after Ngāti Whātua were booted up the hill out of sight and out of mind by the government.
The incident of Rua Kēnana being marched out of Tūhoe in 1917 was repeated again with Tame Iti in 2007 with the Tuhoe raids.
I myself have been restricted under the Pepper-Potting Policy in the late 70s and early 80s as to where I could live in Wellington suburbs when applying for flats. Only so many Māori were allowed to live in inner city suburbs so as not to have too many of the native kind under foot.
All of these policies give rise to the definition of the song by David Grace titled The Treaty is a Fraud.
In 1982 when Judge Joe Williams sang a song on Radio with Pictures with the band Aotearoa titled Stand up for your Rights I, along with producer Brent Hansen, were summoned to court by the Race Relations Office for broadcasting racist songs to the New Zealand public.
So what does all of this mean on Waitangi Day when we celebrate one nation, one people? Thoughts go back to the fact that Māori have never gained any benefits, not one, without protest or argument.
Waitangi Day is the main platform where Māori can have a say, to protest, to argue for the true essence of the Treaty, for equal equity and the best chance of being heard by the government and have eye-to-eye contact with the Prime Minister.
When Pākeha New Zealanders realise that they too can make claims to the Treaty Office, to protect and make gains for our country, rather than just thinking it's solely for Māori to utilise we will move forward and change the landscape for the better, together. Māori have put in claims to protect the waterways, why don't Pākeha too?
Māori do not want Pākeha to leave. The Treaty of Waitangi is a document to share everything equally, not for anyone to hold sovereignty over the other. Besides, it's hard for me to separate myself in two. As Whina Cooper said, "Race relations will be solved in the bedroom" and I am the result of just that.
All of this, and more, passes through the veins of Māori when Waitangi Day celebrations come around every year. And I can say this as a Pākeha as well - I would not exist if my ancestors did not leave Worth of Kent in the 1860s to come to the Land of the Long White Cloud.
Na reira, mauriora kia tatau katoa.
Te Hira Henderson is Curator of Taonga Māori
• New exhibition Five Pākehā Painters opens today, Saturday, February 9. Free entry .
• We have a lot of Art Deco Festival events beginning February 13. Please visit our website www.mtghawkesbay.com for full details.
• Public Art Guided Tour with Art Curator Jess Mio. Thursday, February 21 at noon, meet in MTG front foyer. Free event, all welcome.
• Hang Time, a wine movie for millennials. Saturday, February 23 at 7pm in the MTG Century Theatre. Tickets available through Eventfinda.
• Napier Hill Cemetery Tour, discover tales of tragedy and bravery as the tour winds through the historic cemetery guided by MTG's Curator of Social History Gail Pope. Sunday, February 24, 2–4pm. Tickets are available through Eventfinda or at MTG. $15 per person. Bookings are essential as spaces are limited.
