Sometimes you have to look back to go forward. After all the broken promises, land greed, military interventions, confiscations, dispossessions, raruraru (trouble) and mamae (pain) and decades of repentance and reparation, we desperately need a new kind of conversation.
The annual Waitangi Day commemoration is surely a time to acknowledge the past, listen deeper, be done with “us and them” silo thinking, and reimagine the future.
True Treaty intentions
The impact of Covid and foreign wars, climate change, new technology, and shifting political, social and cultural pathways are forcing us to rethink who we are as a region and a nation.
For a start we need a better-shared understanding of co-governance and what “constitutional transformation” might look like, as proposed by the He Puapua (”space between the waves”) report of Maori aspirational goals for 2040, the 200th anniversary of Te Tiriti.
The late local identity Moana Jackson (co-author of He Puapua) was a great advocate of storytelling to fire up imaginations and explore possibilities.
Every story needs a hook. And there it is: Maui’s double-sided hook following the coastal curve between Te Kauwe-a-Maui (the jawbone/Cape Kidnappers) and Mahia Peninsula.
Maui defied his older brothers by hiding in their waka and at the right time revealed himself, bloodied his nose for bait and cast northward, foul-snagging the great fish Te Ika-a-Māui (the North Island), at Maunga Whakapunake near Wairoa.
Many stories are associated with Te Matau-a-Māui; celestial, terrestrial, geographical, navigational, tribal, cultural and spiritual, each revealing levels of matauranga Māori or ancient knowledge.
Māui the imagineer
Maui, both ancient navigator and collective ancestral myth, was a great storyteller, an imagineer, an out-of-the-box creative thinker who tried new things and often succeeded despite the naysayers.
Nukutaurua on the Mahia Peninsula is a pivotal place where the waka Kurahaupō and Takitimu, after departing Rarotonga, left behind high-ranking leaders and tohunga.
At that location in 1766, three years before Captain James Cook arrived on these shores, the great tohunga (seer, prophet) Arama Te Toiroa prophesied the coming of a new era.
He described Cook’s ship and the appearance of these new arrivals, saying a new God was coming for Māori “but still the people would be oppressed”. During the Musket Wars from the early 1820s, many Māori from Wairarapa to Hawke’s Bay sought protection at Mahia under Ngāpuhi leader Wera Hauraki to avoid musket-wielding rivals.
From here they first heard the message of “the new God”, a way of peace and forgiveness shared by converted Musket Wars captives, graduates of the Rev William Williams’ Turanga (Gisborne) mission station and Catholic priests who were visiting the East Coast. Māori missionaries from Wairoa were first to warn that opportunist trader Barney Rhodes was attempting to buy land from Wairoa to Wairarapa.
Williams wrote to Governor Hobson and influential people in London opposing this outrageous claim.
Reluctant signing
In June 1840, the HMS Herald anchored up the Tukituki River at Waipureku gathering signatures for the new treaty.
On board was Edward Williams who, along with his father Henry Williams, had translated the English words of Te Tiriti into te reo. The signing opened the way for Māori to return from Mahia and reclaim their territories.
Edward Williams, along with his uncle Samuel, who founded and funded Te Aute College thereby transforming Māori education and political influence, are buried in the grounds of Christ’s Church Pukehou.
For most Māori, Te Tiriti was a sacred kawenata (covenant) steeped in a biblical understanding, an agreement to confirm a relationship of equals and to protect Māori land, treasures, rights and mana.
The words he iwi tahi tatou spoken by Governor Hobson to the chiefs after signing are based on scripture (Gal 3:26-29; Eph 2:14) affirming the need to work together in the spirit of unity and to “break down walls of hostility”.
Colenso to Ratana
Other than whalers, missionary printer William Colenso and his estranged wife Elizabeth (nee Fairburn) were the first white residents in Hawke’s Bay, living at a neutral place selected by the chiefs.
As the nation’s first printer, he produced the first Māori-language Bible, Treaty invitations and an eyewitness account of the initial signing. He’s buried in the Old Napier Cemetery, although his monument sits in often flooded swampy land near Ātea a Rangi.
Maori prophet, faith healer and visionary T.W. Ratana came to Hawke’s Bay in the 1920s gathering evidence for a combined Kingitanga-Ratana petition insisting the neglected Te Tiriti be included in the laws of the nation.
He would be encouraged by what is happening today.
In 1933, a year after that petition was tabled in Parliament, he was invited to Nukutauroa to lift ancient curses, again urging the people to move beyond fear and superstition, return to faith in Ihoa o Nga Mano (Jehovah of the Multitudes) and be united.
Making room for change after the Rev Samuel Marsden’s Christmas Day “good news” sermon at Rangihoua (new dawn), Ngāpuhi chief Ruatara and 400 of his warriors performed an ancient haka, Te Hari o Ngāpuhi (the Dance of Joy). It urged Māori to make room for change; to create space for something new coming over the sea at Waitangi and concluded “let peace be established”.
The popular rhythmic 1950s Ngati Kahungunu waiata Tutira Mai Ngā Iwi, penned by Canon Wi Huata, is another call to unity, to stand together in strength.
If Hawke’s Bay’s Waitangi was named for the crying wind, we might ask what sound are we hearing in this time of significant change, as the nation seeks to honour the Treaty first signed at its northern namesake?
We need the messages of Māui, Marsden, Ruatara, Ratana, Huata and visionaries like Moana Jackson, to inspire and encourage us into new ways of thinking, being and acting.
We need one another’s skills, resources, faith and goodwill to weather the storms ahead as we continue our conversations, create space for change as we engage in mahi tuhono (work that brings us together) and reimagine a transformative 2040 vision.
– Keith Newman is a Pākehā journalist, poet and author of books on T.W. Ratana and early Māori engagement with Christianity. He lives in Haumoana.
