Tapu Misa: The treaty conversation that just goes round in circles

Robert Consedine is a middle-aged Pakeha of Irish Catholic whakapapa, who grew up in Addington, Christchurch, where he did not come into contact with many Maori.

His awakening didn't come until the 1981 Springbok Tour, when in the course of civil disobedience he discovered how difficult it was for a white, middle-class male to get arrested. When he finally gained admittance to Addington jail, he found it inhabited by a disproportionate number of Maori.

That got him thinking for a start about the irony of his knowing more about the history and struggles of black South Africans than he did about people living right under his nose. What he went on to find about the country's history propelled him into the work he does today: educating his fellow Pakeha about the Treaty of Waitangi and our colonial history.

I'm told he's very good at it, which is why I went to him after reading the flood of letters that have followed the Herald's coverage of Maori claims. Consedine thinks - somewhat optimistically, I believe - that New Zealanders are having the most interesting conversation of the past 160 years.

I wanted to know what it would take to advance what seemed to me to be a depressingly circular conversation, as evidenced anyway by the impatient and disquieting tone of the letters that have filled this newspaper.

So wide is the gap between the experiences and perceptions of many of us that it hardly seems we're speaking the same language.

I don't see much to connect, say, Margaret Mutu, the Auckland University professor of Maori studies, who says that the settlements are mean-minded and measly compared with ones made to some Pakeha, and the Pakuranga woman, a frequenter of the letters page and one of my most devoted fans, who declares that she is "utterly sick of Maori" and their huge egos.

Robert Consedine is well acquainted with the kinds of emotions that get stirred up when Maori and Pakeha attempt to talk about contentious issues such as the treaty.

He used to run beginner sessions for both Maori and Pakeha but gave that up when he realised that little was gained by putting them in the same room and getting them to talk about their feelings. The gulf in their life experiences and, therefore, their understanding was too wide to bridge easily in a two-day workshop.

He recounts the trauma in his book Healing our History: The Challenge of the Treaty of Waitangi, which he wrote with his daughter, Joanna. "Someone was crying; others were shouting. By morning tea, some had left the workshop, disgusted at the behaviour of other participants. This may have been the day I witnessed a Pakeha fundamentalist Christian attacking Maori spirituality, or a Pakeha lecturing Maori on their laziness and unwillingness to help themselves.

"Or was it the day when outright hostility flew across the room towards a group of Maori participants? Or when some Maori had to be restrained when they came dangerously close to physical violence? Or perhaps it was the day of a stormy departure by a group of Maori who couldn't stand the racism of some Pakeha participants and were appalled at their ignorance."

It wasn't helpful. Emotions were too raw. He realised that both groups needed their own space. Many Maori finding out their own history for the first time went through a process of grief. Pakeha, on the other hand, needed the freedom to talk without censoring themselves.

But it was too hurtful for Maori to listen to them exploring the stereotypes of Maori being lazy, drunken, poor parents and uneducated. Even those of mixed parentage found it painful.

As well as giving people permission to be honest, Consedine found that it helped to recognise that New Zealand's problems weren't unique. Australia and Canada had similar colonial experiences.

Both those countries continue to grapple with indigenous issues, with similar patterns of disadvantage, and the same issues over restitution for stolen lands and resources. Courts in both countries have also recognised common law notions of customary title.

Consedine has helped set up workshops in Canada where the same questions are asked: "Why can't native people get on with it? Why can't they forget the past? Why do they blame us for the past? Why do they want special treatment?" The answers are the same, too. Treaty settlements aren't about special treatment but merely token redress for provable wrongs committed by the Crown.

Consedine says there's "considerable confusion" over claims, and that will continue as long as many New Zealanders remain unaware (I'd say stubbornly resistant) of the idea that much of this nation's wealth was built on land and other resources taken from Maori communities by successive settler governments.

He says that he's changed the attitudes of tens of thousands of Kiwis. But he's not so sure about the effectiveness of public education programmes that just throw information at people. Changing hearts and minds demands a much deeper understanding of the historical context.

Without that, says Consedine, there's a risk of turning ill-informed racists into well-informed racists. "People do not make decisions on facts, rather, how they feel about the facts."

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