There was an amusing exchange in Parliament recently over the Treaty of Waitangi involving the old warhorse Winston Peters, the young activist Chlöe Swarbrick and Labour’s resident wit, Kieran McAnulty.
It is rare to find any humour on the Treaty because of the serious ongoing debate about its signing, its meaning, it’s principles and what their relevance is in 2024.
Each proponent has their own authority on which to boost their argument be it the English version, the Māori version, the English translation of the Māori version, the Court of Appeal, the Waitangi Tribunal or in Peters’ case, “a man called Ngata”.
Peters had just given Swarbrick a tongue-lashing over her supposed lack of knowledge about the Treaty of Waitangi compared with Sir Āpirana Ngata.
She then asked Peters about some aspect of climate change – to which McAnulty interjected: “What did Ngata say?”
Peters went along with the joke and prefaced his climate change answer with: “Well, see, what Ngata would have said was that … ”
Everyone got the joke because everyone knows that Peters’ admiration for Ngata has more recently been elevated into something closer to an obsession when it comes to the meaning of the Treaty.
Ngata’s memory was revived in 1992 when he was put on New Zealand’s $50 note. And now, 150 years after he was born, he is being hauled into the 21st-century debate on whether Māori ceded sovereignty when the Treaty of Waitangi was signed.
Peters is unequivocal that they did and uses Ngata to bolster attacks on Labour, the Greens and particularly Te Pāti Māori when they question the Government position on the Treaty.
Peters, who launched his New Zealand First Party in the 1990s railing against “the brown table” and “the Treaty industry” works himself up when asked why he is so hard and fast.
“I tell you why I’m so hard and fast about it because I despise the elitism of so many Māori who use their people’s numbers for their own cause, their own benefit and their own enrichment.
“You never see them protesting about education properly, you never see them protesting about the quality of jobs or about health. No, it’s always on about this. And who’s on the teat at the top? They are. They are a universal breed.
“I’ve got all these brilliant Māori leaders as my authority …and they haven’t got authority at all. They can’t even agree amongst themselves.”
Peters has described Ngata as ‘the most esteemed Member of Parliament Māoridom has ever had here” and few historians would disagree. He was a political colossus in his day, a great orator in English and Māori, and someone who got things done.
Winston Peters himself was only aged 5 when Ngata died in July 1950 and he says he became conscious of him as a young boy.
“My mother and father were great admirers of his,” he told the Herald.
“I learned a lot off him, about him as a young person,” said Peters. “And he was seriously esteemed right around this country, including in the north, as difficult as it was.”
Ngata held the Native Affairs portfolio only briefly – for six of his 38 years in Parliament. But he worked constructively with various Governments and remained influential from Opposition as well.
He made an impact in land reform aimed at consolidating Māori land into productive farms, improving Māori health and education, getting the Pioneer Māori Battalion and 28th Māori Battalion established in World War I and World War II , in Anglican church matters, celebrating Māori arts and culture, and the elevation of Māori pride and identity. He worked closely with tribal leaders throughout the country.
He was instrumental in getting funding for new marae, for getting the national marae on the upper Treaty ground built, and for setting up the NZ Māori Arts and Craft Institute at Whakarewarewa.
Ngata was born in 1874 and was an MP from 1905 to 1943 for Eastern Māori, and only five New Zealand MPs have served longer than his 38 years, Jonathan Hunt, Sir Walter Nash, Sir Maurice O’Rorke, Sir Keith Holyoake and Rex Mason.
The eastern Māori seat, now known as Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, is currently held by Labour’s Cushla Tangaere-Manuel who hails from the same Ngāti Porou heartland as Ngata.
She mentioned Ngata in her maiden speech in March this year and his political resurrection.
“Recently, a few misguided souls have sought to appropriate Tā Āpirana’s thoughts on the Treaty of Waitangi a hundred years ago – mischief-making,” she said.
“His whānau, iwi, and Māoridom are concerned by this, but I have it on good authority from the Ngata whānau that Tā Āpirana would have offered the offenders a wry smile, tamped down his pipe, and got on with winning everyone over to his ultimate cause – as will I.”
Ngata became the first Māori to graduate from a university and according to his biographer Dr Ranginui Walker he was the first New Zealander to graduate with a double BA and LLB degree.
He and his wife Arihia had 15 children, the youngest Hēnare Kōhere Ngata (later Sir Hēnare) having been born in 1917.
Former National Party cabinet minister Hekia Parata grew up in Ruatoria, Ngati Porou heartland, and was born eight years after he died.
“To begin with, I thought he was still alive because his presence was so pervasive,” said Parata who is deputy chair of Te Runanganui o Ngāti Porou.
Her mother had grown up two paddocks away from “The Bungalow” in which Sir Āpirana and Arihia had lived and she often referenced him in conversation.
Parata went to Ngata Memorial College, sang his songs, read his poems and writings.
“He was a living presence in the language and the activity and the belief system and the behaviour,” she said.
“His writings and expectations were expressed as though we were getting instructions from him directly. Your job was to serve, to serve our country.
“This was my interpretation of his exhortations to service and duty which he himself practised.
“He felt very much alive in our lives growing up in Ngāti Porou.”
Ngata senior was part of a group known as the Young Māori Party (including Māui Pōmare, James Carroll and Peter Buck) which was a group of educated young Māori, mainly Te Aute College old boys, who worked within the system and with the Government for the survival and advancement of Māori.
Historian Jamie Belich referred to Ngata’s style as “brilliantly subversive co-operation,” in his book “Paradise Reforged” (Penguin), comparing his strategies as the leading guardian of Māori interests in the 20th century with Kawiti’s “brilliantly innovative resistance” in the 19th century.
Ngata’s comrades are sometimes mentioned by Peters too but it is one particular aspect of Ngata’s political career that Peters elevates – his explanation published in 1922 of the Treaty of Waitangi.
He wrote the booklet – about 30 pages – in Māori about the Māori version of the Treaty and it was translated into English by MR Jones.
He said that Māori chiefs, present and not present, ceded absolutely to the Queen of England forever the government of their lands. “These are a few words but they indicate complete cession,” he wrote.
He concluded: “If you think these things are wrong and bad then blame our ancestors who gave away their rights in the days when they were powerful.”
Peters sees this as the definitive statement that trumps any view that Māori did not cede sovereignty.
The pamphlet set out some of the context for the signing of the Treaty including general mayhem and lawlessness in the Bay of Islands including a suggestion that 500 escaped convicts from Australia may have been living there.
But there are also grounds for a broader view.
At three points in the pamphlet, Ngata states that the Māori version of the Treaty is not a good translation of the English version but downplays its significance.
He is less definitive when discussing the second article – the one affirming tino rangatiratanga - and says it was the article of the Treaty causing most discussion in marae, Ngata said.
He gives an English translation of the Māori version (which is presumably Ngata’s and not Jones’) and compares it with the actual English version to make the point that the translation was not great and then gives his take in Māori on what the Māori version should say but there is no translation of that into English.
Ngata acknowledges the “wishful thinking” about Kotahitanga and a Māori Parliament by Māori around the tino rangatiratanga article. But the ideas, he said, were caused by confusion because “the authority of the Māori was set aside forever by the first article.”
While Ngata is effectively saying that article one in English trumps article two in Māori, the fact that he acknowledges the aspirations (confusion) that that article created, also serves to highlight the conflict between the two clauses.
University of Auckland Emeritus professor of law David Williams mentioned the pamphlet in a report he wrote in 2001 for the Waitangi Tribunal (he was appointed to the tribunal in 2023) in the context of differences between the Rātana movement, which began in 1918, and Ngata.
Ratana consciously promoted the ordinary people – ngā mōrehu – in language very different to that of Ngata and Buck, he wrote.
Ratana laid great stress on formal ratification of the Treaty of Waitangi. Founder TW Ratana took a petition with some 30,000 signatures seeking ratification to the King in London in 1924.
“Ngata on the other hand wrote an influential pamphlet urging Māori not to distract themselves with past grievances by constantly harping about the Treaty. He thought Māori should cease any yearnings - ngā wawata - based on the Māori text of the Treaty.”
The Ngata booklet was promoted and distributed in the Herald and Stuff newspapers earlier this year by former Act MP Muriel Newman, who heads an activist think-tank, the NZ Centre for Political Research.
His elevation in the debate over the Treaty prompted some concern in the Ngata whānau.
Earlier this year they held a discussion to decide whether or not to come up with a formal response, Ngata’s great-granddaughter Zandria Taare told the Herald.
“We decided not to add fuel to the fire,” said Taare, the granddaughter of Sir Hēnare Ngata.
Personally, she said she felt “affronted” that Sir Āpirana was being used in the current debate.
“It’s just remembering that when you are bandying about somebody else’s words, and out of context of their time, it’s hurtful for the family who remain. That’s just me anyway.”
Hekia Parata says she couldn’t say what Ngata would have thought about being used in today’s debate.
“But he was never one dimension. He was never the last thing he wrote. I don’t think he should be treated in that way.
“He approached all of his work in a very serious way and it would have taken account of the prevailing ideas of the time,” she said.
“But I don’t think from the wider context of him, and wider context of his writings and compositions, that anyone has any doubt that he understood and believed and practised that iwi retained their mana, that iwi retained their authority, their tino rangatiratanga, their responsibility and accountability for the well-being of their iwi and their rohe.
“That wasn’t then, nor is it now, in conflict with the concept of an overall government,” she said.
“There is no example I know of that would have put in conflict the idea that the Government of the day and the practice of rangatiratanga and mana and authority by iwi of their own area were in conflict with one another.
“For all the academic writings and discussions and so forth, the opportunity for that kind of practice in our democracy, which is unique in the world, strengthens it and enriches it.
“I think Sir Āpirana Ngata would have been proud to see the developments that would see Māori and iwi participating in the design of our democracy.”
The Ngata booklet has attracted more attention this term of Parliament with Te Pāti Māori and the Green Party openly confronting the Government about whether Māori ceded sovereignty.
The Government’s formal position is that Māori ceded sovereignty and Crown Law sometimes expresses it but by and large, 21st-century Prime Ministers - and shadow Prime Ministers - have avoided giving a definitive answer.
But Luxon answered in the affirmative under questioning in the House from Green co-leader Chloe Swarbrick and the following week, Chris Hipkins told Moana Maniapoto on Whakaata Māori that Māori did not cede sovereignty.
“I didn’t think that what I’d said actually was all that revelatory, to be honest,” Hipkins told the Herald.
“I remember at school learning about the different texts of the Treaty and the fact that in the Māori version which most of the chiefs signed, it talked about governorship and not sovereignty with the understanding that the governorship in question was over the English settlers who were causing such grief.”
He said he was not questioning the Crown’s sovereignty and he had never questioned that.
“But I think trying to argue that the sovereignty that the Crown has now is on the basis of a lie I think is the bit that is wrong.
“We can’t just pretend that something in our history didn’t happen in order to satisfy a legal nicety or a legal convenience. That’s not the way it happened,” Hipkins said.
No one was suggesting there should be a separate Māori nation within a nation.
“But it does mean that an acknowledgement that Māori didn’t cede sovereignty should inform the nature of the relationship between the Crown and Māori going forward.
“And that, I think, is where the partnership notion comes from.”
If he were to become Prime Minister again, Hipkins’ views would become problematic, says former Attorney General and former Treaty Negotiations Minister Christopher Finlayson.
You couldn’t have the Prime Minister having one position and Crown Law another.
“It is problematic because the Crown has to speak as one.”
“I don’t know that he needed to go that far,” Finlayson said about Hipkins’ comments.
“Whatever the situation in 1840 – and it probably was a bit murky – it seems to me … that regardless of what may have been the case, there is no doubt that at some point sovereignty was de facto ceded.”
He believed constitutional change was coming “but I don’t think this will be the impetus for it. "
“Elements of the current Government may not like it but it is highlighted by the events of the last week [Kiingi Tūheitia’s tangi] – the growing power and authority of Māori cannot be put down.”
Expectations tempered around return to surplus in 2027/28.