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Mt Taranaki returned to local Maori tribe

The reporting of the recent settlement of claims for the return of Mt Taranaki to the original Maori owners adds to the general misunderstanding of the Treaty of Waitangi. If main stream journalists knew more about our history they would be able to explain some of the apparent ambiguities in these treaty settlements. Unfortunately many New Zealand journalists, particularly those born in the last fifty years of last century, were taught very little about our history at school.

I count myself among a small number of journalists who were born, in the 1940s,  into what today would be called bi-cultural and bi-lingual communities. We grew up surrounded by two languages and immersed in an amalgam of traditional Maori and imported English social structures. That included a heady mixture of two sets of folk lore, stories, songs and expected codes of conduct. Our world has changed dramatically since then.

When I retired from front journalism in 2007 I started writing a series of historic novels in an effort to make our history more interesting to average readers. The history is in fact well known and has been faithfully recorded by a number of highly qualified people. Unfortunately far too many people don’t bother to read history books and I decided to use accurate history to tell the personal stories of people and events of the time. They have been well received by many readers who had ancestors in the stories but did not know a great deal of detail about their lives. In spite of these efforts, and the efforts of other writers, our history is still not well known hence the misunderstanding and resentment.  

The Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill, was passed into law last week and will, among other things, officially change the name Mount Egmont to the original name Taranaki Maunga ( Mount Taranaki)

The new law will also give legal person-hood to the mountain. The new law notes (quite correctly) that the Crown stole sacred land and wrongfully took control of Taranaki Mountain (following the illegal New Zealand Land Wars of the 1860s). The law further notes that the mountain was one of the most significant natural sites for Maori, with iwi from across Taranaki, Wellington and Te Tau Ihu tracing their lineage to this to the mountain. Without further explanation these provisions will no doubt raise eyebrows at least, if not attract derisive and negative comments.

The new law does not, and indeed obviously cannot, change the mountain into a physical or even legal person and is not intended to do that.  It does however provide the mountain with all the legal protections from misuse and damage or injury a person or group of people have a right to expect under New Zealand law. It is also obvious people cannot trace their physical human lineage to the mountain. It is not an ancestor in the physical sense.

To understand the origins of these apparent contradictions it is important to understand the differences between the structure of traditional Maori society and the social culture British settlers brought to New Zealand from about the early 1800s.

The social structure of UK was based on capitalism and individualism; the rights of the individual above most other considerations. While women did not have the same level of civil liberty as men and people under 21 years of age had even less and were still subject, at least in theory, to the authority of parents, they were equals under the law. Slavery had been abolished more than 50 years earlier and British style Christianity was the only acceptable, civilised, religious philosophy.

There remained however the remnants of the former class system which included, at least informally, an assumed privilege for members of the landed gentry, nobility and royalty above that of working class people who were only just in a better social position than earlier peasants and crofters. The Scots and Irish immigrants retained, at east for symbolic occasions, clan loyalty but the rights of the individual to life, liberty, property and asset ownership and the legal protection of those things reigned supreme since the Magna Carta of 1215. 

That status was not always fully extended to non-English or non-European British subjects, even under British rule, who were generally considered inferior but treated with benign condescending paternalism. 

Traditional Maori society on the other hand was quite the opposite, more complex and far more different than many early settlers, and even Maori, themselves realised. It was based on whanaungatanga, in which the individual was not as important as the whanau, hapu and iwi they belonged to. Whakapapa (translated loosely as genealogy) was much more important anything else. There were complex rules of expected social behaviour and often severe retribution for transgressions within the hapu or extended family circle. The expectations of kaumatua (elders) in particular were akin to non-negotiable instructions and still are in many Maori families.

Whakapapa was also much more than a simple list of ancestors as it also included association with the natural resources and land forms in the area an individual was born in such as rivers and mountains. These features were not owned as such and there were very few privately owned possessions beyond clothes, hand tools and weapons, which were usually named and tapu(sacred) to those who wore or used them.   

All other tangible assets, including land, were communal possessions and people “belonged” to a river, mountain or region. Such things did not belong to people as they did, and still do, in British and European society. Individual, exclusive, ownership of land and other assets which could be bought and sold was an alien and very confusing concept.   

Maori society was also loosely stratified with three main classes or groups. They were Rangatira (chiefs), Tutua (commoners) and Taurekareka(slaves). Within these groups, in some regions, were sub-groups with Ariki as senior Rangatira, Ware as slightly senior commoners and Mokai as something similar to a willing servant or retainer than a mere Taurekareka slave who was usually captured in war.

There was also the tohunga class (expert in one or more of many fields) who could belong to any group. Slavery status was not inherited but other group membership was according to seniority of birth. Overlying all of these groups was mana, that mixture of personal prestige, generosity, communal acceptance, bravery, high work ethics and moral standards. Maori society was also driven and governed by utu which was a combination of reciprocal and often competing generosity and retribution. It was a complex system and both not understood and confusing to early British settlers, and still is to many people today.

Early British authorities, settlers and even some missionaries expected Maori to make the transition from the centuries old traditional Maori societal structure to that of the British settlers almost immediately without realising that it was a major obstacle which many people failed to make successfully. 

The negative consequences of taking people out of traditional Maori society without adequate preparation was still obvious in the 1950s and 1960s when there was a major relocation of young people from stable rural Maori communities to large cities and towns in search of work. 

Natural evolution has also seen both cultures merge into a third culture which is an often uncomfortable amalgam with Maori living and functioning as Pakeha in ​modern society but retaining many of their former rituals and belief systems at least for symbolic occasions. 

In the years after World War II there were many remote communities where Maori and Pakeha shared this third culture in what would later be called bi-culturalism. A few of these communities still exist in remote rural regions.   

Most non-Maori New Zealanders however, particularly those born here of UK descent are usually known as Pakeha and have never had to make such a transition and most are unaware of the problem or choose not to acknowledge it. They now have their own dialect of spoken English and a conglomerate culture which is unique to this part of the world and more different to that of their ancestors than many realise.

Social evolution, which has led to this outcome, has occurred in spite of the acceptance by tribal leaders, as early 1860, of the most important basic cornerstone of individualism and democracy; the equality of all people under one system of law regardless of origins, social status or historical events. The essential buttress of whanaungatanga and the important role of kaumatua and tribal expectations were simply pushed aside and ignored. 

In the past two decades an otherwise positive return to the regular use of spoken and written Maori and traditional facial moko by men and women has led in turn to an attempt to return New Zealand to a land of two societies as it was in 1840. Those two societies are Maori and everyone else with two sets of social structures and two sets of political rights and obligations all based on a flawed assumption of what the Treaty of Waitangi was designed to achieve.

If allowed to continue it will lead to entrenched separatism, assumed rights of political privilege and damaging resentment which are already occurring. 

Whanaungatanga and individualism can, and do, exist side by side under one set of laws without conflict if they are left alone to do so.  

The new law however repeats a common and damaging error when it notes that “the Crown’s confiscation of Taranaki Mountain was wrongful and unjust, caused immeasurable distress to ngā tāngata o Taranaki, (which it was and clearly did) and was a breach of the Treaty of Waitangi and its principles”. The confiscations were in fact a breach of British common law, which Mairi had a right to expect as British subjects, not a breach of the treaty itself which is not law and merely introduced law to New Zealand.

The new law, and the journalists were reported on it, also failed to make clear that the Crown in this case is a symbolic entity representing past administrations and not the current government of New Zealand, which has accepted the responsibility for redress but has not, and indeed cannot, accept culpability for the misdeeds of colonial authorities. 

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