UNRIGHTEOUS DOMINION

A phenomenon I have only just recently registered, but which really (when I cast my memory back) has been around all my life, is how little conviction and belief the Crown and its supporters have in the language, culture and laws they derived from England.

Take just one word and its legal, linguistic and cultural meanings as an example: “rightfully.”

When I see and hear that word I immediately get that it is a compound of “right” and “fully”.

The first part (right) brings to mind classic English words, phrases and colloquialisms like: “the golden rule”, “courage of one’s convictions”, “a moral compass”, “a sense of responsibility”, “the sword of righteousness”, “defender of truth”, “the ten commandments”. When you use the word “right” you are describing something in the Crown’s language and law that is right – not wrong.

The second part (fully) brings to mind other great English colloquialisms and phrases like “a sense of completeness”, “full as a bull”, “chocker-block”, “pregnant with possibility”, “my cup runneth over”, “total capacity”. When you use the word "fully", you are describing something in the Crown’s law, language and culture that is in a state of fullness – not emptiness.

The compound word “rightfully” not only holds all of the meanings of both its parts, it takes on a number of additional meanings as well. However, none of those meanings adds up to a state of wrong or emptiness.

So, can the word “rightfully” be applied today to the Crown’s assertions in word and deed that it is sovereign with dominion over the country known as New Zealand?

The answer to that question has been evolving for some time now through the kōrero, research and writings coming out of the marae and hui, parliament and select committees, the universities and institutions of this and other lands, the United Nations, the media. But nowhere is it more clearly to be seen taking shape than within the courts and tribunals of this and other lands.

From my long observation of the courts and three decades of working on the interface between the Crown and Māori, the answer is “no”. No, the Crown cannot yet rightfully assert that it holds sovereignty and dominion over this country. No, it cannot continue to get away with breaking its own laws. No, it cannot continue without a written constitution based on Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

The Crown is inching towards doing the “right” thing “fully”. It’s going begrudgingly, even angrily at times; consider Chris Finlayson’s outburst last year telling Ngāti Kahu to go to hell. But it is going.

It has been prophesied that one day we shall all see eye to eye, and that which is wrong shall be set right. That day is coming.

Until then the trend is clear. Māori and others who have strong conviction and belief in both the Māori and English cultures, languages and laws will continue to fight for and win well-argued and legal outcomes against the Crown’s unrighteous dominion.

THE CROWN'S CROWBAR

How can you tell when the Crown is lying? Who decides how and when your people's claims are settled?

If you know the answers to those questions, congratulations; you have just passed the minimum entry requirement to a tough course in the school of hard knocks titled, ‘Direct Treaty Negotiations With The Crown 101'. 

Work hard and you might one day be qualified to be given the mandate to negotiate for your people who lodged, researched and presented their claims to the Waitangi Tribunal.

But you will first have to reach a much higher level of knowledge, even wisdom.

Paper one is titled, What Does Settlement Mean? You will need to answer that question correctly with regard to the different perspectives of at least four distinct groups; the Crown, the public, your people and you. Here is your cram sheet.

• With regard to your people, only they can tell you what settlement means for them, because only they know what they have lost since their tūpuna signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi. You must take the time to be instructed by their ahikāroa, kaumātua kuia and historians because it is they who know what and how settlement will be reached, not the individual iwi and hapū members scattered throughout the world. It is their mandate you must first seek, and the best place to hear their kōrero is in the preparation and presentation of their claims to the Waitangi Tribunal.

• With regard to the public, you can take it as a given that settlement means little to most of them. That is sad. But you don’t have time to educate them and it is not your job to do so.

• With regard to the Crown, settlement means ‘extinguishment’ of Te Tiriti and amen to the mana whenua, rangatiratiratanga and kaitiakitanga of your people. Having finally and irrevocably crowbarred your people away from their lands and everything that made them and you rangatira, the Crown will make itself your sovereign.  

• In exchange the Crown will not pay a cent of compensation. Instead it will, with one hand, give you no more (probably a lot less) than three cents in the dollar on the current value of the land it stole from your people. Then with the other hand it will force you to give back more than 90% in ransom before it will partially relinquish control over perhaps 5% of that land. Those calculations are based on the largest ‘settlements’ to date.

For you, based on those same settlements, it means the Crown will write a deed into which it will slip clauses that beef up its false claims to own everything under the land of your people, and its control over everything above it.

If you are the negotiator that lets all this happen, you will have successfully swapped the rangatiratanga of your people for a position as advisors to Crown agents like DoC and FNDC. Instead of revitalising your people, you will have gutted them.

Finally, you will be remembered forever as the Crown’s crowbar; the one who let the Crown decide when and how your people’s claims were settled; the one who never learnt that the Crown is lying whenever its many lips are moving.