THEFT BY ANY OTHER NAME

To support their theft of almost all of Ngāti Kahu’s lands before 1865, the British Crown and immigrants used sanitised terms like – “pre-Treaty transactions[1]” or “old land claims[2]”, “surplus lands[3]”, “Crown grants[4]”, “scrip[5]”, “waste lands[6]”, and “Crown purchases[7]”. 

But those were all just flash names for theft.  They would only not have been theft if our ancestors had discussed and signed something called the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. 

That document, written in English, stated that the rangatira had ceded their sovereignty to the Queen of England – a notion that is as inconceivable in human behavioural terms as it is wrong in factual terms. 

Our ancestors signed only one treaty, Te Tiriti o Waitangi written in the Māori language. They neither read nor signed an English language document.

Yet certain British immigrants and their successors from that day to this have used the fraudulent Treaty of Waitangi document to justify stealing Ngāti Kahu lands, resources and power.

They even inserted it into Government legislation via the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 where the Waitangi Tribunal is given the impossible task of trying to reconcile it with the authentic treaty.

Its most recent use is in many Deeds of Settlement drawn up by Government bureaucrats who have inserted the odd phrase “Te Tiriti o Waitangi/The Treaty of Waitangi”, as if the two documents were either similar or were translations of each other. They are neither.

Te Tiriti o Waitangi is a treaty of peace and friendship between two sovereign nations and a solemn agreement between our rangatira and the Queen of England. The Treaty of Waitangi reflects the desire of certain immigrants and their Governments to take control of a country that is not theirs.

Immigrants whom we welcomed into our territories and who then stole from us, also tried to drive us out and reduce us to perpetual servitude, slavery, poverty, deprivation and marginalisation in our own country.

As just one example of this, in 1843 their Godfrey Commission awarded 16,199 acres of our lands to just six Europeans, and a further 15,966 acres as “surplus lands” to the Crown.  That same Commission “gave” several hundred unnamed Maori title over just 446 acres.

 

More than 32,000 acres stolen in one move[8]; Whakaangi, Taemaro, Mangonui, Mangatete, Ohotu, Waiokai, Okiore, Kaitaia, Kerekere, Awanui, Pukepoto, Otararau (including Tangonge), Parapara, Tapuirau, Te Mata, Wharo, Matako, Kaimaumau, most of the Oruru Valley, and parts of the Karikari Peninsula.   

Further thefts followed and many of our whānau were forced to leave[9] their ancestral homes in order to survive.  But a number braved hostile conditions to keep a constant Ngāti Kahu presence[10] in our territories and to keep alive our tikanga and the kaupapa laid down by our ancestors.

Five generations of Ngāti Kahu have now sought to stop the lawlessness of those immigrants and their successors, drawing on both our legal system and theirs. 

My generation have already trained our successors.  They know that whatever the thieves call it, theft by any other name is still theft.

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[1] Beyond Biculturalism: The Politics of an Indigenous Minority, by Dominic O’Sullivan, p.63

[2] Invisible Sight, by Angela Wanhalla, ch. 5 pp. 94 – 106

[3] O’Sullivan, p. 63

[4] Ibid. ch1, pp. 23 – 24

[5] The Legacy of Guilt: A Life of Thomas Kendall, by Judith Binney and Thomas Kendall, Appendix 3, p. 190

[6] Buying the Land, Selling the Land: Governments and Maori Land in the North, by Richard Boast, ch 1, pp 25 – 26

[7] O’Sullivan, p.63

[8] Muriwhenua Land Report, 1997 by the Waitangi Tribunal, ch. 5, pp. 141 – 178.

[9] Muriwhenua Land Report, ch. 10, pp.327 – 383.

[10]The Muriwhenua Land Claims Post 1865, by Dame Evelyn Stokes.