RANGATAHI VALUES

[1] All of the seventy wānanga organised by the rōpū rangatahi of Matike Mai o Aotearoa (the independent constitutional transformation working party) devoted a great deal of time to kōrero about values and relationship.    

One of the exercises in the rangatahi wānanga involved participants identifying what tikanga were in operation in selected activities and then discussing how they might be applied in a constitutional setting. 

“If you look at it like this tikanga is everywhere, like it is at the Kura. It’s part of what we’re expected to do and our whānau had to sign up to it when we started…Whaea said that made it our constitution”.

“I think that everything a government does should be based on tikanga. Otherwise they might make bad decisions and pollute Papatūānuku or something”.

From these and similar exercises the rangatahi defined some general values which they believed should be provided for in a constitution including manaakitanga (nurturing the mana of others), kaitiakitanga (guardianship), kotahitanga (unity), mana (ultimate power, prestige and authority), muru (redress), utu (restoration of balance), and hohou rongo (establishing peace).

  

They also identified five core values which would be the base for all of the others.  The first of those values is the health and wellbeing of Ranginui and Papatūānuku. 

Rangatahi were concerned about the environment and asked that any new constitution include the recognition and protection of Ranginui and Papatūānuku to ensure they are adequately cared for. 

They considered that treating our whenua, lakes, rivers and other water bodies with respect should be an underlying constitutional principle and also called for constitutional recognition and protection of traditional knowledges and the associated kawa and tikanga –

“Without the whenua we are not tangata whenua so we have got to look after it. Everything in this (constitutional) mahi should start with that”.

“The land is everything…and it includes all the tikanga that goes with it”.

“We need to look after our kāpata kai for future generations to come and look after it just because it’s what our tīpuna left for us”.

The rangatahi also recognised that constitutional recognition of Papatūānuku depended upon the effective exercise of rangatiratanga –

“Threaded through all of these desires was the aspiration and need to reclaim and uphold our mana whenua and our mana moana, so that we have the right, ability and power to make decisions and uphold this as whānau, hapū and iwi”.

Over the next few weeks we will review the remaining four core values identified by the rangatahi.

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[1] Forty-fourth edited extract from pp. 95 – 96 of He Whakaaro Here Whakaumu Mō Aotearoa – The Report of

Matike Mai o Aotearoa

THE VALUE OF STRUCTURE

[1]The final constitutional value gleaned from all the kōrero heard by Matike Mai o Aotearoa was the need for agreed structural values and conventions that will guarantee democratic ideals like transparency in any governing process and the removal of any conflicts of interest that representatives might have. 

As Māori do, the participants looked at examples of the many ways our tūpuna had tried to deal with these questions in the past.

For example some talked about how the Kīngitanga originally understood its vision of the Māori King and the English Crown being joined together with only God above. 

Others talked about how the Māori Parliament had attempted to resolve the tensions between the sovereignty asserted by the Crown and the mana retained by Iwi and Hapū; how it had defined its role and balanced out the issues of representation between Iwi and Hapū; why it had been unable to achieve its aims; and what lessons may be learned.  

There was lengthy discussion about the structural values in those past visions and their relevance now for the relationship between rangatiratanga and kāwanatanga.  There was also searching debate about the very meaning of democracy and government, and how to ensure it was transparent and open.

“In the final analysis government has to function and that relies on the same things. How do we hold the representatives accountable?  How do we stop the system or the people being corrupted by whatever power they have?  What checks and balances need to be in place?…Those things are like a universal tikanga if you like”.

 

The most commonly identified attributes of a structural value fell under four broad headings. 

Firstly, the need for constitutionally entrenched guarantees of equality, and provisions to enforce it. For example, mandating equal male-female representation in both the different and relational spheres.

The second identified attribute was that representation should be based on both individual and collective interests. Participants were keen to preserve their right to participate as individuals but also wanted guarantees that the collective voice of Iwi and Hapū would not be lost.

Thirdly there was unanimous support for the idea of equity and the need to protect all minorities in order to enable everyone to benefit from the Tiriti relationship.

The fourth attribute consisted of such things as transparency. On this topic there was also general agreement that Māori and Pākehā could set their own guidelines about how their representatives should be chosen. 

Interestingly there was a consensus that there should be no political Parties within the rangatiratanga sphere because of a concern that they might filter or override the voice of the people. Instead Māori should debate some other more tikanga-centred method of representation. 

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[1] Forty-third edited extract from pp. 93 – 94 of He Whakaaro Here Whakaumu Mō Aotearoa – The Report of Matike Mai o Aotearoa

CONCILIATION AND RE-CONCILIATION

[1] Those jurisdictional parameters which were commonplace in 1840 are those which a tikanga and Tiriti-based constitution will replicate to govern the “rituals of encounter” between Māori and the Crown while recognising and respecting the integrity of both rangatiratanga and kāwanatanga.  Without diminishing or detracting from the authority of the Crown in its own sphere of influence, such a constitution will mark a return to tikanga as the first law and values-base of this land in regard to the implementation of the Tiriti relationship.

 

That jurisdiction will also be the base for any resolution when Māori and the Crown are unable to agree on a matter of common interest, because in a constitution which involves two distinct concepts and sites of power there will inevitably be tensions and disagreements when the two come together in the relational sphere.

If treaties are “mahi tūhono” as Ngāti Kahungunu have long described them, a Tiriti-based constitution will need to ensure that even in times of difference the different polities can be brought together.

“It’s just human nature to disagree and even when all the arguing is done about whether the change we’re talking about is going to happen there will be other arguments about what to do if there’s conflict with the Crown…and if the Crown ever gets serious it will acknowledge tikanga because it’s the right thing to do”.

Perhaps the consensus is best summed up by a rangatira and a rangatahi –

“It is very clear to me that if you entered Ngāti Porou then you were under the mantle and the mana of Ngāti Porou. There would have been no ifs and buts in that equation…and I see no reason why that would not be the case if we proceed down this constitutional path…the mantle would be Māori”.  [Apirana Mahuika, 1934 – 2105]

“[In 1840] Kāwanatanga was the right for the presence of a British governance system to be administered over the few Britons present (i.e. several laws had already been passed in Britain where Britons abroad were meant to be following British law wherever they went, so we have simply just allowed them to enforce that law on our lands) but that doesn’t mean Britons weren’t also meant to follow Māori law – of course they were, and of course the promise of  rangatiratanga suggests exactly that”. 

Conciliation is necessary in a Tiriti-based constitution for a balanced relationship between rangatiratanga and kāwanatanga, and re-conciliation is necessary to uphold a conciliatory and consensual democracy rather than an adversarial or majoritarian one.

The actual processes for both will be developed as part of the ongoing constitutional kōrero that lies ahead, and with consensus they will draw upon the other whakapapa values and even respect the wisdom and experience that both treating Parties will bring to the kōrero. 

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[1] Forty-second edited extract from pp. 91 – 92 of He Whakaaro Here Whakaumu Mō Aotearoa – The Report of

Matike Mai o Aotearoa

THE MINISTER AND THE MANDATE

Te Rūnanga-a-Iwi o Ngāti has held the Ngāti Kahu mandate for treaty settlement negotiations since 2000.  In that time we have dealt with four different Ministers— Margaret Wilson, Mark Burton, Michael Cullen and Chris Finlayson. 

Apart from  Minister Cullen with whom we managed to negotiate an Agreement in Principle in 2008, none of them have shown good faith.  Instead they have continued to try and strip Ngāti Kahu of more lands and resources.

To illustrate, Minister Wilson was an architect of the Foreshore and Seabed Act which attempted to steal our takutai moana in 2004; Minister Burton oversaw a Crown attempt to sell off part of Rangiputa in 2006; and Minister Finlayson presides over the Marine and Coastal Areas (MACA) Act 2011 and the current reforms being attempted on Te Ture Whenua Māori Act.

To further illustrate, in a 2010 TV interview on mainstream TV Minster Finlayson told Ngāti Kahu to “go to hell” when one of our hapū repossessed a tiny part of their lands at Taipā that the Crown stole from them in the 1850s. Then in 2011, immediately after meeting with and telling Ngāti Kahu that he would consider our draft Deed of Partial Settlement, he met with and told the other Te Hiku Iwi leaders that he had rejected it.    

He followed this in a 2015 TV interview by calling on Ngāti Kahu to remove our leadership and replace it with ‘fresh eyes’.  Within weeks our people not only renewed their mandate for our leadership, they did so unanimously.

Then in a series of letters questioning our mandate, the last of which was received in August 2016, the Minister advised that he had decided to require us to reconfirm our mandate by following a five stage mandate reconfirmation process  that was complicated, expensive and completely Crown set.  If we did not agree to complete this process in nine months, he wrote that he would have to “consider” whether it remained “appropriate” for him “to recognise” our mandate to “represent Ngāti Kahu in treaty settlement negotiations with the Crown.”

There were several major flaws in the Minister’s approach to our mandate, not least being that we were not and are not in negotiations to settle but are pursuing binding recommendations through the Courts and Tribunal.  Furthermore, it is Ngāti Kahu and not the Minister who give us our mandate, and we do not need his recognition of our mandate to take him to court.  

To help us understand his reasoning we made an Official Information Act (OIA) request for all documentation on which he had based his decision. 

The resultant release arrived in late 2016, and detailed analysis of the documents contained in it revealed that officials from the Office of Treaty Settlements (OTS)  had been giving the Minister very poor advice, including fabrications about our mandate.    

The OIA release also showed that those officials had been working with a separate group in Ngāti Kahu who wanted to accept the Crown’s ‘full and final’ settlement offer that had already been rejected by 12 of the 15 Ngāti Kahu marae.  Some of that separate group  only wanted to settle their own claims.  However the OTS officials had told them they had to be prepared to settle all our claims, and the OIA release revealed that at least one of them (an employee of the Crown) had indicated he was willing to do that by “wresting the mandate from the Runanga.”

Te Rūnanga-a-Iwi o Ngāti Kahu regularly test our mandate under our tikanga, and are doing so again at this time.  However we let the Minister know in February that if he also wanted us to follow the Crown process, then the Crown had to pay for it, and it would take at least 18 months to do properly.  

In response he tried to blackmail us into dropping our legal action and accepting $94,400 to conduct the mandating reconfirmation process he had designed.  We declined, and the Crown suspended its recognition of our mandate.  

Hei aha.  When we apply the same tests to the Crown and the Minister as they did to us, they lost our mandate years ago.  And as already stated, we don’t need their recognition of our mandate to take them to the courts or the Tribunal.  Haere tonu tatou.

THE VALUE OF CONCILIATION

[1] The fifth whakapapa value that people addressed with Matike Mai o Aotearoa may be described as the value of relational conciliation. That is the need for a constitution to have an appropriate tikanga base which recognises the value of place and of Māori. It also implies the need for a resolution framework which recognises tikanga for those occasions when Māori and the Crown might be unable to find consensus or make a joint decision in the relational sphere.

In many ways these matters are perhaps the most difficult to engage with because they require some detailed consideration about what a tikanga and Tiriti-based constitution might require in specific practical, as well as general philosophical, terms. It is the point where debate about the “ought to be” of constitutionalism has to find ways of sustaining the integrity of rangatiratanga and kāwanatanga while setting a values-based structure for any relational sphere, and indeed the constitution as a whole.

Some discussion groups admitted this difficulty but also presented feedback with very clear conclusions -

"This kaupapa caused the most debate in our group by far…but we think that while Te Tiriti included the rights of Pākehā to have kāwanatanga and us to keep rangatiratanga…it also meant that because we were tangata whenua our tikanga should be what everything else rests on”.

"It’s not about setting up some sort of dominance but simply saying that this constitution has got to belong to this whenua or it’s not tika…it’s just like everyone knows that sovereignty in England rests on English tikanga because that’s the place it belongs to…well tangata whenua and Te Tiriti belong here”.

"This will probably be the hardest thing for others to get their head around but every marae has its own kawa and when we go onto another marae we accept that…and this wouldn’t be any different”. 

"We spent nearly all our time talking about what tikanga would apply in this constitution or if there were times when Iwi and the Crown couldn’t agree but that’s the kōrero we have to have if any new constitution is really going to give effect to the treaty…it‘s all got to start there with tikanga”.

Because the grant of kāwanatanga in Te Tiriti recognised the authority that the Crown could have on the “marae” of Aotearoa, there was an expectation that it would be exercised in balance with rangatiratanga and according to the kawa and tikanga of the “marae”. In a sense that is where “it’s all got to start,” and as is the case with any rōpū entering a marae its status would be recognised but it never diminished or detracted from the mana of the marae itself. In fact the right of any rōpū to be on the “marae” would ultimately rest on the prevailing kawa and tikanga.

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[1] Forty-first edited extract from pp. 90 – 91 of He Whakaaro Here Whakaumu Mō Aotearoa – The Report of Matike Mai o Aotearoa

RESPECT AND RELATIONSHIPS

[1]Respect and acceptance of the differences between Māori rangatiratanga and Crown kāwanatanga will only come about through the give and take of deliberative and ongoing constitutional discussions.  So too will the structures to expedite that respect.    

Besides discussions about the political relationship with the Crown, there is also considerable kōrero about the relationships between Iwi or among Māori in general.  In fact it has been quite forcefully stated at many hui that the strength of the treaty relationship depends upon the strength and viability of the relationships Māori have with each other. It is often felt, for example, that more time is spent trying to cement a relationship with the Crown than there is trying to strengthen the ties between Iwi, or between Iwi and organisations such as the Urban Māori Authorities -

“Our whakapapa are about our interrelationships but that was always attacked by the colonisers…they knew their own whakataukī about strength in unity but were always more interested in their other one about ‘divide and rule’…He Whakaputanga is a reminder that in dealing with changing situations, our individual mana depends on how well we can use it to work with others when we need to”.

 

“One of the strengths we have is that on the marae we are still welcomed according to our relationships with the hau kāinga…it is the whakapapa that brings us together and that should be an important value in the way we work with each other on political issues as well”.

  

“It was a worry in our group that we forget our whakapapa to each other and make political decisions, or worse we make investment choices in other rohe that ignore or even takahi the rangatiratanga of other Iwi…we have to be more tika in those things if we hope to get the relationship with the Crown right”.

The Matike Mai Working Group shares that concern and acknowledges how the Crown has continually selected which Māori it will choose or not choose to engage with.  Conversely, tikanga never privileges one group of Māori over another, and whakapapa never excludes someone because of where they live or how they choose to organise themselves.  

This kōrero naturally leads into kōrero about conciliation, which is the final whakapapa value that Māori see as necessary to a Tiriti-based and inclusive constitution.  That value will be the subject of next week’s column and in future columns outlining the indicative models for a constitution that Matike Mai have drawn from all of the kōrero. 

In the end, it’s all about acknowledging the value of equitable and respectful relationships with others, and especially among ourselves. 

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[1] Fortieth edited extract from pp. 88 – 89 of He Whakaaro Here Whakaumu Mō Aotearoa – The Report of

Matike Mai o Aotearoa

PEOPLE POWER

¹Crucial to any notion of constitutional balance between Māori and the Crown is the idea that within their own spheres of influence, each has jurisdictional choice to exercise their rangatiratanga and kāwanatanga in different ways, subject only to their respective tikanga and laws and the need to honour the authority of the other.  

 

The right to be self-determining has always meant that people are free to chart their destiny in their own way and it has always taken different forms in different cultures.  The very difference in form is also the very ideal of democracy. 

 

The Westminster form of democracy for example is as culture-bound as was the original Greek “demos” from which it traces its history. In Ancient Greece the rules about who could participate in political decisionmaking were distinctively shaped by the culture of the time and never allowed for the inclusion of women or the lower classes known as “the mob,” or those non-Athenians who were regarded as “natural born slaves”. 

 

For Māori, the site of power (arikitanga or rangatiratanga) and the concept of power (mana) that facilitate how we make decisions and exercise our power, are different to those in Athens and Westminster because they grew from our culture and our understanding of our relationships with each other and with Papatūānuku. But the legitimacy of our power, like theirs, lies in its cultural distinctiveness. 

In a Tiriti-based constitution that kind of difference would allow Māori and the Crown to make law within their own spheres by following their own processes.  

 

“The idea of doing things our way is crucial otherwise it’s not mana we’re talking about…it will probably lead to arguments about what our way is but that’s part of who we are…we always do things differently anyway…it’s what the kawa on the marae is all about…it’s what being Ngāti Porou or Apanui is all about…it’s not new”.   

  

“I know that in the Māori Parliament they decided to have voting which was not our way but they also worked on a consensus and used other kawa that was quite different…I don’t see why that can’t be done now if it’s tika and I don’t see why we couldn’t figure out how we’d work together either”.  

  

“If we can agree that we will do things differently to the Crown…that’s all we’d have to know when we’re in our whare or whatever and the Crown’s in theirs…trust each other to do what’s right…and then meet regularly with the Crown to negotiate what we need to do together”.   

When John Rangihau described rangatiratanga as being “people-bestowed” he actually accentuated something very democratic – that legitimate power is always from and for the people, and that it is for the people to determine how and when it will be exercised.  

                                                     

^{1 1} Thirty-ninth edited extract from pp. 87 – 88 of He Whakaaro Here Whakaumu Mō Aotearoa – The Report of

Matike Mai o Aotearoa

SHIFTING THE IMBALANCES

Whenever and wherever we find one group of people denying the humans rights of another group, we find an imbalance.  In order to shift that imbalance we have to bring about external change.  And to achieve external change there must be an internal transformation.  When transformation happens, change becomes inevitable.

Kate Sheppard knew it when she published Ten Reasons Why The Women of N.Z. Should Vote (1888). Ngā Tamatoa knew it when they petitioned for Māori to be taught in schools (1972).  We know today it when we claim our right to self-determination.

[1]“We’ve done a good job in shifting lots of things since the Ngā Tamatoa days, but there’s still a long way to go…there’s still no real entrenchment of a constitutional understanding between us and Pākehā that recognises our right to be the decisionmakers on our own issues…that’s what we meant when we used to say the Treaty was a fraud because it’s been used against us by the Crown until it makes all the decisions for everyone”.

A constitution which enshrines a more balanced and nuanced understanding of rangatiratanga and kāwanatanga will be a long overdue honouring of the political and diplomatic conventions which made treating possible in 1840. 

“We would never have gone into a treaty thinking that the Crown was better or more powerful...hell there were hardly any Pākehā here… we knew it was different because Pākehā were different and what our people have been saying to them ever since is just accept the difference…go with the equalness”. 

“Every treaty is about reciprocity just like human rights are about recognising that people are equal and no person is better or more entitled than another…What we have to do is get to a point where a constitution can say that…this is what you do, this is what we do, and you don’t make the final decisions just because you’ve been doing that for so long”.

"If tikanga and manaaki…and democracy is going to mean anything there has to be a way of having kāwanatanga and rangatiratanga in some kind of balance…we need to get away from the idea that rangatiratanga is just a resource management right or something that the Crown has delegated to Iwi…or a co-governance thing where the Crown nearly always ends up having the final say”.

“No-one has done this before which is what makes the treaty special…whatever we come up with will be one way of showing that different sovereignties can live together which is what the treaty was always about…and they can live together by respecting what they are each entitled to do”.

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[1] Thirty-eighth edited extract from pp. 86 – 87 of He Whakaaro Here Whakaumu Mō Aotearoa – The Report of Matike Mai o Aotearoa