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