WORKING TOGETHER

How does the work done by the Pou Tikanga of the National Iwi Chairs Forum (NICF) connect with the issues facing our people every day?

How would Constitutional Transformation address crime?  Can the Te Tiriti Partnership Framework protect our environment?  Will a National Plan of Implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) improve our health and economy?

To help answer these questions, I take a case study approach to how just one of these issues (crime) was dealt with in the past, is dealt with today, and could be dealt with in the future. 

In the past all hara (crime) was defined as the violation of tapū and dealt with by the application of mana and tikanga; tikanga being both the law and a discrete set of values by which mana was given constitutional structure and expression in daily life by ordinary people.  

The main purpose of tikanga was to hold together the whare tangata (the ‘house of the people’), and for centuries it fulfilled that purpose.  Today, it doesn’t do that so much.

Today, crime is now defined as “an action or omission which constitutes an offence” against laws that are historically and heavily based on English law and are constitutionally expressed by the Executive who write them, the Parliament who pass them, and the Judiciary who apply them.  Ordinary people have little to do with law except in its enforcement or their breach of it.

The main purpose of English law is to “protect various liberties and rights from violations or unreasonable intrusions by persons, organizations, or government.”  For tangata whenua, it has rarely, if ever, fulfilled that purpose.

And yet, through the work already done to progress Constitutional Transformation, establish the Tiriti Partnership Framework and implement the UNDRIP, an accommodation can be seen slowly emerging between these two legal systems.  An example of that accommodation can be read in Max Harris’ 2013 review of a 2012 High Court decision by  Justice Heath (R v Mason [2012] NZHC 1361).

Another example of the emerging accommodation is the recent appointment of Justice Joe Williams as the first Māori to the Supreme Court.  Annette Sykes called it, “the kind of development that will ensure the recognition of the underpinnings of the first law of this nation, tikanga Māori, and how the intersect of that law, the introduced colonisers’ law, is important in future decisions that advance justice between and amongst the communities that co-exist in Aotearoa."

But, for me, the neatest example is a lot closer to home.  I’m talking about Te Whānau Moana Te Rorohuri on Karikari Peninsula who are successfully partnering with government departments to work on a range of issues in their rohe, from environmental protection to stamping out P (methamphetamine). 

Constitutional recognition and protection of the emerging accommodation between ordinary people practicing tikanga and working together with government practicing law; that is the connection of the work of Pou Tikanga with the issues facing our people every day.