NAMING AND CLAIMING MYTHS

Central to the eurocentric Doctrine of Discovery was the practice of explorers arriving somewhere new to them, sticking a pole bearing their nation’s flag into the ground and announcing to themselves, “I claim this land in the name of ...” - without regard for the people already there.

After that came the colonisers whose task was to very deliberately displace and/or replace the original peoples using whatever means it took, from intermarriage to genocide.  Once that had been achieved, their descendants’ task was to mythologise and justify the illegality and brutality of the founding events upon which they now laid claim to sovereignty.

Nowhere have the practices of naming and claiming, displacing and replacing, and then mythologising been more clearly and eloquently recorded than in the United States of America. 

In 1823, Chief Justice John Marshall sat atop the fledgling US Supreme Court and penned a decision on a case between two white men.  At issue was a series of private European ‘purchases’ from the Illinois and Piankashaw nations in the years leading up to the American Revolution.  But what resulted was a great deal more than just the resolution of the matter at hand.  Basing his decision on the Doctrine of Discovery, Marshall used it to mythologise his forebears’ conquest of America, and to secure the rights of civilised Europeans to land then held by “fierce savages, whose occupation was war, and whose subsistence was drawn chiefly from the forest.”

With intonations of surprise, Marshall justified his new mythology by what he deemed the practical necessity of the matter: “To leave them in possession of their country was to leave the country a wilderness,” he wrote, and “to govern them as a distinct people was impossible, because they were as brave and high-spirited as they were fierce, and were ready to repel by arms every attempt on their independence,” – as if this were an unnatural and unreasonable reaction to invasion and dispossession.

Here in Aotearoa, the process was a lot sneakier, but just as damaging and damning. 

In 2008 I wrote, “everyone in this country has had a world view beamed into us from birth that’s predicated on key messages such as; “Native title is toast,” “the Crown holds the radical title for everything under the topsoil,” “the Government can issue fee simple title for everything above it.” 

I also noted then, and maintain now, that “the problem with those messages and world view is that they’re highly questionable, clash hugely with the dictates of good conscience and are totally at odds with the simple facts; Maori were never conquered, we never ceded sovereignty, and Native title is not extinguished.”

Those facts are the basis of tangata whenua rangatiratanga and mana whenua to this day.  And to this day, like tangata whenua, they stand in stark and stubborn denial of the Doctrine of Discovery fiction upon which New Zealand parliaments base their claim to sovereignty.

DOCTRINE OF DISCOVERY

Ngāti Kahu is a member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.  Although they do not attend every session of the Forum, they did so in 2004, 2009 and again this year. While there they contribute to what are known as ‘interventions’, which is a way to seek UN involvement in the internal affairs of a state by various means.

In 2004 the hot issue was the theft by the crown of Te Takutaimoana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act.  As a result the UN sent Special Rapporteur Rodolfo Stavenhagen in 2005 to report on the human rights and fundamental freedoms of Māori. His report was damning of the government. You can read it online at http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/srnzmarch06.pdf

In 2009 Ngāti Kahu again sent a representative to join with other Māori to  counter the Crown's spin regards the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) which New Zealand finally signed in June 2010. A month later the UN sent Special Rapporteur James Anaya to do a follow up report on the situation of Māori people in New Zealand. His report can he read online at http://unsr.jamesanaya.org/country-reports/the-situation-of-maori-people-in-new-zealand-2011. Although he noted some improvements, he also noted more needed to be done by the government.

This year the issues range across almost every political and legislative activity.  Resource exploitation, asset sales, charter schools, birth control for beneficiaries, union lockouts and many more issues are problems for everyone.  And increasingly everyone is seeing that the solutions hinge on a written constitution. 

That is why Ngāti Kahu was asked by Te Whakaminenga o Ngā Hapū o Nu Tireni to go to the Permanent Forum this year and seek UN support for a written constitution in this country based on the mana whenua and tikanga of each hapū, Te Whakaputanga o Te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni and Te Tiriti o Waitangi.  While specific to New Zealand, the intervention also fit with the Forum’s theme for its 2012 session; the Doctrine of Discovery.

This Doctrine is what European nations, particularly Spain, Holland, France and England, used to justify the wholesale theft of the lands and resources of indigenous peoples throughout the world and the subsequent genocide as millions were murdered and many nations entirely wiped out.

It is based on the false notion or myth that white Christians are somehow superior to all other people and must always dominate the world. It is the basis for the current legal and government systems we have in New Zealand and is what underlies the deeply ingrained racism we are constantly subjected to.

Over the next few weeks I will share reports on what happened at the Forum as this Doctrine and its modern day consequences were discussed.

WHAT NOW?

Quid nunc (what now) is a Latin term for someone who is a busybody and a gossip.  I first heard it in 1984 when the late Tā Hemi Henare used it in a speech he made to the newly elected Lange government with reference to those who are always ready to seek, spread and expand on any bad news about Māori. 

Quid nunc came to mind on Sunday just gone with an email from a Herald reporter who wrote, “I’m working on a financial accountability project for the paper in the wake of the recent sad news that Ngati Tama has lost virtually all of its treaty settlement funds… The purpose is to find out how many iwi keep their tribal members informed and whether the information is easily accessible… Respectfully, would your organization kindly provide your annual report and tell me if it is available to your iwi members? If so, how is it available?”

I have not responded to this request because, respectfully, I don’t need to; Ngāti Kahu know where to come if they want to know anything.  But the request itself made me think.

deListed NewZealand is an independent service that provides updated information on companies that have changed their name, failed or been delisted from the NewZealand Stock Exchange.  After getting the Herald’s request, I went online and checked the stats for 2011, and here is what I found.

Last year 663 non-Iwi companies went into receivership, 4767 more went into liquidation and a further 24 were placed into administration; that’s 5,454 failed non-Iwi companies.  To get an idea of what that figure means, during the same year the New Zealand Companies Register recorded the incorporation of 43,927 new companies.  Even allowing for the fact that there are almost 570,000 registered companies in the country, the failure rate of non-Iwi companies was more than 10% of the rate of all new companies registered during 2011. 

That was news to me.  So I emailed some Chief Executives of non-Iwi companies and asked if any of them had received a similar request from the Herald.  They had not.  I then emailed some Chief Executives of Iwi entities and asked if the Herald had contacted any of them with the same request?  It had. 

Apparently, based on the losses of a single Iwi, the Herald feels compelled to do a series on the financial accountability of all Iwi.  And yet, in spite of the failure of more than five and a half thousand  non-Iwi companies during 2011, it has yet to investigate the financial accountability of all non-Iwi.  And how do I know these were non-Iwi companies that failed? Because if they were Iwi, the media would have named them individually.

Apart from being inherently racist and unhelpful, this is lazy, lazy journalism; pure quid nuncery. 

WRITING OUR CONSTITUTION

This week I'm sharing a brief constitutional fact sheet put out by AotearoaMatike Mai (the Independent Working Group on Constitutional Transformation).

Every day Parliament passes laws that impact on Māori people but Māori never have any effective say over what those laws might be. There have been Māori MP’s of course, and now there is “consultation,” but in nearly every case Māori views are ignored. For example during the recent consultation on Section 9 of the SOE Act most Māori opposed the selling of State Assets but the government is going ahead with its policy.

The asset sales example is part of a history from the New Zealand Settlements Act of 1863 which confiscated thousands of acres of whenua to the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 which was passed in spite of the largest hikoi the country has ever seen.

The passing of all these laws in spite of Māori views and rights is part of a Crown constitutional process.

Ever since 1840 Māori people have argued that a process which operates in this way is contrary to Te Tiriti oWaitangi because the retention of Tino Rangatiratanga reaffirmed the constitutional authority or the right to make our own decisions that Iwi and Hapū had exercised for centuries.

As a result Māori history since 1840 has been an attempt to retain and exercise the authority to make our own decisions – it has been an attempt to adapt yet hold fast to what have always been Iwi and Hapū-based constitutional processes.   The Māori Parliament and Kotahitanga are just two examples, as was He Whakaputanga in 1835.

The Crown has never recognised the constitutional legitimacy of such attempts although it is clear that Māori people never signed Te Tiriti to be powerless in our own land. Instead it was signed to maintain an independent constitutional authority.

In more recent years Iwi and Hapū have couched these arguments in the language of “constitutional change” because of the need to change the way the Crown continues to exercise its authority by effectively reducing Māori People to just another “minority interest”.

The Working Group on Constitutional Transformation was formed at a National Hui in 2009 to further this discussion by actually transforming the whole process of government in a way that is based more honestly upon the relationship envisaged in Te Tiriti.  As Sir Archie Taiaroa stated at the three hui called by Sir Hepi Te HeuHeu in 1995-96 any attempt to change the way government works must be a “transformative process that restores authority to Iwi and Hapū while recognising the place of others”.

The Working Group is convened by Moana Jackson (Ngāti Kahungunu) and chaired by Margaret Mutu (Ngāti Kahu). Over the next year they are travelling around the motu to hui with whānau, hapū and roopu katoa, asking people to imagine what this transformative process might be like.