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Maori and the State: Crown-Māori relations in New Zealand/Aotearoa, 1950-2000

Asserting Rangatiratanga

Asserting Rangatiratanga

Most claims, in the final analysis, were about rangatiratanga, whether they explicitly stated so or not. They tended to focus on land, but often had many other aspects, and all Maori negotiators sought more satisfactory relationships with the Crown. Durable Treaty settlements would not only recognise rangatiratanga, but also provide a package of resources to underpin its enhancement. The structures, responsibilities and powers of the collective organisations that would safeguard, enhance and distribute settlement resources were intensely debated within and between tribes. The Crown accepted the right of the post-settlement regimes to control their resources as they saw fit, under the ‘self management principle’ of the modern Treaty of Waitangi. But tribal autonomy could be argued to be limited, insofar as tribal governance structures receiving settlement resources required legal sanction for ‘public good’ (and Article Three) reasons, such as protecting the rights of potential and actual beneficiaries. Some iwi, in fact, felt strongly that the legal requirements which the Crown insisted on imposing as a precondition of settlement derogated from their rangatiratanga.15

A number of sub-iwi groupings which were hoping to take advantage of the new types of family and tribal trusts being offered for the administration of Maori-owned land had similar feelings about Crown requirements. The increasing judicial capacity to intervene in Maori affairs was resented in some quarters as a state intrusion, too, though it was more common for Maori to view legal processes as a way of protecting their interests. Legal challenges were launched by urban and other Maori groupings to resolve issues arising frompage 261 various fisheries asset distribution proposals, and Ngai Tahu would spearhead use of the courts as a weapon during difficulties in negotiations. There were promising developments for Maori from time to time in an emerging ‘Treaty jurisprudence’, together with signs of a legal pluralism that could encompass aspects of Maori customary law. All the same, the heavy involvement of the judiciary in Maori issues was an ongoing reminder that in matters relating to their management of reclaimed or otherwise Crown-provided resources, in the final analysis institutions of state held the decision-making power.

In abandoning the RIA’s devolutionary institutions, the government had not discarded the well entrenched notion of partnership. Given its insistence that any movement towards partnership had to remain fully and firmly within the parameters of an indivisible sovereignty, however, alternative autonomist arrangements from those now repealed continued to prove elusive. But the prospect of Treaty settlements refocused attention on the issue of what types of rangatiratanga the Crown would recognise as the bases for forging permanent relationships. A great deal of discussion within Maoridom ensued as to the regimes by which iwi, hapu and other collectivities could both deal with the Crown and best handle sizeable settlement monies, lands and other resources.

The government, stressing that Treaty settlements were by grace of the political executive and Parliament, refused any recognition of rangatiratanga arrangements that might impinge upon Crown prerogatives – let alone to consider the many radical proposals also in the air, such as variations on the quasi-sovereignty of the Native American ‘domestic dependent nations’. Crown constraints upon what it would discuss reinforced within Maoridom arguments that their people needed to organise on the basis of strength through unity. Initial high hopes that the National Maori Congress might become a durable kotahitanga movement, perhaps even the nucleus of a Maori polity to sit alongside the Crown, had quickly dissipated. Now, new ideas for achieving unity of process and purpose jostled with each other. By the mid-1990s, with the Maori world remaining fractionated at its interface with the state, key leaders were reaching the conclusion that, to complement and supplement the rangatiratanga exercised by the tribes and other groupings, te tino rangatiratanga needed to be organised at national level as a matter of urgent priority.16

15 Sullivan, Ann, ‘The Treaty of Waitangi and Social Well-being: Justice, Representation, and Participation’, in Belgrave, Michael, Kawharu, Merata and Williams, David (eds), Waitangi Revisited: Perspectives on the Treaty of Waitangi, Auckland, 2005, pp 132–3; Ladley, ‘The Treaty’, pp 21–3 (re limited autonomy); McHugh, Paul, ‘Aboriginal Identity and Relations in North America and Australasia’, in Coates, Ken S and McHugh, P G, Living Relationships, Kōkiri Ngatāhi: The Treaty of Waitangi in the New Millennium, Wellington, 1998, pp 137–43; Office of Treaty Settlements, Crown Proposals, pp 13–4.

16 Orange, An Illustrated History, p 216; Williams, The Too-Hard Basket, pp 110–11, 113–23; McHugh, ‘Aboriginal Identity’, pp 171–5; Durie, Te Mana, pp 228–31, 236–8.