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The Waitangi Tribunal

The fourth Labour government’s primary emphasis was on pushing through its right-wing economic policies, but it had little choice but to move to fulfil a number of the promises on social, ethnic and moral issues which it had made to its liberal pakeha and Maori supporters. The Waitangi Tribunal’s 1985 acquisition of the power to address historical grievances was among the most significant and enduring legacies of this process. Tribes which had not gained settlements in the past, or whose settlements had been rendered insignificant by inflation, together with sub-tribal, pan-tribal or non-tribal Maori groupings, all saw hope for a future which included Crown acknowledgement of rangatiratanga. Many believed that the Tribunal’s deliberations and recommendations might assist them in re-establishing a resource base, but this was not generally the principal aim of either Crown or claimants. The Crown desired to remove Maori grievances which were believed to be diverting Maoridom (and therefore the whole country) from socio-economic progress. The thrust of what tribes wanted was a Crown apology for its past breaches of the Treaty, and reparations that would both help promote the rebuilding of the cultural, social and political (as well as economic) strength of the claimant collectivities and embody Crown acknowledgement of the seriousness of their grievances. Most were realistic on the question of compensation, and did not expect that – however hard they fought – it would ever come to represent more than a very small amount of past losses at Crown hands.¹

All groupings placing claims before the Tribunal sought, in essence, respect for their rangatiratanga. Success in persuading the Crown of the necessity for such respect required greater public understanding of New Zealand history, as no government would forge too far ahead of ‘public opinion’ on ‘race issues’. Publicity for the evidence presented to the Tribunal, and for Tribunal reports them selves, assisted the development of such understanding. Liberal pakeha, organised in Project Waitangi and other groupings, began proactive educationpage 222 campaigns on Treaty matters aimed at the general populace, complementing the efforts of Maori organisations. Claims were accompanied by direct pressure on the government. A typical submission in mid-decade urged the government to honour the Treaty and demanded that, in seeking ‘principles of partnership and bi-cultural development’, it focus on the Maori version and its guarantee of te tino rangatiratanga. There was also much ‘Treaty education’ inside many institutions, official and non-official. The first New Zealand Conference on Social Work Education incorporated a workshop on the implications of the Treaty for social work training and a role play on the events leading up to the Treaty’s signing. The Public Service Association, similarly, was soon looking to ‘establish a process’ whereby ‘Maori and non-Maori members can discuss the Treaty’.

Throughout the 1980s, official and non-official efforts, and academic outputs, increasingly attempted to address or reflect Maori perspectives. There were a great number of initiatives aimed at ‘negotiating a bicultural past’ in order to produce a better present and future. Historians revised their interpretations in ways which both restored agency to Maori and outlined why the country’s past did not bear out the myth of racial harmony – James Belich’s The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict, published in 1986, being a notable example. The judiciary began to make decisions respecting Maori positions. All such developments in turn influenced the Waitangi Tribunal, and gave increased hope to Maori collectivities that achievement of Crown recognition of rangatiratanga might now be within grasp.²

The Tribunal’s findings against the Crown on Orakei/Bastion Point in 1987 did more than simply vindicate the occupiers’ arguments and lead to Crown concessions. In setting out ‘relevant principles’, it went some way towards accommodating longstanding Maori interpretations of the Treaty. The old ‘certainty’, in the pakeha world at least, was that of unconditional Maori agreement in 1840 to cede indivisible ‘sovereignty’ to the Crown. This could no longer be seen as unproblematic. In Article One of the Maori version of the Treaty, ‘kawanatanga’ (governorship) had been used as a translation for ‘sovereignty’. This had meant, in Maori eyes, something less than the transfer of indivisible sovereignty to the Crown – the more so when taken alongside Article Two’s guarantee of ‘full authority’/te tino rangatiratanga over land and other taonga/treasures to the Maori signatories, which was seen to imply ‘more than mere possession’ of tangible resources.

Differing perceptions between the parties as to the meaning of the Treaty were not unusual in a bilingual colonial document. In view of this, and reflecting the emergent Treaty-based discourses, the Tribunal believed that the ‘essence’ of the agreement transcended its words. The Treaty provided, in fact,page 223 not just the basis for righting the wrongs of the past, crucial as these were. Even more significantly, it was said to establish the foundation for ‘a developing social contract’ between Crown and Maori, one in which the parties resembled partners and were ‘obliged to act reasonably and in good faith towards each other’. Later reports built upon and fine-tuned such interpretations, which were in turn taken up and re-modified in the political, bureaucratic and judicial arenas as part of an evolving set of ‘Treaty principles’.³