Guest Post: Abraham Lincoln and the Treaty of Waitangi
A guest post by Peter Lynn:
In 2005 I went on a pilgrimage with a group of Americans to Gettysburg, site of the pivotal battle of the American Civil War. At the climax of our visit, I was the only person willing to attempt Lincoln’s address. It was rendered in a kiwi accent with quite a bit of fudging but to sustained applause- very polite people Americans.
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal—–”
“All men are created equal” is wrong of course, we are born differently abled and into different circumstances- and what about women? But at that time, it was a resounding affirmation of equality before the law and a shining beacon for enlightened government everywhere.
And then Lincoln (and I) continued: “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.”
The founding document for NZ is not a remarkable statement of the principles of good government like the 1776 American Declaration of Independence but the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi between the British Crown, and 500 something Māori chiefs.
We call it a treaty, but strictly it isn’t, treaties can only be between sovereign countries and New Zealand in 1840 was a collection of warring Māori tribes plus a few European settlers. It’s an agreement or contract.
From 1800, guns brought in by traders, sealers and whalers were used by Māori to settle old scores and take territory in what is now called the Musket Wars (1818 to 1840). Perhaps 20,000 from a population of 100,000 died and Māori pressured the British to take control and protect them- as did the few European settlers and traders established by this time.
The British were very reluctant, foreseeing a lot of expense and very little thanks but finally asserted sovereignty in 1840 with the agreement of a majority of Māori chiefs (the Treaty of Waitangi). This ended the Musket Wars.
Bringing Māori into the English law system was not complete until nearly 1900 and as European population increased, conflicts between settlers and Māori escalated. By the time of the American Civil war, NZ was embroiled in the New Zealand Land Wars (1843 to 1872).
These were at the same time and had the same cause as the US army’s campaign to push Indians out of their hunting grounds in the American West. At this post-enlightenment stage of European expansion, settlers were attempting to behave legally and humanely- but often failed. At least they were trying.
In previous eras, back to pre-history, the question of ‘rights’ did not occur to invaders- or to the invaded (who had likely been invaders last time around). Rape, slaughter, pillage and genocide were routine- Genghis Khan’s expansion for example, and the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Māori tribal wars were of this style well into the European era, with the Chatham Islands Moriori (an isolated island tribe) being reduced from perhaps 2000 in 1835 to less than a hundred in 1860 by invading mainland tribes- New Zealand’s very own genocide.
Inevitably, Māori could not prevail against British Imperial power and New Zealand then settled into a hundred years of rapidly increasing prosperity from the expansion of farming. By 1950, New Zealand was in the top international rank by gdp/capita.
Māori were still relatively disadvantaged but had adapted at least as well as any colonised stone age culture. Worryingly, they became reluctant to engage with education. By the 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Waitangi, pre-eminent Māori leader Sir Apirana Ngata proclaimed “Beware of separatism. The Māori can do anything the Pakeha can do but in order to achieve this we must all be New Zealanders first.” On their return from WW2, the Māori battalion (volunteers, Māori were exempt from conscription) asked (paraphrasing): “Now have we earned the right to be New Zealanders?”
This was the high point. By the 1970s, Māori separatism was on the rise again, driven by a deep sense of injustice: In less than 100 years, they had lost most of their land, had their culture overturned, went from top of their heap to being at the bottom and had still not adapted adequately to the changing world.
Recently, supported by Pakeha elites, for whom it has become a fashionable cause, Māori separatism has accelerated and at the fringes has become a Māori supremist movement. This has been abetted by an activist judiciary: Justice Cooke’s 1987 “— akin to a partnership” has since been strengthened to an actual partnership, permeated NZ institutions and seeped into statutes.
Separatism has of course been passionately embraced by tribal hierarchies whose status and power it massively boosts. There is now an entrenched ‘Treaty Industry’ comprising individuals and entities who benefit from the extension of Māori privilege.
To sell this to the majority population, there has been extensive revision of our history. Māori was not a written language until missionaries created dictionaries to aid with religious conversion. Language drift, tribal variations in meaning and imperfect translation has provided ample scope for revisionists. Also, some of the Māori signatories to the treaty couldn’t read (although Māori literacy was higher than for settlers at that time because of mission schools). Spoken explanations were used to cover this- leading to disputes over what the signatories thought they were agreeing to.
After the treaty was signed, Māori acted as though they had ceded sovereignty until quite recently, but revisionists now claim that Māori never did cede sovereignty. In the ‘80’s and 90’s the treaty was pushed as a “living document” to justify interpretations that suited revisionists. Curiously, now those changes are established, it is no longer a living document.
But we don’t need to resolve these probably unresolvable questions to consider Lincoln’s question: ‘can a nation so conceived long endure’?
For America the answer is yes- they have not only endured but have risen to world leadership. The poorest state in the US is now more prosperous per capita than London, the richest district in England, the world’s super-power in 1863.
For New Zealand the answer is no it can’t.
Because the majority population is becoming increasingly resentful of special legal status based on ancestry. For example, Māori have increasingly gained veto power over land and water use consents, enabling them to demand koha (usually money) in return for not opposing applications. To Māori this is seen as reasonable as it was their country before Europeans arrived. They further justify their demands for special privilege by quoting Māori’s worse economic and health stats- and are not at all interested in discussing the cultural and lifestyle choices underlying these.
But no country that is ruled by a racial, religious or cultural minority. has ever survived for long. South Africa didn’t, Rhodesia didn’t, Rwanda didn’t (> 500,000 dead), Iraq didn’t (failed state). Not even the French could- their aristocratic elite met Monsieur Guillotine and weren’t even of different ethnicity or religion.
Nothing riles people more than others getting preferential treatment. For how much longer will the Asian immigrant population (18% and rising) accept inferior status? Resentment is especially sharp when the group claiming superiority set themselves apart- as Māori are doing with their overt adoption of retro cultural markers.
It might take a while here, perhaps even a few generations, but sooner or later every minority group that puts itself above others pays the price.
Can the special legal status Māori have acquired through judicial activism and 30 years of appeasement (which always just invites further demands) be stripped away without violence? Jenny Shipley says there’ll be a civil war if Māori aren’t further elevated but this will be as nothing to what will happen when the majority population rises up.
Equality before the law is not just desirable, it’s a necessity- as Abraham (yes, he was Jewish) Lincoln knew back in 1863 but NZ’s tribal leaders, Pakeha elites and appeasers in the major parties seem not yet to have grasped.
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