The current legislative discussions around Te Tiriri o Waitangi / The Treaty of Waitangi seem to be about culture.

For David Seymour, his concern (legitimate or not) is that one way of interpreting the Treaty would award “special rights” based on “ancestry”, which he feels violates his understanding of equal rights for all individuals. He thinks Te Tiriti sets up one government (‘kawanatanga‘) for all. One set of laws for all. Equal rights for all. This language of equality is deeply intuitive to many. The debate centres on the extent, nature and scope of that government. My own suspicion, which I hold very lightly, is that the hesitance of some Māori to sign Te Tiriti, lends weight to the view that ‘te Kawanatanga katoa o o ratou wenua’ indeed refers to total (‘katoa’) government over the land (‘whenua’). According to this understanding, Māori were clear what was being proposed, but as some of their chiefs (rangatira) had travelled widely and were wisely aware how colonisation had negatively affected other peoples, were concerned about whether or not this proposed ‘Kawana’ (a loan word for the English ‘Governor’) was going to truly protect their best interests. Sadly it turned out that land was unjustly sold and taken.

For some (or even many) Māori and their allies seeking to honour Te Tiriti, the concern is that the current system of government fails to give them the voice, influence and self-determination (‘tino rangatiratanga‘) which they (as they see it) are promised in article two of Te Tiriti. From this point of view, the structure of Parliament and system for governing the country are not ‘neutral’ but reflect British/European culture. Te Tiriti is seen as a safeguard against European cultural dominance, promising that colonisation, immigration and settling of Europeans will not overwhelm or erase Māori people, lands, and ways of being.

Since 1840, when Te Tiriti was signed, many people from other cultures (Asian, African, ‘American’) have also migrated, which adds a multi-cultural expression to the nation.

So, reviewing, we have:

a) an indigenous culture which is promised a very real degree of ‘tino rangatiratanga’ (self-determination or ‘chiefly rule’) over their own lands, and a settler culture which is (arguably) given the right to exercise ‘kawanatanga’ (government) over the ‘wenua’ (land)
b) a Treaty that is rightly seen as ‘bi-cultural’ between the Queen of England and the United Tribes of Nu Tirani (New Zealand).
c) a modern multi-cultural reality where Te Tiriti gives migrants the right to call Aotearoa / New Zealand home.

Is there a ‘transcultural‘ layer in the mix?

One of the major active parties involved in the drafting, translation, negotiation and signing of Te Tiriti – that is the Missionaries, notably Henry Williams – were motivated by their understanding of The Gospel (Te Rongopai). Whilst Māori, as of 1840, would understandably be skeptical about what this proposed incoming ‘Kawanatanga‘ would mean for their people, the previous two decades had seen an overwhelmingly positive response to the incoming message of ‘Rongopai’. As leading Māori historian Monty Soutar argued at an event I attended in 2019, it is the height of Eurocentric condescension to argue that Māori were tricked into welcoming this foreign religion. He is well versed in the history of intelligent weighing and welcoming of the Gospel among his people. Some estimates are that up to 90% of Māori were Christian around 1840.

I take it as obvious that these 19th century agents of mission were imperfect (sometimes extremely so). They inherited, carried and expressed an assumption of cultural superiority. This is famously seen in Samuel Marsden’s estimation that Australian aboriginals were not developed enough to have the Gospel shared with them. Despite this, Māori (and Australian aboriginals too) were intelligently and wisely able to see beyond the messengers to the message, which so many of them saw as good for their people. Thus comes into focus the ability of the Gospel to be (as missiologist David Bosch describes) ‘infinitely translatable’.

Gambian missiologist Lamin Sanneh points out that, despite the very real assumptions of cultural superiority at work, the very act of translation of the Scriptures into the many languages and cultures the missionaries went was itself inherently humanising and preserving. This is a message that does not destroy culture as it is planted into it. In the first century, when a male, female, Jew, Gentile, slave or free person became a Christian, this did not meant that their male-ness or female-ness was erased or downgraded. Rather who they were was enhanced and arguably transformed. English folk become more human, more Christ-like English folk. Māori likewise arguably judged that their people would be enriched and humanized by Te Rongopai. That vision of a humanising movement was at the heart of humanitarian and Christian groups like The Clapham Sect, which had such an influence on the wording of Te Tiriti; demanding that indigenous peoples be protected.

So then, there seems to be a kind of parallel when it comes to the present debate. I can imagine that some, perhaps David Seymour, will be imagining that ‘Parliament’ or ‘the Government’ is transcultural – neutral – objective; and that it is this neutral ‘democratic’ equality that is obviously needed here. My strong suspicion is that there needs to be a fresh awareness that The Westminster system of Parliament is indeed aligned to a particular British cultural system and not ‘neutral’. What should it – what could it – look like instead to have a (bi-cultural / multi-cultural / trans-cultural) Kawanatanga where two things could be simultaneously a reality:

1. all could share ‘democratically’ in the same universal and general rights under one Law,
2. but in a way that properly and thoroughly preserves and protects the particular rights due to any and all peoples (starting with and never excluding iwi & hapu (tribe & sub-tribe) Māori who are explicitly protected in Article 2 of Te Tiriti)

I have no idea what this would look like, but it seems to beautifully smell like both Te Rongopai and Te Tiriti.