Inspired by Eric Muller's 'live' blogging of a book review in progress, I am going to try the same thing as I collect my thoughts for a review of Giselle Byrnes' important new book, The Waitangi Tribunal and New Zealand History.
Right off the bat, I don't expect my small and mostly American audience to be interested in this ... but maybe you'll find something worth reading.
At the broadest level Byrnes grapples with the universal problem of the historical past being used in the service of the political present. Perhaps I stretch for the parallel too much, but what John Kerry and George Bush did or did not do in Vietnam over thirty years ago is fixed. Whether or not you believe that it is relevant to today's politics, it has been made relevant. Even absent the personal dimensions of the draft dodger versus the veteran, the history of United States' involvement in Vietnam would be relevant to the debate today about Iraq.
History, in the sense of what happend, but more importantly history in the sense of "our interpretations of the past" are central to politics.
Clearly, European-indigenous inter-relationships from the 19th century have little impact on the mainstream political debate in the United States. That's what you get when Native Americans make up 0.9 percent of the population, compared to Maori making up 14.7 percent of the New Zealand population.
The issue of white (or "Pakeha" in the NZ context) relationships with Maori, and the form of Maori political representation is currently the axis on which New Zealand politics divides. In all likelihood, who wins the debate will determine the next government.
If you've read this far, I hope I've convinced you of the current salience of the issue, and the broader issues the book deals with, and will take time for a quick guide to the history of the Waitangi Tribunal.
To really start at the beginning we'll take off from the American Revolution.
Along with sadly depriving Americans of the chance of having cricket as their national pastime, the Revolution also cut short the scheme the British had of sending their convicts to Georgia. Thus were born the Australian penal colonies in New South Wales and Tamania.
Once the convicts had served their time they were not able to make it back to Britain (that being the point of the penal transportation system), and despite a degree of acceptance in free society, many felt it was better to clear out to the next place they could find.
That would be New Zealand, which was also being discovered by whalers, sealers and traders as an all around good place for those activities, and the New Zealand Company, led by the "interesting" Edward Gibbon Wakefield had designs on starting settlements there. Despite a smattering of French and Americans amongst the whalers and traders, most were British; as were the ex-convicts.
With the British descended population in New Zealand growing, the Colonial Office decided that British law would provide a more orderly framework for the settlement of New Zealand. Not insignificantly, they also believed that a British legal framework would confer substantial benefits on Maori by bringing transactions about land and other real property under the law.
Thus it was that William Hobson was sent out to negotiate a treaty with Maori.
The result was the Treaty of Waitangi signed in 1840:
ARTICLE THE FIRST
The Chiefs of the Confederation of the United Tribes of New Zealand and the separate and independent Chiefs who have not become members of the Confederation cede to Her Majesty the Queen of England absolutely and without reservation all the rights and powers of Sovereignty which the said Confederation or Individual Chiefs respectively exercise or possess, or may be supposed to exercise or to possess over their respective Territories as the sole sovereigns thereof.ARTICLE THE SECOND
Her Majesty the Queen of England confirms and guarantees to the Chiefs and Tribes of New Zealand and to the respective families and individuals thereof the full exclusive and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates Forests Fisheries and other properties which they may collectively or individually possess so long as it is their wish and desire to retain the same in their possession; but the Chiefs of the United Tribes and the individual Chiefs yield to Her Majesty the exclusive right of Preemption over such lands as the proprietors thereof may be disposed to alienate at such prices as may be agreed upon between the respective Proprietors and persons appointed by Her Majesty to treat with them in that behalf.ARTICLE THE THIRD
In consideration thereof Her Majesty the Queen of England extends to the Natives of New Zealand Her royal protection and imparts to them all the Rights and Privileges of British Subjects.
Plough through that, and you'll notice that it's not exactly a model of clarity; not to mention that the Maori version had some interpretive differences.
As a practical matter, the sovereignty the British had obtained over New Zealand was rather limited; as they had few officials and few troops, but a rapidly growing number of immigrants.
Whether you like to view the dispute as being over land or sovereignty, the New Zealand wars between 1846 and 1882 (if you believe that the peace treaty with the King movement was the end of the wars) or 1916 (if you believe that Rua Kenana's arrest marks the end of the wars) unquestionably established European legal control over New Zealand. Maori were more successful in resisting encroachments on their land and self-government than native Americans in the United States and Canada, to say nothing of Australia or South Africa.
With the end of large scale armed resistance to British authority in the 1880s, Maori increasingly turned to political means to press their claim for compensation for lost resources. To some extent the New Zealand government responded to these claims with a Royal Commission into land confiscation in 1926, and small monetary settlements with major tribes in the 1940s.
Then in 1975 the third Labour government established the Waitangi Tribunal to hear claims against the Crown. The Act limited claims to events occurring after 1975, and because of that limitation the impact of the Tribunal was slight.
In 1985 the fourth Labour government extended the ambit of the Tribunal back to 1840 in a move which occasioned remarkably little debate at the time. The official website for the Treaty (established in response to the current, that is 2004 onwards, political debate) notes:
There were unexpected implications of going back to 1840: opening up the whole history of the terms and modes of colonisation.
A couple of years later in 1987 the Court of Appeal decided that the 1986 State Owned Enterprises Act meant the government could do nothing that "is inconsistent with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi," and then proceeded to set out a number of principles that it saw flowing from the text above. In particular, it said that the Treaty meant that the Crown and Maori were partners in government, though partners with profoundly unequal resources and power. For a country with a long tradition of a supreme executive, compliant legislature, and relatively weak courts this case attracted little public comment at the time. If you're not watching what the courts do, you don't see what the courts do.
But the government did take note of the court's decision, as did the succeeding National government which proceeded to make some major settlements with key tribes. This settlement process had bipartisan support, but led to some disagreement within the Maori community about how to allocate the bounty received. A radical, direct action group within the Maori community were the very visible face of Maori discontent about resource claims, and continuing poor health, education and criminal justice outcomes for many Maori.
The next Labour government, elected in 1999, attracted a lot of Maori support. The government's key policy aim was to remedy some of the poor health and education outcomes; and more quietly to reduce the pressure on Maori tribes to make settlements of resource claims quickly. Despite some Pakeha opposition to 'special' programs for Maori (you may like to think of this as equivalent to affirmative action in the U.S.), the opposition National Party did not make a political issue of the programs; and was subsequently crushed in the 2002 election.
After continuing to flounder in the electoral wilderness for the next 18 months, the National Party then elected a new leader in late 2003, the former Governor of the Reserve Bank, Don Brash. Brash's initial months in the job were not auspicious; to put it mildly the man was not used to the give and take of political debate, and more used to the executive authority of being the head of the bank.
But then in late January 2004, Brash journeyed to Orewa and gave a speech that shifted NZ politics dramatically. Before the speech everyone assumed that Labour would coast to re-election in 2005, on the back of a surprisingly strong economy, and that Labour could establish itself as the 'natural party of government.' Now that's not the case; if Labour wins they will still be able to thank the economy and their stewardship of it has been more than competent; if they lose, it will be because Brash has made the Treaty salient in partisan politics in a way it never has been before.
Reading the speech several months after its delivery, and with the knowledge of others Brash has delivered since, several things are striking. First, Brash is great at asking the sophomoric questions about politics. As a former paid-up member and current supporter of the Labour party, I have no love for the Tories but Brash raises some legitimate questions. Second, he's proved pretty poor at answering his own questions, and putting some policies out there that actually differ substantively from Labour's. Having rushed out with the blanket principle that there should be no racial preferences ... it turns out there will be exceptions for racial preferences which meet a true need and are demonstrably successful in achieving policy aims in other spheres. All of which is much less ringing a call to electoral arms than what we heard in January.
It is into this political climate that Byrnes' book is released. How we deal with the effects of the past in the present, and how academic historians relate to that debate.
With that very extended introduction, more tomorrow on the actual book.
Posted by robe0419 at August 23, 2004 04:40 PM | TrackBack