Beholding the original Te Tiriti o Waitangi

As you walk past the Beehive and Parliament House you walk past the front lawns on your right - which are now beautifully restored after the mayhem in February, you eventually exit the grounds onto Molesworth street.

There, right in front of you on the other side of Molesworth Street stands the National Library with the Archive behind it.

I was so keen to see Te Tiriti o Waitangi I strode across the road and walked right on up to the information desk and asked where it was exactly lol.

Turns out it was straight ahead.

There was nothing difficult at all about seeing the original nine sheets of Te Tiriti o Waitangi which were all on display in a wonderful wooden panelled room right there on the ground level of the National Library.

You can just walk in and see it yourself anytime you are in Wellington.

Amazing really.

It bugged me that I had never seen it before and I think now with all this talk about Co-Governance that it was well past time I got off my arse and learned some things.

I wanted the full story and I have yet to read those books many of you will recommend.

So before seeing these original documents, Vicki and I decided we'd take the digital display tour and learn and absorb as much as possible about our real history.

We started in 1835 with He Whakaputanga - the Declaration of Independence.

I pressed every button there was and we both listened to audio recordings telling us on 28 October 1835, at the home of British Resident James Busby in Waitangi, 34 northern chiefs signed He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni.

Yes the Declaration of Independence had four articles and the second one said something like this :

"The sovereignty/kingship (Kīngitanga) and the mana from the land of the Confederation of New Zealand are here declared to belong solely to the true leaders (Tino Rangatira) of our gathering, and we also declare that we will not allow (tukua) any other group to frame laws (wakarite ture), nor any Governorship (Kawanatanga) to be established in the lands of the Confederation, unless (by persons) appointed by us to carry out (wakarite) the laws (ture) we have enacted in our assembly (huihuinga)."

So to me this kind of showed that while all these British settlers were arriving and causing trouble ( whalers getting drunk and raping women and all that nonsense ) the Northern chiefs had been meeting and talking about concepts like sovereignty with the likes of Busby ...but I am also aware that words like "Kawanatanga" were Missionary words and these concepts were kind of fairly new and applied mostly to the way British culture did things. ( Correct me if I am wrong )

After listening to how this Declaration was accepted by the British Crown we moved on to the next set of displays all about Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

The first thing we learned was paper was mostly stretched sheep skin in those days and Sheet 1 had been nibbled by rats.

The next thing we noticed was Hone Heke was pretty young when he signed up so a few more senior chiefs wrote their names above his - it was all about seniority and mana.

We knew about the different versions but we never really appreciated a few matters.

I learned it took 8 months to get this Tiriti o Waitangi around the country in 1840 and 540 people signed it but it only took two days to draft the thing up and that's caused loads of issues.

The British knew they were rushing this and it seems many people who signed up thought that the Governor was going to control those settlers and leave the Maori alone to get on with their own lives undisturbed and with all the rights and privileges as the settlers.

Seemed like a good deal in terms of protection - but many were suspicious cos why trade something you already have?

Undisturbed possession of land and taonga was important.

Maybe there was some inevitability about being colonised or something - but the Maori version of the Treaty ( Te Tiriti o Waitangi ) never ceded sovereignty to the Crown and only 54 people signed the English text which did.

No way would such a legal document stand up in court in favour of the Crown and heaps of scholars know it, but Christopher Luxon didn't know it in his interview with Moana on Monday 18 April 2022.

Now the documents are like foundational and constitutional and form the basis for many laws and must be seen as a living document - not a relic in a library.

Vicki and I listened to all the scholars talking like Moana Jackson and Claudia Orange, Dame Anne Salmond and others and they knew more than David Seymour or Christopher Luxon for sure.

I'd say Christopher Luxon knew about four bullet points about all this...but soon we listened to today's young people talking and it was great to hear them so educated and onto it.

I felt like one of those used shopping bags - a pakeha who slipped through the cracks and never knew but maybe I was like too many pakeha ...and at least I was finally trying to catch up.

We saw the terrible way the New Zealand Wars happened, and all the inequity and injustice and it was horrible.

We saw the way so many had lost their mana and their land and had become tenants in their own place because they were cheated and made second class.

And I knew we had to fix the inequity - not fight it like Luxon and Seymour who have no real solutions other than controlling everything.

There was something disproportionate about the status quo NOT about co-governance and how terrible if Aotearoa could still not see this?

I sat in the dark like a bag of potatoes and my insides welled up like the stuff that makes you blink ...

Vicki and I stood up and looked at the original women's suffrage petition - signed by so many women in 1893.

It was like a huge toilet roll with a broom handle through the middle it was so long.

You see - democracy evolved right there - despite the David Seymour's of the day shouting no way...like they have at every step of progress for people fighting for their rights.

Finally we entered the panelled room ...in the right state of mind to see the original Te Tiriti o Waitangi and wow - there it was.

After 56 years I was finally looking at it right in front of me.

"Let's learn how to speak Te Reo", said Vicki.

"He Whakaputanga" I said cos that word can mean to emerge.

Which is what we are going to do next.

It's all part of our long journey out of ignorance and into a much better place.

I hope New Zealand keeps on emerging too...and is not stopped by ignorance and fear without any real understanding nor knowledge.

Beholding the original Te Tiriti o Waitangi

G