One of the ironies of David Seymour, the Act party leader who’s insisting on a referendum on “co-governance” between the crown and iwi, is that one of his own ancestors was a signatory to Te Titiri o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi). That doesn’t quite make Seymour a hypocrite, and nor does it necessarily make him a disloyal descendant, instead it reveals one of the contradictions at the heart of New Zealand politics: that few politicians can agree on quite what our founding document means. At one end, Te Pāti Māori (the Māori party) and the Greens pursue the textual meaning of Te Tiriti, the Māori language version reaffirming Māori sovereignty while carving out modest powers for the crown. At the other end, Act and the National party pursue the textual meaning of the English language treaty where the chiefs who sign apparently surrender their sovereignty to Her Majesty.
What Act and parts of the National party ignore, of course, is that few chiefs signed the English language version, rendering “the Treaty of Waitangi” a dead document. The courts deal with that fact in an admirably centrist manner, choosing to ignore both language texts in favour of extracting “principles” like “partnership” – which is an approximation of co-governance – and “active protection”. But the academic and activist consensus is increasingly critical of that compromise. Few historians and legal scholars would disagree that the relevant language version is the Māori Te Tiriti.
