At the estuary bridge connecting Waitangi’s treaty grounds to its township, children lined up to leap from the fence railings into the sea, competing for the biggest splash. A team of rowers carved their oars into the water, guiding a waka (traditional canoe) out towards the open ocean.
In the wind above them, a thick row of flags rippled: not the Union Jack-embossed symbol of the New Zealand state, but the red and black curl of tino rangatiratanga, representing the Indigenous battle for self-determination and governance.
The bridge weaves together the signature mixture of New Zealand’s founding Waitangi Day commemorations – where a party atmosphere of festival-style celebration takes place against the backdrop of political questions about sovereignty, inequality and history.
Over the weekend, New Zealand’s political leaders gathered at the marae (meeting house) in the Bay of Islands to mark the 183rd anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi – the country’s founding document, forged between Māori and the British crown. This year, the hosts had made an explicit effort to “keep politics out of it” – barring politicians from highly politicised speeches and asking they instead address wider themes of unity and nationhood. But with an election approaching, where shared governance with Māori is emerging as a flashpoint issue, political questions of race and Indigenous sovereignty continued to rise to the surface.
“We non-Māori have nothing to fear and much to gain” from facing the wrongs of the past, the prime minister, Chris Hipkins, said in his speech at the pōwhiri (welcoming ceremony) for political leaders. “Much of the contemporary debate, unfortunately, is still characterised by a degree of uncertainty and fear. With honesty and with understanding we can overcome this.”
He and his opponents’ political speeches foreshadowed an election in which the future of the government’s relationship with Māori is playing a central role. The question of “co-governance” of public assets has dogged the government, after proposed reform of waterways management became a heated proxy debate about the rights of state and iwi (tribal) institutions. Waikato-Tainui’s Tukoroirangi Morgan said on Friday that opposition parties had “fanned the flames of racism” to stir up debate over the reforms.
On Sunday, Hipkins sought to allay those voters’ fears. There was “a lot of anxiety amongst non-Māori New Zealanders about what treaty settlements might mean, and what the ongoing relationship between the crown and Māori might mean,” he said, but that was unnecessary. “I don’t think we should be afraid of talking about those issues,” said Hipkins. “I’m certainly not afraid of talking about them.”
Hipkins focused the remainder of his speech on the ongoing challenges of inequality for Māori, who face stark inequalities of outcome in education, the justice system and health. “We have come too far not to go further, we have done too much not to do more,” he concluded.
His counterpart, the National leader, Christopher Luxon, chose to focus on concluding one of the main formal pathways of redress – Waitangi tribunal settlements. That process “settles claims forever” and “brings an end to grievance”, he said, promising to try and settle all claims in the next seven years. “Then it will be possible to declare that a tremendous national reconciliation process that began in the 1990s is complete.”
But that process is likely to be immensely challenging. The site of the treaty’s signing is Ngāpuhi land – a tribe that has never agreed upon a formal settlement for past wrongdoing by the crown. On the minds of many present was a 2,000-page report released a month earlier, by the Waitangi tribunal, that found the crown had vastly overstepped its rights to govern Ngāpuhi, waging war and confiscating land. It recommended, among other steps, the return of all crown-owned land in Northland to Māori.
Speaking in te reo in his greeting to politicians, Ngāti Hine elder Waihoroi Shortland remarked that vague discussions of “deviation” from the treaty did not capture who had strayed from its agreement. “I am in the very same place that we were 183 years ago,” he said. “Who was it that shifted? Who was it that moved away? Who was it that has been wandering in the wilderness?
“And yet we have still created a nation.”
Overall, the weekend marked the latest iteration of a shift in tone for Waitangi – the political heat of the day mostly muted in favour of more genteel panel discussions, shared food, dancing and music. It has often been a historic site of highly charged protest and sometimes literal political mudslinging: then-National party leader Don Brash was hit in the face with handfuls of dirt in 2004. There was little of that energy this year, and banners and placards were few and far between.
By Monday, even the brief political speeches were over. Crowds gathered in the early morning darkness for a dawn service to greet the sunrise. Rain faded to drizzle as the sun rose. Beyond the gates of the treaty grounds, the last preparations for a full-blown music festival were under way, with tens of thousands of people to gather.
“The politics comes and goes,” the prime minister said, leaving his final formal engagement at the site. “But overall, I think it’s been a pretty positive place to be.”
