Something Thoughtful

 Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.    

                                                  I AM TANGATA WHENUA

 

I was born in New Zealand. My parents were born in New Zealand. My four grandparents were born in New Zealand. Six of my eight great-grandparents were born in New Zealand and I have one or two great-great grandparents who were born in New Zealand. I am at least a fourth generation New Zealander. If I trace my genealogy back, I could say my ancestors were 50% Scots, 25% Irish and 25% English. (My wife’s ancestry is 100% Irish). I may sometimes have a certain vague affection for the countries my forebears came from, but I do not consider myself to be Scots, Irish, English or British in general. I am a New Zealander. The only passport I hold is for New Zealand. I have lived nearly all my life in New Zealand, apart from two or three years of overseas travel. I am a citizen of nowhere but New Zealand. Therefore I regard myself as one of the tangata whenua – the people of the land. What other land do I belong to?

But despite what I’ve said, some will say that, not being Maori, I must really be only one of the tangata tiriti, that is, persons who are here only because of the Treaty of Waitangi. And here my argument begins. Obviously I wasn’t here when the Treaty of Waitangi was signed and I had no hand in framing it or endorsing it. I am not a New Zealander because of a document which, as I now interpret it, was in part fraudulent, its main purpose being to establish British sovereignty. I say this even with the knowledge that the treaty was more idealistic than methods by which Europeans took over other countries. I am a New Zealander by right of being born here. I object to being classed as one who somehow has a lesser right to be here. And the use of the term tangata whenua tends to imply that those who are not Maori are not really people of the land and are therefore merely “guests” of those whose ancestors arrived here earlier. New Zealand is now a multi-cultural nation, including Pasifika, Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Korean and many other ethnicities. It is not merely bi-cultural, with a neat division of Maori and European, and that means that the newer Asian and Pacific arrivals are also belittled by the use of the term tangata whenua.

Let’s consider some of the problems that this term raises. Because there were no formal censuses or written records to tell us how large the Maori population was in pre-European times, historians can only speculate. The best estimate is between 100,000 and 200,000. The population of New Zealand now is approximately 5 million – that is, 25 times larger than the higher estimate. Of those 5 million, at most 18% now identify as Maori, and even this percentage raises problems. The African-American novelist James Baldwin pointed out in one of his essays that the only reason he was called “Baldwin” was that one of his ancestors had been owned by a slave-master called Baldwin. But there was no such slavery in New Zealand. Therefore any Maori with a European surname has at least some European forebears, be it Whina Cooper, Tipene O’Regan, Winston Peters or Willy Jackson. And many Maori with Maori surnames also have some European ancestors. Does this make them a lesser or diluted form of tangata whenua? At the very least, shouldn’t this fact give pause to those who condemn outright colonialism and non-Maori settlement when some of their own ancestors were part of the process?

There’s a strong possibility that by this stage I have raised your hackles. There might even by a few who now wish to throw such terms as “racist” at me.

So I’ll set out my position very carefully. As an historian, I am very well read in the histories and commentaries of Ranginui Walker,  Judith Binney, James Belich, Vincent O’Malley and many others. I am aware that much colonisation was carried out by fraud and force, that lands were confiscated (i.e. stolen), that outright warfare and invasion were made in the Waikato and elsewhere, that Maori were systematically deprived of their rights and resources, and that attempts were made to suppress the Maori language. I am fully on board with plans to teach this history more truthfully in our schools. I also support the wider teaching of the Maori language in schools and the wider use of the Maori language in public speech – a culture loses a lot when it loses its language. As for the new Matariki holiday – great! It’s good to have a Maori celebration written into the calendar. I know that in New Zealand, Maori [and people of the Pacific] are most likely to be the impoverished part of society and I know that Maori tend to be incarcerated more often than other ethnicities. Many sociologists have suggested that, if convicted of a crime, Maori tend to get harsher sentences than Pakeha. The re-assertion of Maoritanga, the “Maori Renaissance” and beyond, didn’t come from nowhere – it came from a raft of legitimate grievances.

So they have to be addressed by all of as. As equal citizens. Which means we all should be seen as tangata whenua, partners working to a common good.