Why are New Zealand’s Maori protesting over colonial-era treaty bill? (www.aljazeera.com)

submitted 1 month ago by absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz to c/newzealand@lemmy.nz

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[-] Dave@lemmy.nz 8 points 1 month ago

Interesting to see overseas coverage of this. There seems to be a few errors or misunderstandings. One key one repeated in the article:

There are currently 978,246 Maori in New Zealand, constituting around 19 percent of the country’s population of 5.3 million. They are represented by Te Pati Maori, or the Maori Party, which currently holds six of the 123 seats in Parliament.

This implies the Māori Party is the only representation, and implies 6/123 MPs represent 19% of the country. In reality, there is nothing special about The Māori Party, and Māori people vote for who they want to represent them like anyone else (yes there are Māori electorates but that's different and Māori can choose if they want to be on that system).

At multiple points they present the Māori Party as if they are the designated representation for Māori, which isn't true.

[-] absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Copy of what I replied in the other comment section:

There is a lot more nuance than is explained or even hinted at in the article.

There are a bunch of biased comments in the article.

It paints the Maori as a consistent group.
- Before the arrival of the British and for a long time after, the Maori were similar to the Greek city states; alliances, wars, betrayals and friendships.
- Their culture was just as fragmented.
It says in the article that Maori speak te Reo.
- This is unfortunately not true, it is changing and there is more te Reo being spoken "in the wild"; but walking down the street, it is not often I hear te Reo being spoken.
- te Reo is an amalgamation. The Maori were a diverse group, each had their own dialect, at some point in the recent past te Reo was "standardized". There was a bunch of contention around some words that were pronounced and spelt differently by different Iwi.
The land grabs and persecution parts are true.
- Some Iwi did a lot better than others.
- Some Iwi didn't sign the treaty at all.
- Some tribes "sold" their land, when they thought differently.
The part about Te Pati Maori only holding 6 out of 123 seats is funny.
- There are 7 Maori electorates, TPM won a bunch of these. Labour won some.
- Every party has Moari MP's, TPM is not the only Maori voice in parliament. Implying TPM is the only voice for Maori is demeaning. The Maori people are not a monolithic group; their politics is as varied as any other group.

The main issue is that the two treaties, the English language version and the version written in "Maori" are not the same. Te Triti (the Maori version) grants rangatiratanga; or self determination to the Iwi; whilst the English version grants sovereignty to the crown. There are a bunch of other differences, but this is the main one.

Contract law has the doctrine of Contra Proferentem; or against the drafter. Since the British crown wrote the treaties; as at the time there was no Maori written language; the interpretation of the contract should be read as to benefit the non-drafting party, in this case Te Triti should be taken as the "correct" one.

Now to the issue with the proposed bill.

It sets out to "equalise" all peoples, which on the surface sounds really good. Why wouldn't you want to treat people equally?
Under NZ law, all peoples are already equal!
There are specific carve outs, to allow for the closing of historic inequities suffered by Maori. The bill seeks to remove or reduce these.
There is also culture war bullshit, around dual names for government departments etc.
Treaty negotiations have been ongoing for decades at this point. They look set to continue for many decades to come. The ACT party wants this to stop.

Some say that ACT are hiding their racism behind the guise of equality. My opinion is that they are not specifically being racist. ACT is the libertarian party here; I think this is a long game to transfer more power to the corporates and private sector. This kind of culture war crap is a great smoke screen to transfer more power away from the people.