Post by Kiwi Frontline on Jan 12, 2021 17:54:22 GMT 12
Northland Age 12/1/21
TWO LAWS FOR ALL
A recently published article featuring academic Ms. Paul suggesting our law schools should teach both Pakeha and Maori law. She quotes Justice Joe Williams as saying “Kupe’s law ruled before Cook’s law”. Joe must have had his tongue firmly in his cheek to say that.
He would well know that prior to the Treaty of Waitangi the only law that existed in New Zealand was that laid down by individual chiefs. Their personal law was absolute and apt to change without notice. It was also likely to swiftly change at the whim of a more dominant chief!
What seems to be forgotten, by those who should know better, was that a letter written to the King of England in 1831 by a group of northern chiefs imploring the King to become their “Friend and Guardian”. That letter led to the arrival of Busby, the “Declaration of Independence” and within eight years the arrival of Hobson and the Treaty.
Interestingly some of the signatories were also signatories of both the “Declaration and the Treaty”
The letter explains their concerns and suggests that the 500+ chiefs who eventually signed the “Treaty of Waitangi” new exactly what they were doing. Very contrary to what we are led to believe today.
MURRAY REID, Cambridge
A CHARADE
The Northland Regional Council, Whangarei District Council and Kaipara District Council have voted to introduce Maori Wards.
Clear-thinking people in Northland should be able to see the proposal for what it is and shows up Councillors who are short on ability and stumbling into a racist, paternalistic option with a faulty and misguided view of legislative requirements.
This thinking has no place in our egalitarian society and the three Northland Councils obsession with granting special privileges to one section of the community over all others is divisive and it is insulting to all Maori suggesting they are incapable of achieving without patronage. We now see the Minister for Local Government Nanaia Mahuta wants to remove provisions allowing petitioners who called for public referendums to establish Maori Wards.
Mahuta seems to think that freedom of speech and democracy are not good for our communities.
Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mugabe, Kim Jong-un, and other tyrants would agree with Mahuta and how successful they destroyed their people and countries.
New Zealanders wants one set of rules for everyone regardless of who our ancestors were.
It looks that our country’s commitment to democracy and citizen equality has now become a charade.
MIKE LALLY, Te Puke
TRY TALKING
I believe that people should talk to one another, across often considerable differences of opinion, trying to understand another’s point of view.
Among his unpleasant and crude language, Wally Hicks (7 January) appears to be raising a few questions that we might usefully debate, once they are freed from the surrounding nonsense. I invite such a polite piece.
For the moment, I would like to clear up some incorrect imaginings in Hicks recent letter where he relates my ideas to “Rightist media artillery” and “bombast in the race-fear-and-hatred armoury”.
Far from being rightist, I am proudly socialist. And there is no fear or hatred in my writing. For example, I respect highly many early Maori and have written of Two great New Zealanders, Tamati Waka Nene and Apirana Ngata. In The kingite rebellion, I note both the role of Rewi Maniapoto in bringing war to the Waikato and his generosity after the fighting was over, making peace and becoming a good friend to his former foe, George Grey.
I do, however, have a great dislike for racism, for the labelling of any group as a race (as in the legal definition of who is considered a Maori in legislation) and for different treatment to different groups based on such a racial distinction.
I am further called “a selective confirmation-bias heisteria expert”. This appears to insist that I bring a fixed view to my research. To the contrary, I am a scientist and seek for facts that help to explain apparent puzzles. Thus, when I wondered why war broke out in Taranaki in 1860, I searched for an explanation, to understand just what had happened.
The conflict had its genesis when members of Te Atiawa moved from Kapiti (where I live) back to their former homeland in Waitara in 1848 once the peace of colonisation had removed the former threat from Waikato iwi – and took with them a bitter dispute over whether to sell land there.
After more than fifty deaths in the Taranaki feuds, Governor Brown was asked to bring peace and law. That effort to uphold the Treaty of Waitangi included protection for any chief who wanted to sell his land, a right guaranteed by the Treaty.
When a commissioner ruled that one chief, Teira, did indeed own the land in question, the sale went ahead – and the opposing chief, Wiremu Kingi, took up arms and built a pa there. That complex story (which goes back to the many attacks by Waikato that drove most Te Atiawa from Taranaki in the 1820s and 1830s) was well worth the effort of exploring historical documents in an effort to sort out the true story.
DR JOHN ROBINSON, Waikanae
www.kiwifrontline.nz/media/letters-to-the-editor
TWO LAWS FOR ALL
A recently published article featuring academic Ms. Paul suggesting our law schools should teach both Pakeha and Maori law. She quotes Justice Joe Williams as saying “Kupe’s law ruled before Cook’s law”. Joe must have had his tongue firmly in his cheek to say that.
He would well know that prior to the Treaty of Waitangi the only law that existed in New Zealand was that laid down by individual chiefs. Their personal law was absolute and apt to change without notice. It was also likely to swiftly change at the whim of a more dominant chief!
What seems to be forgotten, by those who should know better, was that a letter written to the King of England in 1831 by a group of northern chiefs imploring the King to become their “Friend and Guardian”. That letter led to the arrival of Busby, the “Declaration of Independence” and within eight years the arrival of Hobson and the Treaty.
Interestingly some of the signatories were also signatories of both the “Declaration and the Treaty”
The letter explains their concerns and suggests that the 500+ chiefs who eventually signed the “Treaty of Waitangi” new exactly what they were doing. Very contrary to what we are led to believe today.
MURRAY REID, Cambridge
A CHARADE
The Northland Regional Council, Whangarei District Council and Kaipara District Council have voted to introduce Maori Wards.
Clear-thinking people in Northland should be able to see the proposal for what it is and shows up Councillors who are short on ability and stumbling into a racist, paternalistic option with a faulty and misguided view of legislative requirements.
This thinking has no place in our egalitarian society and the three Northland Councils obsession with granting special privileges to one section of the community over all others is divisive and it is insulting to all Maori suggesting they are incapable of achieving without patronage. We now see the Minister for Local Government Nanaia Mahuta wants to remove provisions allowing petitioners who called for public referendums to establish Maori Wards.
Mahuta seems to think that freedom of speech and democracy are not good for our communities.
Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mugabe, Kim Jong-un, and other tyrants would agree with Mahuta and how successful they destroyed their people and countries.
New Zealanders wants one set of rules for everyone regardless of who our ancestors were.
It looks that our country’s commitment to democracy and citizen equality has now become a charade.
MIKE LALLY, Te Puke
TRY TALKING
I believe that people should talk to one another, across often considerable differences of opinion, trying to understand another’s point of view.
Among his unpleasant and crude language, Wally Hicks (7 January) appears to be raising a few questions that we might usefully debate, once they are freed from the surrounding nonsense. I invite such a polite piece.
For the moment, I would like to clear up some incorrect imaginings in Hicks recent letter where he relates my ideas to “Rightist media artillery” and “bombast in the race-fear-and-hatred armoury”.
Far from being rightist, I am proudly socialist. And there is no fear or hatred in my writing. For example, I respect highly many early Maori and have written of Two great New Zealanders, Tamati Waka Nene and Apirana Ngata. In The kingite rebellion, I note both the role of Rewi Maniapoto in bringing war to the Waikato and his generosity after the fighting was over, making peace and becoming a good friend to his former foe, George Grey.
I do, however, have a great dislike for racism, for the labelling of any group as a race (as in the legal definition of who is considered a Maori in legislation) and for different treatment to different groups based on such a racial distinction.
I am further called “a selective confirmation-bias heisteria expert”. This appears to insist that I bring a fixed view to my research. To the contrary, I am a scientist and seek for facts that help to explain apparent puzzles. Thus, when I wondered why war broke out in Taranaki in 1860, I searched for an explanation, to understand just what had happened.
The conflict had its genesis when members of Te Atiawa moved from Kapiti (where I live) back to their former homeland in Waitara in 1848 once the peace of colonisation had removed the former threat from Waikato iwi – and took with them a bitter dispute over whether to sell land there.
After more than fifty deaths in the Taranaki feuds, Governor Brown was asked to bring peace and law. That effort to uphold the Treaty of Waitangi included protection for any chief who wanted to sell his land, a right guaranteed by the Treaty.
When a commissioner ruled that one chief, Teira, did indeed own the land in question, the sale went ahead – and the opposing chief, Wiremu Kingi, took up arms and built a pa there. That complex story (which goes back to the many attacks by Waikato that drove most Te Atiawa from Taranaki in the 1820s and 1830s) was well worth the effort of exploring historical documents in an effort to sort out the true story.
DR JOHN ROBINSON, Waikanae
www.kiwifrontline.nz/media/letters-to-the-editor