Paddy Gibson from Solidarity interviews Teanau Tuiono, a Māori and Pasifika Greens MP in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Can you explain what’s at stake with this bill that’s currently going through parliament?
Te Tiriti o Waitangi—the Indigenous language version of the Treaty of Waitangi—is part of the constitutional fabric of Aotearoa New Zealand.
It was signed in 1840 and it’s very specific around what we call Tino Rangatiratanga. Article two talks about our Rangatiratanga, our Indigenous self-determination, it’s about the rights to authority over our own lands and resources.
In 1840, we were the majority here, with more and more settlers were coming in. That unruly minority of settlers needed to be controlled. For example, in the 1830s, the town of Russell, which was known as Kororāreka until the 1840s, was a lawless town where drinking, brawling and prostitution were rife. The town was called “the hellhole of the Pacific”. This town is across from the bay from Waitangi. Where the Treaty of Waitangi gets its name from.
The whole point of the treaty was for Britain to take care of their people because they were getting out of control and for us to continue to control our lands and resources. Of course, that didn’t happen and there were bloody land wars against the British that went on for decades. This is the violence of colonisation experienced by Indigenous peoples across the globe.
Now, it’s actually been accepted through the courts, but also through Parliament, that there needs to be recognition of the Treaty of Waitangi. So this bill at the moment is an attempt to rewrite history and pretend that all that stuff didn’t happen.
The Treaty Principles bill is actually from a libertarian party, ACT. It’s about undoing 50 years of struggles and undermining all of the collective Indigenous rights that we have pushed to have recognised by the system. But what they didn’t count on was how strong we are and how resolute Māori are to fight this.
Could you explain some of the areas of Māori life that might be affected?
It will have flow-on impacts because it undermines everything that we’ve been working on. It undermines the fundamental foundations of Aotearoa New Zealand, of the whole society. It’s incredibly divisive and racist. The Treaty is intertwined with everything we do, it’s part of our Constitution.
So, if we look at it from the education perspective, the Māori language is an official language of Aotearoa New Zealand, and that came out of decades of struggle and protest, pointing to the fact that actually we have protection of Te Reo Māori in the Treaty of Waitangi i.e. the protection of our Indigenous language.
Another example, we have Māori seats within the parliament, which has meant that we have guaranteed Māori voices within our Parliament. Within our councils we have Māori wards and Māori positions, because if you follow things through with the Treaty of Waitangi, you’re going to make sure at the very least that you have representation at the council or in Parliament.
It’s not enough, in my view, just to have a Māori person in a general seat, because then their job is to represent all of the constituents in that seat. A Māori ward councillor’s role is to represent Māori interests within that ward for example.
What this bill is doing is undermining the fabric of all of that.
Could you talk about what’s happened in reaction to this bill and what the movement against it has looked like?
At the beginning we had the big hīkoi, the big march. Hīkoi means “to walk”. It started up at Te Rerenga Wairua, where we often start our big marches. It’s the gathering place of people and a very spiritual place, the entrance to the next stage once you pass away, and it was very beautiful.
When we were waiting for the dawn to come up, we could hear karakia, waerea, our Indigenous chants, and as dawn came up and the fog lifted, I could see crowds of my people there, some had even arrived on horseback. That’s when I knew this was going to be a very strong hīkoi.
I followed it all the way down to Auckland. We went over the Auckland Harbour Bridge and the bridge itself shook with the power of the people. There were so many people there. And then for those of us who were members of Parliament, we had to go back down to Parliament because they had scheduled the first reading of that bill early, trying to undermine the march.
The plan amongst the opposition parties was that there would be a haka which Hana Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke led and the rest of us Māori MPs within the Green Party and in the Labour Party and of course, the Māori Party could get up to support to show our resistance within Parliament and to bring the people’s voices into Parliament as well. It was the most well known haka, called Ka Mate Mate.
So I thought it was completely appropriate for us to use our haka to put on record our resistance as Māori and the voices of the people in Parliament. Then as the hīkoi came down we had a massive gathering in Wellington to march on Parliament. And perhaps you saw some of those images that went around the world.
What about broader support? Have you been getting support from the trade union movement and other civil society organisations?
The last really big mobilisation of Indigenous peoples, of Māori here, was in 2004, around 20 years ago. One of the things that I noticed, and a lot of Māori noticed, a lot of non-Māori were on this recent hīkoi march, thousands showed up to support. This points towards the massive amounts of education that has been done around working with non-Māori to support the struggle.
Māori call ourselves Tangata Whenua, people of the land, and the people that came into the country in a good way, we say that they’ve come by the treaty. So we call them Tangata Tiriti, people of the treaty. There’s been a growing awareness of what that means to be a good treaty person and a good ally.
And yes the unions have all been there. It’s important to note that this is the most right-wing reactionary government that we’ve had in my lifetime, so you’ve had protests from trade unions and a fight back with different struggles. The unions came to Parliament en masse a month or so earlier and there has been strike action up and down the country. There has been a lot of action across the left in response to this government.
Can you talk more about how this fits into this government’s broader agenda. What other kind of attacks have they got on the table?
You name it, they’re attacking it. The thing about the Treaty Principles bill is that there’s worse stuff coming down the pipeline. There’s going to be even more legislation.
At the end of last year, they got rid of Fair Pay Agreements, the ability for workers to be able to bargain across sectors, across industries.
They brought back 90-day trials, which means if I get a job and the boss doesn’t like me, they can give me the boot. There are massive attacks on workers’ rights, attacks on the environment and attacks on Indigenous people.
They are absolutely undermining the public sector as well. They’ve fired 8000 people in Wellington and climbing.
The Prime Minister himself is not in control. There’s a coalition government with three political parties and the two other smaller political parties have very experienced political leaders. National actually doesn’t have control of the narrative or the levers of power in government. It’s the smaller, more reactionary parties.
Do you have any comment on the Māori Party and its role here? In 2011 the Mana Party formed as a left-wing split from the Māori Party, after the role they played in a conservative government. Has the Māori Party shifted to the left with the role they are playing in this struggle?
I’m not a member of the Māori Party. I’m in the Green Party but it seems to me the Māori Party have moved to the left.
A previous incarnation of the Māori Party went into coalition for quite a few years with the National Party, the main right-wing party. This had been after the last large hīkoi, which was protesting against the Labor Party. Sometimes the two big parties actually have more in common than the rest of us have.
This incarnation of the Māori Party is a version that I can work with. We share similar views on the environment, and of course on Indigenous peoples rights as well. Which is why we had many members of Parliament in the opposition who were Māori, got up to support Hana as she did the haka. It was awesome to be part of that. So there is that movement to the left. But, you know, they’re their own movement as well and I hope they keep left.
What does the future hold for this bill and the struggle?
National, the main government party, have said they won’t support the Treaty Principles past the second reading. But from our perspective the damage has already been done, because what National have effectively done is allow the smaller, more right-wing, libertarian party to have a six-month platform for all sorts of stuff as well [during public consultations on the bill].
But there is worse shit coming down the pipeline too. So it’s important to organise ourselves so that we can all contribute. I can do my bit bringing the voices into parliament, the unions can do their bit, environmental groups can do their bit and Indigenous iwi and hapu can do their bit.
We can all focus on an Aotearoa that can be positive and progressive, that looks after the land, looks after the ocean, looks after the rivers, but also can look after each other and ourselves and let people be their best selves.
That’s what we actually want, as opposed to what this lot is just doing, just bending over backwards for all the capitalists, for the corporations and the big business interests. So I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful we can do that.
