Waitangi Tribunal | Sparrowhawk/Kārearea

What if the Crown is also Māori?

Posted on October 13, 2017 by Sparrowhawk/Kārearea

A slightly edited form of this post has also appeared on E-Tangata.

Symbols come in many forms, tangible and the intangible. They tell us stories we may not even be aware of.

Here’s one. I work in a beautiful building. It is a building that breathes and moves about me. Occasionally, as I walk down the halls or the stairway I feel surrounded by a soft golden glow, created by the sensory fusion of kauri finishings, scroll-shaped corbels, the curved window bays, and sombre carpeting. Mostly, I just feel harried and inadequate, so I forget to marvel at this hand-wrought architectural icon.

“Icon” is the right word because these Old Government Buildings in Wellington operate as a transportive symbol; walk through the doors, and whether or not you are aware of it, you are carried to an era of history that consolidated New Zealand as a colonial nation. Built in 1876, the year provincial governments were abolished and a central government established, this place was the seat of administrative power. This building tells a simple surface story of a young nation finding its way, but the deeper and truer story is of Pākehā power and claim surmounting the messy, contested, and uncertain history of several peoples.

So I walk the victors’ halls. As a law lecturer I now teach aspects of the legal system that upholds that deeper story, as those halls now comprise Victoria University’s law school. You will see no koru, no tukutuku, no whakairo. There are Māori and Pasifika spaces tucked away, if you know where to look, fragile and lovely, retrofitted exceptions to this narrative of solidity and permanence.

Most of us who work and study in this place don’t pay attention to this one-sided battle of stories, and fair enough too. We have our lives to get on with and futures to imagine. It’s our building, we use it, we inhabit it for a brief time (or maybe for a long time) on our way to somewhere else.

Let’s not overthink things, right?

In the pre-election maelstrom you might have missed a pretty insignificant story. I nearly did, bewitched as I was by Jacinda, Gareth & Marama et al (not always in that order).

It was a little item on the TV news (and in the Christchurch press) in mid-September about people lining up to see inside the new $300 million justice and emergency services precinct, including the police watch-house and cells.

Thousands jumped at the chance, with the queue stretching down Lichfield St all morning and into the afternoon. […]

“It’s quite unreal really, definitely a different experience,” one said. “The kids love it which is great.”

They’ll just be hoping this is the only visit they’ll have to make to the police cells.

Somehow this event pierced my election-induced fog. I paused, wondering if I had heard it correctly. I waited for the punchline, or the ironic comment. There was none. This little unimportant story symbolised something larger. Apparently in my hometown thousands of happy people queued for more than an hour to see the inside of a legal system they accepted was theirs but was not designed to hold them. To such people there is right, as well as rightness in the process and the outcome of law. Law is normal, formal, probably a bit absurd and creaky, but part of the natural order of things.

Five days later the almost exact opposite occurred, also at the symbolic level. In celebrating Māori language week a police car decked out in te reo Māori decals made its debut in Papakura, Auckland. The response was, shall we say, mixed:

“Been to Ngā Whare Wātea today and the kids were all over it. It was fantastic, they had a great time,” says police officer Ivan Tarlton (Ngāpuhi).

However, not everyone is smiling.

Khylee Quince, “Waitangi Tribunal earlier this year, only five months ago, makes recommendations about the Crown breach of Treaty relationships and Treaty duties, particularly active protection in relation to Māori and the terrible disproportionate rates of Māori offending. This is the first we see from the Police in response to that, so particularly poorly thought out strategy in my view.” […]

Julia Whaipooti of the youth-led rights organisation Just Speak is one who expressed concern.

“Putting a kupu Māori on a Police car doesn’t seem to form part of any strategy towards reducing the number of Māori we have entering and being processed in the system at disproportionate rates. It’s like having a pōhiri to come into prison. Putting a Māori name on a police car doesn’t do anything to address the issues.”

Similar feelings had been expressed months earlier when the Department of Corrections launched a new haka to find new recruits, in part as ‘a challenge for Maori to step up and accept the role of being a change agent working as a Corrections Officer’. Others saw such symbolic developments as ineffective bandaids to the vast problem of Māori hyper-incarceration.

The haka and the Māori design on the police car were symbolic, of a powerful story just as powerful as that represented by my workplace: Māori could only be subject to the legal system, never owners of it. Māori (most, not all) will never have unthinking ownership of Crown or government institutions. Most (not all) Pākehā New Zealanders, in comparison assume exactly such ownership.

An example from my own work-life I have blogged about before of daily and undramatic reality that underpins such symbolism. Every year I have a similar kind of student visit me, and we have a version of the following conversation:

‘I’m having trouble with my lectures. I just don’t get it.’

‘OK. What are you finding so hard?’

‘I don’t understand what the lecturer is saying. I write everything she says down. I read it, again and again, I highlight the words, and I write it out again and I still don’t get it.’

‘OK. Show me some of your notes. Right. Do you know what this is [pointing to ‘Cabinet Minister’]?

‘Not sure’.

‘What about this [pointing to the word ‘statute’]?

‘Not sure about that either.’

‘How about this [pointing to the word ‘Parliament’]?’

‘I know where it is, I just don’t know what it DOES.’

This student may have already struggled with the education system, but not necessarily. She may well be a B student in her other subjects, but the ideas behind words like ‘statute’, ‘Parliament’ and ‘Cabinet Minister’, for the moment at least, defeat her: she has never, in her life, come across them before in a way that enabled her to understand them. Perhaps she didn’t come from a family where politics or voting, or even the news, were discussed, where Western ‘law’ was ever really thought of as something beyond ‘what the police do’.

This student is Māori, but her lack of exposure to the most basic ideas of Western ‘law’ don’t stem just from ethnicity, as I have also had these conversations with Pākehā, although far more rarely. She merely falls on the difficult side of social and educational history: like many other Māori in tertiary study (including me and my brothers) she is the first of her family to study at Uni, the first to study law. She has no template to follow, and for whatever reason school did not prepare her by introducing her to the ideas underpinning our institutional structures. Right now she has absolutely no confidence that this will ever be her world or her tool; how can she? She cannot even describe it yet. Our general system, our Law in all its manifestations is alien and abnormal; an animal to study behind safety glass; a poisonous exotic.

Strangely enough for those who do have that sense of ownership of our general legal system, Māori law has become the alien; the museum exhibit, the quaint but useless curiosity.

And yet there are signs that this kind of rigid dualism in thinking is outliving its usefulness.

There is a sentence in the reo section of the Wai 262 Flora and Fauna report that hit me upside the head one day in 2010, and I have repeated it many times to myself ever since.

Fundamentally, there is a need for a mindset shift away from the pervasive assumption that the Crown is Pākehā, English-speaking, and distinct from Māori rather than representative of them. Increasingly, in the twenty-first century, the Crown is also Māori. If the nation is to move forward, this reality must be grasped.

The Crown is also Māori. This extraordinary statement is at once surely true and surely incapable of being true. When exactly does reality collapses into one possibility or the other, I wonder? Acceptance of the notion that the Crown is also Māori requires reaching beyond the idea of simply negotiating better Māori space, or better concessions for Māori, or a Māori seat at the table. Such a notion requires the development of unthinking assumption that the table is Māori to start with; that the Old Government Buildings are to be understood to be as much a Māori, as a Pākehā construct.

A few weeks ago I was one of the moot court judges for the internal Māori moot at Te Herenga Waka marae; a competition where Māori students put arguments before judges in a mock court setting. Of the six mooters, four of the students mooted in Māori. Each of them was able to move fluidly between an unconscious ownership of the legal system and of tikanga Māori, and a blistering critique of the same systems. Just one small symbolic and up-ending moment of something better. There are other such moments waiting to coalesce.

In truth I doubt the Old Government Buildings can ever really be understood to be as much a Māori space as a Pākehā construct, even if we did add whakairo and other symbols of Māori ownership to it. I’m looking for the day when more Māori can walk through the doors with their culture intact, and are indeed transported: not to an era of colonial power made manifest in which they are an exception to an unwritten rule, but simply to a place they own. Unthinkingly.

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Posted in New Zealand society, culture, politics and tagged Māori law, New Zealand Legal System, symbols, the Crown, Waitangi Tribunal. Bookmark the permalink.

‘Trumping’, Hosking & the Waitangi Tribunal. It’s a thing.

Posted on April 4, 2016 by Sparrowhawk/Kārearea

So my brief this week was to write a post on the Waitangi Tribunal. Now, I often need to feel a bit het up in order to write (or at least write something vaguely meaningful). My usual gauge is the Shower Test. Do I stand in my morning shower, stock-still, with hot water levels merrily depleting while I stare into middle distance ruminating about some issue? If so, that usually means I can write about that issue with some vim & vigour.

And unfortunately, despite being a legal academic, the judicial and quasi-judicial institutions of our legal system don’t usually pass my Shower Test.

And then Mike Hosking came to the rescue with his latest column, much of which was a critique of the Waitangi Tribunal.

Now. To be fair – confessional, even, I don’t mind opinionated middle-aged Pākehā men sounding off. I don’t have a well developed outrage nerve, and the opinions of people I don’t know don’t often to get on it. Rodney Hide, Paul Henry, Jamie Whyte, Duncan Garner, John Roughan, Brian Rudman, Cameron Slater, Martyn Bradbury et al can say what they want; I’m responsible for my own responses to what they say. They too usually fail my Shower Test. But I did find myself thinking about some of the statements in Mike’s column. That is unusual.

I should note that the last time Mike interviewed me on Newstalk ZB he got my name wrong, my gender wrong and my job title wrong, so I know he can be Trumpish on detail, but let’s look at what he said anyway about the Waitangi Tribunal.

The Waitangi Tribunal is having a busy old time of it at the moment. One might have thought that when the whole concept was dreamed up they would’ve given some thought to how long it was going to be around for, given it had a specific mandate which was by and large to deal with Treaty grievances.

You know, there is a great little legislative time machine we can use at this point, it’s known as the ‘New Zealand Acts As Enacted’ collection hosted by the New Zealand Legal Information Institute (NZLII). The beauty of this collection is that you can go back to any year an Act was passed and see What it Was Like Back In the Day. So have a look at the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975, if you feel like it.

Actually, Mike’s not entirely wrong here. The Tribunal was set up with a specific mandate, and part of that mandate was to hear claims. Inevitably, those claims were to involve grievance. We don’t make claims when all is right with the world. The fact that one of the other parts of the mandate remains to examine draft legislation referred to it for compliance with Treaty principles. for example, has escaped Mike’s notice.

That he says ‘ One might have thought … they would’ve given some thought to how long it was going to be around for’ reveals that he has probably not ever looked at the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975, or else he wouldn’t have written that. Let’s look at the opening words of the Act (and yes, they remain the opening words of the Act, 41 years after original enactment):

WHEREAS on the 6th day of February 1840 a Treaty was entered into at Waitangi between Her late Majesty Queen Victoria and the Maori people of New Zealand: And whereas the text of the Treaty in the English language differs from the text of the Treaty in the Maori language: And whereas it is desirable that a Tribunal be established to make recommendations on claims relating to the practical application of the principles of the Treaty and, for that purpose, to determine its meaning and effect and whether certain matters are inconsistent with those principles […] [emphasis added]

Clearly, as it was conceived originally, the Tribunal was always intended to stick around to facilitate this notion of ‘practical application of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi’. Of course, this was all a little ill-defined, because back then we hadn’t really begun the process of articulating what those principles are (a process that has never ended, by the way).

For another thing the Tribunal was established as a permanent commission of inquiry. Now, ‘permanent’ means different things to different people, but I think we all understand the notion of permanence as opposed to temporary-ence.

And at that point historical claims were not part of its brief, Māori individuals (alone or as part of a group) could only bring claims against the Crown if she, or the group, was being prejudiced (at that time, or was likely to be prejudiced at some time in the future) by actions of the Crown, including by way or Act, regulation, policy, etc), where such behaviour was contrary to those principles of the Treaty.

By the way, its status as a permanent commission of Inquiry is WHY its recommendations are not binding (with one exception, the power of resumption under Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975, ss 8A-8HJ, but we need not go into that here).

Given the scope in 1975 (to hear claims for wrongs now, or at some time on the future), let’s face it, the Tribunal was never intended to have an expiry date. The addition, in 1985, to the Tribunals’ jurisdiction, to enable it to hear claims before 1975 made not one iota of difference to that.

But let’s dip our toe back into the murky world of Mike’s Tribunal Tribulations:

Sadly no such luck. If you ever want an example of “build it and they will come”, or of an organisation that expands its brief to ensure survival, then the tribunal is your one-stop shop.

OK, not gonna bite. See above.

Next, Mike alludes to the urgency claim filed against the TPPA. Harrumph, he reckons:

What can the tribunal do, to assuage the concerns? Answer? … nothing. Nothing it does is binding. And in highlighting the example we highlight what this has become – a gravy train. Everyone on the tribunal is getting paid, everyone presenting the cases is getting paid, and you know full well who’s footing the bill.

Um. Kind of true, but not in a way that means anything. Nothing in the jurisdiction of the Tribunal allows it to “do anything” about the TPPA. That wasn’t what it set up for (see above). Nevertheless there are a good many Māori who would say that the Crown’s signing of the TPPA could well cause prejudice to Māori, being inconsistent with the principles of the Treaty. I’m not about to enter into the TPPA debate, others articulate those concerns far more effectively than I can. But this is exactly the kind of claim the Tribunal was set up for in 1975. What is Mike suggesting? That this forum just be cancelled because he happens to agree with the TPPA? I need more than that to give his opinion any weight.

As for the ‘Gravy Train’…oh I don’t know. I don’t even know what a bloody gravy train is. I looked it up, and I’m still none the wiser. As far as I can see it is just a phrase people trot out for when they think people are getting money for things they don’t like. Like “fat cats”. And “On the pig’s back’, and ‘snouts in the trough’ and ‘sucking on the teat of the taxpayer’ or any other silly phrase that gives us permission to stop thinking. Apparently, there is a “Gravy Train” dog-food in the states. So here’s my antidote:

GraveTrain

Then Mike takes aim at the recently accepted claim in urgency against Corrections, concerning the Crown’s alleged failure to make a high level commitment to improve the disproportionate number of Māori in prison. He would like the Tribunal to conclude that there is no real problem, Māori just have to stop committing crimes:

It would be refreshing to hear this conclusion from the tribunal, but I’ll bet you a week’s wages you won’t because that wouldn’t serve its purpose.

Having dealt with the vast majority of Treaty grievances just what is its purpose? At what point does a government say, “You know what? We’re done.”

Once again. It’s not the tribunal’s purpose to tell Māori people how to behave so as to stop having negative experiences. That might be how Judge Judy does it but the tribunal’s job is to determine if the Crown has acted in such a way (inconsistent with the TOW principles, once again) that Māori experience prejudice under the Act.

And that’s about as deep as Mike’s analysis gets. The Tribunal allows Māori to say things he doesn’t like about “rats and mice issues of no real importance whatsoever”, and it should just wrap itself up. End of.

But enough of Mike. The Donald would have been proud of the lack of facts or thought in that column. And you know what? I give up. I agree. I, too, cannot WAIT for the Waitangi Tribunal to fade from existence due to irrelevance. Why? Because that would mean the Crown had stopped breaching the principles of the Treaty. Let’s see some opinionated columns in the mainstream media about how the Crown might do that!

To return to earth for a moment, there are genuine grounds to be concerned about the role and efficacy of the Tribunal.

For one thing, as the settlement process began in earnest, it has been argued that it was intended the Tribunal be an integral part of the process, as is still evident if only because the Office of Treaty Settlements still requires claimants to have registered a claim with the Tribunal before they can enter into direct negotiations for settlement with the Crown.

The fact is, despite registering claims many claimants go straight to direct negotiations with the Crown; and they don’t go to the Waitangi Tribunal at all. If this is the case, has the Tribunal lost something of its moral suasion if Māori are not using it to actually be heard and to get a report written about their historical claims?

And what kind of pressures have claimants been subject to in the direct negotiations process that might have been eased with the buffer of such a report?

Well, Māori are continuing to use the Tribunal, particularly for the kinds of contemporary issues it was originally set up to hear. The bigger question is really whether the Tribunal recommendations make a difference. In many cases one could argue no. For the Tribunal’s recommendations to succeed, the Crown needs to buy in, and often it simply doesn’t. But sometimes it does..in a round about kind of way.

Here’s an example. in 2011 the Wai 262 recommendations were released along with the gargantuan report Ko Aotearoa Tēnei. Have a read of my colleague Carwyn Jones’ summary, on his own blog, of the big job the Tribunal had to do on this first whole-of-government inquiry.

Ultimately, the Tribunal wanted to see Māori intellectual property rights in mātauranga Māori protected within the New Zealand legal system by way of a special regime. Well, as of March 2016 the Crown has not responded to the recommendations. Or at least, if they have, I have missed it.

Is it strictly true to say that the recommendations have been ignored? In the main, probably. But in 2014 the Ka Mate Attribution Act was passed; in part to enact the provisions contained in the Ngāti Toa Rangatira Deed of Settlement dealing with the haka Ka Mate. The Attorney General Chris Finlayson said that the time that the issue of protecting Ka Mate went beyond Ngāti Toa.

What we have here is, I believe, exciting legislation. It is the very first tentative step by the Crown towards recognition of traditional cultural expressions

And maybe it is. It could be argued that the Act was, in part, a response to the issues set out with regard to Ka Mate in the Wai 262 report. This is the kind of impact that is hard to measure, because it is indirect, partial, and incomplete.

One other point I would make about the Tribunal; it is sometimes described as ‘a safety valve’ (Matiu Rata is said to have described the Tribunal thus), or even as a kind of ‘truth and reconciliation commission‘. I would agree with that; much pain and many tears have been shed before the Tribunal, and the weight of that Māori participation in this mechanism must not be undervalued.

Actually, this public participation aspect has, in recent years, been under threat, in regards to those historical claims. As the Tribunal has become more formal, efficient, and court-like over the years, its emphasis has greatly shifted, it has been argued, from providing that necessary public safety valve to helping claimants do better in highly bureaucratic settlement negotiations. This is worrying to me.

Therefore, an important saving grace of contemporary claims, such as the hearings on the TPPA and Corrections, may well be that the Māori public voice within the public square is getting louder, once more.

Long may it remain so.

[Please note: a very slightly different version of this post was first published a couple of days ago on E-Tangata]