Christianity and the Treaty

Summary

In this engaging presentation by Rangiora Baptist Church, the speaker delves into the profound history intertwined with the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand. The narrative unfolds the colonial tensions and misunderstandings between the Maori and British settlers, particularly focusing on the Treaty of Waitangi's creation, its implications, and the enduring call for justice and reconciliation. The account traces significant events, including the Wairau Affray and the injustices faced by the Maori population due to mistranslations and misinterpretations of the treaty. A poignant reminder of the need for ongoing dialogue, understanding, and the Christian duty towards reconciliation and justice permeates the talk, leaving the audience contemplating their personal and collective roles in moving forward.

Highlights

• The Treaty of Waitangi's two versions—English and Maori—differ significantly, causing conflict and misunderstanding 🤔.
• Christian missionaries tried to bridge the gap but sometimes fueled further divisions 💬.
• The Wairau Affray showcases the intense disputes over land ownership, marking a crucial point in history 🌍.
• Maori struggled with the influx of settlers and misleading land deals, leading to numerous conflicts over the years 🤝.
• Modern efforts for reconciliation emphasize understanding and respecting Maori culture and history 🌿.

Key Takeaways

• The Treaty of Waitangi was a complicated document with significant mistranslations between the English and Maori versions, leading to long-standing disagreements 📜.
• The Wairau Affray was a pivotal conflict highlighting the serious land ownership disputes and cultural misunderstandings between the British and Maori 💥.
• Christian missionaries played a crucial role in the treaty, often acting as intermediaries for translation and understanding, though not without their biases and mistakes ✝️.
• The Maori were often misrepresented and mistreated, leading to numerous uprisings and calls for justice throughout New Zealand's history 🙌.
• Reconciliation today requires acknowledgment of past wrongs, open dialogue, and efforts to build mutual respect between Maori and non-Maori communities 🤝.

Overview

The tale of the Treaty of Waitangi is a complex one, filled with misinterpretations and intentions both noble and misguided. The Rangiora Baptist Church discusses how the differing English and Maori versions of the treaty laid the groundwork for future conflicts over sovereignty and land rights, such as the Wairau Affray. This account demonstrates the depth of colonial impact on New Zealand and its indigenous people.

Throughout the historical summary, Christian missionaries are highlighted for their roles in both positive and negative facets of treaty-related discussions. Acting as translators and intermediaries, they attempted to install peace and guidance, yet their own misunderstandings sometimes compounded tensions. The missionaries’ influence was significant, marking a unique intersection of faith and colonial administration.

Today, the narrative stresses a path toward reconciliation, acknowledging past grievances while focusing on building a future grounded in mutual respect and understanding. The talk urges Christians and non-Christians alike to actively participate in bridging historical divides, underscoring the role of faith-based communities in facilitating dialogue and fostering healing.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Introduction and Ancestral Background The introduction begins with a friendly greeting and a lively exchange between individuals. Reference is made to Mount Richmond and the Maitai River, illustrating their significance as ancestral landmarks. The chapter discusses the importance of the Phoebe ship, which holds historical value as the vessel that carried the speaker's ancestors to New Zealand, emphasizing the cultural and familial connections to these locations.
• 03:00 - 27:00: Historical Context and Treaty Formation This chapter provides a personal historical context related to the narrator's family lineage, particularly focusing on the migration journey from Britain to New Zealand. It highlights the family history starting from the arrival of John Burton and Sarah in Nelson, New Zealand, in April 1843, tracing back through several generations of the Burton and Britain families. The narrative connects personal ancestral history with broader themes of migration and settlement.
• 27:00 - 43:00: Conflicts and Early Consequences In the chapter titled 'Conflicts and Early Consequences,' the narrator reveals a family secret that Sarah, according to marriage records, was actually a cousin of John Burton. However, this fact is not discussed openly within the family, though the older sons believe it explains much about their family. John Burton was from Sussex and worked as a short-sighted shoemaker, raising questions about the quality of his craftsmanship.
• 43:00 - 65:00: Land Wars and the Parihaka Movement The New Zealand company, owned by the Wakefield Brothers, advertised in England to attract settlers to New Zealand by promising work and farmland. However, the company was selling land they did not yet own to make a profit.
• 65:00 - 85:00: Reflection on Historical Lessons and Reconciliation The chapter discusses the arrival of a settler in New Zealand in April 1843 amid ongoing tensions. Upon his arrival, there was a notable argument between the Maori Chief, tiruparaha, and Arthur Wakefield in Nelson.

Christianity and the Treaty Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 would you like a thingy yeah that'd be great thanks so Tina Toto katoa greeting Steel Mount Richmond tokimoanga Mount Richmond is my mountain core Mai Tai toku AWA the maitai river in Nelson is my River called Phoebe toku Waka the Phoebe is the ship that brought my ancestors to New Zealand
• 00:30 - 01:00 Nelson is my ancestral hunt here in New Zealand anyway core Britain toku whanau probably all know Britain is my family name kulkari Toko inoa My Name is Kerry I am the son of Ivan Burton who is the son of Robert Burton who was the son of Hugh Britain who was the son of Samuel Burton he was the son of John Burton who with his wife Sarah landed in Nelson in April 1843.
• 01:00 - 01:30 so Sarah according to the marriage records was actually his cousin but we don't talk about that in our family although my older two sons reckon that that has a lot explains a lot about our family so John Burton was from Sussex he was a Shoemaker who was short-sighted which makes you wonder about the quality of his shoes
• 01:30 - 02:00 he answered an advertisement which I think was up on the screen behind me there was a second ago where the New Zealand company advertised in England and said come out to New Zealand as settlers and we will provide you with work you can be a roading contractor or something else I will sell you some farmland and the New Zealand company was owned by the Wakefield Brothers Edward Wakefield was the prime mover with his two younger brothers and they really were in the business of selling that land that they didn't yet own so that they could make money
• 02:00 - 02:30 out of this uh new settlement of New Zealand so he answered the advertisement sailed out to New Zealand arrived here in 1843 as I said in April 1843 when he arrived in April 1843 there was an argument actually going on right at that time in Nelson when he landed so tiruparaha was actually in the Maori Tower Chief was actually in Nelson at the time and he was having a big argument with Arthur Wakefield the
• 02:30 - 03:00 youngest of the Wakefield brothers who was actually acting he was in charge of the small town at that point of Nelson population of about three thousand and that tarapaha was actually saying actually you think you own land and the wairau plains just south of Nelson but you don't we never sold it to you and Wakefield said so I bought some and he goes no you didn't I never sold any land and so they're having this big argument Wakefield said to him well okay let me let me buy the land from you and uh said no it's never going to happen we're not
• 03:00 - 03:30 going to sell our land not now not ever uh Wakefield said if you don't our surveyors are going to come and start serving the land if you cause any problems I will come in with 300 armed constables and we will take the land regardless and through Opera House said let's talk to the governor about that and see what the governor says because this is terribly uh wrong let's get him to arbitrate that so um Wakefield didn't wait for that the next month he sent in some surveys to survey the land and
• 03:30 - 04:00 um they um they were met by te rapraha with some Warriors who marched them back off the land marched them back to Nelson and burnt down the Huts that they had built so then in June 17th of June what happened was that Arthur Whitefield rounded up the local magistrate and he armed 60 of the settlers swore them in his constables and then they marched into the wairau to wire our planes to claim the land that they didn't own
• 04:00 - 04:30 they bumped into to your Opera who was there with 90 of his men and some woman there was a standoff at the stream there was a stream where they met there in the in the wairau plains as you actually drive from Blenheim to Picton you actually drive past a sign if you've ever seen it that says the wairau afraid and it's right there which that battle the battle happened what happened was that um there was this big standoff and then Arthur Wakefield told his men to advance they fired some
• 04:30 - 05:00 shots and one of the um one of the Maori was killed who unfortunately was the wife of the chief and also's daughter told his men to go forward they um chased the men off the land the settlers all took fright and ran back to Nelson but 22 of them died so one of them was Arthur Wakefield who died there at that place so the people from Nelson rushed back to Nelson and they they wrote to the
• 05:00 - 05:30 governor and said you need to come and sort out these Maori who have attacked us they referred to it as the wire out Massacre and but the people of Nelson were terrified that the Murray were going to come and bring retribution and so about a third about a thousand of the people in Nelson at the time left Nelson fled uh some of them fled all the way back to England some of them fled to the North Island to um the other settlement that the Wakefield brothers were starting in Wellington and um they waited for the governor to come
• 05:30 - 06:00 but every night for the next six months the woman and children would go into the fort at Nelson because they were so sure the men would stand guard and this was the situation that my great-great-great-great-grandfather arrived into he found that in fact actually they didn't the way the New Zealand company didn't own any land uh because they hadn't actually bought any land there were no roads to build so he was unemployed and he was in a terrible situation so the governor eventually met at
• 06:00 - 06:30 waikanae in the north island and the um the leaders from Nelson went up to make their complaint along with 500 Maori so Governor Fitzroy listened to all of this and he said he said to the the Chiefs he said in the first place he said when I heard about this I was terribly angry and I thought I would bring my soldiers down and revenge the pakiha who died but he says what I find now after
• 06:30 - 07:00 listening to everyone was that the white men were in the wrong they had no right to survey the land they had no right to build the houses on the land as they were then first and the wrong I will not avenge their deaths so fitzroy's report was endorsed by Colonel secretary Lord Stanley who was in charge of the colonial office in London and he said the actions of the party led by Thompson and Wakefield had been manifestly illegal unjust and unwise and that their deaths had occurred as a natural and immediate sequence and so
• 07:00 - 07:30 that was actually one of the few cases actually where the government upheld the Maori in the dispute of the lands what actually happened then was that um in my great great grandfather was um in a serious situation so they actually tinted and they built a tent on the side of the the mai tai River in Nelson he was unemployed terrible financial situation there's actually a letter on record in the government office where the magistrate writes to the governor of New Zealand and says can I disperse some immediate
• 07:30 - 08:00 emergency funds to the Britain family who are living in Nelson as Paupers and so this was actually the beginning of my story it's the impact that the Treaty of waitangi and and the subsequent things that that went on from there ahead of my family and they go to the heart of my story so a lot of it goes back to the Treaty of waitangi
• 08:00 - 08:30 what was actually agreed in the Treaty of waitangi what actually was agreed to back in 1840. I think that to actually understand that we need to actually firstly look at what was happening in the country at that time in 1840 the population of New Zealand was just slightly over 80 000. they reckon that 80 there were eighty thousand Maori living at the time and less than less than 1500 non-maori most of these were Whalers and Traders
• 08:30 - 09:00 who had come and lived in coastal areas there were very few settlements in New Zealand mostly Coastal wailing stations and trading posts Auckland did not exist it wasn't actually settled until September 1846 months after the treaty Wellington had a population of 150 they had actually arrived just one month before the Treaty of waitangi were signed Christchurch had no life in it at all it was an abandoned whaling station the otago harbor had been settled and it was known as an international whaling Port it was known as a lawless place it
• 09:00 - 09:30 was a riotous settlement which was well known for its liquor trade prostitution and all night parties in fact the guy who actually went and settled otago Harbor John Tucker he went to Christchurch first looked at riccarton said this is way too swampy we're not settling here and went to otago just just saying half of the um they reckon that nearly half of the Maori population had been converted to Christianity so the Christian missionaries Samuel Marsden who arrived I think it was 18 11 1812.
• 09:30 - 10:00 had done a really good job of spreading the gospel and that also trained maoris to go and spread the gospel as well and so somewhere between 30 and 40 000 of the 80 000 are Maori were counted as Christians by the missionaries at that time in 1835 the New Zealand was actually recognized as an independent state by Britain so what happened was James Busby who was
• 10:00 - 10:30 the New Zealand resident he was the next best thing we had to an ambassador he actually gathered a whole lot of chiefs up and he got them to sign a um a declaration of independence which they called themselves the United tribes of New Zealand and they actually had a flag which on waitangi day they still fly it's called tikara and so Britain right in the early days recognized that New Zealand was an independent state and um and so that's actually why there was a treaty because it was actually a treaty
• 10:30 - 11:00 between an independent state and the um in the Great Britain Empire so that was the situation that was there just prior to this was actually a a mad Frenchman called Baron Charles de Ferry who sailed out to New Zealand and he was actually looking to set up an independent state on banks of the hokianga and he was going to declare himself King he was generally held to be a little bit insane but he um there was
• 11:00 - 11:30 actually a lot of concern in New Zealand about this that actually this was an attempt by France to actually come out and start settling New Zealand and claim it for themselves and of course there was also known in the early days of 1840 that there was a ship coming out from France to akaroa and that they were looking to set up a settlement there as well so there was a lot of concern about at that time whether New Zealand was going to be British whether it was going to be French or whether it was going to be Maori or whether the whole thing was just going to become an ugly ugly situation and the Maori would suffer through that
• 11:30 - 12:00 so we come to the two treaties the Treaty of waitangi security or waitangi and that really goes to the heart of the matter we know and it's indisputable that there are two two treaties there's the English version of the treaty and then there's the taleo version of the treaty and they don't match they don't say the same things the English version talks about sovereignty being given to the queen which was at that time of queen of creed Victoria and that's um
• 12:00 - 12:30 they would protect the Maori people and their rights that they would make sure that the Maori people kept their land unless they wanted to sell it back but that the Maori version didn't mention sovereignty at all um it mentioned that the queen was going to be what was going to point a government government and appoint Governors and that they would um they would protect uh Maori land rights customary rights and everything that they treasured and so there was no suggestion there of
• 12:30 - 13:00 selling the land um the English version said that if the Maori sold the land they could only sell it to the crown there was no mention of that in the Maori version at all there's actually a lot of Doubt as to whether the maori's actually understood the concept of sovereignty it was not an idea that was actually in their language and their culture they would have had no idea what that even meant and so history as it's been taught in recent times
• 13:00 - 13:30 was that the basic problem is the fact that we have two treaties which are quite different and carry different concepts and would have been different ideas to the Maori at the time the big question was whether this was actually fraudulently done on purpose or whether it was just simply a mistake and then of course the question beyond that is how do we live with this mistake how do we live with this these two treaties which one do we honor which one don't we honor is it possible to honor both at the same time since both of them
• 13:30 - 14:00 were signed by the crown to understand that we need to understand that there are actually a whole lot of different parties who are involved in the way that the treaty was was signed the way that the treaty was was the way it came together firstly there was the colonial office and the colonial office back in Britain they actually had a and that was led by the influential figure there was the guy on the left James Stephen he was a um a Christian man
• 14:00 - 14:30 a civil servant he began working in the colonial office in London advising politicians on remote places such as New Zealand and for him he actually got into the whole Colonial office because he was concerned about anti- about slavery and so under his guidance and he had a big impact on the abolition of slavery which the anti-slavery bill was passed in 1831 then once that was passed he turned his focus on to the rights of indigenous
• 14:30 - 15:00 people around the world and he was actually really concerned about the way that British colonies were treating indigenous people particularly in Australia and some of those other places and so the the view of the colonial office at that time was that they didn't really want New Zealand as a colony they didn't feel that they could afford that financially they didn't want to get involved in a a bun fight with France uh there were also a lot of American Whalers in the area and they actually had a concern that if they declared New Zealand to be a state or a colony of
• 15:00 - 15:30 Britain then they would get into trouble with France and America and they would they would actually take a very dim view of this so James Stephen Christian man he was a very uh he's an evangelist himself he was the nephew of William Wilberforce who was a big driver behind the anti-slavery Drive In in the UK and so he um he was really strong on the rights of
• 15:30 - 16:00 indigenous people he wanted to make sure that they kept their land and whatever happened he would be protected they would be protected by all that happened then there was Lieutenant Hobson Lieutenant Hobson was a naval officer who'd proved himself in Warfare he'd fought pirates in the Caribbean and he was a Dashing Young Captain very reliable but didn't have much imagination they described him as so he was a good officer but he was actually asked to draw up a treaty he had no qualifications to drop a treaty he was
• 16:00 - 16:30 actually just a naval officer he wasn't he had any legal brain and so he was tasked with that he had instructions from the colonial office but the colonial office hadn't actually given him a draft to work with they just told him these are the things we want you to go and to achieve and then we have James Busby beside him there James Busby was the New Zealand Ambassador the resident officer and then we have Henry and Edward Williams who translated it into today so Lieutenant Hobson
• 16:30 - 17:00 as the servant of the crown later to be Governor Hobson he had been instructed by the colonial office but he actually had different beliefs about what should really happen and then we have Henry and Edward Williams who were given one evening to translate the whole thing into today and so those are all massive tasks and they all resulted in things going badly you know if you talk to Legal people and
• 17:00 - 17:30 you go so so talking to a judge one day and he was saying to me that you know when new legislation comes in um they had this brand new act and it doesn't always make sense that the judges who actually have to put into practice in courts and make it work and so to actually understand that what they do is they go back and they look at what was the intentions of the politicians who wrote the legislation they go back and they read the press releases they read the reviews from the Department of Justice Etc and they go what was the intention behind this so that we can be
• 17:30 - 18:00 true to the intention if we look at the intention we come back to Stephen's belief that indigenous people needed to have their rights protected Stevens told the Secretary of State Lord John Russell he said I would take care that the mayor forms and phrase phraseology of the contracts should embody and recognize the great Cardinal principle that the land that the lands are not ours but theirs that we have no title to them except such as we derive from purchase and that their future
• 18:00 - 18:30 claims Upon Us in respect of such lands are the claims claims not of Paupers for arms but of offenders for the Fulfillment of a binding contract so James was saying James Stevens was saying that their land is their land we need to make sure we protect that right and if we actually end up buying the land we need to make sure that they actually treated as any other British citizen would be treated that they have the full rights of the law behind them in terms of everything that happens in terms of a binding contract
• 18:30 - 19:00 the first prime minister or Premiere as he was called in those days of New Zealand was a man called Henry Sewell he was actually also Attorney General at a different time and he identified the principal causes of all the problems as being insistence by the crown that that sovereignty the form of sovereignty they were following left no scope for Maori government or law so he was saying you know this whole idea that the treaty says that the British are sovereign and that everything comes under there and there's only one law and one government
• 19:00 - 19:30 is totally wrong this is not how it was intended to be and if we had actually just followed the letter of the the treaty we wouldn't be in this situation we wouldn't have seen the Maori Wars we wouldn't have seen all the things that happened he actually argued against the fact that all subjects of the queen were subject to the same law and he said such an idea was just superficial he wrote in his Memoirs natives as well as settlers are it is true equally subjects of your majesty but there is nothing inconsistent with their Majesty's Paramount Authority in
• 19:30 - 20:00 permitting natives to enjoy as law their own usages and Customs nor anything criminal and they're seeking to embody this native law in some fixed form under a head and magistrates of their own choice so what he was saying and what it seems James Stephen intended when they originally sent those attractions to Hobson was that they would actually um they would appoint the queen as Sovereign but in a point in the queen of sovereign they would actually protect the Maori rights
• 20:00 - 20:30 and so the view of the colonial office at that point was that New Zealand was had very few non-maori people in it there was less than less than 2 000 non-maoris in New Zealand at all and they're around the coast and they would stay that way they would just stay around the coast the mighties would look after the interior and the other parts of New Zealand and so the government of New Zealand would look after the British the British appointed government would look after the Europeans and the maoris would form their own leadership to look after the maoris they would protect their law their laws and their customer
• 20:30 - 21:00 rights and so it was really the idea was partnership and the idea was that these two people would work together respecting each other's laws and it would be a covenant type of relationship so this idea of one state two peoples governing their own people by their own laws and customs this was the job that Hobson was told to put together and so Hobson arrived at the beginning of February in 1840 came off the boat and this non-legal person this Naval
• 21:00 - 21:30 captain in three days cobbled together what we now know as the English aversion of the Treaty of New Zealand of waitangi and so James Busby who was the New Zealand resident officer from Britain I gave him some help with that they put it together and then overnight on the night of the fourth beginning of the fifth of February the English version was translated into today by Henry Williams and his son Edward
• 21:30 - 22:00 and so the whole thing came together very fast put together by people who weren't experts and putting to get put together by people who were still in effect really learning today and trying best to actually take all these Concepts from English law and translate them into a way that Maori would understand in their culture and so instead of talking about sovereignty in the today version Henry Williams talked about governance
• 22:00 - 22:30 he talked about chiefly rights being maintained because this was the best way that he could explain it and this was what the Maori Chiefs heard on the day and so on the morning of the 5th of February the Maori and English versions of the treaty were put before a gathering of of Northern Chiefs that was there were in all the chiefs of New Zealand enlarged in in a large Marquee on the lawn in front of Busby's house at waitangi Hobson read the treaty in English and then Williams read the Maori translation and explained each section and warned the Chiefs not to rush to
• 22:30 - 23:00 decide whether to sign because he was a Christian Henry Williamson is one of the missionaries he actually explained it this way he said this is Queen Victoria's Act of love to you she wants to ensure you that you keep what is yours your property your rights and Privileges and those that things that you value who knows when a foreign power perhaps the French so he was playing on the sphere of the French might take this country this treaty is really like a fortress to you and so who's saying what we're doing is
• 23:00 - 23:30 we're coming to declare sovereignty but it's to protect you and to look after you in a special in a way it's Queens Queen Victoria's Act of love to you and so for the next it was a beautiful day apparently and and for the next five hours the Maori Chiefs debated this treaty much of that discussion was recorded by William kalenso who worked at the the um the Mission Station and so um the there was the Anglican
• 23:30 - 24:00 missionaries and there was also the Catholic missionaries who were led by Bishop pompalier Bishop pompalier a Frenchman he said to the Chiefs you should not sign this treaty you should not sign the street at all he was worried about two things firstly he was French and he was concerned about British sovereignty secondly he was concerned that this was being driven by Anglican missionaries and he was concerned about what this would mean for the Catholic faith in New Zealand so he said to them you should not sign this you don't need a governor um you don't need this treaty at all
• 24:00 - 24:30 it's going to be of no benefit to you please don't sign it and then he left before the treaty was signed so um one of his one of his followers riwa who was a Catholic chief he said the Maori people don't want a government Governor we aren't European it's true that we have sold some of our lands but this country is still ours we Chiefs govern this land of our ancestors another Chief argued that all land unjustly purchased by Europeans should be returned and that was actually a big deal at the time Hobson actually had
• 24:30 - 25:00 taken time to say um if you sign this treaty we will investigate all prior land purchases and all future land purchases can only be sold to the crown so we'll protect you because you won't be able to do purchases to individual settlers you can only sell to the crown and so he explained that as one of the benefits and so they said we want our land returned that has been um taken from us by dodgy purchases another Chief said yesterday as I walked through the streets here I
• 25:00 - 25:30 was cursed by a white man is that the way things are going to be is that the way that you're going to treat us some of the Chiefs had actually traveled to Australia and they had um extremely grimatoric stories to tell about how the Aborigines were being treated there were some Protestant Chiefs who had actually been um who've given their lives to Christ under the ministry of the England missionaries and some of them were accepting of the governor and said this is not a bad idea one of them was a man called honey hickey and he said Governor you should stay
• 25:30 - 26:00 with us and be like a father if you go away then the French or the rum sellers will take us Maori over how can we know what the future will bring if you state we can all be as one with you and the missionaries and so there was this idea that the missionaries were there to protect them and and a lot of the discussion was actually around the fact that a governor was going to be appointed and at the end of the day at the end of the day Hobson recorded and said to somebody else at the time and it was recorded that that the
• 26:00 - 26:30 discussion seemed to be going against them a lot of the discussion actually that went against them was the fact that the Maori was saying why do we need a governor why are you being promoted over us if we're all governors and it will equal well that would be fine but why do we need a governor and so this idea of having a governor was a problem to them but then what actually happened was that there was a debate that was going to go on it's going to go on for the next day the the 6th of February so Hobson was um
• 26:30 - 27:00 in his 10th fantasy what happened the night before on the night of the fifth was that the the Maori were sitting around their campfires and there were English settlers who were going around causing trouble and they were saying to these these Maori Chiefs they said you've lost the land now the land is now ours and you're nothing but slaves and they're saying those sorts of things and the chiefs were going to Henry Williams as one of the chief missionaries and saying what is this why are they saying that and who knew Williams just held the line and said uh
• 27:00 - 27:30 well this is actually for your protection if you sign this treaty all these things will go away so Hobson and the English were expecting the British were expecting that this discussion would go on right through the day of the sixth and so he was rather stunned when um the Maori Chiefs came to him and said we're ready to sign on the morning of the six the belief is that I mean the weather was turning and it looked as if that there's going to be some heavy rain and the chiefs were wanting to go home and so they were like well we'll sign you a bit of paper and then we'll go
• 27:30 - 28:00 home but most importantly in every account of the signing of the treaty will say the same story the Maori leaders were heavily influenced by the missionaries they trusted the the missionaries like Samuel Marsden and Henry Williams and they trusted their advice and the explanation of the treaty the missionaries had explained the treaty as a covenant between Maori and Queen Victoria the head of state and the church of England with nearly half of the population following Christianity many looked at the treaty as a Biblical Covenant a sacred Bond and so they looked at this
• 28:00 - 28:30 as being like a marriage covenant where the English and the Maori would come together in a covenant somewhat like marriage and there'd be two people coming together the Covenant to work together to live together and to be one people and so one by one they came and they signed the treaty as each one signed Hobson shook their hand and said to them we are now one people the English so the Maori chiefs were very encouraged by that they were
• 28:30 - 29:00 delighted that he said that the Christian Maori Chiefs understood him to be saying this is a covenant this is this is an agreement that we've made you've made an agreement now with Queen Victoria the crown and we are one people in a biblical sense We Are One people under Christ you know from the um from the time that the treaty was signed there were problems they're a problem straight away I mean they went round the rest of the country and they signed it with other tribes not all the tribes that signed it some of
• 29:00 - 29:30 the Chiefs came to Hobson and said we want our money we want uh we want to give you your gifts back we want our names taken off the treaty uh he disregarded that and he wrote back to England and said the Chiefs have all signed and new zealanders now um part of the sovereign state of of the British Empire it's now a colony and we have sovereignty which was actually really not the case at all so the treaty the fact that there were two versions of the treaty
• 29:30 - 30:00 the fact that there was differences the fact that there was a growing population of settlers coming and there was no land for them or starting to cause problems that he's getting a company was still agitating I mean this was 1840. and so they were pushing for the same sort of system as happened in America where the Americans would would say hey if we if we find land and there's nobody on it then it's land that can be claimed if it's unoccupied land and so this principle of Discovery as it was called was what they were what they were
• 30:00 - 30:30 pushing for but James Stephen back in in uh back in the colonial office he said um this is is not right the land is not theirs unless we have bought it and so um the New Zealand company and the British colonial office were in Conflict about this all the time Lord Russell in December 1840. he actually opposed the New Zealand Company by saying
• 30:30 - 31:00 of Maori they have been formally recognized in Great Britain as an independent state and even in assuming the Dominion of the country this principle was acknowledged for it is on the deliberate act and cessation of the Chiefs on behalf of the people at large that our title rests so in other words our title rests on the treaty and we need to honor the treaty Lords Lord Russell's successor as Secretary of State for colonies was Lord Stanley
• 31:00 - 31:30 he told the House of Lords in 1845 that the extent of Maori interests and property and landlords dependent on Maori law and custom which had to be examined to find the answer in other words he was saying if there's any debate about land we need to go back to the maoris and go how do you understand this and we need to actually operate based on their understanding in 1845 he made Lord Stanley made the following speech and he was a committed and devout Christian he said that law and that custom are well understood among the natives of the natives of the islands by them we are
• 31:30 - 32:00 agreed to be bound and by them we must abide these Lords these laws are these customs and the rights arising from them on the part of the crown we have guaranteed when we accepted the sovereignty of the islands and be the same be the amount at stake smaller or larger as far as native title has proved be the land waste or occupied Barren or enjoyed these rights and titles the crown of England is bound to honor to maintain and the interpretation of the Treaty of waitangi with regard to these rights is that except in the case of the
• 32:00 - 32:30 intelligent consent of the natives the crown has no right to take possession of the land land and having no right to take possession of the land itself it has no right and so long as I'm a minister of the crown I shall not advise it to exercise the power of making over to another party that which in itself does not possess and so he's saying we have no right to take the land unless they are intelligently advised and they make an intelligent decision to sell a land and so we actually have no right to sell it to somebody else in fact if we don't own it so stop all the land
• 32:30 - 33:00 grabbing that is going on you know it's um time is running out but I want to touch on something else that that followed because as time went on the population increased dramatically so in 1840 there were population of New Zealand was just slightly over 80 000. by 1860 it had grown to 1.2 million and there was still not a lot of land that had been sold to or taken by the um by the the settlers at that time and
• 33:00 - 33:30 so these people were building up in the towns and cities there was a lot of unrest as well as that New Zealand was actually in financial difficulty and so what was being talked about in Parliament quite openly was the fact that we need to take the land and then we need to sell the land to settlers and that will then get us out of our financial difficulty so in 1860 the taranaki land Wars started what actually happened was that the there was a Maori guy called Tierra and on the
• 33:30 - 34:00 property title they called him Taylor but he owed he heard some merchants in New Plymouth 200 pound and so the local representative of the crown went to Herman said so if you sell us these 600 acres in waitara called The waitara Block if you sell these to us for 200 pound and we'll wipe your debt off and we'll take the land in Nairobi Square so he sold this land even though he didn't even own the land so he never actually owned that 600 acres but they got him to sign it anyway
• 34:00 - 34:30 and then they actually moved on to it with surveys so the Maori took a very dim view of this as you can imagine they said this is our land they uh they marched the surveyors back to um to New Plymouth and then what happened was the militia arrived thinking that they would gain an easy victory over the Maori but the Maori gave them a severe thrashing and sent them back to New Plymouth and so uh all hell broke loose the the soldiers arrived in the next 12 months there were 12 staged battles
• 34:30 - 35:00 the uh the settlers didn't do too well the maoris proved to be uh very dangerous opponents much more than they thought and so in 1861 the government said let's have a ceasefire while we think about this and so they had a ceasefire and they said let's investigate what happened with the waitara block so they appointed a board of inquiry the board of inquiry came back and said well these are our findings firstly The Taking of the waitara block was illegal it should never have happened the land
• 35:00 - 35:30 should never have been confiscated so that was wrong but uh the Maori rebelled against the crown and that clearly was wrong as well so we're going to confiscate pretty much all of taranaki one million Acres and it now belongs to the crown I don't know how that sounds to you but it sounds like the ultimate rip-off to me and so taranaki Maori Wars started and many lives were lost and and all sorts of things happened
• 35:30 - 36:00 and then in 1867 two Maori Chiefs who are recognized as prophets to fiti and tofu tohu they they actually said let's step back from this let's step back from this conflict and they they actually started a peaceful Village called parihaka in the shadow of Mount taranaki and and quite close to where opanake is nowadays and so tofu and and te fiti they started this town and they said this is a place of Refuge this is a place of Faith it's
• 36:00 - 36:30 a place of peace and we are going to claim back our land and we're going to hold a land by a policy of passive resistance we will not hold any arms we will not fight we will just stay constant in the face of European aggression and we will not ever strike back if they strike us we will turn the other cheek they had three principles at parihaka and sometimes you see parihaka as a symbol of Three Feathers they were um peace Good Will and Glory and those
• 36:30 - 37:00 three things were taken from the story of the birth of Jesus where the Angels came and said Peace and Good Will to all men Glory Be On High and so these were men of Faith they uh they gathered the people and as Maori lost their land around the country they all quietly gathered at parihaka and became part of this settlement it eventually became known as the the largest Maori Village in all of New Zealand and so this became a bit of a problem for the government because the people at party Haka were
• 37:00 - 37:30 saying we will not sell our lands we will not give up our lands we are here and we're occupying them these are our lands they have not the ones that you have confiscated from us they're not your lands and so what happened was that the um the militia or the the surveyors would come and they would survey the land and then the Maori would come and they would pull all the pigs out and they would plow the land and plant a crop and so you see a picture there I'm not quite sure whether these were the surveyor pigs that remained from that time but they pulled out many many of these survey pigs and plowed the land
• 37:30 - 38:00 and they said this was quite remarkable they would actually you know surveys would come and Survey during the day that night they would come they'd pull out the survey pigs and then 20 to 30 people would then be plowing the land planting a crop and the next day they would come back and find that there was a crop where their surveyor pigs had been and so they started arresting the survey the the the plowmen they were known as the plowman and so uh they would come and they would arrest them uh they never resisted they were just taken away to jail and um put into prison
• 38:00 - 38:30 but the more that they arrested the more Maori came from all over New Zealand to be part of this plowing and so it got to a point where they didn't have prisons to hold them all and so they started exporting them to the South Island and they were being held illegally without trial there's a story of actually these were the last the last of the plowmen that were arrested and that's what's starting to there were questions being asked in Britain about this in the House of Lords they were saying what is going on over there in New Zealand and why are they treating
• 38:30 - 39:00 them Maori that way and so it was becoming an embarrassing situation for New Zealand even though it was not reported uh favorably at all in New Zealand at all New Zealand was still um just if you look back at the papers at that time they were just appalling cartoons uh about about Maori and they were just ridiculed in every way at the very last trial of there were 59 plowmen that had been been arrested they were in court and so they had a hearing
• 39:00 - 39:30 they talked about what had happened they had plowed the land they'd been pulled in and then the jury asked to go and make a decision the jury went away and came back and said we can't find we can't make a decision so the judge said to them look it's getting late at night I need you to make a decision if you don't make a decision I'm going to lock you up for the night he'd say that to the jurors and he said you don't need to be worried about me giving them a bad sentence he says if you find them guilty he said I'll just sentence them for one hour and then we can let them go and we've
• 39:30 - 40:00 done our we've satisfied the law so they went away and and they came back and they said yeah sure we find them guilty so he actually um then sentenced them and said you've been found guilty you're being imprisoned for two years hard labor in Littleton and they were sent to Littleton where they worked many of them didn't come back they got sick and died in prison but the party Haka continued on and they continued to resist and so what they did was they started
• 40:00 - 40:30 building a road they planned to build a road that would go right through the middle of parihaka and they said well why wouldn't you want to Road through your town and they said because we know what you're planning and you see one of the really sad things was after the whole thing with a white or a block when they had taken that land and they'd been told then it was found that it was wrong and they took all that land the million Acres the Maori Chiefs then said to them we see how you Christians behave
• 40:30 - 41:00 we see what you preach but we see how you really behave because during that year when all those battles were going on you burnt down our churches you attacked us on Sunday is this the gospel of peace and love that you brought to New Zealand is this what you would want us to believe is this how you act this is what Christians do and they said there's a famous saying at the time they said you say ABC and we will do ABC by which they meant was you actually the things that you're saying
• 41:00 - 41:30 we're going to do the things that you do and so that became their cry through that time we are learning fast what yupakiha really mean when you say peace and love and when you tell us the Gospel of Jesus Christ and about that time many of the Maori started falling away from Christianity can you blame them not really because they're saying this is how Christians behave and that's one of the great tragedies of this time and so parihaka they they formed this road and
• 41:30 - 42:00 te fiti and tohu said do not resist every time they would they would actually start bullying the road they'd come and they would plow it up and plant crops and but they they uh they had armed people building this and they just kept coming through and then in um it was actually the 5th of November 1881. Guy Fawkes don't the the militia came that actually ran out of time they they came to parihaka 1500 of them
• 42:00 - 42:30 and they planted a cannon on the hill and then they marched their their troops into parihaka because they said this is actually becoming an embarrassment to us they are they are questioning our sovereignty and we can't let that stand if we are going to have sovereignty in this country then we need to actually destroy parihaka so the native minister at the time who should have been representing the Maori people his name was Bryce he came and he was riding a white horse he was the one who actually
• 42:30 - 43:00 had instigated and inflamed all of this and they went marching into Haka so what happened was when they marched in uh and they've been big articles in the paper saying how you know the maoris were arming and they were going to set up an army and they were going to come through and wipe everybody out and uh there was a lot of a lot of stuff in the paper that was just blatantly untrue so as the troops came in they were actually met by children dancing and offering them food and uh they uh they couldn't believe
• 43:00 - 43:30 this and so there was this big standoff where they marched into the middle of parihaka and they're in this large Village they found all the people sitting on the ground just waiting to meet them and taffeti and tofu had said whatever they do don't respond so they would come charging up to them with their guns and they would just sit there quietly John Bryce got there and he said I command you to leave the town are they just sat there quietly and so over the next few days they started physically cutting them off cutting them off they destroyed the town there were many atrocities against the
• 43:30 - 44:00 woman particularly many of them were raped and the behavior of the soldiers was absolutely appalling the houses were all destroyed many many things were stolen and the people were dispersed tofu and te fiti were arrested and taken down to the South Island even though they were never tried so this is our history I don't know how you felt about it but it Grieves me deeply
• 44:00 - 44:30 listening to that story you may get the impression that the maori's never did anything wrong and you know there were there were instances where they've done things they did things which were not not smart not wise but given the way that they were treated in the way that they the way that things were done to them I don't know that you can blame them yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine who um in the Hawke's Bay and he was saying to me because I'd rang him and said we should go fishing again we used to go fishing up in the euras while camerawana and lake waikiriti and he
• 44:30 - 45:00 said oh no we can't go fishing there anymore Kerry because the Euros I don't know if you know that's actually owned by the tuhoi and they operate the um the national park there in partnership with with Doc an agreement that was entered into a few years ago and he said you can't actually go into uh the Euros anymore he said they've closed it off you can't do any of the walking tracks they're all just falling apart you're not allowed to go fishing because it's only for the Maori people now and uh so he goes um you know the great walk that went around Lake locomoana which was a
• 45:00 - 45:30 popular tourist track uh you're not allowed to walk it anymore if you ring the doc Center the phone just rings and the two are people who man that will not answer and if you try to go there they'll discourage you and walk you off and so when I heard that I was disappointed I was like wow we had some magic times in those Lakes great area but when you think about what was done for the Maori people I was thinking about it later that night can you really blame them given what was done to them and so they were wrongs on both sides but I would say
• 45:30 - 46:00 certainly in all the reading that I've done is that the vast majority of wrong was done by us and as Christians particularly as a Christian and bear in mind the the the the way that the Christians missionaries particularly had an influence in treating the waitangi and and making the treaty waitangi happen I look at that and I go you know we have a responsibility we have a responsibility
• 46:00 - 46:30 to the treaty we have a responsibility to the Maori people what does reconciliation look like how do we try now 160 two years later to put this right and I don't know that there are any easy answers to that but I believe we have an obligation to do that what does that look like for us I would have loved to have had a discussion about how we in one euro which is predominantly a white town
• 46:30 - 47:00 can actually Reach Out as I was as I was praying about this the verse that came to me was actually Micah 6 8. he has shown you a man what what is good what does the Lord require of you to act justly to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God I think in regard to the Maori people we haven't done that and there is work to be done
• 47:00 - 47:30 one suggestion I would make I don't know if many of you have been at the tuhiwi is the local morai and it's the um the the the main meeting place of the naitahu the the main tribe here in the South Island if you've never been to tuohui I encourage you to go they have open days there quite regularly and when I went I found it incredibly helpful to understand the local people and I think if there's going to be reconciliation if there's going to be restoration it probably happens one conversation at a time and somehow we need to start that
• 47:30 - 48:00 conversation so if you haven't been to tuhiwi I'd encourage you to go you can make inquiries they have some stuff on there their website they have a paid a booklet that tells you what their Customs are and how to respect those when you're there but it's a lovely day and it's a really good way to start that conversation so as we go from here because it's now about 10 past eight and I think we probably should be concluding I've talked far longer than us planning to talk but you know our history
• 48:00 - 48:30 our history is a sad one in this respect and I think particularly as Christians there are things that we need to do and I would encourage you to pray about that to think about that and to ponder that question how is it that we can bridge the gap maybe it's learning today maybe it's going to tuahui maybe there are other things that you can do
• 48:30 - 49:00 if you have ideas I'd love to hear from you I would love as a church to actually be reaching out but also at the end of the day if this is going to happen it's going to happen person to person before it can happen in a greater way I don't know if I've covered this very well but this is my heart and I hope this is your heart as well I'm going to pray
• 49:00 - 49:30 [Applause] let's pray father God you've called us to be ministers of reconciliation you've called us to be a people who love others even as we love ourselves but father the story of New Zealand is a story of people putting themselves first and other people suffering as a result of that
• 49:30 - 50:00 so we look to the Past father and we seek to learn the lessons that will take us into the future into a better tomorrow a better tomorrow for all new zealanders for pocket half or non-mari and for Maori father even though 162 years have gone by and we can't take those years back help us to walk into the future with the intent to walk into a better future to build a better future to build a future that is good for all people of New Zealand
• 50:00 - 50:30 father I think of those words of Governor Hobson we are now one people I pray and look forward to a time when truly we can be one people father forgive us for the things of the past we've done that wrong forgive us father for the sins of our fathers and I pray father that you would plant the NASA heart a heart that says we will love God with all our heart and we will love others in the equal measure to who how we love
• 50:30 - 51:00 ourselves so be with us bless us father on this journey help us as we seek to reach out in Jesus name amen