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Jan 9, 2015

Gareth Morgan and the Pākehā Pathology

The Treaty of Waitangi. 


Sometimes it seems like the qualities we cherish in our democracy we condemn in our politics. We revere a kind of abstract equality, but we hesitate when it means substantive equality for Māori. There are plenty of New Zealanders willing to admonish Māori underrepresentation in local government, yet few are willing to support any measures to achieve the equality they claim to support. There are plenty of intellectuals and politicians who applaud the rule of law, yet few who supported the rule of law so much that they opposed the Foreshore and Seabed Act. 

This is the incongruous intellectual tradition of which Gareth Morgan is a part. He supports “rangatiratanga”, yet he opposes “unique political rights for Māori”, which is rather contradictory because rangatiratanga is a unique political right for Māori: it is the right to our “unique” indigenous systems*. Surely, for the sake of credibility if not consistency, you cannot support something in one breath and then condemn it in the next. Yet Morgan seems intellectually unfazed. 

As one might be after solving the tax problem and the cat problem, the “Treaty problem” must seem small and simple in comparison. The New Zealand Herald - whose roster of writers on Māori issues appears to be two Pākehā men – has commissioned a four part series based on Morgan’s new book, Are We There Yet? The Future of the Treaty of Waitangi. But Morgan, certainly an impressive economist and publicist, is hardly a Treaty expert.

In his first column, a kind of extended inoculation, Morgan tells us the Treaty “renaissance [should] be celebrated”. Yet in the second and third columns it becomes clear that underneath this superficial optimism is a grim fatalism: the Waitangi Tribunal is using the Treaty to “divide society along descent lines”. I’m sure the members of the Tribunal would be flattered to know they are credited with such sinister power. 

Apparently this division is emerging because the Tribunal is “only talk[ing] to one of the partners”. That is, the Māori partner. The reality is rather different. Far from refusing to participate in Tribunal hearings the Crown regularly disputes claimants’ versions of events and vigorously contests their evidence at hearings. But I suspect this is not Morgan’s meaning – how could a Treaty author get such an elementary fact wrong? – I think the clue to his intended meaning is later in the paragraph where he writes:

“How can those in the Treaty industry guide enduring solutions if they don't take non-Maori with them”

Or, in other words, the Tribunal and the “Treaty industry” - which, ironically, Morgan is now a part of as a Treaty author – must soothe Pākehā sensitivities and avoid findings which do not meet their ideological expectations. Morgan wants to shift the full burden to Māori – we must compromise – the full measure of justice is not available to us because it is not acceptable to them (Pākehā). The statement should be reversed: how can Pākehā society offer “enduring solutions” if they do not take Māori with them?

That is not to say I expect Morgan to completely understand our perspective. The relentless focus on what is acceptable to Pākehā – rather than what is just for Māori – is natural. When you are born to one culture with few voices dissimilar to your own then it is very easy to mistake the happy accident of your own cultural sensibilities as a set of natural laws. 

This is more common than we might hope and it is not peculiar to one culture. Yet in almost every settler colony only one culture gets to draw the line between the acceptable and the unacceptable, the normative and abnormal. Which culture gets to draw the line is a matter of power and where the line is drawn is then a matter of ideology. In New Zealand the culture that draws the line is Pākehā culture and where they draw it will often exclude Māori.

And this is very much what the anti-Treaty industry does: they draw a line and declare that we go no further. But Morgan is more sophisticated than this. He wants us, rather paternalistically, to reclaim our “self-esteem” with power devolved from the state, but he will not permit measures like dedicated representation which give us some power over the state. 

Yet, in the final column suggesting better ways to implement the Treaty partnership, Morgan then goes on to endorse an upper house with a 50/50 split between Māori and non-Māori. Confused yet? You should be because in each column Morgan warns us of this inchoate division the Tribunal and the Treaty industry are creating, yet he then suggests a political division between Māori and non- Māori as a solution to that division. Again, Morgan seems intellectually unfazed.

Which is not to say we should opposes his suggestions - most of them are already in place, all of them are acceptable steps forward – but we should recognise that he fails to examine the Treaty in a substantive way. Marking problems at the edges will not do. The Treaty partnership has no meaning without reckoning with where power lies and how it is really meant to be distributed. 

Social and political reality does not change just because it is unjust, it does so when the material reality that gave rise to it expires. The problem is economic – colonisation was wildly profitable, decolonisation is costly – but also ideological. Pākehā supremacy is an organising principle in New Zealand society. Certainly not in the sense that Pākehā think themselves racially superior and are pursuing a conscious agenda on that basis, rather in the sense that their systems are placed above our systems. 

Thus the burden of compromise always falls to Māori – we can push only for what is compatible with their system – this makes Morgan’s idea that there is some sort of creeping political division emerging an utterly ridiculous one. Think about it from an iwi perspective. For each iwi a typical settlement represents around 1 to 5 percent of what was lost. In this situation who is making the compromise? The party which agrees to concede 95 to 99 percent of what it lost or the party which agrees to return 1 to 4 percent of what it gained?

*Rangatiratanga is more than a "right" as we would normally understand it. It describes a form of authority as well as the systems, practices and so on which derive from it. However, in the context of Morgan's pieces he is referring to the "right" to rangatiratanga guaranteed in the Māori text of the Treaty. 

7 comments:

  1. I think it's all hot air when people won't face the issue that the nz govt today is a different govt of pre 1986. There is imo collusion going on from both sides of the fence when the nz public has no idea that sovereignty was usurped by a govt that suddenly decided to appoint itself in absence of a lawfull mandate from the people as the agency by which the people should decide how independence from the crown who was and still is the entity that should be answering to the issues raised by the treaty. It's all just a big mess and the Gareth Morgan's are just patsys send out to spread diversion and ultimately confuse the real issues that exist. The colonial government was founded on semi truths and deceptive methods, that same govt used semi truths and deceptive methods to set up the incumbent system which is no better and simply continues to deceive and mislead the people with semi truths and this time it's even worse because it has been set up to deceive both maori and pakeha alike.

    The truth is that there is a conversation going in about new Zealand's constitution and it's being held almost clandestinely while the vast majority of nz is ignorant of its existence and the ramifications. The nz parliament was and is not a lawful govt under international conventions.

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  2. Morgan's qualification to lecture us on treaty issues comes down to ... Maungatautari. I'm sick of lectures from rich guys.

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  3. I am so pleased to have someone else answer Gareth Morgan's rather simplistic (and scarey) views of the Treaty settlements. Simplistic views : because there appears to be little knowledge or depth in what he is tryinmg to say. Scarey views: because they are probably shared by large numbers of Pakeha - which show up the ignorance of so many of us Pakeha about the origins of colonial settlement in NZ, and how the Maori were trampled on.

    This is one area our state education system has failed us on : I was lucky to get a sprinkling of Maori history in the rural country school I attended 64 years ago. My adults sons had very little in the suburban schools (primary and secondary) they attended. Has this changed at all in the intervening years ? If the proper history of NZ settlement hasn't been put into the education curriculum by now, then it needs to be incorporated urgently.

    And we can be thankful for historians, researchers and writers for at least getting parts of our Pakeha-Maori relationships and history published over the years - Dame Ann Salmon, Michael King, Dick Smith, Vincent O'Malley, Tony Simpson and the like.

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  4. There is something that has bothered me for a long time and which just keeps on growing! The meaning of "rangatiratanga"! The "treaty industry" as Gareth calls it, as well as iwi Maori academia and cohorts, have over the years, cemented the understanding that "rangatiratanga" equates to self determination for Maori and some will take that further and assert that it means "sovereignty" in the widest sense of that word! When back in 1988 I asked a prominent academic the question “If “rangatiratanga” equates to sovereignty (as he was in the midst of asserting!) what is “arikitanga”? He reacted negatively to my question and seemed to deem it michievous. However, given that traditional Maori society was made up of a bulk of commoners, a smaller group of “rangatira” and a tiny bunch of “ariki”, and that “ariki” were at the top of the pecking order (of course not all iwi had ariki but all tribes would have been familiar with the word) and “rangatira” were the individuals who held day to day responsibility for iwi and hapuu operations, how does “rangatiratanga” equate to sovereignty? A sovereign is an ariki or ariki nui (the term was also used to denote “God”). A rangatria might be compared to a 19th century English “Lord of the Manor” who was, nevertheless, a way down the pecking order from the mighty sovereign! This is important because if you read the treaty in this light it becomes obvious that the British were assuring Maori “rangatira” of their right to exercise “rangatiratanga” as they saw it and at the time this would have been seen as the right to exercise control over their own hapuu. In the Maori world of the 1830s, it was a huge concern for rangatira that they were facing continuing challenges from inside and outside their tribes to their mana and their rangatiratanga. New concepts of social control that arrived with christianity and the proclomations of vocal ‘others’ that recalled the rallying calls of the French revolution, liberty, fraternity and equality, were suggesting that the traditional social control mechanisms were failing. The Treaty guaranteed these rights on a local level, inside the hapu, inside the whanau, determining local land rights …… “Sovereignty”? I don’t think so.

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    Replies
    1. Great comment! Definitely food for thought.

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    2. Tino Rangatiratanga in the Treaty text probably best translates into English as independence. To reduce it's meaning to hapu leadership is simplistic, belittling, and misses the point somewhat - which was to describe a foreign concept in Te Reo, the rather lofty, and by then legalistic, secular concept of sovereignty or political independence. It would have been extremely confusing to overlay the spiritual connotations of arikitanga in trying to convey such an idea. I suspect the academic was annoyed by your question because it kind of comes at the issue from a thought you had rather than something substantive. Often a rangatira and an ariki were the same person and the powers and status of chiefs were extremely varied.

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