Blowing the dust off NZ’s ‘founding documents’ reveals the hold they still have on today’s Treaty debate

New Zealand Parliament

There is power in paper. Anyone who denies the potency of history’s dusty documents needs only look at the current incendiary debates over proposed legislation tackling the “principles” of the Treaty of Waitangi.

Documents may be static and mute, but they are able to sculpt opinions and provoke actions. And there are several such documents overshadowing ACT’s planned Treaty Principles Bill.

However, documents are not history themselves. Rather, they are the raw materials that go towards assembling some meaning of the past. And despite initial impressions, they are not infallible, but are susceptible to continual shifts in interpretation and application.

Another feature of some documents is their capacity for perpetual revelation. Excavating some of these documents and exploring the crevices of their content can help encourage personal prejudices to yield to historical evidence.

But those looking for absolute truths in the archives need to approach with caution. Documents are not neutral detailers of the past. Every document was produced with a motive in mind, and deciphering the intent can be just as important as exploring their content.

Examining the many roles documents fulfil – which is the idea behind my new book, Founding Documents of Aotearoa New Zealand: 50 Moments that Formed the Country – can help shed light on key historical moments that still cast their shadows today.

‘Justice and perfect sincerity’

Two documents, separated by a gap of 136 years, offer important insights into how we might understand the role of the Treaty and the principles that emerge from it.

The first is a set of instructions to Captain (later Governor) William Hobson issued by Lord Normanby in August 1839. These were actually drafted by the head of the Colonial Office, Sir James Stephen, whose greater drafting accomplishment – five years earlier – was the bill abolishing slavery in the British Empire.

Normanby’s instructions recognised New Zealand as “a sovereign and independent state” and acknowledged the “evils” of unregulated colonialism (while realistically conceding the inevitability of more immigration to the country).

Normanby was aware the proposed treaty with Maori – the centrepiece of the instructions – could be “open to suspicion” among New Zealand’s indigenous population, who might “probably regard with distrust a proposal which may carry on the face of it the appearance of humiliation on their side and of a formidable encroachment on ours”.

Hobson was therefore advised to overcome such reservations by exercising “mildness, justice, and perfect sincerity”.

Likewise, when it came to the Crown’s acquisition of Maori land, all transactions were to be “conducted on the same principles of sincerity, justice, and good faith [and] they must not be permitted to enter into any contracts in which they might be ignorant and unintentional authors of injuries to themselves”.

However, almost immediately after the Treaty’s conclusion, colonial smugness took over. The decades that followed were marked by blatant breaches and declining observance of the agreement.

Grappling with the past

Fast forward to 1975. In the dying months of the Labour administration, with the looming shadow of a Muldoon-led National government just weeks away, the Treaty of Waitangi Act was passed.

It was to be the legacy of the then minister of Maori affairs, Matiu Rata. After more than a century of constitutional hibernation, the Treaty was now re-entering national political life.

Under the act, a tribunal would be created with the authority to recommend the Crown take measures “to compensate for or remove the prejudice or to prevent other persons from being similarly affected in the future” as a result of any “policy, practice, or act [by the Crown] inconsistent with the principles of the Treaty”.

What was meant by principles? The act suggested there were challenges in interpreting the English and te reo Maori versions of the Treaty, and so proposed that principles derived from the text might help in resolving Maori grievances.

Almost half a century on, and 185 years after Normanby’s instructions, we are still grappling with the repercussions of these documents.

Where does ACT’s planned bill feature in this? While some people are anxious it might undermine the Treaty relationship that has evolved since 1840, historians are inclined to take a longer view.

History is seldom settled – that would be contrary to the ceaseless questioning that is the essence of the discipline. (No doubt, some people reading this piece are already planning to challenge its content on social media.)

But as various sides in the Treaty “debate” show signs of becoming more fractious, now more than ever an immersion in the documentary details of our past might be the antidote needed to those forces intent on prising apart our Treaty-based civic society.

Founding Documents of Aotearoa New Zealand: 50 Moments that Formed the Country (Upstart Press) is out now.

Paul Moon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.