Waitangi Day 2025 marks 185 years since Rangatira Māori and the British Crown signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Over the years, I have understood its significance in who I am and how I came to be following the migration of my ancestors throughout history from across the Pacific and as far away as England. The commitments made between people that looked and acted and behaved differently. Not being ‘as one’ but just being together. Lasting relationships, woven beneath the auspices of our founding document.
The Treaty is an agreement between the British Crown and about 540 Rangatira (chiefs), to take good care of each other. It takes its name from the place in the Bay of Islands in Te Tai Tokerau (the North) where it was first signed on 6 February 1840, not too far from where my Māori whakapapa hails.
Since the Luxon government, we’ve faced many challenges. In just one year, they’ve sent us backwards, restricting our access to consult on important matters of public concern, rushing harmful legislation like the Fast-Track Approvals Act as part of an all-out assault on our natural environment, our drinking water and food sources, and the ocean.
Te Tiriti has always been a contentious issue for many New Zealanders. For some, there is a gap in understanding the Te Reo version – which the majority of Māori chiefs signed – and the commitments the British Crown and the Chiefs agreed upon. Others feel mamae (pain) because the Crown has not honoured their responsibilities. Today, though, those wounds are reopened with anti-Māori policy and sentiments from the government, and David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill that has caused a deep chasm amongst us.
I’m proud of my mixed heritage. My great-grandfather Leslie Lee, migrated to Aotearoa New Zealand, from England under this agreement. They settled first in the South Island as farmers before his parents moved again to Broadwood. He married my great-grandmother from Pawarenga, Raiha Hunia (Te Uri o Tai). They raised their family, including my Poppy, on their farm on her hau kainga (ancestral home). I never got to meet them, but I understand from stories that their relationship was built on respect and reciprocity, which only comes with a willingness to listen and understand what makes the other different.
There’s a similar story for my dad’s mum’s side. John Lees Faulkner migrated from Nottingham to Tauranga, marrying Ruawahine Puihi (Ngāi Tukairangi). William Henry Beazley of Wandsworth, Surrey arrived in Hokianga in 1836 and married their daughter, Elizabeth Faulkner in 1853 and had ten children. Their son married into Scottish and Ngāti Rangi, Ngāti Hine, and they too lived on her haukainga, amongst her hapū. Their granddaughter Ngaio, would eventually marry my Poppy.
Decades after the Lees, Faulkners and Beazleys immigrated, my mother’s parents arrived from Rarotonga in the mid-1950s, and they too built a life here afforded to them by Te Tiriti.
Yes, thinking ahead to Waitangi Day has brought many feelings to the fore. My Rarotongan ancestors shared Whakapapa with my Māori tupuna. They possibly, at some point, traversed the Pacific Ocean within the same fleet. Genetically tied to each other and yet needing a ‘modern day’ and ‘non-Polynesian / Pacific’ treaty to reacquaint. Sometimes that feels weird to me. But ultimately, I look in the mirror and see how Te Tiriti literally is how I come to be standing here today as I am.
I am grateful for all the journeys my ancestors took that built all the parts of me. So all these relationships within my whānau has been a microcosm of what I imagine of the potential of a Te Tiriti partnership and recognition of Te Ao Māori, its special place in Aotearoa and what makes it beautiful, important to all of us and worth protecting.
Something that is now more obvious to me because of my mahi, is the Te Ao Māori worldview of Te Taiao (the natural world), where maunga and awa are seen as our ancestors and treated as such. Where Māori see themselves as part of the environment, not separate. Where Matauranga Māori tells us the health of the moana affects the health on the land, and the health of both affects the wellbeing of the people. This is fundamentally why a traditional Māori worldview sees seabed mining as so harmful, and why they know the harm will be widespread.
I see how our birth-righted responsibility to care for it has been restricted through Crown breaches of Te Tiriti per Article II. But I also see how Te Tiriti is a protection.
Greenpeace Aotearoa is present at Waitangi again this year. It makes me super proud to work with people who can see clearly how all of the issues we are dealing with as a result of the Luxon government’s war on nature, democracy and Te Ao Māori, are connected.
My dear friend and colleague Amanda, who is a champion Tangata Tiriti (non-Māori person, here by virtue of Te Tiriti) has written this powerful blog about the importance of Te Tiriti and the threat of the Treaty Principles Bill to all the other battles we are now facing because of this coalition.
Greenpeace joined the Hikoi mo Te Tiriti and helped mobilise people to make thousands of submissions opposing the Treaty Principles Bill. You can read the Greenpeace submission here, and Russel Norman will make an oral submission opposing the Bill on behalf of Greenpeace Aotearoa in the coming weeks.
From 7 February, the Fast Track Approvals Act will begin to receive applications from projects looking to shortcut consents and bypass environmental checks and balances and democratic processes. Australian company Trans-Tasman Resources will be applying to fast track seabed mining off the coast of Pātea, in Taranaki.
It’s a fight we’ve been part of, working alongside allies and the leadership of Ngāti Ruanui. In this fight, I am constantly reminded that Te Tiriti recognises the mana that iwi have of their kainga, including the moana and this is powerful. I know this authority and Te Tiriti must be upheld and protected for this reason, and so many others.
This Waitangi Day, you might hear lots of rhetoric from proponents of the harmful Treaty Principles Bill as removing privileges for some and equalising human rights ‘for the rest’. I invite you to think about how Te Tiriti can protect your rights to a clean and healthy environment, where we grow and catch food and sustain all life on this planet. I invite you to think about how Te Tiriti can safeguard kaitiakitanga and other matauranga Māori (Māori knowledge systems), that seek those same rights for future generations. Recognising and embracing the vision of the two parties that signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi is an important step for us to fight back against the Luxon government’s war on nature.
If you haven’t already done so, please sign our petition to call for a ban on seabed mining and send a protest message to the wannabe Australian seabed miners!
Seabed mining is a new threat to the oceans. Now is our chance to prevent the destruction before it’s too late.
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