Waiheke writer and conservationist Margaret Mills was born in 1929, the day the stock market on Wall Street crashed. She has lived an action-packed life, and her soon-to-be published memoirs are filled with remarkable vignettes of small-town life in New Zealand. Some of her stories are very funny, some outrageous, others… well, I can’t get the following sentences out of my head. They are reproduced here with Margaret’s permission.
“Taranaki in 1939 was very racist. It was just 70 years since the end of the Land Wars and most long-established families had family members who had taken part. I didn’t understand why Pākehā kids didn’t play with Māori kids and sat in different rows of desks at school, and why they got the strap for speaking their own language… The local hall doubled as a movie theatre and halfway down there was a rope across it. Behind the rope were rows of chairs for Pākehā of all ages and in front the Māori of all ages sat on backless forms. There were two barbers in town, one for Pākehā and one for Māori. Only in the local public hospital was there no separation.”
At the age of 10, Margaret Mills saw around her a spider’s web of structural racism. She also recognised, as so many cannot, her own privilege.
Her primary school history book was called Our Country and she remembers its first sentence – ‘New Zealand history began in 1840’ – the year Hobson proclaimed British sovereignty over New Zealand. But Margaret’s father was a primary school teacher who loved history, and he explained that this made no sense. Before Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Aotearoa was controlled by Māori hapū. Margaret’s school textbook erased hundreds of years of Māori culture in a sentence.
Even by 1840, the overwhelming majority of the New Zealand population was Māori. Aotearoa was an independent country under the 1835 Declaration of Independence. To take control, Britain needed Māori permission.
Margaret’s father was born in 1901, a mere decade after te Tiriti’s 50th anniversary in 1890. In those days, the binding promises of te tiriti were brutally and illegally suppressed. The date of William Hobson’s arrival at Waitangi (29 January) was celebrated instead.
In the years before 1940, interest in the treaty began to revive among Pākehā. In 1932, the Governor-General bought James Busby’s run-down house at Waitangi (now known as ‘The Treaty House’) and gifted it to the nation. As Māori children were strapped by the state for speaking their own language, the country celebrated the centenary of te Tiriti o Waitangi, patting itself on the back for a century of European progress. The same year, a library and reading room were built in Kaitaia with segregated toilets.
The dire effects of colonialism took a steep toll on generations of Māori New Zealanders. In towns like Pukekohe, Māori were banned from bars and barbershops. Buses, the movie theatre and swimming pools were segregated. Bank loans, cashed cheques or taxis? Forget it. Rental housing was also much harder to find if you were Māori – and this is still the case in many parts of New Zealand. Dr Robert Bartholomew describes cases like these in his book No Māori Allowed: New Zealand’s forgotten history of racial segregation (2020). New Zealand’s pride in its history of ‘race relations’ is a pākehā delusion.
What did the Māori expect from the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840? As some politicians again try to quash the power of the treaty, they have instead encouraged us all to learn more about it. It is interesting to reread the words of those who made their way to Busby’s house in 1840, and The Spinoff has done a good job in collecting their transcribed voices in an online piece: What did the Māori chiefs say before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840?
I have to say, this one stands out. “I promise,” said William Hobson, “that all unjustly sold land will be returned, and no more illegal land sales will be allowed.”
Nōpera Panakareao was one of more than 500 rangatira who were convinced, by arguments like these, to sign te tiriti. “The shadow of the land will go to the Queen,” he said, “but the substance of the land will remain with us.” He famously changed his mind about that, as Hobson’s promise was broken. “I thought the shadow of the land would go to the Queen and the substance would remain with us but now I fear the substance has gone to the Queen and the shadow is our only portion.”
The far-right group Hobson’s Pledge named itself after Hobson’s famous quote: “he iwi tahi tatou” – “we are now one people”. But this is a slogan, not a pledge. Hobson’s true pledge to Māori was “no more illegal land sales will be allowed”. We all know how that turned out. • Jenny Nicholls
