David Seymour, via his Treaty Principle’s Bill, is calling the country back to the original intention and meaning of the Treaty. We need to get behind him and his Bill. By this I mean his original 3 principles which were: 1. that the New Zealand Government has the right to govern all New Zealanders; 2. the New Zealand Government will honour all New Zealanders in the chieftainship of their land and all their property; 3. and that all New Zealanders are equal under the law with the same rights and duties. Seymour was forced by Luxon and his cabinet to change these original 3 principles so they now read as follows (these are the revised 3 principles). The following is a picture of the actual Act.
What are we to make of this new wording in light of what the Treaty actually says and means? Principle 1: This is a clear reference to Article 1 of the Treaty, and thus a incontrovertible acknowledgment by the Government that in 1840 the Maori chiefs ceded sovereignty. What does ‘ceding sovereignty’ mean? It meant that the chiefs gave up the government of their country completely and forever to the British. By this we mean that all the resources of New Zealand, including all land, forests, and minerals on the ground and under the ground, fisheries, rivers, lakes, mountains, all things material and non-material etc (.e.g air waves, radio waves, the air above the land etc ) were given over to the British to be managed by them on behalf of all New Zealanders. The chiefs also gave to the British the right to set up and run a judicial system, a postal system, a police force, and every other branch of government needed to run a successful country. There was nothing they did not cede. However, there is a caveat. Included in the concept of ‘government’ is the reality that the possession / ownership of privately owned land would be protected by the government (Treaty Article 2, sentence 1). What does this mean? First up, the British considered that Maori ‘owned’ all the land in New Zealand in 1840, except that which the chiefs had already sold to speculators or settlers. This meant that if a Maori chief, Iwi, or Hapu (i.e. from hereon in referred to as “Maori”) owned land, and on that land were rivers, mountains, forests, lakes etc, the land owners would retain the same in their possession until such time as they wanted to sell that land. If Maori owned land with a coastal boundary, the British agreed to protect the right of those Maori to continue to use that coastline. The truth of the matter is that many tribes had a coastal boundary because fish and shellfish were an important and vital source of food for Maori. Tribes would mark out on the beach their territorial boundaries with sticks. These sticks would mark where a tribe could fish and not fish. They were strictly policed by each tribe, the infringement of which would incur the wrath of the offended neighbouring tribe. The British, in the Treaty, were simply saying to Maori “we will protect your right to continue to fish your traditional fishing grounds.” That is all. The British, in the Treaty, gave Maori the right to gather food from the coastline, but not to own it. The same ‘right’ was granted to all British citizens. That Maori have special rights over our coastline, with some even suggesting they own it,