A
hapū hui in Whangārei has sent a clear message that
sovereignty is a “red line” in any future Ngāpuhi
settlement.
The vexed issue of sovereignty hit the
headlines again recently when Treaty Negotiations Minister
Paul Goldsmith said settlement talks with Bay of Plenty iwi
Te Whānau-ā-Apanui had been put on hold over a
controversial “agree to disagree” clause.
The clause,
added during the previous government in 2023, spells out the
iwi’s claim it is a sovereign nation – while at the same
time allowing the Crown to maintain it has sovereignty over
New Zealand.
A landmark Waitangi Tribunal report in
2014 sided with iwi by ruling that Ngāpuhi chiefs did not
cede sovereignty when they signed Te Tiriti in
1840.
Wednesday’s hui at Ngāraratunua Marae was to
have been a routine gathering of Te Kotahitanga o Ngā Hapū
Ngāpuhi.
Instead, much of the agenda was consumed by
discussions of sovereignty and NZ First Minister Shane
Jones’ member’s bill which aims to impose a single
settlement on Ngāpuhi, instead of the multiple smaller
settlements sought by some hapū.
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Te Kotahitanga
co-chair Pita Tipene said he would not enter any discussions
with the Crown if there was no acknowledgement of hapū
sovereignty.
“It’s a red line for me, a bottom line
… it would mean everything that we’ve been fighting for,
prosecuting through the Waitangi Tribunal that we have never
ceded our sovereignty, will be signed away by a couple of
signatures on a piece of paper,” he said.
Anyone
willing to sign such a settlement was “giving up their soul
for pieces of silver and gold”.
However, Tipene said
he was still willing to meet Goldsmith if he travelled to
Northland in coming weeks, as indicated by the minister in
an interview last week.
“We’re always willing to meet
with the minister. He’s responsible for the government in
terms of our Tiriti o Waitangi claims so it’s only right
that we sit down and talk with him instead of talking with
him through the media.”
Tipene was also dismissive of
Jones’ member’s bill, which he described as a
distraction.
“We will not be corralled into a single
settlement. If hapū want to come together, they will do it
because they want to, not because they have
to.”
Tipene said East Coast iwi Ngāti Kahungunu had
proven it was possible to split the settlement for a large
and complex iwi into smaller agreements based on taiwhenua,
or regional hapū groupings.
With Ngāpuhi, however,
Tipene said successive governments seemed to consider
settlement as a kind of trophy, with politicians like big
game hunters hoping to be photographed with a gun in hand
and a foot on the head of the biggest lion.
While he
didn’t agree with Jones on Treaty matters, Tipene said he
respected him and valued his role in stirring up
debate.
“One must admire him for agitating. By
agitating, it gets people thinking and moving and having
conversations that they may not ordinarily have.”
‘We
do not want a single commercial settlement’ –
Tipene
Tipene said the message from Wednesday’s hui
was clear.
“We do not want a single commercial
settlement. We will be adhering strongly to our own
rangatiratanga or sovereignty, and we won’t be signing
anything that may undermine that.”
Earlier, Jones said
multiple smaller settlements risked turning Ngāpuhi – which
had some of the worst socio-economic statistics in the
country – into “economic confetti”.
He told RNZ his
bill would bring clarity as to how the claim could be
settled.
“Then people can consult on the member’s
bill, and I accept it will take some time, but they will
have a clear target, because at the moment, it’s like a
flock of ducks quacking loudly, flying in all different
directions, and sadly, that’s what the Ngāpuhi claim has
turned into,” Jones said.
Te Kotahitanga co-chair Lee
Harris, who also co-chairs the Hokianga Taiwhenua, said a
meeting in Rāwene a day earlier came to the same
conclusions as the Whangārei hui.
“The position of
the hapū that attended was complete opposition to Shane
Jones’ proposal. We do not accept one settlement for
Ngāpuhi. In regard to Minister Goldsmith’s kōrero about
the removal of any possible clause acknowledging
sovereignty, well, we don’t agree with that either,
especially in light of the stage one Te Paparahi o Te Raki
report [that found Ngāpuhi did not cede sovereignty],” she
said.
Harris also rejected the argument that a single
settlement was needed so work could begin quickly on turning
around Northland’s dire poverty statistics.
“In
Hokianga, we’re pretty sick and tired of people using our
existing very poor standards of living against us as a
weapon by trying to push a settlement over the top of us.
Paparahi o Te Raki [The Waitangi Tribunal’s Northland
inquiry] addressed historical grievances. Therefore, any
settlement is to pay for the wrongs of yesterday that
happened to our tūpuna. It’s not to be used to tidy up the
contemporary mess of the poor living conditions in which we
live in today. That is a separate issue, and that is solely
on the Crown.”
Not all at the hui, however, considered
sovereignty a sticking point.
Kaumatua Waihoroi
“Wassie” Shortland said Crown sovereignty was the only way
the nation could operate collectively, even if history was
littered with examples of governments exercising that
sovereignty badly.
However, if the Crown maintained
Ngāpuhi had lost its sovereignty, that came at a cost that
needed to be factored into any future settlement.
Like
Tipene, Shortland said he was ready to talk to Goldsmith,
because he did not have to agree with people to engage with
them.
Shortland believed settlement would come when
Ngāpuhi, which made up one in five Māori and one in 25 New
Zealanders, learnt to use the strength of its
numbers.
About 120 people attended Wednesday’s
hui.
Te Kotahitanga o Ngā Hapū Ngāpuhi is an
informal group initially set up by Tipene and the late Rudy
Taylor to oppose Tuhoronuku, an earlier attempt to set up a
mandated iwi authority to negotiate a single Ngāpuhi
settlement.
Tuhoronuku was recognised by the
government in 2014 but abandoned in late
2018.
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