Mana motuhake needs to be at the centre of any settlement for Ngāpuhi, argues Eru Kapa-Kingi.
Treaty settlements are entirely and deliberately anchored in political capitalism. They have therefore always been obsessed with quantum – the monetary value claimant groups receive after playing the unwinnable card game against the Office of Treaty Settlements. Claimants never get dealt a hand, and the Crown makes all the rules, also deciding when the game ends. We have become affixed to the money game, and for many, the wānanga of mana has fallen silent.
What if the hapū of Ngāpuhi Nui Tonu – statistically the biggest collective of whakapapa Māori in the universe – completely flipped the table and made the Crown play a different game of its own making? What if the hapū of Te Whare o Puhi said: “We are not here for the money, but instead hapū will give mauri to the wānanga of mana. We will zone out areas in each of our rohe currently owned by the government to be formally returned, alongside an agreed expression that the Crown has no legal jurisdiction or influence upon these whenua rangatira.”
No amount of money can buy our mana back – indeed, we never lost it. Heoi anō, our mana is severely suffocated. A mana that lives on and thrives comes only through a collective will to change the status quo and stop accepting colonisation as inevitable.
I acknowledge my whanaunga of Te Whānau a Apanui who have already set the example by pushing to redraw the lines of sovereignty through their deed of settlement. The government is shaking at the idea of accepting they are not the sole arbiters of the natives of Aotearoa – as it should be. The arc of Tiriti justice is indeed long, but it bends towards hapū sovereignty. The more of us who push this kaupapa, the more inevitable our mana actually becomes.
The Crown’s silencing settlement regime has monopolised Tiriti injustice for four decades. Tūpuna from iwi all over the motu faced the initial onslaught of the British Colonial Office before the ink of their moko had even dried on the pages of te Tiriti, through to the end of the 1800s. By this time, almost half of the Māori population was decimated by settler disease and te koti whero (British military forces).
In the following century, many of their mokopuna – our kaumātua – were forced to bear their pain in a Crown-dominated process, only to receive a qualified apology, some money, and slivers of land. But the deals didn’t end there: the Crown bargain has always been that it will return to tangata whenua around 2% of what can be put into dollar figures and acreage, only if iwi agree to forego 100% of their dream of absolute justice under te Tiriti – a hard deal to resist when you seem to have no alternative to continued poverty and landlessness.
My heart continually aches for my own kaumātua on my Aupōuri side who survived the trauma of settling and still came out of the other side saying: “We did not get what we have a right to, we did not get justice.” Most of them have passed on, and today – despite having an impressive bank balance according to our accountant – many of their mokopuna are still left wondering what true freedom feels like. Freedom to be, and live our best rangatira lives.
This is no one’s fault, but the result of the system of colonialism. It was designed to have us fit in by forcing us to behave like a company, not like the sovereign hapū we once were. It does not have to be this way though – this is not inevitable. Nor is this idea as radical or unachievable as the coloniser’s voice would have you believe – there are parallels with reserved lands in the United States, and the establishment of a Sámi parliament for the indigenous people of Norway.
Practically, this is achievable and not legally complicated. Such agreements by hapū could be sub-treaties with the Crown – extensions of te Tiriti and He Whakaputanga acknowledging the specific mana and jurisdiction of each hapū. Hapū could also have kawenata between themselves as frameworks to honour respective mana but also share resources and infrastructure.
It is not necessary to have the government come to the table, either. I would not have to convince my relations in the north who have their own Whakaputanga passports of this, as they already drive unregistered vehicles and refuse to acknowledge the coercive powers of the police. While I’ve always respected the energy – if we are about mokopuna decisions – we must do this in a way that keeps us safe and our dignity intact. Whether we acknowledge police powers or not, they can (and do) still lock us up.
Crown co-operation is more likely through the lens of Tiriti justice discussions. A collectivised hapū effort not only enforces safety in numbers, but also acknowledges the specific mana of each hapū in the process. Hapū-centric change is essential. Centralising power was how the British empire was built and expanded its borders across the globe. Therefore, the most effective form of decolonising power is decentralising it back to our original communities of political will, in the form of hapū.
Prioritising jurisdiction over financial quantum would mean reclaiming and developing our own means of self-government. Our communities would no longer have to live in fear of being over-policed and under-serviced. This form of justice is not on the basis of race, but on the basis of rights as independent nations. Our nationhood always has and always will be protected by He Whakaputanga and te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Given Ngāpuhi were the original architects – and therefore are still the kaipupuru mauri of those constitutional documents – the sheer size of the iwi, and support from the Waitangi Tribunal through its Te Paparahi o Te Raki reports, means we can be the game changer in this suppressive system. We can set a new norm for our whanaunga across the motu.
This is not to say that money would be completely out of the picture – funding for essential services and infrastructure is a minimum obligation for the government. There must also be investment to address the immediate harm our whānau are facing today, such as homelessness and a lack of basic needs. Heoi anō, the point is money should not be the answer on its own. There is no dollar amount that will change the fact we are under the laws of the settler and their power-hungry systems that are the root cause of us being pōhara.
Ko tā Ngāpuhi, he rapu i te ngākau o te mate ka tīkarohia ai. Maranga mai tātou, kia piri, kia tata. Ngāpuhi must seek out the very root of the affliction and dig it out. Let us rise together, united and close.
