No discussion of Waitangi Day?

[an modh coinniolach]

Given the lively discussion of Australia Day over the last few weeks, I was just wondering why there was no similar discussion of Waitangi Day today? The day commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi which was Aotearoa/New Zealand’s founding document. Interpreting the Treaty is controversial but a very basic explanation is that it was an agreement between the British Crown and some chiefs in the north of the country by which they ceded sovereignty to the Crown in return for recognition of their full ownership of their land and other property rights, and the extension to them of the full rights of British citizenship. Māori have long argued that the Crown failed to live up to its side of the Treaty and, at least in the later twentieth century, have successfully challenged this through the courts.

The lack of discussion is hardly because of a lack of connection between the two countries. At Aotearoa/New Zealand’s 2006 census some 4,776 usual resident identified themselves as being born in Northern Ireland with a further 6,888 born in the Republic of Ireland. Anecdotally, at least, we can expect that those figures will have risen by now; unfortunately NZ’s 2011 census was not carried out due to the earthquakes in Christchurch.

Links in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were even more marked: it’s estimated that between 100,000 and 150,000 migrants arrived there from Ireland before 1939, representing between fifteen and twenty per cent of the country’s non-Māori population. That said, something of the explanation as to the why the links between Ireland and New Zealand are not so easily recognised, at least in the Republic, might come from the religious make-up of this migrant group as it appears that only sixty per cent of migrants prior to 1870 and a declining number of Catholics after the 1880s .

Neither can it be because of a lack of political interest or controversy around the day itself. Firstly it is interesting that for many years New Zealanders, at least Pākehā ones, believed that they had the best race-relations in the world, and in particular believed that they were superior to Australians in this regard. Secondly, since the early seventies Māori have been using the Treaty to exert themselves politically and legally and Waitangi Day itself and the ceremonies at Te Tii Marae have become a site of protest. Just yesterday one Māori academic argued that Māori suffered a colonial 'holocaust'.

Finally, there is an Irish link to the Treaty in that it was signed on behalf of the Queen by William Hobson, born in Co. Waterford.

My own opinion is that New Zealand, a bit like Ireland, tends to be overshadowed by its larger neighbour in terms of outsider’s discussions of its culture and politics. Either that or it’s just that Neighbours and Home and Away are superior to Shortland Street.

[mistercrabs]

This would be because nobody in this country either knows or cares about Waitangi Day. Neither do we know or care about the national day of Tonga or Serbia or Guinea Bissau, or any tiny other tiny country thousands of miles away.

[an modh coinniolach]

This would be because nobody in this country either knows or cares about Waitangi Day. Neither do we know or care about the national day of Tonga or Serbia or Guinea Bissau, or any tiny other tiny country thousands of miles away.

Fair enough, I'll get me coat.

[SideysGhost]

New Zealand just tends to be overlooked by the rest of the world. And as far as I can tell, most Kiwis - including Maori - seem to be perfectly happy with this state of affairs. Stay under the radar and do what needs doing to have a fairly decent well-run country.

There's an understandable tendency to view NZ in the same "small country with bigger neighbour" light as Ireland and Britain, or even Canada and the US, and there is some truth to it. But at the same time...it's the same distance from Wellington to Sydney as it is from London to Moscow - and it's ocean all the way. The sheer numbers of Maori and islanders in the population (not to mention the growing numbers of Chinese and other Asians) means NZ looks just as much to the Pacific islands as it does to Oz, and economically are well aware they are far more dependent on China and other Asian economies than on any largely sentimental connection to the rest of the Anglosphere. While up to the 1980s NZ really was a sort of bizarre "little Britain" remote colony those days are fading fast.

It's an odd little country. I like it.

[shiel]

Having been there once I was amazed in the differences from Australia and the lack of any impetus on either side to form a union. The Maori in NZ cannot not be compared to the aborigines in Australia.

The nearest comparison with the Maori are the natives in southern Chile who also made treaties with the colonisers and native Chilean/European governments to maintain their rights.

I would recommend a visit to NZ. The people are the friendlist and the scenery, especially in the south is spectacular. The traffic jam in the South Island is 5,000 sheep with two dogs and and a four wheel drive.

[an modh coinniolach]

And as far as I can tell, most Kiwis - including Maori - seem to be perfectly happy with this state of affairs

I like it too. There are many Maori however who would argue that their treatment has been far from fair..

This chap for example. Iti eventually had his firearm's conviction for this incident overturned, but he was arrested in October 2007 in a series of police raids. Among the allegations against himself and the other accused was that they intended to start an 'IRA style war' in New Zealand, although I don't know whether that is a quote from the police or the alleged conspirators.



Again, interestingly from an Irish point of view, one notable moment in the 'History of Tūhoe Resistance' that the clip refers to to is the fight which occurred in 1916 when police led by Irishman John Cullen raided the settlement of the Māori prophet Rua Kenana. From memory, there is also mention in Mark Derby's recent book The Prophet and the Policeman: The Story of Rua Kenana and John Cullen (Nelson, 2009) of late nineteenth-century fears of an alliance between Māori and Fenians resident in New Zealand.