Following the direction of the Hapu Hui on Sunday (03/02/2019) Ngai Tamahaua Hapu Chair Peter T Selwyn has sent a letter to HM the Queen and her UK and NZ governments on the occasion of Waitangi Day 2019. The text of the Chair’s letter is as below:
—————————————–
HM The Queen
Buckingham Palace, LONDON.
HM United Kingdom Government
Rt Hon Prime Minister
Rt Hon Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary
Downing St, LONDON.
HE British High Commissioner
British High Commission, WELLINGTON.
HM New Zealand Government
HE Rt Hon Governor-General
Government House, WELLINGTON.
Rt Hon Prime Minister
Hon Minister for Maori-Crown Relations
Hon Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations
Hon Minister for Maori Development
Parliament Buildings, WELLINGTON.
5 February 2019
Te Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi 1840
Tena koe Queen Elizabeth II
Nga mihi o te tau hou – greetings to Your Majesty and the Right Honourable and Honourable Ministers of your respective Governments in this new year.
I address you all as Chair of Ngai Tamahaua Hapu in our sovereign capacity.
Ngai Tamahaua Hapu are tangata whenua (indigenous people) of the Opotiki country of Aotearoa (New Zealand). The Hapu of Whakatohea entered into sovereign relations with the Crown when our Hapu leadership signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty) on 27 May 1840 at Opotiki.
The Treaty guarantees to us Her Majesty’s royal protection and provides for the continued exercise of our own governance and imparts to our members the rights and privileges of British Subjects. These British guarantees to our Hapu have been imperfectly observed by Her Majesty’s Governments, especially from the time of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy and colonial military invasion of Opotiki in 1865 and subsequent confiscation of land and militarised occupation (the Raupatu).
The Raupatu and its maintenance by the New Zealand Government is a particularly nasty abrogation of the Treaty which the Hapu want to stop and – absent any international mechanism – one that the Hapu wishes to have inquired into by the Waitangi Tribunal of New Zealand (the Tribunal) and heard without delay. It is hoped that the inquiry report (on the 1840-1992 period) will then inform settlement negotiations.
A Tribunal-directed opinion poll of last year indicated an inquiry was unanimously supported by all Hapu of Whakatohea and the New Zealand Government’s mandated negotiation entity registered only uneven and marginal support. The New Zealand Government would be wise to take this opportunity to terminate the mandate recognition and support a Tribunal inquiry. Please find my letter of 8 January 2017 to the respective Governments on the matter of our Treaty policy remains applicable.
I note the New Zealand Justice Minister Hon. Andrew Little gave a speech at the United Nations Human Rights Council at Geneva on 21 January 2019 which employed ambiguous language around the Treaty status and recited a reliance of his Government on the discredited colonial tools of limitation out of step with the global consensus established by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Let me once again urge the respective Governments to dialogue with Hapu on issues of self-determination and transition. In that regard I thank the former High Commissioner, HE Jonathan Sinclair, for his kind words to us on the occasion of our 2017 Treaty anniversary and would very much appreciate any message from the present High Commissioner on the upcoming anniversary 27 May 2019.
I understand that a House of Commons motion to acknowledge the Treaty is customarily made on February 6th – the date it was first signed in 1840. The Hapu welcome such a motion.
Naku noa na
Peter T Selwyn
Ngai Tamahaua Hapu Chair
—————————————–