In tonight's post I wish to steer away from my usual concerns and discuss an issue very prominent in the New Zealand news at the moment, a controversy that has been brewing since not longer after we relaxed Covid restrictions – co-governance between Maori and Pakeha. I suspect that many of my readers are not New Zealanders but I will attempt to describe this very significant and interesting development in New Zealand's race relations in a way that should be clear even to people in the United States or Germany (to pick two countries at random). Even if you know very little about New Zealand, you might, through some kind of analogical thinking, be able to relate it to race relations in your own country and to 'political correctness', 'identity politics' and 'wokeism' in general. It also has consequences for 'democracy'. I won't set out my conclusions immediately but rather simply present my personal perspective on this potentially extraordinary seismic shift in the cultural and political landscape. Consider me a field journalist reporting on the culture wars here in Aotearoa.
According to the last census in 2018 (I am here citing Wikipedia), New Zealand's population comprises four main ethnic groups: 70.2% European, 16.5% Maori, 15.1% Asian and 8.1% Pacific Islander. The reason these percentages add up to more than 100% is because it is possible for New Zealand citizens to identify with more than one ethnic group. In the introduction I used the word 'Pakeha'. This word is ambiguous. 'Pakeha' is a Maori word which simply means non-Maori but is often used to describe ethnically European New Zealanders. (Of course, when the word 'Pakeha' was first coined, the only non-Maori in New Zealand were the European colonisers.) Maori are, of course, the indigenous inhabitants of New Zealand, the 'tangata whenua' (people of the land). I shall attempt, perhaps imprecisely, to say something about the Maori. Maori society was and still is tribal – for instance, the largest tribe (or 'iwi') in New Zealand is Ngapuhi. My foreign readers may jump to the conclusion that Maori are somehow 'uncivilised', that they live in flax huts and spend their time fishing, gathering shellfish, and growing sweet potatoes (kumara). In fact, they enjoy the benefits of Western 'civilisation' (I hope I am not using this word injudiciously) while still keeping alive many of the cultural traditions that predated Abel Tasman first setting foot on New Zealand soil in 1642, traditions that have experienced a renaissance over the last thirty or forty years after essentially being squashed for over a century by government policies that favoured assimilation. Central to Maori culture is the 'marae' a meeting house that serves as focal point for Maori communities. I have been on maraes a number of times in my life. For example, when I undertook my abortive experiment in teacher training in 2006, my teachers, fellow students, and I all spent the night sleeping in a marae as a kind of bonding or spiritual experience – it is not uncommon for many organisations or professions in New Zealand to recommend or even require this rite of passage for prospective initiates. Perhaps spending the night on a marae at least once in one's life is seen as a way of confirming one's status as a New Zealander. More recently I attended the funeral service, more properly called the 'tangi', of the mother of my sister-in-law, Colleen Urlich, a celebrated Maori artist who had specialised in pottery, at her marae near Dargaville.
Most marae tend to be in rural parts of New Zealand but most Maori, like most New Zealanders, live in the cities. Although I said above that Maori enjoy the benefits of European civilisation, Maori are far more likely to be poor and disproportionately make up the prison population. Some people on the right use this as an excuse for racism – Michael Laws, the former mayor of Whanganui, used to talk darkly of a 'feral underclass'. Many people on the Left blame colonisation for the deep seated inequities in New Zealand society. In 1994, a very well received and reasonably successful film was made about sexual and physical abuse in a Maori family living in South Auckland, Once Were Warriors. This film, based on a book by a Maori author, Alan Duff, and directed by a Maori director, Lee Tamahori, essentially argued that the cause of Maori social ills was the circumstance that many modern Maori are disconnected from their cultural roots. (Once Were Warriors provided the springboard for the Hollywood careers of actors Temuera Morrison and Cliff Curtis.) This film may still be taught in high schools but I suspect that it probably couldn't be made today in 2022 given our current political environment.
We arrive now at one of the central things complicating race relations in Aotearoa New Zealand. Although I have been talking about Pakeha/Maori relations as though it is an us and them situation, in fact there has been so much intermarriage between Pakeha and Maori over the last two centuries that it is almost impossible to draw a line between the two groups. For instance, David Seymour, the leader of the right libertarian Act Party, who has called for abolishing two agencies expressly designed to further Maori interests (the Ministry of Māori Development and the Office of Māori Crown Relations), is part Maori himself (his iwi is Ngapuhi). This led the Maori minister for the former agency, Willie Jackson, to say, "He's just a useless Maori that's all [...] (He’s) absolutely Māori, but just maybe the most useless advocate for Māori we’ve ever seen.” Closer to home, my sister-in-law has Maori, Dalmatian and I think English heritage as I've intimated above and, obviously of course, so do my nephew and niece. In fact, my lovely and almost preternaturally good niece won an award a year or two ago for top Maori law scholar at Victoria University. By way of contrast, I'll mention another relation (although not one I am related to by blood), an Irish immigrant now in his eighties, who likes to bang on about the Maoris and says, whenever the subject comes up, "There's no such thing as a full blooded Maori!" (a common plaint among Pakeha of his generation). This relation is a staunch Labour supporter and a socialist. It is even possible that I have a little Maori blood in me – I had a great grandmother who was dusky and used to say that she had Spanish blood. All this gives some indication of how complicated it is, a complication compounded by the fact that at least some Maori put their tribal affiliation ahead of their membership in the wider Maori population, something I shall come back to later. Maori are not a homogenous group. Legally, according to the Maori Affairs Amendment Act 1974, a Māori is defined as "a person of the Māori race of New Zealand; and includes any descendant of such a person". Thus David Seymour and my niece, although they are perhaps only an eighth or less genetically Maori, can claim to be Maori. I heard from a right-wing source that the Government is considering changing the definition so that any person can claim to be Maori if he or she chooses to identify as such but, although I spent a little time poring through the Internet last night, I was unable to find anything to confirm this potentially scurrilous rumour. It could be just more bullshit cooked up by the Right.
The media, government, schools, judiciary, and other agencies are constantly seeking to promote Maori culture and language ('te reo') and I shall give a couple of case studies that illustrate this phenomenon, the first relating to place names, the second relating to the teaching of Maori knowledge in science classes, and the third relating to common law. As my readers will have picked up, some place names in New Zealand are of British origin, such as the major cities Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin. Others are Maori such as Kaitaia, Waikato, Oamaru, and Timaru. We have a Mount Cook and and Mount Ruapehu. This is not to say that things cannot change – on the nightly news Auckland is often referred to as Tamaki Makaurau and people often refer to New Zealand, as I have done above, as Aotearoa. Importantly, in te reo, the 'wh' transcription is (usually) pronounced closer to a 'f' sound than a 'w' sound. In the early days of settlement, or colonisation, many Maori place names were, effectively, mistranscribed and for some decades government agencies, such as the New Zealand Geographic Board, have been putting the letter 'h' back in place names. Towards the end of the first decade of this century, iwi groups in what was then Wanganui applied to the New Zealand Geographic Board for the spelling of the small city's name to be changed to 'Whanganui'. In 2006 and 2009, two referenda were held on whether the city should have its name changed. Then mayor Michael Laws, who I mentioned above, campaigned strongly against the change. Both times the Wanganui citizens voted, by a slim majority, to retain the status quo. Despite these referenda, the New Zealand Geographic Board recommended that the name be changed and in all official Crown documents 'Whanganui' was chosen as the preferred spelling. Wanganui, effectively, officially, became Whanganui in 2015. Personally, I was against the change – but I had a good reason. In the local Maori dialect in the region, the name Whanganui is pronounced with a hard 'w' sound rather than an 'f' sound and I worried that people would start pronouncing the name of the city and region in a way quite different to the way the original iwi who lived there had pronounced it. More generally, this example illustrates the problem I shall come back to later, a tension in this country between the interests of Maori and democracy. (Before my New Zealand readers leap to the conclusion that I am a right wing hack, remember that the name change occurred under a National government.)
I wish to digress for a moment to mention my friend Jess (a girl I haven't seen since 2015). Jess, I suspect, has no Maori blood in her but she is fascinated by Maori mythology and once wrote a poem about the Maori goddess of Death, Hine-nui-te-po. In 2009, she cut out a whole lot of 'h's from newspapers and magazines, put them in an envelope, and mailed them to Michael Laws.
A more recent controversy surrounds the teaching of Maori knowledge, known as matauranga Maori, in universities and schools. Halfway through last year a group of prominent academics from the University of Auckland wrote an open letter to The Listener, New Zealand's most popular and widely read magazine, saying that matauranga Maori was "not science" and protesting being forced to teach it. The letter provoked a backlash from Maori and Maori-sympathetic academics and even from the University's Vice-Chancellor. Subsequently Richard Dawkins weighed in on the controversy from his base in Oxford, penning a very well written open letter to The Listener supporting the original protest. Recently I saw Richard Dawkins interviewed on New Zealand TV by Patrick Gower – he dismissed matauranga Maori as 'mythology'. The issue, as I see it, is this. If, as the original letter suggested, matauranga Maori is being promoted as an alternative to Western science, if Western science is viewed as a Eurocentric tool of colonisation and oppression, this is clearly nonsense. It resembles the claim that was apparently made (perhaps only once by a very silly Feminist) that the equation E=mc squared is sexist. Science is both a method of generating knowledge and the knowledge itself and at least seeks to be objective. Perhaps more importantly it is subject to revision. Einstein overturned Newton, the theory that schizophrenia is genetic has been debunked as has the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia, the theory that Alzheimers is caused by plaques in the brain has been shown to be based on fraudulent research, and so on. In my view even the idea that evolution is caused by natural selection acting on random mutations may one day be rejected. If science is ultimately subjective, we would never be able to falsify or disprove a theory – the fact that science seems to progress is what makes it different from knowledge systems based on tradition. It is an historical accident that what we generally call science arose in Europe (algebra, apparently, originated with the ancient Babylonians) and so can be regarded as something universal. If, however, we view matauranga Maori as contributing to science, there is no longer a problem. Some Maori knowledge may not be science but some is – to dismiss all matauranga Maori as 'mythology', as Dawkins did, is to overlook the possibility that some Maori ideas may advance science. I cannot be certain which of these two views is the predominant one among Maori academics and the New Zealand academy as a whole. There are also moves to teach matauranga Maori in high schools – I am worried about this. When I was in high school, way back in the 'nineties, we studied New Zealand history. We learned about the Treaty of Waitangi and the land wars of the nineteenth century. In English, back then and today, students study Maori authors such as Witi Ihimaera, Patricia Grace, and Keri Hulme. When I was on placement at a school in 2006, I voluntarily taught the poet Hone Tuwhare. But I am very skeptical about the idea that matauranga Maori should be taught in chemistry and physics classes.
A third way in which Maori culture and concepts are creeping into the mainstream is through the courts. In October this year the Supreme Court in New Zealand posthumously quashed the convictions of Peter Ellis, a former creche worker who had been found of guilty of a number of sexual offences against children in 1993 and had served seven years in prison. I won't go into the details of this bizarre and terrible case in this post but I recommend readers have a look at the Wikipedia article about it. I will only say about it that, in my opinion, Ellis was the victim of a kind of mass hysteria reminiscent of the insane paranoid suspicion currently held by some Republicans in the US that the Democrat party is deliberately trying to sexualise and groom children. What is relevant here is that the Supreme Court, when posthumously overturning Elis's convictions, relied on the Maori concept of tikanga Maori, a concept that, now that it has been introduced into New Zealand common law, enables the 'mana' (a word which loosely means reputation or prestige) of a defendant to be restored through the courts even if the defendant has died. What do I think about this? In this particular case, I think it is a good thing – I believe, as many people do (including a number of political party leaders and former Prime Ministers such as Don Brash, David Lange, and Mike Moore) that Ellis was the victim of a major miscarriage of justice. However there remains the serious issue of whether such a significant change to New Zealand jurisprudence should have been effected by the courts rather than by Parliament. In America, the Right used to talk ominously about 'activist judges' (until they had their own activist judges in power). It seems that we can justifiably use the same term about many judges here.
I have given three examples of the promotion of Maori culture in New Zealand and now I will adduce perhaps the most obvious, striking exemplar. On the nightly news these days, a lot of te reo is used. Not only is Auckland often referred to as Tamaki Makaurau but Maori phrases are often used (such as, for instance, 'ka kite ano' which loosely means 'see you tomorrow). If I was an American tourist visiting New Zealand who happened to watch the news, I might assume that all New Zealanders speak Maori. This is not the case. Most Pakeha and even some Maori do not speak te reo, at least not as their first language. I myself do not speak Maori although, like most New Zealanders, I know a smattering of Maori words. Even though Maori tend to constitute a kind of underclass in New Zealand (except in Parliament where they are perhaps overrepresented), there is a way in which Maori culture and language is being introduced from the top down. What do I feel about this? I suspect that I am becoming more conservative as I get older but I can't really see a downside to the increased use of the Maori language. I would, for instance, support changing New Zealand's name officially to Aotearoa. The Maori culture and language is something that makes New Zealand unique and the use of Maori words provides a way for immigrants, including those whose ancestors immigrated here over two hundred years ago, to declare their membership in the New Zealand community. For instance, earlier this year, I was at the birthday party of a (female) friend, an immigrant from Ireland. Her girlfriend, an Indian immigrant, used the word 'whanau', a Maori word which means family, during the celebratory speech in honour of my friend.
New Zealand identity, for some time, has been going through a momentous change. In the mid-twentieth century many Pakeha would refer to Britain as 'home'. In 1941, Allen Curnow, perhaps one of the two greatest New Zealand poets (the other being James K Baxter), wrote a poem called "House and Land" which gives some sense of how New Zealand identity has shifted since then. I have been unable to find a full transcription of this poem on the Internet but it contains the lines "The spirit of exile, wrote the historian, /Is strong in the people still" and ends by talking about "Awareness of what great gloom / Stands in a land of settlers / With never a soul at home". (This poem, of course, conveniently forgets Maori.) Curnow was instrumental in guiding New Zealand poets towards a poetry rooted in New Zealand rather than a poetry that simply echoed English verse. As the twentieth century progressed, Pakeha New Zealanders found other tropes through which to express their group identity, such as comic book character Wal Footrot, the black t-shirted sheep farmer who lives in a provincial town and loves rugby, or Fred Dagg, memorably played by John Clarke. Pakeha did not seek to incorporate Maori culture into their identities and Pakeha and Maori identities remained distinct. Over the last several decades, however, as I've already suggested in this essay, Pakeha and Maori identities have begun to overlap or coalesce. I am unsure when this process began.
The point of this post is to discuss co-governance and I am getting there gradually but first I need to say a little about Maori-Pakeha relations from a political perspective. The founding document of New Zealand is the Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840, a document as important to New Zealand as the Declaration of Independence is to Americans. I will not describe fully the Treaty of Waitangi here but point readers to the Wikipedia article on it if they are interested. What is important here is that the Treaty was an agreement between the (British) Crown and Maori iwi in which the Maori gained the privileges of British citizens and were guaranteed rights over their land, villages, and other treasures ('taonga'). The Maori version of the Treaty, signed by around 530 chiefs (including thirteen women), was imperfectly translated from English – in the English version, the Maori ceded 'sovereignty' to the Crown while in the Maori version the word used was 'kawanatanga' (governance) while 'rangatiratanga' (chiefly rule) was also guaranteed. Not long after the signing, the British colonisers, and it is important to remember that they made up a much smaller proportion of the population in those days, pretty much ignored it, resulting in wars between the Brits and the Maori between 1845 and 1862. Starting in the 1970s, however, the importance of the Treaty was recognised by the government, and more gradually by the general population. Compensation began to awarded to iwi for the loss of lands and other taonga and, in 1974, Waitangi Day was made a public holiday. What is essential to note here is that the Treaty and the spirit of the Treaty assumes two separate groups, the English and the Maori, and, as it is generally interpreted today, treats the governance of New Zealand as a kind of partnership between the English and the Maori. (In fact, many Maori oppose making New Zealand a republic because to do so might effectively nullify the Treaty.)
Finally, before turning to co-governance, I wish to say something about the Maori seats. The New Zealand Parliament has 120 seats of which seven of the sixty electorate seats are Maori seats. New Zealanders who identify as Maori can choose to be either on the Maori roll or the general roll. The Maori seats were set up to ensure Maori representation in Parliament but, as I've suggested, quite a number of Members of Parliament today are Maori although I cannot be certain how many.
All these issues have come to a head recently. Along with an upsurge in crime and serious inflation (inflation that is, however, lower than in the US and UK), the major issue that may cost the Labour-led government the next election is the 3 Waters project. My foreign readers may find this part of the essay somewhat dull but for New Zealanders this strikes at the heart of two basic concerns – what it means to be a New Zealander and what our form of government should be. The proposed scheme provokes very strong emotional reactions from both supporters and opponents and can even make some quite upset. In a nutshell, the 3 Waters reform is this. Currently, stormwater, wastewater, and drinking water are administered by 67 regional councils. It is proposed to amalgamate the water services of these councils into four publicly owned entities. These entities will have boards selected, as one site I read says, "based on competence". In fact, what will happen is some kind of governing body, 50% made of council representatives (with each council getting one vote per 50,000 ratepayers) and 50% made of up representatives of iwi that fall under the jurisdiction of a particular entity, will choose the board members. The entities will "have highly skilled, competency-based boards to govern the entities professionally and independently. This will include a collective requirement for the board to have competence in the delivery of infrastructure and have an understanding of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, mātauranga Māori, tikanga Māori, and te ao Māori." Furthermore they will "have joint, and equal, local government and mana whenua strategic influence and oversight of the entities and their operation." The need for reform is clear – the water infrastructure in New Zealand is substandard and set to get worse without significant investment. I believe even the opposition National Party recognises the need for reform. What people disagree about is the co-governance of these entities by councils and iwi.
Democracy is generally considered a Good Thing. I recall that when George W. Bush thought he'd won the war in Iraq he said (in 2005) "It is true that the seeds of freedom have only recently been planted in Iraq -- but democracy, when it grows, is not a fragile flower; it is a healthy, sturdy tree." Policy wonks in Washington like to say that no two democracies have gone to war against each other. The recent American midterms were pitched by Democrats as a referendum on democracy itself – they warned that democracy itself was in peril. My foreign readers probably assume that New Zealand is a democracy (and they would be mostly right) – but the co-governance envisaged by the 3 Waters project is, basically by definition, antidemocratic. For one thing, Maori will have 50% influence and oversight even though Maori make up less than 17% of the population. Second, discrimination based on race is built into the structure of these entities. Third, it treats Maori as monolithic. Most importantly, we might ask the question, "Who chooses the Maori representatives?" I admit that the internal workings of iwi are murky to me. Iwi were once ruled by rangatira, chiefs, a hereditary office, but this is no longer the case. Today tribes are effectively led by 'kaumatua' (respected elders), a person becoming a kaumatua through seniority and the respect of his or her peers. I believe kaumatua assemble on marae and, through a process of discussion, deliberation, and consensus arrive at decisions for their iwi or hapu (a process known as a 'hui'). The question then is – is the internal power structure of an iwi democratic and non-democratic? If we accept the Western idea of democracy, that it consists of elections in which each constituent has one vote, iwi are not democratic. If we also then accept that democracy is a Good Thing, than co-governance must be considered a Bad Thing. If we regard the Maori way of administering their own communities as simply a different kind of democracy, the issue is not so clear cut.
Of course, this assumes that democracy is a Good Thing. Some political philosophers don't agree. Last semester, for a Philosophy paper on politics, I studied the book Against Democracy by Jason Brennan. In this disquisition, or polemic, Brennan, an American, argues that most American citizens are so stupid they shouldn't be allowed to vote and suggests that people should only be grated suffrage if they can pass an exam on civics and basic economic theory. If we accept Brennan's argument, we could possibly argue that Maori society is better governed than Western democracies.
There is another aspect of the 3 Waters debate that is seldom covered by the media here. Not only is Maori society tribal, it used to be very bellicose. Iwi often fought vicious wars against other iwi and victors sometime enslaved and sometimes even ate their vanquished foes. In the early 19th century, the Musket Wars were fought during which tribes took advantage of newly acquired guns to dramatically alter tribal borders and decimate other tribes, a conflict led at first by Ngapuhi chief Hongi Hika. Although iwi no longer fight wars against each other, there is still a great deal of intertribal rivalry. It has been suggested to me that a part of the politics of 3 Waters stems from this intertribal rivalry. The Minister of Local Government, Nanaia Mahuta, a strong proponent of 3 Waters, although, according to the Internet, tracing her heritage to three iwi, is mostly closely aligned with Tainui; it is possible that disagreement about 3 Waters may partly be result from animosity between different tribes. In the Herald today (it has taken me about a week to write this post) Shane Jones, a former MP for New Zealand First, suggests that 3 Waters could lead to litigation between different iwi and cites as an example "current infighting between Hauraki iwi and Ngati Whatua in Auckland." Jones, like the New Zealand First leader, Winston Peters, court conservative 'mainstream' New Zealand – Peters, for instance, strongly opposes changing New Zealand's name to Aoteaoroa. However, both, by the definition advanced above, are Maori. According to what I can find, Jones is of Te Aupouri and Ngati Takota descent and Peters is of Ngati Wai descent (his Scottish clan being MacInnes). It is not impossible that disagreement about 3 Waters partly reflects hostility between Northland tribes and Tainui, an iwi based in the Waikato – Jones has criticised Tainui in the past. (I might note here that is not easy to find accurate facts about tribal affiliation of individuals on the Internet.)
This essay shows just how complex Maori-Pakeha relations are here in New Zealand. In a recent post, "A Reaction to Netflix's Adaptation of The Sandman", I discussed how, in America and the UK, there is a tension today between two different conceptions of racial identity. On the one hand, there is a desire to believe that race no longer matters, that western civilisation has moved beyond race. On the other hand, there is the desire to cleave to one's own racial or ethnic group, a disposition encompassed by the term "Identity Politics". This tension is manifest in New Zealand today. On the one hand, New Zealanders, regardless of their genealogy (their 'whakapapa'), embrace Maori culture and language and associate national identity with Maori tradition. This first attitude is inclusive of all New Zealanders. On the other hand, there is a move to divide New Zealanders, separate them into two groups, Pakeha and Maori, and grant disproportionate power to the minority. The first conception is something with which I am very sympathetic but the second conception is something with which I am uncomfortable. Some opponents of co-governance even use the word 'apartheid'. Fundamentally, the problem in New Zealand is that there is a basic contradiction between the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi and the principles of democracy. Because the Treaty is New Zealand's founding document, this is no easy problem to fix. It is also worth noting that, in a sense, the Treaty predated democracy – in 1840 (and only as a result of the 1832 Reform Bill) only 18% of the total adult male population in England and Wales could vote. Presumably British colonists in New Zealand in 1840 had no say over the government at all. Although democratic theorists like to trace the history of democracy back to ancient Athens, in a sense modern democracy, the doctrine that every citizen of voting age has an equal right to participate in elections, is a recent invention – it did not come into existence until the early twentieth century. Moreover, a part of Identity Politics is the idea that one's own identity depends on the history of the group to which one belongs – this is what drives talk in the US about awarding reparations to the descendants of slaves. The precept that societies should correct historical injustices against minority groups is what partly motivates the proponents of co-governance. I would like to say, as Stephen Daedalus does in Ulysses, "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."
It might seem that I have been arguing against co-governance but there are always arguments to be made on both sides. Much of the criticism of co-governance comes from the Right, from people who support laissez-faire capitalism. I would like to say here that if these critics oppose co-governance on the grounds that it is undemocratic, they should also, for the sake of consistency, support the nationalisation of New Zealand's two supermarket chains. Capitalism, like co-governance, is also antidemocratic.
This post, as the reader may have noticed, exhibits a certain amount of ambivalence. Even within my own family, there is sharp and sometimes passionate disagreement about co-governance. My father, a King's Counsel, is currently with a group of concerned citizens planning to take the government to court over co-governance. I believe this is public knowledge – he wrote a piece for the National Business Review earlier this year attacking the 3 Waters scheme. In this post, I have tried, as objectively as a I can, to get to the philosophic roots of the problem.
My American readers, who may be familiar with New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern only through her appearances on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, may be surprised to learn how much hostility there is towards her here in New Zealand, particularly among the Right. Some think that because she has identified as a Socialist, she is aligning herself with Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao. I think this is quite wrong. I wrote a post about Jacinda a couple of years ago, when she enjoyed more popular support, in which I argued that she could be described as both a democrat and a technocrat. I would like to say here that I truly believe she is a good person trying to do the right thing. It might be that she is being bullied by the sizeable Maori contingent in the Labour caucus; it might be that she truly believes co-governance is the best way to honour the spirit of the Treaty. If I could, I would suggest she consider the position taken by Helen Clark in 2004 when the then Labour government passed the Foreshore and Seabed Act that prevented iwi from seeking customary title of the coastline. If the current government does not back down, it will probably lose the next election. And a National government will certainly repeal 3 Waters or at least that part of the legislation that grants iwi 50% control. It isn't a battle worth fighting.
At the risk of repeating myself, I'll summarise the arguments I have made. In New Zealand at the moment, there is a push to change the national identity by promoting Maori culture and concepts from the top down. This unofficial policy involves, for instance, changing place names, making much more use of te reo in the media, and introducing concepts like matauranga Maori to education and tikanga Maori to common law. This can be considered a type of 'political correctness' or 'wokeism', a form of social engineering analogous to practices in the US known as 'affirmative action' or 'reverse discrimination'. I will reserve judgment about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. Alongside this, paradoxically, there is a political move to separate New Zealanders into two distinct groups, Maori and Pakeha, and award disproportionate power to the former group – this is occurring even though Maori and Pakeha identities, culturally and in terms of heritage or ancestry, are becoming increasingly blurred. This tension, operating both to bring New Zealand together and to pull it apart, has part of its roots in the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand's founding document, a document that predated modern democracy.
I'll finish this post by describing a couple of experiences I've had that bear on the topics I have discussed. In early 2014, immediately after I was put under the Act, my mother and I visited the coastal town of Kawhia – I felt like some kind of spirit or presence associated with the place didn't want me to be there and was trying to push me out. Kawhia was the birthplace of a particularly blood-thirsty Maori chief, Te Rauparaha, who fought during the Musket Wars. I learned just now that for a period during the nineteenth century Kawhia was closed to Europeans. More recently, I think in 2016, when I was still hearing voices sometimes, I was lying in bed and heard a voice chanting in te reo in the back of my mind. As I've said, I don't speak Maori, but I had the sense somehow of a 'karakia' being performed. A karakia is a ritual chant or incantation used to invoke spiritual guidance or protection. In this blog, I have very often indeed discussed mental illness, and mental illness, like crime and poverty, disproportionately affects Maori. Perhaps, by discussing my own mental illness publicly, I have helped the Maori community a little. This sounds grandiose but that doesn't make me wrong.
