SYMHC Classics: Treaty of Waitangi

Summary

Stuff You Missed in History Class: SYMHC Classics – Treaty of Waitangi

Release Date: November 23, 2024
Hosts: Holly Frey and Tracy V. Wilson
Produced by iHeartPodcasts

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Introduction to the Treaty of Waitangi

In the latest episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class, hosts Holly Frey and Tracy V. Wilson delve deep into the historical and contemporary significance of the Treaty of Waitangi, a pivotal document in New Zealand's history. The episode gains immediate relevance as recent events, including Maori MP Hanarahiti Maipe Clark's haka at a parliamentary vote, have thrust the treaty back into the international spotlight.

Tracy V. Wilson [02:00]: "The Treaty of Waitangi became international news late last week after Maori MP Hanarahiti Maipe Clark started a haka at the end of a vote on the Treaty Principles Bill."

Historical Context and Early Interactions

The episode begins by setting the stage in the early 19th century, highlighting the initial European encounters with New Zealand. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman first sighted New Zealand in 1642, followed by James Cook's cabin boy, Young Nick, in 1769. However, significant European settlement began slowly, primarily consisting of whalers, sealers, and missionaries.

Holly Frey [06:47]: "Dutch explorer Abel Tasman first sighted New Zealand in 1642, and then James Cook's cabin boy, who was called Young Nick, spotted it again in 1769."

By the 1830s, the Maori population stood at approximately 125,000, with British settlers viewing New Zealand as a frontier outpost of New South Wales, a British penal colony.

James Busby and the Declaration of Independence

As European presence grew, so did the need for governance. In 1835, James Busby was appointed as the British Resident in New Zealand, tasked with maintaining order and protecting Maori interests against other European powers, notably France.

Holly Frey [10:10]: "He was there to represent the Crown, that was his job. But he really didn't have any actual power and he had almost no support from the British government. So consequently, people called him the man o war without guns."

One of Busby's significant, albeit unauthorized, acts was drafting the Declaration of Independence of the Northern Chiefs. This document proclaimed New Zealand as a sovereign nation under Maori chiefs, aiming to prevent French colonization.

Tracy V. Wilson [09:40]: "He really didn't have any actual power and he had almost no support from the British government. So consequently, people called him the man o war without guns."

The Treaty Negotiations and Signing

In 1839, the British government dispatched William Hobson to New Zealand with clear instructions emphasizing sincerity, justice, and good faith in dealings with the Maori. Unlike many colonial treaties, the Treaty of Waitangi was intended to respect Maori autonomy while establishing British sovereignty.

Tracy V. Wilson [17:02]: "All dealings with the Aborigines for their lands must be conducted on the same principles of sincerity, justice, justice and good faith as must govern your transactions with them for the recognition of Her Majesty's sovereignty in these islands."

Hobson, along with his secretary James Freeman and James Busby, hurried to draft the treaty, culminating in the first signing on February 6, 1840, at Busby's home. Chief Hone Heke was instrumental in securing additional signatories, recognizing the treaty as a means to protect Maori interests against external threats.

Holly Frey [20:33]: "The first to sign was a chief named Hone Heke, who was also called Hone Pokai, and he felt a treaty with the British was their best option."

In total, over 500 Maori signed the treaty, including 13 women, predominantly under the assurance of land and resource protections.

Discrepancies Between English and Maori Texts

A critical discussion in the episode centers on the significant differences between the English and Maori versions of the treaty, which have led to enduring debates over its true intent and implications.

Tracy V. Wilson [27:54]: "So Article 1 of the English version, the Maori chiefs are ceding, quote, the rights and powers of sovereignty to the Queen of England. But in the Maori translation, the word sovereignty was translated to a word that's closer to governorship, which is a much less encompassing concept than sovereignty."

These discrepancies have fueled contention, with Maori interpreting the treaty as granting them continued self-governance, while the English version imposed full British sovereignty. The rushed translation process, led by missionary Henry Williams and his son Edward, has been scrutinized for potential misinterpretations or deliberate alterations.

Holly Frey [31:17]: "There's also a big subject of speculation around how much the British signatories were even aware that these discrepancies existed."

Aftermath and Long-Term Implications

Following the treaty's signing, New Zealand officially became a British colony, leading to a surge in European settlement and subsequent land disputes. Key figures like Hone Heke became disillusioned, leading to protests such as the repeated cutting down of British flagpoles.

Tracy V. Wilson [33:40]: "In the 1850s, the European settlers in New Zealand established their own government. And in 1853, the first parliament convened in New Zealand. But at that point the Maori were completely excluded from holding seats or from voting."

Over time, measures were introduced to include Maori in governance, culminating in the establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal in 1975, which investigates breaches of the treaty. The tribunal's scope was later expanded to address historical grievances dating back to 1840.

Holly Frey [35:33]: "In 1975, the Waitangi Tribunal was established and this investigates claims by Maori on breaches of the treaty."

Modern-Day Relevance and Legacy

Today, the Treaty of Waitangi remains a cornerstone of New Zealand's legal and cultural landscape. It underscores the country's commitment to biculturalism, with Maori having designated seats in Parliament and recognition of Maori language and customs.

Holly Frey [35:47]: "New Zealand has grown into a parliamentary democracy with three official languages, English, Maori and sign language."

However, debates continue regarding the effectiveness of Maori seats in Parliament and whether they provide adequate representation or inadvertently perpetuate division.

Tracy V. Wilson [34:38]: "There's a lot of debate about whether having specifically Maori seats are whether that's a good thing or a bad thing."

The episode concludes by reflecting on the Treaty of Waitangi as a progressive, albeit imperfect, attempt at forging a partnership between colonizing powers and indigenous peoples, highlighting its enduring impact on New Zealand's identity.

Holly Frey [38:03]: "And this story is also sort of a nice snapshot of how issues of government can become extremely complex. You know, based on one thing like that, one translation led to a great deal of discussion and all of these sort of bizarre layers of government that happened as a consequence."

Conclusion

Holly and Tracy offer a nuanced perspective on the Treaty of Waitangi, acknowledging its groundbreaking nature while also critiquing its shortcomings. The episode serves as a comprehensive guide for listeners to understand the complexities surrounding the treaty and its lasting significance in shaping New Zealand's socio-political fabric.

Tracy V. Wilson [37:11]: "I like this story because it does represent such a big step forward in relationships between colonial governments and indigenous peoples. But at the same time, like, it's not perfect and there's still colonialism happening in this whole situation."

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For those interested in further exploring the Treaty of Waitangi and its implications, subscribe to Stuff You Missed in History Class on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast platform.

Transcript

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

So I feel like it could go with anything. My style is very fun. I feel like I always look like I'm on holiday. I just really like playing around with it and tying it to the music. So yeah, I really feel like the music I'm making right now feels like a holiday so I want to look like it soon. Check out boze.com for more. The holidays are here at the Home Depot so let's get to decorating. Find your perfect tree in our huge assortment of shapes, sizes and styles. Like the easy to assemble Jackson Noble fir with pre lit branches perfect for styling with all your favorite ornaments or the flocked starry light Frasier fir with over 1900 pre lit memory wire branches that keep their shape so it's ready right out of the box. Find the perfect tree now at the Home Depot and enjoy free delivery on most holiday decor subject to availability. See home depot.comdelivery for details. Happy Saturday. The Treaty of Waitangi became international news late last week after Maori MP Hanarahiti Maipe Clark started a haka at the end of a vote on the Treaty Principles Bill. So footage of Maori members of Parliament and people in the public gallery joining this haka as some of the other people in the room either rolled their eyes or looked uncomfortable very quickly went viral. This is part of ongoing advocacy on the part of Maori people to get the terms of this treaty respected. And thousands of people have also been marching to Wellington in protest of the Treaty Principles Bill. That march is expected to arrive at the Capitol after we record this intro, but before this Saturday classic will come out into our podcast feed.

[Holly Frey]

Our episode on the Treaty of Waitangi came out on June 4, 2014, and it talks about some of the context for this bill, which is that the English and Maori versions of this treaty have significant and meaningful differences from one another. If the Treaty Principles Bill became law, it would move interpretations of the treaty from the courts to Parliament, which critics say would drastically undermine its terms. This bill's progression through Parliament is still ongoing, as Tracy said as of when we are recording this. Also, I just want to add that in the original version of this episode, I made a brief reference to Eddie Izzard kind of on the fly, and that was before she began using she her pronouns. So that information and the way I reference her is outdated.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So enjoy the episode.

[Holly Frey]

Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

[Holly Frey]

And I'm Holly Frey.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So we've had a lot of people who have asked us to talk about the Treaty of Waitangi. And this is including a listener mail that we read on the podcast a very long time ago in which I pronounced Waitangi terribly, like really, really badly. Somebody later wrote in and said that I did a good job, and I'm pretty sure that person was kidding because I did a very bad job or kind. Yes, I'm hoping to do a better job today. I've been listening to a whole lot of film from New Zealand. So this is a treaty that was signed by representatives of the British government and the Maori of New Zealand, or as it's known in the Maori language, Aotearoa, and that means land of the long white cloud. So this is the document that established New Zealand as a nation. And unlike with many, many, many other treaties between the British government and indigenous peoples that had happened earlier in history, the spirit of this agreement was really to see to the best interests of both the Maori and the Crown, which makes it kind of an anomaly and kind of groundbreaking in the words or in the world of, like, colonial and indigenous relations. However, the English and Maori texts of this treaty are so different that they're almost fundamentally different documents. And so debate over exactly what the treaty meant and how it should be interpreted started almost immediately. And given the history of mankind on the earth, it should also be a surprise to no one that not everything afterward followed the original spirit of the treaty. Anyway. So that's what we're going to talk about today, this treaty and how it came about and some of what it led to. And, you know, as with any treaty, there are pros and cons to it, but when you look at the grand spectrum of relations between colonizing governments and indigenous peoples, this one was a lot of different. A lot different than a lot of what came before.

[Holly Frey]

So we're going to do a little bit of groundwork here about New Zealand. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman first sighted New Zealand in 1642, and then James Cook's cabin boy, who was called Young Nick, spotted it again in 1769.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Europeans were fairly slow to arrive in New Zealand from that point, so the whalers and the sealers came first, and then missionaries followed not long after.

[Holly Frey]

By the 1830s, there were approximately 125,000 Maori living in New Zealand. And a few British settlers made it a frontier outpost of New South Wales, which, at the time was a British penal colony.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Overall, for the most part, early relations between the Maori and the Europeans who were arriving in New Zealand were mostly peaceful. There were occasional disputes and fights. However, the British law did not extend to New Zealand because New Zealand wasn't British territory. And so this meant that there really was not any law governing the British subjects who wound up there, who naturally did not feel like they were beholden to Maori law. And so this was especially problematic given that many of the subjects of the crown who made their way to New Zealand were convicts who had escaped from New South Wales. So you had people who were convicted criminals making their way to this other island where there were no laws to govern them.

[Holly Frey]

And as more people moved in, trading efforts started to grow, because people need things. And so more than 1,000 British ships began visiting New Zealand every year. And New Zealand started to become more appealing to other European governments as a consequence, including France.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Eventually, as the population of Europeans started to grow, some of them asked the British government to help establish some kind of official system to try to maintain order. It was this kind of lawless place among the European settlers at this point. They were also a lot of the British subjects were hoping for protection that would prevent the encroachment of other European governments. And at first, the British were really not eager to do this. They did not really want to, you know, extend their holdings into New Zealand at all. So eventually, in 1835, a man named James Busby was given the official post of British Resident in New Zealand. And this was sort of like being a consular official. He was there to represent the Crown, that was his job. But he really didn't have any actual power and he had almost no support from the British government. So consequently, people called him the man o war without guns.

[Holly Frey]

One of Busby's acts as British Resident, which kind of cracks me up as a title for some reason, although one that was done without any authority to do so, was to draw up a Declaration of Independence of the Northern Chiefs. And this document declared New Zealand a sovereign nation under the absolute rule of its hereditary chiefs and tribal leaders. And his goal wasn't so much to make the Maori independent as to try to block the French from making their own treaty and taking the colony over.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yes, Britain was not currently at war at France when this was going on, but they had been in the recent past and for many, many years. So they were at best a little wary of each other.

[Holly Frey]

All I can think of is the Eddie Izard bit where he does, do you have a flag?

[Tracy V. Wilson]

It is actually a lot like this. This is not for you then. Yes, there is real. There was real discussion about we need to get the flag. We need to get a flag for the New Zealanders. People will be more respectful of New Zealand if it has a flag like that was a real step in this whole process that we are not going into a lot of detail about today.

[Chelsea Handler]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

So Busby presented this declaration to 34 Maori chiefs at his home on the North Island. So additional chiefs then were originally present, eventually signed the document. And then in 1936, the Crown officially acknowledged Maori nationhood based on the existence of this declaration.

[Holly Frey]

And before this point, the Maori had not really had the concept of the state as part of their worldview. In their social structure, each tribe governed itself under the leadership of a chief known as Rangatira. However, as word of the Declaration of Independence spread, it solidified the idea among the Maori that they were, in fact, in charge of their own affairs and able to govern themselves.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So this declaration, though, only gave New Zealand a temporary respite from the influence of all these political factions from Europe. By the late 1830s, there were about 2,000 settlers from Europe living in New Zealand, and a number of British businesses and shipping companies were planning to scale up their operations there. And there, of course, was also interest substantially from France. There were also huge amounts of trade going on between New Zealand and New South Wales. So the Maori wanted to begin trading with other nations themselves. But doing so was difficult without being first officially recognized as a nation. Which brings us back to the question of whether they had a flag, which was a real point of discussion in all of this.

[Holly Frey]

In a move that was definitely as much about protecting its own interests from France as protecting the Maori from anybody, in 1839, the British government dispatched William Hobson of the Royal Navy to go to New Zealand and negotiate on behalf of the Crown. And his assignment was to establish a treaty with the Maori. And once that was done, he was to act as Lieutenant Governor for any part of New Zealand that would agree to become a British colony.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Hobson got a lot of direction about exactly what he was supposed to do. And included in all of this were these instructions from Lord Normanby, the Colonial Secretary, regarding this assignment. This is quote, all dealings with the Aborigines for their lands must be conducted on the same principles of sincerity, justice, justice and good faith as must govern your transactions with them for the recognition of Her Majesty's sovereignty in these islands. Nor is this all. They must not be permitted to enter into any contracts in which they might be ignorant and unintentional authors of injuries to themselves. You will not, for example, purchase from them any territory, the retention of which by them would be essential or highly conducive to their own comfort, safety or substance. The acquisition of land by the Crown for the future settlement of British subjects must be confined to such districts as the natives can alienate without distress or serious inconvenience to themselves. To secure the observance of this rule will be one of the first duties of their official protector. So if you know anything about relations with Indigenous people in the world before this point, this is basically the opposite of how a lot of these treaties were previously carried out. Like, there were many, many treaties in the settlement of what is now the United States and in Africa and in the South Pacific and in South America that were basically like, here is this treaty where we're going to make you think you're getting a good deal, but we, the people who are colonizing, are actually taking you for a giant ride. So this was specifically, at this point, the world, having learned that this was a bad thing to do, against the rules, like, he. He was supposed to get down there and actually put a treaty together in good faith. And so considering the tone of a lot of earlier treaties between the British and Indigenous peoples, or later Americans and Indigenous peoples or whoever and Indigenous peoples, this was hugely progressive. But at the same time, some of the flavor of the instruction was also kind of racist, since a big underlying tone of all of it was that from the British point of view, the Maori were not actually capable of handling their own affairs. So there, although it was a big step forward in relations with Indigenous people, it was not entirely free from problems.

[Holly Frey]

Hobson arrived on January 29th of 1840, and he had been corresponding with George Gips, who was governor of New South Wales, about what exactly should go into the treaty. And once he arrived, Hobson also worked with his secretary, who was named James Freeman, as well as James Busby, who we discussed earlier on completing this treaty.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So they basically got completely down to the wire on putting the treaty together. They had summoned all of these chiefs to a big meeting, but they didn't have a draft of the treaty to actually have translated until the night before. So on the eve of this meeting, they handed the treaty over to Henry Williams, who was a missionary, and Williams translated the text into Maori with the help of his son Edward. At this point, the Williamses had established relationships with the Maori and they spoke the Maori language, but they really did not have a lot of time to put their translation together.

[Holly Frey]

On February 5, once again, in Busby's home. The representatives of Britain presented the treaty to about 500 assembled Maori. And while there was extensive discussion, no agreement was actually signed the next day.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Which was February 6th. After a little more discussion, 45 Chiefs did sign the treaty. The first to sign was a chief named Hone Heke, who was also called Hone Pokai, and he felt a treaty with the British was their best option. The day before the treaty was signed, he reportedly said to Hobson, governor, you should stay with us and be like a father. If you go away, then the French and the rum sellers will take us Maori over. So Honaheke's support was really instrumental in getting a lot of the other chiefs to sign the treaty.

[Holly Frey]

And from there, the original treaty, as well as copies of it were sent around the islands to gather additional signatures. And in the end, more than 500 Maori signatures were applied to the document. And 13 of the signatures were from women. Overwhelmingly, the Maori who signed the treaty signed a Maori language version with at least one British subject signing as well. And who this British signatory was varied from place to place.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Not every Rangatira signed the document. Some of them never got a chance to because while copies of the treaty were distributed, they didn't make it to every single part of the island that make up New Zealand. There were also definitely chiefs who opposed the treaty on the grounds that the protections that were being granted were just not enough to outweigh the independence that they would be giving up. There were also chiefs who were suspicious of the British government's intent about the whole thing. And then farther inland, there were chiefs who just didn't see the point because they, not being from the more coastal areas, hadn't actually had a lot of contact with people from Europe by then.

[Holly Frey]

And even though not every chief had signed, the British government felt that the treaty applied to all Maori whether they had signed it or not. They also almost universally viewed the English language version of the text as the true version of the text. Within a few years, British officials admitted that Crown sovereignty would outweigh Maori leadership when the two were in conflict.

[Chelsea Handler]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

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[Danielle Robe]

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[Tyla Bose]

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[Unknown]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

So to get back to this treaty itself, the Treaty of Waitangi opens with a preamble, and that's followed by three articles.

[Holly Frey]

Article 1 quote the Chiefs of the Confederation of the United Tribes of New Zealand and the separate and independent chiefs who have not become members of the confederation, cede to Her Majesty the Queen of England absolutely and without reservation all the rights and powers of sovereignty which the said confederation or individual chiefs respectively exercise or possess or may be supposed to exercise or to possess over their respective territories as the sole sovereign thereof.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So the extremely short and oversimplified version of this is basically, you, the British, are the boss of us, the Maori, as of now.

[Holly Frey]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So Article 2 reads, Her Majesty the Queen of England confirms and guarantees to the chiefs and tribes of New Zealand and to the respective families and individual individuals thereof the full, exclusive and undisturbed possessions of their lands and estates, forest, fisheries and other properties which they may collectively or individually possess, so long it is as it is their wish and desire to retain the same in their possession. But the chiefs of the United Tribes and the individual chiefs yield to Her Majesty the exclusive right of preemption over such lands as the proprietors thereof may be disposed to alienate at such prices as may be agreed upon between the respective proprietors and the persons appointed by Her Majesty to treat with them on that behalf.

[Holly Frey]

So the oversimplified summation on that one is, you can keep your land and your stuff unless you want to give it to us. And if you want to do that, we'll figure out a price.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Article 3 is in consideration thereof, Her Majesty the Queen of England extends to the natives of New Zealand her royal protection and imparts to them all the rights and privileges of British subjects. That one's already pretty short, but it basically in exchange for giving up their sovereignty, the Maori get the protection of the Crown and the rights and privileges that are due to British subjects.

[Holly Frey]

And the document ends with an epilogue which essentially states that both parties have entered into the spirit of the treaty, which has been important in determining whether future acts violated the treaty. It's the spirit, not the letter.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So that's the English parts, but there are some huge and important and meaningful differences between the English and the Maori texts in almost every part of the entire treaty.

[Holly Frey]

And those differences start right from the beginning. The English preamble is focused on providing for British settlement of New Zealand while also protecting the Maori's interests, as well as setting up a government in the interest of maintaining peace and order. But the Maori preamble is focused on securing Maori claims to land and tribal governance and autonomy, or tino rangatiratanga.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In Article 1 of the English version, the Maori chiefs are ceding, quote, the rights and powers of sovereignty to the Queen of England. But in the Maori translation, the word sovereignty was translated to a word that's closer to governorship, which is a much less encompassing concept than sovereignty. There was no exact translation for the word sovereignty in the Maori language.

[Holly Frey]

The English version of the article of Article 2 grants the Maori the full, exclusive and undisturbed possession of their lands and estates, forests, fisheries and other properties. But the Maori translation used a phrase that meant, quote, the full essence of chieftainship, again suggesting that the Maori were more or less getting full control over their own affairs. The translation of forests, fisheries and other properties is problematic too, since it was translated into a Maori word that more closely means treasures.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, there have been a lot of discussions about what is included in treasures. It was like, is the Maori language a treasure? Yeah, that's a pretty culture. A treasure?

[Holly Frey]

Yeah, that's a word of nebulous meaning.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

It's very nebulous. And so with huge differences, like huge, meaningful differences in the overwhelming bulk of this treaty, the debate about what the treaty was really supposed to mean and about what the Maori believed that they were signing started almost immediately.

[Holly Frey]

And on top of that, there is significant speculation about how exactly those discrepancies between the two texts came to be there. Was it a simple error, you know, due to this sort of rush translation that had to happen, or was it actually a more orchestrated effort to slant the text in an effort to make it more palatable to the Maori? And there is really no clear documentation, although there's loads of speculation.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

There's also a big subject of speculation around how much the British signatories were even aware that these discrepancies existed. There had been lengthy meetings and discussions about the treaty and the text. And the Williamses were, as we said before, familiar with the Maori language. But, you know, they didn't have a lot of time to put this all together. So, you know, at this point in history, it's kind of unclear exactly how much both sides knew about the differences between what one was signing and what the other was signing.

[Holly Frey]

But regardless of the differences, with this treaty in place, New Zealand became a British colony at first as part of New South Wales and later that same year as its own colony.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So because this was the document that established New Zealand as a nation, to try to recap everything that happened as a result of the Treaty of Waitangi would basically require summing up basically the entire history of New Zealand from the time that it was signed. So to extremely briefly summarize, with the door now opened to settling from Britain, a lot of settlers from England, Ireland and Scotland started making their way to New Zealand. With thousands of people arriving over the next decade.

[Holly Frey]

Within a few years, Hone Heke had withdrawn his support for the treaty. He was feeling disillusioned that it was not in fact as beneficial for the Maori as he had believed it was going to be. As an act of protest, he had the flagpole at a British settlement repeatedly cut down.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In the 1850s, the European settlers in New Zealand established their own government. And in 1853, the first parliament convened in New Zealand. But at that point the Maori were completely excluded from holding seats or from voting. Following a pretty British tradition. Land ownership was a requirement for both of these. And most property ownership among the Maori at that point was communal instead of individual. So it took a while for that to shift so that it was more compatible with the Maori worldview to allow the Maori to participate in the government.

[Holly Frey]

In 1867, Maori men gained the right to vote and the Maori people actually gained four seats. And that was intended to be a temporary move. Today, however, the Maori continue to have seats in Parliament and can choose to vote among the general or the Maori electorate. The number of Maori seats in Parliament varies depending on how many choose to vote in the Maori electorate.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I think right now there are seven based on that number. And there's a lot of debate about whether having specifically Maori seats are whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. There's debate on both sides and I can see both sides of that argument. There are people who feel like maybe the Maori would have more representation if they did not have these pre arranged seats, or people who feel like having These seats at all is racist in some way. Way, like there's a lot of ongoing discussion about that. In 1975, the Waitangi Tribunal was established and this investigates claims by Mai on breaches of the treaty. For the first 10 years of its existence, this tribunal only investigated issues that happened since it was established. However, in 1985, its scope was expanded to include everything that has happened since the treaty was signed in 1840.

[Holly Frey]

And only Maori can make claims. And these are against either the Crown or against legislation. They can be contemporary or historical. There's also a special land court to deal specifically with Maori land.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So today, New Zealand has grown into a parliamentary democracy with three official languages, English, Maori and sign language. The House of Representatives, which is a body of elected officials, makes the laws. It's also simultaneously a constitutional monarchy with the reigning sovereign of Great Britain being the sovereign of New Zealand as well. So as we are recording this, Queen Elizabeth 2 is the queen of the United Kingdom as well as being Queen of New Zealand. So in this whole arrangement, that's a separate thing. New Zealand is not just part of the United Kingdom. The Queen's involvement in the government is also mostly symbolic. She's represented by the Governor General, but a Prime Minister handles the day to day running of the government. I know most of our listeners are from the United States and this sounds like very complicated system of government considering what a lot of our listeners are used to.

[Holly Frey]

Yeah, it's a lot of layers of different branches of government, sort of all theoretically playing nice together.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, yeah. To make it even a little bit more complex, the name New Zealand does not even come from the British, it comes from the Dutch. So when the Dutch cited it, they named it after the Netherlands province of Zeeland, because at that point Australia was called New Holland, which, you know, is another part of Netherlands.

[Holly Frey]

And the treaty itself was actually almost lost or destroyed a number of times over the years, including by fire and by efforts to preserve the document that we're actually damaging. Now these documents are in the Constitution Room at the archives of New Zealand in Wellington.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I like this story because it does represent such a big step forward in relationships between colonial governments and indigenous peoples. But at the same time, like, it's not perfect and there's still colonialism happening in this whole situation. So, like, I'm really of two minds about it. But without this treaty, like, when you look at documents about New Zealand or if you ever visit New Zealand, like, you see it's sort of a multicultural place in a lot of ways at this time. And I don't think that would exist without this treaty having been created and signed.

[Holly Frey]

And this story is also sort of a nice snapshot of how issues of government can become extremely complex. You know, based on one thing like that, one translation led to a great deal of discussion and all of these sort of bizarre layers of government that happened as a consequence.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, so when this, when the Waitangi Tribunal looks at cases where people have filed a grievance against the government or against a law, it's sort of looking at, okay, what was the spirit of the treaty supposed to be in this case? And was the spirit of the treaty followed? I tried to find some data about how many cases the tribunal has heard, and I was not able to find that before we recorded. So if someone knows and you send us, we will probably read it on a future listener mail. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email address is history podcast heartradio.com and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Here's to Turkey Day, the favorite day of the year for many. From cozying up by the fire to watch the parade to gathering in the kitchen to whip up casseroles, it's a time of joy and togetherness. And here's to the Chinette brand for making it all a little easier with the Chinette Classic collection. No need to worry about cleanup. Plus, Chinet Classic plates and bowls are compostable, helping not just to keep the sink clean, but also leaving less of a mess for future generations. So here's to being together. Here's to us. All of us. Find a local [e-mail] do you like podcasts, music and audiobooks? Because when you subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited, you get all three in one app. Imagine listening to your favorite podcasts and music on the go to work, school, the gym, or better yet, vacation. Now imagine being on vacation with your favorite audiobook from Audible and then listening to a new one every month from a huge selection of popular titles. That sounds like a pretty good vacation, right? Audible is now included on Amazon Music Unlimited. Download the Amazon Music app now to start listening terms apply. We've all got a thing, an obsession.

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