The whakapapa of the mana that underpins both He Whakaputanga and te Tiriti starts with the first arrivals to Aotearoa from Hawaiki, including Kupe in Te Puna i Te Ao M\u0101rama, about a thousand years ago (give or take, though my Hokianga relations might disagree with me on this \u2013 kia ahatia).\u00a0<\/p>\n
The oratorical fibres of He Whakaputanga began to form at least 15 years prior to the initial signings at Te Tou Rangatira in 1835. Ng\u0101puhi rangatira H\u014dngi Hika and Waikato visited England in 1820, where they discussed a number of matters with King George, stemming from growing concern at the Bay of Islands\u200a\u200aaround the behaviour of unruly Europeans and traders. Rangatira of the north wanted to regain control over the Bay and be able to punish the transgressions of foreigners, so they presented a list of demands to the king reflecting a desire for some certainty of control over the European intrusion.<\/p>\n
Ng\u0101puhi chiefs gathering to choose the United Tribes flag. Many would go on to sign He Whakaputanga. (Image: Shaw Savill, Alexander Turnbull Library)<\/p>\n
The next decade saw a number of w\u0101nanga in Te Tai Tokerau, including the first meeting of Te Whakaminenga \u2013 the confederation that would eventually create He Whakaputanga \u2013 at Te Ngaere, around 30 kilometres north of Waitangi.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 1831, 13 Ng\u0101puhi rangatira signed a letter of petition written by young academic prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Eruera Pare, repeating the concerns raised in person to King George, who had failed to meet the demands made by H\u014dngi. Three years later, a national flag known as Te Kara<\/a> was selected to resolve trade access issues, and the following year He Whakaputanga was born.<\/p>\n This whakapapa is important as it disproves the theory promoted by some that He Whakaputanga was a pet project of James Busby, who only came into the picture three years before the signing. He Whakaputanga was an action carefully discussed and taken through the agency of rangatira who were acutely aware of the need to protect their mana from a changing world. This document did not create their mana, but found ways to describe it in a language and format the foreign mind could understand, and not deny. The US, France and Britain all recognised He Whakaputanga<\/a> by the turn of the following decade.\u00a0<\/p>\n Importantly, He Whakaputanga was not an agreement between multiple parties. It was one party, Te Whakaminenga, making a declaration that all \u201ck\u012bngitanga\u201d (a modern political extension of mana) in respect of hap\u016b territories resided with them. They also agreed to meet annually at Waitangi to exercise their exclusive right to frame ture or laws for the purposes of justice, peace, good order and trade.\u00a0<\/p>\n To think the same collective of hap\u016b would give away the rights they declared to the world only five years later is unfathomable. The fact the hap\u016b of the north never ceded sovereignty is not a joking matter \u2013 it is a generational legacy that defines a purpose as kaipupuru, or protectors of that truth.<\/p>\n Heoi an\u014d, He Whakaputanga should be open to all rohe to use as evidence of undying rangatiratanga. All hap\u016b, no matter their rohe, possessed (and still possess) the prerogative to declare their mana to the world. However, many rohe did not feel the same settler pressures as those in Te Tai Tokerau, hence why the north was the first to do so.\u00a0<\/p>\n He Whakaputanga set the stage for te Tiriti, which extended the declaration by giving rights of self-government to settler peoples in Aotearoa, while maintaining rangatiratanga of hap\u016b across Aotearoa. Signatures to te Tiriti can also be found in He Whakaputanga.\u00a0<\/p>\n Embracing the declaration together can only galvanise our intent in pursuing change for Aotearoa, based on the reality that our mana and reciprocal duties as tangata whenua have never wavered. He Whakaputanga provides a roadmap for such change: a return to the hap\u016b-centric system its words were designed to protect. The document was built to sustain and guarantee the rights and responsibilities traditional communities had possessed and practised for generations.<\/p>\n Born out of imperialism and capitalism, the centralisation agenda of the British Colonial Office has forced us to forget the power of \u2013 and need to return to \u2013 community. The current model that anchors everything in Wellington offices does not work for tangata whenua.<\/p>\n He Whakaputanga was the first pou in the ground making our presence known to the globe. Te Tiriti was the second pou to its side, which then created a waharoa \u2013 a doorway welcoming all cultures and people to these lands on the basis of mutual benefit, and the condition of respecting the mana of tangata whenua. Two centuries later, both pou must be seen as working together, and we must restore their vision of what Aotearoa was meant to look like.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Signed 190 years ago today, He Whakaputanga still defines the M\u0101ori struggle for mana and self-determination. The very…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[26380,76212,76213,111,43,139,76214,69,76215,2114,76216],"class_list":{"0":"post-105308","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-atea","9":"tag-eru-kapa-kingi","10":"tag-he-whakaputanga-o-te-rangatiratanga-o-nu-tireni","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-ngapuhi","15":"tag-nz","16":"tag-nz-sovereignty","17":"tag-opinion","18":"tag-te-tiriti-o-waitangi"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}