The woman who would not sign

Embedded content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sbic6nNS07g

"The person who had the authority in our hapu to sign, the ariki with the mana, the mandate, if you like, to sign, was a women called Hine Aka Tioke, and so she said or someone said on her behalf this is who will sign for us."

Speakers

Moana Jackson

Transcript

Moana Jackson: So those hapu that had agreed to sign assembled on the banks of the Tukituki River between what is now Napier and Hastings and waited for the Crown officials and after the formalities were over our people were asked who's going to sign.

Moana Jackson: The person who had the authority in our hapu to sign, the ariki with the mana, the mandate, if you like, to sign, was a women called Hine Aka Tioke, and so she said or someone said on her behalf this is who will sign for us.

Moana Jackson: and we don't have an actual written record of what the Crown response was but the story that's come down to us is that that caused some consternation amongst some of the Crown officials because women under western law at that time could not sign treaties. They could not sign contracts, they could not make a will, they had no political constitutional power

Moana Jackson: and so our people were then confronted with a dilemma, do we do what our independent authority demanded, that the person who had the mana to sign would sign, or do we do what this new Crown entity wanted and scramble round and find a man

Moana Jackson: and to my everlasting pride, our hapu said if she can't sign we'll go home and so they walked home and our little hapu never signed The Treaty of Waitangi.

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