E oho! Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the church

Speakers

Jay Ruka, Tanja Schubert-McArthur

Mihi

Jay Ruka: Ka mahara ki te kaha runga rawa ki te karakia a te tokotoru tapu, ki te whakapono ki te tokotorutanga.

Ki te wā kino o te kotahitanga o te kaihanga o ngā mea katoa.

Nāu te mana, nāu te mauri, e te matua kore, e te tama i rorokutia, e te wairua tapu.
Nō reira, tēnā e te tokotoru tapu, tēnei te mihi.

Mihi atu ki te pō ki a rātou mā kua wehe atu ki te pō.
E maumahara i tēnei rā i tōku matua tipuna a Hohepa Kōpiri.
Nō reira e te whanaunga, tēnei te mihi i te pō nei.

Huri atu ki te pō, huri mai ki te ao,
e hoa mā, tēnei te mihi ki a koutou,
kua tae mai ki te rongo ki a au i tēnei ahiahi nei.

Ko wai au, he uri nō Taranaki maunga.
Ko Te Āti Awa tōku iwi, ko Puketapu, ko Ngāti Te Whiti ōku hapū, ko Mururaupatu me Ōwae ōku marae.

Ko Jay Ruka tōku ingoa, nō reira tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

Introduction

Jay Ruka: Kia ora everybody. My name is Jay. I also happen to be the Dean of Taranaki Cathedral, which is a job I wasn't looking for myself to get. But anyway, I've ended up in that neck of the woods and I’ve found myself coming and speaking to you today.

A couple of things I want to make to my friend, Hami Carpenter. Some of the key things I want to share today, his thinking and his writings for the Waitangi Tribunal, have really shaped my thinking. So I just want to mihi to him today before I speak.

And also want to mihi to Ned Fletcher, who spoke last month at E Oho, because he's the academic that really has done the study behind what I'm going to say to back it up.

Sure, I have written a book. I call it the cartoon, the comic strip version of New Zealand church history. I am not an historian. I am a human being who has grown up on Aotearoa, who is also a pastor's kid and has found myself working in church spaces, and trying to understand my story and the story of the social organisations that have been a part of my whole life, and trying to understand what does all that mean.

So that's the book, Huia You Come Home, is what I've put all that into that book. And it's really unpacking the metaphor of a huia bird, which is an indigenous here and has become extinct, and a chicken, which guess what, it's not from here. In other words, a bird that's been imported into the whenua. So the book really unpacks that metaphor as well.

But what I want to do today is, in starting, I want to race through some of the story of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. And in doing that, the first half, I'm just racing through some context because I can't really talk about what I want to talk about without touching on some of the context at first.

So I assume because you've come here, most of you will know some of this. What I found in my life is most, let's just say public sectors, have had treaty training for a good 25 to 30 years now. Yet how many of us can go home and have a story about the Treaty of Waitangi around the dinner table? And most people can't because they're scared.

And so what I found is that the reason we're scared is because there's a whole bunch of facts and information that come our way, but we've lost the story. What's the actual story of this thing, and why has it come out?

So I'm going to very quickly tell a story. Of course it's not the story. You can find that story in a couple of books downstairs in the bookshop. But I want to tell a story, particularly from some things highlighted from my understanding of the haāi's involvement in that journey.

So you OK? Everyone all good? Hold fire if you get offended, kei te paiMĀORI. If you think it's a whole bunch of BS, kei te paiMĀORI. Just hold your questions, and hit me up later. And we can talk about that in the Q&A.

Context of Te Tiriti

So when we come to talking about the treaties, first thing I want to remind us about is that our tūpunafrom Ngāpuhi, Waikato, and Hone Heke, ah Hongi Hika went over in the 1920s, and of course, met the king at the time over there.

At the time of his arrival, who would become Queen Victoria was about a year old. She was alive. She would have been around the royal palace when our tupuna went over there.

So in 1940, when Queen Vic of course, was the head of state, who signed the treaty on her behalf, she was a 21-year-old girl at the time of the signing of the treaty. But what's more important is that our tūpuna who began to sign it up there at Waitangi, had a personal connection with the family.

So I wasn't actually talking about someone who they didn't really, really know. There had been a 20-year connection, particularly with Ngāpuhi, to the royal family and to the Crown over there in England at the time. So the treaty had a personal touch and account to it.

Articles of the Treaty

Again, let me just run quickly through the articles. Article one, has to do with sovereignty, kāwanatanga, who gets to sign the flag. What's the name of this flag? The laser kiwi, that's right. Someone submitted this for the official New Zealand flag.

Article two, chieftainship Rangatiratanga and Trade Me. So article two, our chiefs have the right over our own whenua and over our taonga and that sort of thing. However, if we want to sell any of that stuff we've got to put it up on Trade Me first. And the Crown gets to put in it first.

Article three, citizenship. So we get the right to have a British/New Zealand passport. In 2023 we go, well, what do you do? That doesn't really mean much now for us. But at the time and all that, what do we-- let's just call it. Let's be PC. All the treaty making prior to this had never been offered to any indigenous people at the time on entering into relationship with people.

And of course, there is the unwritten fourth article, which is the right to religion.

Māori mea ana te kāwana ko ngā whakapono katoa o Ingarangi, o ngā Weteriana, Roma, me te ritanga Māori hoki e tiakina ngatahitia e ia.

So what's his name? Pompallier, right? Leans over the table, says, hey, yo, Henry, bro. How about you write this down and say, here's a chat with Hobson. And they go, well, OK. So they scribbled it out on a piece of paper. And of course, the chiefs agree to it.

So essentially, the right to religion is protected under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Kororāreka — The hell-hole of the South Pacific

So let me, what I want to do is race through a quick context. Has anyone been to Kororāreka? Yeah?

Has anyone been to Russell? Same place. Yep. Sweet. Just double-checking. So here's a lovely, lovely-- look, it's a beautiful summer's day. Look at this lovely Māori. And then the park is going for a walk in the trees, that sort of thing.

So have you also heard of a fella called George-- no, not George. Charles Darwin? Darwin comes out here in the early, ah mid-1800s, 1830s. And he calls Kororāreka the hellhole of the South Pacific because of all the drunken debauchery that's going on, right?

So Kororāreka had the word on the global street. Oh man, if you ever get down to South Pacific, rock on down to this place called Kororāreka for a good time, right? Because all of these sailors, there had been contact. Before the treaty was signed, there'd been 70 years of international contact. So the forces of globalisation were well and truly beginning in our neck of the woods.

And all of these-- they estimate something like 1,000 ships were coming here every year. So what, 25, 30 mostly men on a ship for months at sea, coming down to the bottom of the world. When they get here, what do they want to do, right? They want to go to church.

[LAUGHTER]

Right? No, they want to get it on like it's Donkey Kong. They have a party. So one of the things that brought about, at least from a Pākehā understanding strongly-- the need of the treaty was because of all the raruraru, all the rascal, mischievous behaviour that was going on at Kororāreka at the time.

Edward Gibbon Wakefield

The second reason I want to say about why Pākehā thought the treaty was a good idea was because of Edward Gibbon Wakefield.

You can see down there, he had inscribed the founder of New Zealand. Apologies if this is your whanaunga. Kei te pai, not your fault. But I just want to presuppose that before maybe some of the negative things I say about the bro. But just to speed things up, he ran away with a politician's 16-year-old daughter. Anyway, he got caught up, thrown in prison.

When he was in prison, he studied economics. He asked the question, man, how can I make a whole bunch of cash? I know. We're the British Empire. There's all these colonies. Let's go and try and buy land for really, really cheap and sell it to the poor people in Bristol and Manchester and London. So when the talk of potentially annexing New Zealand came about, he was like, oh man, we can't wait for this. So we need to just get stuck in.

And of course, they advertised for the sale of land in New Zealand in newspapers in England before they even owned any land. And of course, many of our ancestors on our Pākehā side came out on false pretension, you know that they would be landowners down here, whereas the New Zealand Company didn't have any land. So from a English conscience and moral perspective, one of the things that necessitated the treaty from an English perspective was because of what the New Zealand Company was beginning to do. And there was a need to try and halt what they were trying to do.

Humanitarian movement

Third reason I want to talk about is what historians call the humanitarians. There had been some lessons learned about what Britain had done in West Africa. And when it came to New Zealand, a conscience had grown mainly because of the work of this very, very short fella. His name was John Wesley. A moral and social revival had swept through England in the 1700s.

From the work of John Wesley and the awakening of his moral conscience in England, we see the abolition of slavery emerge. We see the emancipation of industrial workers, humanising of the prison system, London City Mission, Barnardo's orphanages begin, polytechs began-- the Boy Scouts, the RSPCA began as an outflow of the influence of the preaching of John Wesley across the nation of England. John Wesley on his deathbed writes a letter to a guy called William Wilberforce, telling William Wilberforce, William, in all of your power, you've got to end this thing called slavery, right?

Wilberforce writes it is the true duty of every man to promote the happiness of his fellow creatures to the utmost of his power. Here's a guy called Sir James Stephen who was the nephew of William Wilberforce-- grew up at the feet of William Wilberforce and William Pitt and was a part of these groups, this group of humanitarians. So James Stephens became the head in the colonial office in the late 1830s and had a massive influence.

Sir James Stephen is the one who wrote Lord Normanby's Instructions. So history calls them Lord Normanby's instructions that were given to Captain Hobson. But they were actually written by Sir James Stephen, William Wilberforce's nephew. And of course, Sir James Stephens instructs Hobson, by going, "I have already stated that we acknowledge New Zealand as a sovereign and independent state." This is important-- in 1839.

The Queen, in common with her Majesty's predecessor, disclaims for herself and her subjects every pretension to seize on the islands of New Zealand or to govern them as part of the dominions of Great Britain unless the free, intelligent consent of the natives expressed according to their established usages shall first be obtained. They must not be permitted to enter into any contracts in which they might be the ignorant or unintentional authors of injuries to themselves. So these were the instructions given to Hobson. And again, this had not happened at all in all the history of England's treaty-making.

How many treaties are there in the United States? There's over 700, right? How many Americans grow up knowing about any of those treaties? Hardly any. How many treaties in New Zealand? One, but two versions, right? Every New Zealander grows up knowing something about it, even if it's just a holiday. But the reason for that holiday is because at the origins and the source of it, there is actually a conscience, not like the charlatan treaties that European countries had done prior.

Why did rangatira sign Te Tiriti?

Now, a couple of things I want to mention about from a Māori perspective, why did our tupuna want to enter-- why did over 500 of our rangatira want to enter into signing this thing? Well, I've mentioned the first one, the hellhole of the South Pacific. Essentially, in the Bay of Islands, the chiefs, our rangatira were like, well, man, they're not our people. Man, if the Queen can come and sort their people, then please, get, let's sort something out-- for these guys to be sorted-- roughly about 200,000 Māori in 1840, roughly about 2,500 Europeans.

So it wasn't this-- whoa, there's this massive influx coming. And we need someone to come and rule us or govern us. That wasn't what was going on. A massive priority from a Māori perspective was the treaty was a trade agreement. How do we secure our Pākehā, which is what our leaders would refer to them-- our Pākehā to establish their rights of trade in our places because our people love iPhones, and flat screen TVs, and falcon xr8s.

In other words, all this new technology that was coming, our people were into it. So if the treaty could secure these pathways of trade with all this new technology, then kei te pai.

He Whakaputanga 1835

And, of course, what England had already recognised, the biggest reason we felt coupled into this trade was because of He Whakaputanga in 1835. We had acknowledged our independent statehood to all the nations of the Earth.

It had been read out in British Parliament. It also been read out in Congress in the United States of America, that Whakaputanga had been acknowledged over there. So it wasn't, oh yes, Queen, come and help us. No, it was Rangatira to rangatira. It was nation to nation. It was a partnership. Are you with me? You OK?

Karuwhā – Henry Williams

I just want to mention, where I want to lead today is I want to talk about Karuwhā, or Henry Williams. Karuwhā means four eyes, pre Billy T James. Do you know Tamihana Te Rauparaha and Matene Te Whiwhi, right? Ngāti Toa rangatira, Te Rauparaha’s son. They had gone up to the Bay of Islands to meet Karuwhā because they wanted a missionary to come down here to Waikanae and ~Otaki.

So he goes up and meets Karu-wha and says, hey, bro, got a missionary, right? And Henry's like, no. Octavius Hadfield had just been in the country about three weeks, I believe. And he goes to Henry, hey, look, I'm a severe asthmatic.I've just got here. I'm about to die. So why don't I go down? And Henry goes, OK. So Henry, Matene, and Tamihana Te Rauparaha, and Octavius, they sail down to Wellington. They get down into Whanganui-a-Tara.

And they see these ships there. And they're like, oh, who are you fellas? And they're like, hi, we're the New Zealand Company. We've just bought Wellington.

Henry's like, well, korero Māori koutou? Do you understand all of these ways and all these things that are going on? Henry's not a happy camper. He sales out of the harbours. He's coming around. He ends up blown off course over to the top of Collingwood.

And he sees the New Zealand Company over there as well. And he's like, who are you fellas? They're like, we're the New Zealand Company. And the New Zealand Company had bought what they understood to be a line from Golden Bay all the way through to Kaikoura.

Henry's fuming. He eventually comes back to Ōtaki. And he meets with Te Rauparaha there,and he wānangas there . And then Henry walks home.

He makes his way up to Tauranga. It takes him two months. Gets it in, then sails back up to the Bay of Islands, up to Pēwhairangi. And he gets home a few weeks before Hobson comes over with the treaty, of which we know Henry and his son Edward stay up all night of February th. And they translate the treaty. And then they discuss it on the 5th. And in the morning of the 6th of February, 1840, they come to sign.

Hone Heke

In the morning, Hone Heke-- what's Hone Heke famous for? The only thing I remember about the treaty in my schooling was Hone Heke cut down the flagpole. Nobody told me because it was on his land, you know? But on the morning of the 6th, he turns to Henry. He says, it's not for us. It's for you, our fathers, your missionaries. It's for you to say to decide what it shall be. A few days later, they're up in Kaitaia.

One of the chiefs up there, Martona Wera. "If your thoughts are as our thoughts towards Christ, let us be one. We believe your intentions around Te Tiriti to be good." All nine of those treaty sheets downstairs were taken around by missionaries, except for one, for Fedarb in Whakatane. He had become the owner of the general store, but he was an ex-missionary. But essentially, those Christian people were the ones who built the relationship.

Most of the church doesn't know that, that the reason why our people, tea o Māori, signed it was because they had a working relationship with missionaries. And they understood their intentions to be good, all right?

Radical changes

So just to save time, we know what the treaty says, right? Our chiefs get to retain our whenua, our taonga, our forests, our fisheries and that sort of thing.

You've seen these maps-- 1860, after that agreement-- 1890, 50 years down to 100 years later. In 1860, the entire South Island was lost. And of course, here, as He Tohu shows us only 4.8% of our land is in the ownership of our people right now, after an agreement was made in 1840, where we can retain it as we like. Now, I don't obviously go into the story on how that land was lost.

Kāwanatanga vs tino rangatiratanga

But what I want to talk about today now, I want to get into some stuff, talking about kāwanatanga and tino rangatiratanga. Have you seen this poster [The Treaty is a Fraud]? This was the sentiment in the '70s and '80s for our people because of the feeling of being ripped off around that story, you know? But the first one to call the treaty a fraud was Captain William Wakefield. "This pretend treaty, a fraud on the ignorant Natives and a sham towards more intelligent people."

Why did he call the treaty sham and a fraud? Because it stopped him from buying land. The first one to call the treaty a fraud was Wakefield. You've been at the Basin Reserve? You've been to his rotunda?

And his rotunda, this is to honour William Wakefield and where he used to live. And guess where he used to live? Parliament House is built on his old house-- interesting name. The man who called the treaty a fraud, Parliament is built on his whare. Do with it what you like.

OK, what I want to talk about is the notion of the two versions of te Tiriti. And first, to do that is to understand, of course, a bit of a glossary here. So mana, our prestige, our authority, control, power, influence, status-- a supernatural force in a place, in a person, in an object. Kāwanatanga is government, governance, governorship, authority, rule, province. And of course, tino rangatiratanga, which is self-determination, sovereignty, domination, rule, control, power, et cetera, et cetera.

Now, what is important to note here around the word kāwanatanga and tino rangatiratanga-- in 1840, where had Māori used or seen those words before? The Bible. The only place that those words were used from a Māori mind and a Māori imagination prior to 1814 was in the capacity of our people to gain the technology and the skill of reading. And what they read was the Te Paipera Tapu, mostly. So the kāwanatanga was the word used to describe who Pontius Pilate was.

And the term tino rangatiratanga came from Te rangatiratanga o te Atua, the Kingdom of God. So when our leaders and our rangatira were reading Te Tiriti o Waitangi, they were also reading the language of the Bible. And they understood that, which is why our rangatira considered Te Tiriti o Waitangi to be a sacred covenant, to be a sacred document because it was wrapped up in the language of the Te Paipera Tapu. Maarama? Okay.

Ruth Ross

Now, I want to talk to you about an amazing lady, Ruth Ross, who 51 years ago stood up here at Victoria University and presented her paper, Texts and Translations. And her interpretation of what has become known as the two versions of the treaty still stands. What she put forward on that day in 1972 was a, oh my goodness, this is amazing! Now, what also happened in 1970s? What also began for us as Māori?

Land March, Ngā Tamatoa, Ōrakei, Raglan Golf Course, the year of the Māori Renaissance-- it's this-- movement blows up amongst our people, which we are picking the fruit of today. There also became an understanding of the treaty as, hang on, was this full of something that was a trickster? Ross, in her paper, she did two things. She said this. She says, look, doesn't matter what the Treaty of Waitangi says.

It could have said, hey, you get the right to have as much KFC as you like. It doesn't matter because it wasn't signed. What is the real treaty is the one that was signed. And the real treaty is Te Tiriti o Waitangi. And in 1972, she was the first one to say that. And everyone was like, chu yeah, that's right, tika.. And then she did this. And then she goes, hang on, check this out.

And He Whakaputanga, in the Declaration of Independence, which Henry Williams translated from English into Māori, to translate the idea of sovereign, he used the word "mana." So here it was. Ko te Kingitanga o te mana i te wenua o te wakaminenga o Nu Tireni. Here is our chief, standing up and giving-- we hold the mana over these islands of New Zealand. Five years later, when it came to translating the treaty, Henry Williams took the idea of sovereignty.

And he used the term, kāwanatanga. And in 1972, Ruth Ross goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on a sec here, bro. Mana and kāwanatanga are not the same things. They are two completely different concepts. If Henry had been faithful and if Henry had been a legitimate translator, he would have used the same concept of mana, that we are giving the Queen the mana. And every Māori knows there's no way we're going to give the Queen our mana.

How can we give the mana that's been handed to us from our tūpuna? It's not going to happen. It's not going to work. So Henry tricked our people and just used the softer term, kāwanatanga to convince our people to sign it. Now, like I said, in 1972, Māori Renaissance has taken off. It just felt good to blame someone! All of a sudden, it was like, oh, those pesky missionaries. Oh, look at them. It's their fault. They tricked us.

Now, just to take a step sideways, in many aspects, many did – let us be honest. But in the aspects of the treaty, I don't think so. This is what Ross writes. "The language of the Treaty of Waitangi is not indigenous Māori. It is missionary Māori, specifically, Protestant missionary Māori.”

“It was not the New Zealanders who call this unknown thing kāwanatanga. It was the Protestant missionaries.”

“It is difficult to conclude that the omission of mana from the text of the Treaty of Waitangi was no accidental oversight."

“It is not this woolly-mindedness, the real crux of the Waitangi problem.“

And this has been the stock standard that you've been taught in universities ever since, that there are two versions. And the interpretation is wrong. Rachael Bell writes, "Ross characteristically perhaps was skeptical of the universal beneficence of early missionaries. Ross found that Williams's attitude towards Māori to have been at best, paternalistic, and at worst, condescending. She maintained that as a document, it was based on the element of the seat."

No one would question that most of the early missionaries, Protestant and Catholic, were sincere in doing their best for the New Zealanders, often under very tiring conditions. But what we must recognise is that their best was not always very good. Their actions were not always wise. Their teaching was not always in the best interest of those they taught. This is what she presented about Henry Williams in 1972.

And it's been bought hook, line, and sinker. People believe, and it is taught, that Henry Williams intentionally mistranslated Te Tiriti o Waitangi, or he was not a very good translator. And they should have had someone else doing it. And he got it wrong-- out of the point of deceit.

Seeing Henry Williams in a different light

Now, if Henry Williams was a-- if he was a deceptive human being, then surely, there would be a trace and a track and a trail of deception in the many, many, many decades he lived in New Zealand.

Why would Ngāti Rāiri at Te Tii marae at Waitangi right now, -- why would they carve a deceit in their pou tū ā Rongo, in their meeting house? Why would they carve Karuwhā at the base of their pou tū ā Rongo? If Henry was a deceitful man, it would have come out in other ways. This is what Henry says. He says the Treaty of Waitangi-- let me just say this.

Ross took words on paper, made an interpretation about those words on paper, and maligned the character of a human being, by interpreting words on paper. Now, preachers do this every Sunday. Some do, sorry-- not any of you preachers in here, if there are any here. But like I say, if that was true, that would come out in other contexts. But this is Henry's understanding of what he was doing.

"The Treaty of Waitangi having been declared as the origin of all the existing mischief by which the chiefs had given up their rank, rights, and privileges as chiefs with their lands and their positions. To meet this growing evil, I had 400 copies of the Waitangi Treaty struck off and distributed, and for many days was engaged in explaining the same, showing the chiefs that this treaty was indeed their Magna Carta, whereby their lands, their rights, their privileges were secured to them."

There is no warehouse stationery to go and print off 400 versions of the treaty in the 1840s. This is what he did in 1844. He wrote this down in 1847. He called the treaty their Magna Carta. In other words, it was for Māori.

Magna Carta

In other words, their time, where, in 1215 AD, the nobles and the barons-- now, I know there's also a lot of stories around this stuff. But they said to King John, you know what, King John? Screw you, bro.

Enough is enough. We don't need you taking our sons for all of these wars and all of these crusades. And we don't need you taxing us for all of these things. Guess what, man? King John, you're going to come down here. And we're going to start this parliamentary process and this sort of thing. In other words, the treaty from Henry William's understanding was their Magna Carta.

My friend Sam [Carpenter], he writes this. "It is quite clear from this that Magna Carta for Henry Williams stood for the protection of two distinct types of rights. The first was the rights of property. The second was their rank of the rangatira and the associated privileges." In other words, the treaty wasn't inviting the Queen to go, Queen, you come in here like this. Now, Queen, you come here like this. Us Rangatira remain here like this.

And we're going to create a society and a rulership for this place together. In other words, it was this idea of partnership, just as right now, right? Parliament rules with the governor-general as the Queen's representative, right? This two systems in operation, that relate to one another. That's how the thing works. This is how Henry understood the treaty and the understanding of what kāwanatanga, of that type of sovereignty, meant.

Now, just to quote from the auspicious Ned Fletcher from the last E Oho. "In the colonial office, James Stephen did not treat plurality in government and law inconsistent with British sovereignty in New Zealand. That's clear from the instructions that he drew up for Normandy and Russell." Ned Fletcher's work unpacks the notions and all the layers of British sovereignty and how that worked in an empire.

But if Henry meant no, chiefs remain with their tino rangatiratanga over their whenua. And the Queen is coming to establish our law for all with certain jurisdictions. Where did it go wrong?

Governor George Grey

Now I really don't like this man.

Aroha mai. I'm sure we'll have a cup of tea one day. So I say I don't like the work of George Grey. Once again, if you related to George Grey, not your fault.

But it is your family story. When George Grey shows up in 1845, he asked this question. Who are Māori listening to? Who has the ear of the Māori people? And of course, everyone said, Karuwhā, Henry Williams. Grey was sent here to exercise a false sense of British sovereignty over the islands of New Zealand.

So when he gets here, he asked that question. And everyone said, Henry Williams. So his number one strategy to try and bring a full and final British version of sovereignty into the islands of New Zealand-- his number one strategy was to destroy the reputation of Henry Williams. The first thing he set out to do is that the battles at Ruapekapeka broke out.

Grey was determined to have full authority. And to get this, he saw that a break with the missionary body was essential. He accused Henry Williams of treason due to letters written to Kāwiti at Ruapekapeka. So Grey had intercepted a letter from Henry Williams to Kāwiti and to Hone Heke. And in that letter, Henry was saying, guys, is there any ways to peacefully resolve this conflict?

Grey got a hold of that letter. And he told a lie. He said that the letter is actually Henry Williams working in partnership with Kāwiti and Hone Heke. He reports that, at Ruapekapeka, it was Church Missionary Society (CMS) and Māori involved in the land wars. He accuses Henry Williams and the CMS of large pretend purchases of land. Now, I think it was 1833, Henry had bought 11,000 acres of land.

Ngāpuhi sold him 11,000 acres. And you go, man, why? He had 11 kids. And he wanted the future of his children to be in Aotearoa. So what was the future for them, it was to work the land and to be farmers.

So Ngāpuhi happily sold him 11,000 acres. In 1837, a rule was made that only 2,000-- I think it's 2,645 or something, acres could be owned. So what happens is Grey shows up. And he says, Henry Williams, you own 11,000 acres. You're only allowed to own 2,600.

Who are you to tell us that we can't do this? You're a liar and a deceiver. You're a trickster. And this is what Henry Williams did. He says this. "In the Blood and Treasures dispatches, he made a complaint of 24 land claims, eight of which involved the CMS. And Grey writes, I feel myself satisfied that these claims are not based upon substantial justice to the Aborigines or to the large majority of British settlers in this country. And guess what? Grey had this Blood and Treasures dispatch is published in all the newspapers in England.

So the CMS wakes up in London one day. And all of a sudden, there's this news about their leader down there in New Zealand, Henry Williams. And because of that, the CMS fire Henry Williams. Henry Williams gets fired. Henry's great, great, great, great, great granddaughter said that the last words on his deathbed were, how cruel, how cruel, at the way the Crown ended up treating our people and about the way that they'd gone about it and going and doing it.

For 51 years, it has been told that Henry intentionally mistranslated the treaty. He did not. He said that what the Crown gets is kāwanatanga, not the right to own, the right to establish a law of justice for everyone. Have you heard of the ACT party's one-law campaign? There's only one law.

Have you heard the first people to say the one law campaign was? Wiremu Tamahana from Ngāti Haua . And he was criticising the Crown-- said, there is one law in this country that is for all. Why do you make a different law for Pākehā and you mistreat our people? Henry Williams knew that what the treaty was designed to do was to stop British coming in here and buying and controlling this land.

But what the treaty was supposed to do was to allow and remain the tino rangatiratanga of the chiefs of Aotearoa to remain as so, working in partnership with the British Crown to establish a righteous law for all, including those of the Crown's people that were coming over here from Europe. What does this mean for us? Like I said at the start, most of the church that I'm a part of don't know the story of the treaty. If they did, there would be more signs like this outside church's as the one that I put up a few weeks ago in [This is your friendly reminder that Waitangi Day is all day everyday].[laughter]

The role of churches in Aotearoa

If churches were truly doing the work that they were called and supposed to be doing and sent here to Aotearoa to do, then they would be and they should be the biggest supporters of tino rangatiratanga, outside of iwi and hapū. Why is that? Because the whakapapa or the whakapapa, or the genealogical connections of the story of Te Tiriti connects to the story of the Christian story. There is an innate connection to that sucker.

And it's very, very clear when you get into the history and when you get into the story-- no, Crown, you get kāwanatanga. Rangatira-- your rangatiratanga remains, as was-- as it was mai rā anō. But unfortunately, this is not the case. But in the coming century, it will be the case -- because history's arc is what, bends toward justice.

To be able to stand in a place where you are proclaiming or saying a message that is supposed to carry a weight of justice, that which is pure and true and right, then you cannot bypass the story. And for generations, the church has bypassed it, even though it's their own story-- in partnership with Rangatira Māori. Ned Fletcher has written a very scary book. People will go, whoa, that thing's thick.

He has done an incredible service to the present and future of Aotearoa by helping us to understand that sovereignty from a European whakaaro is layered-- and his notions of shared leadership. It has been practiced in British history. Therefore, what the treaty actually offers us, is a phenomenal way forward.

The huia and the chicken

Now, I'll just close with this story. In 2008, my wife and I ran a hui on Aotea, Great Barrier Island . We thought we'd run a summer gathering, learning about church history in the morning and then going surfing in the afternoon, woohoo. I didn't grow up knowing anything about church history. I didn't know anything at all. In January 2008, I had some amazing rangatira become really good friends-- unpack some of the history that I knew.

And I grew up in church circles thinking Rātana was a cult. That's what I was taught, I did not know about Tohu and Te Whiti, even though I whakapapa to Te Atiawa. I didn't know any of my own story back in 2008.

And I heard those stories for the first time. And I was like, what? Whaaaat? Why has no one ever told me this history? And I was both elated and angry at the same time, you know? It depends on how you thought about it that day.

Over that same week, as we're learning this history, my wife has a dream. She was pregnant with our second child. And it was an afternoon nap. And she goes, oh man-- I was out surfing. She goes, Jay, I just had this dream. And in this dream, I saw a chicken. It was three stories tall. And the chicken was so big in her dream. And she laughed. She went, oh my god, it was a big chicken. And then she heard the word "Huia" and woke up.

And now, Erin is from the United States. And she goes, what's huia? She didn't know what huia was. And I go, oh, it's a bird. It's indigenous to Aotearoa New Zealand, but it's now extinct. Anyway, this metaphor has become the direction of our lives. A chicken should not be three stories tall. It shouldn't be that large.

The chicken represents for us Western ways of being, Western ways of thinking, Western ways of educating, Western ways of governing, Western ways of treating land as an asset. But the chicken should not be three stories tall. The huia, a manu, a bird that is unique and specific to this landscape only-- in all of creation, creator only put the huia on this whenua. We've now lost it.

And we've lost it because we cut down its home. And we wanted its feather for a fashion statement. It took six years to hunt the huia to extinction because Europeans wanted to wear the feathers as a brooch, right? But from this, we coined this phrase, Huia Come Home. In other words, our nation is growing up into an area where it is an absolute imperative that we no longer discard the indigenous way of thinking or being.

It's no longer where we box-tick the Māori way of partnering, as has been happening for 25 or 30 years. It's an absolute imperative and a necessity for the future of Aotearoa that we embrace in a meaningful way indigenous Aotearoa by relating and learning to the rangatiratanga of our people. Now, if you're not Māori, that doesn't mean you're supposed to be Māori.

What that means is that we're supposed to learn from the Māori way of being, from a whakaaro Māori, from a Māori way of understanding. This is what it means for the huia to come home, for the ao wairua for the huia to come back from ngā toi i te rangi to fly back home again and rest on all of our shoulders-- that there is a calling for all New Zealanders to understand the Māori way of being and the Māori way of thinking because guess what? The future healing of the world depends on it. Nō reira e te iwi, ka nui te mihi i au ki a koutou, ngā mihi mō tō whakarongo ki au me tō tātou whakarongo ki au i te ahi ahi nei. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. Kia ora.

Questions

Tanja Schubert-McArthur: Well, first of all, I'd like to thank you, Jay, for taking us on a roller coaster of a presentation. And it's quite refreshing to hear your perspective of Te Tiriti, which was more humorous and tongue-in-cheek than we usually do at E Oho! I loved some of your visuals as well. But yeah, I really enjoyed your talk.

Missionaries had role of midwives for Te Tiriti?

Tanja Schubert-McArthur: Thank you very much. And I'll kick it off with one question about the missionary's role, which has sometimes been linked to the role of a midwife in creating Te Tiriti o Waitangi and being those mediaries between Māori, rangatira, and the British Crown. So would you agree with that?

Jay Ruka: Yeah, so when we hear language, we make interpretations. So I mean, I'll just throw out the words, missionary, Christianity, Christian, church. And they either-- you have interpretations that could be positive or could be alarm bells. But if I can narrow those things down to the teachings of Ihu Karaiti, the teachings of Christ, then the challenge is, how are those people or how are those institutions being faithful to the actual teachings of Ihu Karaiti as opposed to the cultural presuppositions that they are interpreting his teachings in?

And I think that's been a massive problem for what we might understand missionaries to be. I think what has happened is missionaries haven't just preached-- or Christians, or church leaders, or whatever it is, they don't just preach their teachings of Christ. They preach their world views of the West or whatever it is they come from. So what is happening in today right now is that those world views have been pulled apart.

And the Christians-- I think everyone, whether you're a Christian or an atheist, it doesn't really matter-- but whatever you are, you've got to critique your own worldview. And that's the sort of thing that-- I think that's the era that we're in now. So you can't just say you're preaching a message. But I do my best to follow the teachings of Christ. I screw up here and there.

So what that means for me is that I -- is it unfortunate? But I have to acknowledge -- of the mamae -- I was going to say of my missionary, you know? I can't just say I detached myself from that. No, I've actually got to subsume that into myself and flip it over. And actually, it just means that I've got to say sorry a lot. Yeah, so that's the thing that I have to do there. That's an answer to that question. I don't know if that helps.

Tanja Schubert-McArthur: Thank you. We'll also encourage you to come up with your own questions. We do have a mic. So please wait for the mic to come to your before you speak so other people online can hear it. And if you're watching online and you have a question, please put it in the Q&A so I can read it out.

Ministry training in theological colleges?

Tanja Schubert-McArthur: And we have actually one question here. It says, Jay, thank you for your research and kōrero]. It's so valuable. Have you been invited to speak at any theological colleges in New Zealand? I'm interested how much this knowledge is being embedded in our ministry training contexts here in Aotearoa.

Jay Ruka: Yeah, I'd say compared to 2008, there's a lot more. But of course, there's still a long way to go. What I will say is what has happened probably in the last two years in particular, there's amazing Māori leadership in all theological colleges that are emerging-- and amazing programs, whether that's Te Rau Theological College at Tairāwhiti, St. John's in Auckland, or Laidlaw College or Taupo as well.

There are just some amazing theological units that are bringing in some really, really cool mātauranga Māori into the spaces here. And I think what is happening is there's a slight Renaissance 2.0, I think, what our generation is in. What Ngā Tamatoa sowed in the 70s and that-- we're now picking the fruit. So it's exponential. And it's not just happening in the church. It's happening in the schools, you know? So yeah.

Practical advice for churches?

Tanja Schubert-McArthur: And you might get some speaking gigs after this one to come and speak at those colleges. Here's another question for you. And it is, where can we read more about how our church can move from a box tick approach to one that truly aims to bring the huia home?

Jay Ruka: Yeah, OK. I've asked this question. And I'll talk about Christ. I try to follow Christ. But does Christ, does Creator, does God have the right to destroy the religion he starts? --- And if you are a student of Te Paipera Tapu, the answer of that is yes, right? The Creator has the right to pull down his religious institutions, whether that's the Hebrew temple, whether it's Herod's temple.

We follow a Creator that can't stand it when religion takes over people and rips people off. Now, I'm not saying that the person who asked this question is ripping people off. But what I am saying is that if the chicken is three stories tall, it has to decrease to a normal size. The process of decreasing is letting go. So what churches aren't supposed to do is run Māori programs in their churches.

They're supposed to walk out the door, close the church door, and go and sit on the marae, and learn from our people. So the orientation is different, whereas the missionary movement has been coming this way from a whole-- I mean, Henry Williams is a hero for me because he did get it right. He spent years learning the language.

He changed the orientation to go, you know what? Marsden was about civilising Māori. Williams turned it the other way. Now, we're in the land of the Māori. We need to learn their way of being. And so that's the orientation, that churches are so used to being so-- come to us because we've got cake or whatever it is. But the orientation is different. There has to be a leaving.

And if I could just say this. Erin had the dream in 2008, January. We probably figured it out around October 2008, what it meant. And when we figured it out, I was like, oh man, I'm working in Christian organisations that started in America.

Flip, what do I do, you know? So for me personally, I didn't grow up understanding my Māori culture. I decided surfers are my people because I always looked like I should how to play the part but never did, you know?

But what happened in 2008 for me was a path of deceit. I had to stop being a leader of mission organisation. I had to stop being a pastor in a church. And I left it all to go and begin learning te reo on a marae. Doing baby speak for two years. So what churches must learn is that you're on the path of dissent.

You're actually going into exile. And the indigenous world, there's an exodus. So you need to attach yourself to that exodus if you want to survive.

Process of decolonisation

Tanja Schubert-McArthur: Ngā mihi. And that sounds very similar to the process of decolonisation or indigenising institutions like libraries and museums as well-- but having that in a church context.

Jay Ruka: It's the same thing. That's right. It is. It's the same—

Tanja Schubert-McArthur: The process we must go through, I think.

Jay Ruka: Yeah, it's the same thing.

When's your second book coming out?

Tanja Schubert-McArthur: There are more questions coming through. But please put your hand up if you do have a question here. So I see, OK, mic's coming to you. In the meantime, when's your second book coming out, someone asks?

Jay Ruka: Look, I actually have drafted another one. And that is on Ihu Karaiti. So what does Ihu [Karaiti] mean for us now, if anything? But I also want to write one on tino rangatiratanga. Basically, we should be the biggest supporters. The church should be the biggest supporter of tino rangatiratanga. So we'll see how that goes.

But yeah, I have drafted another book because our people in the original day, the teachings of Christ made so much sense to our people within our own worldview, you know? And particularly, if I think of Taranaki, our people, they didn't have to accept the culture that came with the missionary. They were able to take the teaching and apply it to themselves and to their own world. So yeah, it's one of the things I want to talk about, yeah.

Tanja Schubert-McArthur: I have a question here.

Taranaki Cathedral – specific challenges?

Tanja Schubert-McArthur: The parish that you've joined with your dean of is one of the most symbolic in the country, of the settler church, of just below the garrison that was on the hill and that embattled a white settler settlement of New Plymouth. And the church in the model, the old stone of England transplanted in with military insignia around the church. What are the specific challenges and changes have you've been introducing in the role of dean in Taranaki?

Jay Ruka: So yes, I was offered the job. Funny enough, I'd been headhunted by the Anglicans for quite a few years. And I was just like, nah, no thanks. So I called myself the world's worst Anglican and nicknamed them the Ganglicans. But look, when I was offered the role, my eyes were like, no way, bro. I don't want to go and work at St Mary's, just because I knew the history, being Te Atiawa and stuff like that.

However, I knew that something was up when Archbishop Phillip Richardson put the role to me. Erin and I were both-- gosh, this is kind of-- what they're trying to achieve there sounds like what we've sort of our life’s been on about. We always knew we were supposed to return to Taranaki at some point, even though I never grew up there.

So what I did is I said, you know what? I'm going to talk to some of my elders and my iwi and put it out to them. And so I approached three, said, hey, I've been offered this job at St. Mary's-- the three elders within Te Atiawa and said, hey, should I go and work here? I was like, I don't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole. And all three of them said, when can you start?

And I was like, oh man, I just finally bought my first house in Raglan. We were living in Raglan at the time, Whaingaroa. And so anyway, we just knew it was a tohu, so we decided to shift there. But we've shifted again. I have arrived into a season of change. And there's true change happening across Taranaki, where I don't have to pioneer anything because Uncle Tikituterangi Raumati has pioneered before me. And Tā Paul Reeves pioneered before me, you know?

Sir Paul Reeves and Uncle Tiki, they were the ones that hacked at the story, of that what you've said, for decades. And so I've arrived into a season of Meri Tapu in their life, which is a real, real privilege. It's at its lowest point in history. It's 177 years old this year, the oldest stone church in New Zealand. And because it was shut in 2016, it's at its lowest point in history. But at its lowest point, the fruit of reconciliation is truly beginning to emerge and arise. In three weeks today-- no, what's today, Wednesday or Thursday?

Tanja Schubert-McArthur: Wednesday.

Opening Te Whare Hononga

Jay Ruka: Oh, three weeks tomorrow, we open Te Whare Hononga, a new whare wānanga that we've built in partnership with my iwi, my hupū, Ngāti Te Whiti, to tell the story of Ngāti Te Whiti on that whenua, on that land. So it's a privilege. In 1860, Waikato men came down to serve us and help us. And to cut a long story short, their leaders that were killed at Mawere tahi were brought back into Meri Tapu and have been buried at our church.

And that's always created mamae for Ngāti Hauā, Ngāti Āpuku, Ngāti Kaura . But in three weeks' time, they are coming en masse because we've built in a memorial to them. And they're coming to tautoko them. We had said, hey, we'd love to give your men back to you if you'd like to bring them back home to Waikato. But they said, no, let them remain there. And so we're building a memorial, you know? So And so it's going to be a historical occasion, really.

Reconciliation

So all that to say is that the fruit of reconciliation is beginning to emerge-- still a long way to go because reconciliation is a journey and not a destination, you know? So even in the process of doing this, the process of building a whare wānanga has been tough, with different understandings and different ways. So what we've got is something beautiful. But also, it could have been a lot better. But that's the process of relationship.

Tanja Schubert-McArthur: Can we just turn the mic on please?

He Whakaminenga

Audience member: Jay, I've heard of an organisation that, I think it's called He Whakaminenga, which I understand meets in Waitangi and has done consistently since 1836. I'm also aware of a house just across the road [Parliamanent]. Would you perhaps see the He Whakaminenga a bit like the feather of the huia that's being formed at this time. And in terms of our current political system and the way the house is, don't we have quite a big chicken on that nest that needs to reduce? Would that be a fair comment?

Jay Ruka: Yeah, I tautoko that comment. Look, whatever way it is that the-- the current kāwanatanga, it is a chicken system, right? But its creation, the intention of its creation was the partnership with the rangatiratanga o Ngāpuhi me Niu Tirene. It was supposed to be in relationship with our rangatira. So for me, the dream is, how does the indigenous way of thinking and seeing the world be applied to kāwanatanga? It's not an either, or.

It has to be a both and. And that's our special source. The both and is our special source that we have to offer the world. There is no nation that is offering the best of Western ways of thinking and the best of Indigenous ways of thinking and partnership together. That's what Aotearoa has to offer the world. It's what's imprinted in Te Tiriti o Waitangi. So somehow, it's not a question of representation within the existing structure.

There has to be that structure in partnership with another structure that has the indigenous way of thinking in partnership-- so whether that's an upper house, a lower house, whether-- you do have, somehow, the hapū and iwi represented on, I don't know, the iwi chairs forum or something like that. But in other words-- because the point is the decision making.

There's a way of thinking around laws that have to be made. So how do we begin to look at those laws through indigenous ways of seeing land, indigenous ways of seeing water? I mean, the best of Western mātauranga is screaming at us: sort the climate out. It's screaming. But there is no imperative. There's no existing imperative to listen to that because it doesn't financially make sense, which means that the economic models are up the wazoo.

So how do our economic models-- the imperative needs to be-- there's no will within the Western motive to change itself.

Paradigm shift will come from mātauranga Māori

So where's the paradigm shift going to come from? For us in New Zealand, it's only going to come from the Māori world. So how do these Western systems-- they need to latch on fast to indigenous ways of thinking.

Now, the cool thing is that since the 70s, man, there's so many Māori leaders, amazing Māori leaders in sectors across the country that have the best of Māori and Western mātauranga Māori within them now. They're just phenomenal. We've got several generations of phenomenal young Māori leaders that can do this right now. It's just, there needs to be the will of the Western kāwanatanga to relinquish.

Tanja Schubert-McArthur: Kia ora. And we might take the last questions because we're right on time.

Audience member: Thank you very much for the enlightenment you've shared. I must say that I have close links with St. Mary's New Plymouth, with great-grandparents buried by its walls. But I also was very moved with what Sir Paul Reeves did there. And I wonder if you'd tell us briefly about that.

Jay Ruka: You might know better than me.

Audience member: Well, I visited St. Mary's once when he had been there. And there was a wonderful display reconciling the differences between the military and the Māori at that time. And it was very, very inspiring to see what he began, which can't have been easy.

Jay Ruka: Well, what's happened is that in 1972, there was whakairo Māori put up inside St. Mary's that told the story of Takarangi and Te Rau-Mahora, like Te Atiawa and Taranaki were at war. And there was reconciliation made through the marriage of Takarangi to Te Rau-Mahora. And so there was a carving put in 1972 around that, which, I'm not sure if Tā Paora had something to do with the bringing of that carving.

But as we've gone about this new season, Ngāti Te Whiti, so the local hapū, which also has connections here, they have pulled out this carving which is called Ka aroha koutou tetehi ki tetehi, that you would love one another. And so that's become our motif. And that's what Sir Paul really, really drove and challenged St. Mary's on. And his challenge to St. Mary's, that St. Mary's, if you want a future, you have to deal with your past. You can't go forward without dealing with this past.

And that season, we're now picking that fruit. And in three weeks' time, lady Beverly Reeves and her children are coming down to help open these whare, these houses. So it's an absolute honour for us to have that connection with the Reeves family and to see that his challenge to St Mary's is coming out through the Sir Paul Reeves Centre, which is a centre built around justice and reconciliation. And so that's what we're starting off there at Meri Tapu, yeah. So nō reira, ka mihi ahau ki a koutou, kia ora .

He whakapapa kōrero, he wenua kura

Tanja Schubert-McArthur: ’He whakapapa kōrero, he whenua kura’ is the whakataukī that comes to mind, talking about our past to create a better future, which is also our whakataukī for He Tohu upstairs. So we could talk here for hours. But I'm sure that Jay will be available after this talk to answer any questions.

And online, quite a few questions came through about, how can we practically do this as a church, as Christians. And I'm sure there are lots of ideas in the book. But yeah, do you have any closing comments before you close us off with karakia, Jay?

Closing comments

Jay Ruka: Yeah, just to say, I dreamed of being buried in my All Blacks uniform, right? And I'm still dreaming about that. But all that to say is that, guys, Aotearoa is a special place. Whether you're born English, or Korean, or Scottish, or German, you've been brought to the whenua of te ao Māori, the only place in the world you find it. It's a secret place. We haven't been brought here to dominate it.

We've been brought here to be housed and cared by the Māori way of thinking. You might not ever be able to kōrero Māori, you know? My dad, my awesome father and my mom, he's tried. He's tried to learn te reo, but he struggles, you know? But his heart understands. And he gets it. So guys, politicians this year, they're going to pull the crap around the division and the three waters this or three waters that or whatever, that's kind of gone off the radar.

But it's because they're lessening New Zealand by not connecting into the indigenous way of thinking. It's our joy. It is our joy. Whether we know lots or whether we know nothing, it's our joy to connect to te ao Māori and the Māori world. And your kids are going to do it way better than you are. And so are your grandkids. So just find it a joy.

Let the indigenous way of thinking have its leadership way. We're in the season of the leadership paradigm, of the indigenous motif of what New Zealanders are called to be right from its bicultural start. So if I can just close with that, that's what I'll close with. Ka pai. You want me to karakia now? OK.

Karakia whakamutunga

Unuhia, unuhia
Unuhia ki te uru tapu nui
Kia wātea, kia māmā, te ngākau, te tinana, te wairua i te ara takatā
Koia rā e Rongo, whakairia ake ki runga
Kia wātea, kia wātea, ae rā kua wātea.

Paimārie!