Over the next couple of weeks Te Papa Tongarewa (in partnership with the New Zealand Centre for Public Law) will be hosting this year’s Treaty Debates, continuing the excellent series that has been an annual event since 2005 and has, each year, provided engaging discussions of Treaty of Waitangi issues. This year’s theme is ‘Evolution not Revolution’ and begins this Thursday with Professor Paul Spoonley and Dr Ranginui Walker considering the last 30-40 years of Māori activism. The following week will see Professor Mason Durie and Colin James discussing the Treaty of Waitangi and the state. Both sessions will be chaired by Claudia Orange. The debates are well worth attending if you are in Wellington. Further information about the debates can be found on the Te Papa website.
The debates will also be broadcast on Radio New Zealand National. Paul Spoonley and Ranginui Walker’s session will be broadcast after the 4pm news on Sunday, 31 January and repeated after the 9pm news on Tuesday, 2 February. Mason Durie and Colin James; session will be broadcast after the 4pm news on Sunday, 7 February and repeated after the 9pm news on Tuesday, 9 February. I understand that video recordings of the debates will be made available on the Te Papa website. Recordings of many of the debates from previous years can be found there too and podcasts are available on the National Radio website.
AUT history professor, Paul Moon, has a piece in the Herald today which considers the place of the Treaty of Waitangi in the 21st century. Professor Moon sketches a trajectory from the Treaty's slightly unpromising beginning through to the first decade of the the 21st century. In conclusion, he notes:
What started as a cession of sovereignty in 1840, then lapsed from government attention for more than a century, to emerge in the 1970s as a source of rights and a cause for protest, might now be entering a new phase - the Treaty not as leverage for claims, but as a basis for a fruitful constitutional arrangement.
I gave a public lecture last year for the New Zealand Centre for Public Law in which I expressed a similar view - that we are now moving out of the time when claims and settlements dominate the public discussion of the Treaty and towards a period of considering the constitutional role of the Treaty and how the Treaty partnership is to be given effect moving forward. I suggested in that lecture that this will require a different, and perhaps, a more challenging approach to Treaty issues. In particular, I suggested that the reliance on Treaty principles will need to be replaced by a focus on the Māori text of the Treaty. Treaty principles qualify the terms of the Treaty and provide an important compromise that enables claims and settlements to be advanced. However, if we are to seriously explore constitutional relationships that are based on the Treaty, that exploration ought not to start from a compromised or qualified understanding of what the Treaty says. Rather, we should return to the terms of the Treaty to consider what it really means to give effect to 'kawanatanga' and 'tino rangatiratanga'.
