Treaty of Waitangi - Meaning and Interpretation

Meaning and Interpretation

The Treaty itself is short, consisting of a preamble and three articles. The preamble presents Queen Victoria "being desirous to establish a settled form of Civil Government", and invites Māori chiefs to concur in the following articles. The first article of the English version grants the "Queen of England" (actually the United Kingdom) sovereignty over New Zealand. The second article guarantees to the chiefs full "exclusive and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates Forests Fisheries and other properties." It also specifies that Māori will sell land only to the Crown. The third article guarantees to all Māori the same rights as all other British subjects.

The English and Māori versions differ. This has made it difficult to interpret the Treaty and continues to undermine its effect. The most critical difference revolves around the interpretation of three Māori words: kāwanatanga (governorship), which is ceded to the Queen in the first article; rangatiratanga (chieftainship) not mana (leadership) (which was stated in the Declaration of Independence just five years before the Treaty was signed), which is retained by the chiefs in the second; and taonga (property or valued possessions), which the chiefs are guaranteed ownership and control of, also in the second article. Few Māori had good understanding of either sovereignty or "governorship", as understood by 19th century Europeans, and so some academics, such as Moana Jackson, question whether Māori fully understood that they were ceding sovereignty to the British Crown.

Furthermore, kāwanatanga is a loan translation from 'governorship' and was not part of the Māori language. The term had been used by Henry Williams in his translation of the Declaration of Independence of New Zealand which was signed by 35 northern Māori chiefs at Waitangi on 28 October 1835. The Declaration of Independence of New Zealand had stated 'Ko te Kingitanga ko te mana i te wenua' to describe 'all sovereign power and authority in the land'.

There is considerable debate about what would have been a more appropriate term. Some scholars, notably Ruth Ross, argue that mana (prestige, authority) would have more accurately conveyed the transfer of sovereignty. However, it has more recently been argued by others, for example Judith Binney, that mana would not have been appropriate. This is because mana is not the same thing as sovereignty, and also because no-one can give up their mana.

The English language version recognises Māori rights to "properties", which seems to imply physical and perhaps intellectual property. The Māori version, on the other hand, mentions "taonga", meaning "treasures" or "precious things". In Māori usage the term applies much more broadly than the English concept of legal property, and since the 1980s courts have found that the term can encompass intangible things such as language and culture. Even where physical property such as land is concerned, differing cultural understandings as to what types of land are able to be privately owned have caused problems, as for example in the foreshore and seabed controversy of 2003–04.

The pre-emption clause is generally not well translated, and many Māori apparently believed that they were simply giving the British Queen first offer on land, after which they could sell it to anyone. Doubt has been cast on whether Hobson himself actually understood the concept of pre-emption. Another, less important, difference is that Ingarani, meaning England alone, is used throughout in the Māori version, whereas "the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland" is used in the first paragraph of the English.

The entire issue is further complicated by the fact that, at the time, Māori society was an oral rather than literate one. Māori present at the signing of the Treaty would have placed more value and reliance on what Hobson and the missionaries said, rather than the words of the actual Treaty.

Māori beliefs and attitudes towards ownership and use of land were different from those prevailing in Britain and Europe. The chiefs saw themselves as 'kaitiaki' or guardians of the land, and would traditionally grant permission for the land to be used for a time for a particular purpose. Some may have thought that they were leasing the land rather than selling it, leading to disputes with the occupant settlers. A northern chief, Nopera Panakareao, also early on summarised his understanding of the Treaty as "the shadow of the land is to the Queen, but the substance remains to us", even as a British official later remarked that the Māori would discover that the British had acquired "something more than the shadow". Nopera's later reversed his earlier statement – feeling that the substance of the land had indeed gone to the Queen; only the shadow remained for the Māori.