In Newsroom on 6 March Dame Anne Salmond made a fool of herself when she lectured Richard Prebble about the two versions of the Treaty of Waitangi. She grandly informed him that Maori signed the version written in Maori, and proceeded to give us her take on what those words meant when translated into English.
Richard Prebble took a double degree at the University of Auckland in History and in Law. He knows that Maori signed the Maori version of the Treaty, and that that is the version that we should all use when discussing what the Treaty means. Funnily enough, it was a colleague of Anne Salmond’s at Auckland University, Sir Hugh Kawharu, who was Professor of Maori Studies and a Ngati Whatua elder, who carefully translated the Maori version of the Treaty in the 1980s. That translation was endorsed by the then Maori Queen and used by the 1990 Commission of which I was the chair, when New Zealand celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Treaty’s signing. Queen Elizabeth II, great grand-daughter of Queen Victoria in whose name the original Treaty was signed, also accepted the Kawharu translation when she was present at Waitangi on 6 February 1990.
We have no need of Anne Salmond’s ruminations on the subject, nor her insults to Richard Prebble. She demeans herself and all the others who since Sir Apirana Ngata’s comments about the Treaty in 1922 have known about the importance of the Maori version of the Treaty and its meanings. What Anne Salmond should be explaining to us is how, and why, she seems now to be at odds with Ngata, Kawharu, the Maori Queen, and all the others who have been content to use the translations of the Maori version of the Treaty that have been readily available for more than a century. They form the basis for the principles that David Seymour wants recognition for in his Bill that is before Parliament. What does Anne Salmond know about the Maori language that Apirana Ngata, Hugh Kawharu and the late Maori Queen didn‘t know? She should tell us.
New Zealand does not need modern, radical Maori make-believe, designed to turn the Treaty into an instrument of racial advantage for people who are nearly all more European than Maori in their ancestry.
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