International Socialists

Marxism is not a set of rigid doctrines but a living, dynamic way of interpreting, understanding and most importantly changing the world around us. Many aspects of politics and culture have been extensively discussed by Marxists over the years but others remain unresolved and little-debated.

The question of tino rangatiratanga is one that is often misunderstood and dealt with superficially by both racists and anti-racists alike. In what we hope will be the opening shot in a series of articles debating this important question, Mike Tait outlines some of the issues.

 

 

 

Round One: Pre 1840

Before 1840 Aotearoa had easily swallowed and digested the sailors, whalers, ex-convicts and traders who landed on her shores. These fugitives generally blended in with Mäori society, bringing with them trade and useful skills. Soon Mäori trading vessels plied the Tasman Sea.

 

 

Round Two: The Treaty of Waitangi

This peace was not to be. Instead, Mäori chiefs and the British ambassador, Hobson, signed a treaty in 1840. It was a logical step for Mäori, who had so far seen mainly good results come from interaction.

 

For the British it was not only logical, it was great  in return for acknowledging Mäori ownership (or tino rangatiratanga) of their land and taonga they were granted governorship (kawanatanga). It was a windfall for the British because, at this stage, they were completely unable to challenge Mäori tino rangatiratanga. The mightiest empire in the world was unable to project its power everywhere at once.

 

Capitalism, the economic system which fuelled the explosion of British might and power, was entering into its first major crisis.

 

This recession was like all the recessions which have followed it, not caused by drought or flooding or any other natural disaster but rather the result of overproduction. The economy as a whole had produced more than enough goods, and the millions of people who worked in mines, farms and factories did not need to work any more.

 

What should have been a cause for great happiness was actually the worst disaster this relatively new system had faced, because the people who controlled the economy could no longer make any profits. So millions who had produced the surplus were made redundant, and the British Empire in the 1840s was facing a crisis, while back home the "Chartists" demanded a fairer share of the wealth for those who produced it as well as greater democracy.

 

So, because of all this, Queen Vicky was in no position to grab Aotearoa off Mäori. Instead she sent Hobson with his pieces of paper.

 

 

Round Three: WAR!

Unemployed workers and Hobson's treaty may at first seem unrelated, and they were, until some bright spark in the British gentry hit on the idea of solving unemployment at home by exporting "surplus population" (i.e. poor people). Aotearoa became reinvented by the nineteenth century's Saatchi & Saatchi as "New Zealand," a land of milk and honey. English, Irish and Scottish "boat people" flooded the ports of New Zealand, hoping for a fresh start.

 

The South Island had already been bought at bargain basement prices (34 million acres of Ngai Tahu land at 0.006 pence per acre!) and carved up by the billionaires of the time. The only land available to the recent arrivals was still occupied by Mäori.

 

The result was decades of warfare across the length and breadth of the North Island. Led by chiefs like Maniopoto, Titokowaru, Te Ua Haumene and Te Kooti, Mäori put up a fierce resistance to the British land grab. But Mäori were also divided among themselves, with some "kupapa" or "loyalist" Mäori supporting the British.

 

The military conflict ended with massive confiscations of tribal land from the "rebels," but also from the tribes who had fought alongside the British.

 

 

Round Four: The legal assault

After crushing military resistance the government passed laws to try and break up tribal land and to dispossess Mäori. An important law was the Native Lands Act, which broke up the collective title of Mäori land.

 

Henry Sewell, the first premier of New Zealand, explained its two-fold purpose: firstly, to bring the bulk of land within the reach of European colonisation, and, secondly, to achieve "the detribalisation of the natives - to destroy if it were possible, the principle of communism which runs through the whole of their institutions."

 

As if this wasn't enough, in 1875 Chief Justice Prendergast declared that the Treaty of Waitangi was legally null and void. It stayed that way legally for 100 years.

 

In the early 1900s, European rulers smugly told themselves that they were watching the twilight of the "Mäori race," outclassed in some sort of evolutionary struggle.

 

 

Round Five: Survival

The Mäori "race" was in fact far from dead. The New Zealand government responded with the Hunn Report, released in 1960. It rejected the official policy of assimilation, proposing instead the "integration" of the best of two cultures (Mäori and Päkehä). Because policy prescriptions promoted strategies strictly in educational terms, integration was essentially to be integration for Mäori into a capitalist society which reflected the material interests of a ruling class that at this stage was dominated by Päkehä. So the reality for most Mäori was that there was very little difference between the policies of assimilation and integration.

 

But this challenge was met by a new generation of activists like Nga Tamatoa, who revived the old claim to tino rangatiratanga. In the cities and the country of New Zealand, Aotearoa raised her standard, marching on Parliament demanding land, and occupying stolen lands such as Bastion Point and Raglan. In 1975 Prime Minister Muldoon was forced to undo Prendergast's decision and once more acknowledge the Treaty officially. He set up the Waitangi Tribunal, but is was a toothless body, unable to hear claims from before 1975.

 

In 1981 Mäori resistance to colonisation in New Zealand was joined with Pakeha resistance to support the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Hundreds of thousands protested racism in South Africa, and woke up to the facts of racism in New Zealand.

 

In 1984, a Labour Government was elected, and they increased the power of the Waitangi Tribunal, opening it to hear claims from before 1975. Labour's strategy was to try and steer Mäori radicals into fighting along "legal" lines where they were weakest and the state was at its strongest.

 

At the same time, Labour embarked on its New Right restructuring of the economy which was continued by the National and Coalition Governments. Most workers, both Mäori and Päkehä, suffered a fall in incomes as unions were attacked and jobs were lost.

 

Many of the activists who had opposed the state were now tied up with red tape by the Waitangi Tribunal, as the ruling class and Labour had hoped, and some openly embraced the new culture of greed for the elite (a.k.a. belt-tightening for everyone else). Big names in this new plastic Aotearoa, like Robert Mahuta of Tainui-Corp and Tipene O'Regan, earned big perks and bigger bucks, while the vast majority of Mäori are worse off than ten years ago.

 

The Treaty settlements that have been made are paraded as triumphs for justice by the Government and the media. Nobody points out how these settlements are tiny compared with what the Crown owes under the Treaty, and no-one points out that the benefits stay with the new rich Mäori leaders.

 

The settlements tend to play into the hands of parties like ACT who fuel racism by their crass slogan "Full fair and final settlements."

 

 

Round Six: Socialism:  Aotearoa's prize-winning KO blow?

At the same time as the British army fought in Aotearoa to chuck Mäori off their land, they were fighting to evict the Scottish Highlanders and replace them with sheep. As new foreign diseases ravaged Aotearoa, a famine made worse by British occupation ravaged Ireland.

 

Also, while the Mäori sovereignty movement was at its strongest, in the 1970s and early 80s, the union movement was also at its peak. The New Right economic reforms have hurt both Päkehä and Mäori workers. Most people in Aotearoa/New Zealand are worse off now than they were a decade ago. This just shows that the rhetoric of racism is nothing but myth and slander. So long as nations war against nations, their rulers reap the benefits.

 

Socialism is about cooperation. It means fighting for all working people, Mäori and Päkehä, against the things which oppress all of us - this undemocratic and alienating, depressing system which places profit above any sort of human consideration.

 

For Päkehä, tino rangatiratanga is nothing to fear or fight against. The idea that Mäori will "steal" all of "our" land is just stupid and alarmist. Most of us don't actually own vast tracts of land, the bosses who control our lives do. Reconciliation won't come about through flashy Waitangi celebrations, it'll come when concrete justice is delivered to the majority of Mäori.

 

This can't happen in a system where a small group of wealthy people control the rest of us. It matters little if this elite is Päkehä or Mäori - for the vast majority of Mäori no sort of self-determination would exist. Real tino rangatiratanga can occur only in a socialist society. A socialist society in Aotearoa would be socialist in name only unless it recognised and developed tino rangatiratanga.

 

Ka whawhai tonu matou, ake ake ake!