OPINION
Ngati Kahu is writing to the King. Shocked by what they perceive to be a “violent attack” on Te Tiriti o Waitangi, they asked their leader, Margaret Mutu, Professor of Maori Studies at the University of Auckland, to draft a letter to King Charles III calling upon him to stop it.
It is difficult to know where to start with this news item. It stretches credulity to believe that, in the 21st century, there are still some Maori who believe that King Charles III exercises direct political authority in and over New Zealanders. Were Charles III, whose constitutional role is entirely ceremonial, to so much as attempt to instruct the New Zealand Government on a matter of policy, he would be gone before anyone could shout “Long live the Republic!”
And yet, Mutu, a university professor, giving “evidence” to a special hearing of the Waitangi Tribunal, declared:
We still look to Charles III to do something about his government. We have just finished drafting a letter to him, reminding him of the undertakings of his ancestors, the very sacred undertaking of his ancestors and to therefore say something to his government about the fact that they cannot behave the way they are because they bring shame, they bring all sorts of disrespect on the head of the Crown.
It is entirely possible, of course, that this historical and constitutional poppycock was not meant to be taken seriously. Mutu’s “evidence” may well have been delivered with a satirical twinkle, and the Tribunal, understanding the professor’s provocative intentions, may simply have pretended to take her statements seriously.
There is French expression, épater la bourgeoisie, coined by those two decadent poets of the French avant-garde, Baudelaire and Rimbaud, which, loosely translated, means skewering the middle classes. It may well be that Mutu, with the whole room in on the joke, was doing something similar: épater les colons, outraging the settlers or skewering the Pakeha. Mutu’s entire performance may be an example of classical Maori humour, delivered with the express purpose of getting under her opponents’ skin.
That would be the most benign explanation: that Mutu, knowing her words would be reported, was just winding-up the supporters of ACT leader David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill. It should not be forgotten that classical Maori oratory was capable of inflicting wounds every bit as painful as classical Maori weapons.
It is equally possible, however, that Mutu was being serious, or, at the very least, advancing with all seriousness the beliefs of Ngati Kahu. Because, if there’s one thing that the actions of Maori leaders over the past 184 years makes clear, it is that none of them understood the nature of constitutional monarchy.
The idea that a chief might not exercise authority in his own right, that he could be a figurehead only and that it was the ordinary tribespeople, and those they chose to act for them, that embodied the true mana of the tribe, would have made no sense to the Maori signatories of Te Tiriti. From the very beginning “Kuini Wikitoria” was perceived as the ruler of the Pakeha. The proud warrior chiefs who assembled at Waitangi would have surrendered their sovereignty to no one less than a queen.
Had someone present, one of the Americans perhaps, explained that Queen Victoria was not the real ruler of the British, that Captain Hobson was not really acting on her orders, but on the orders of senior bureaucrats who were, in turn, acting on the orders of politicians, because no king or queen of England had wielded the powers of a Maori rangatira for 150 years, then it might have made a material difference to the outcome of the Waitangi deliberations, but as far as we know, nobody did.
Which explains why delegation after delegation of Maori leaders made the pilgrimage to London to ask the queen (who appeared to be immortal) to force her subjects in New Zealand, the Pakeha settlers, to abide by the treaty presented to their people, in her name, on 6 February 1840.
Though they came to the imperial capital as the living embodiment of the mana of their iwi, they were never granted an audience with Victoria. Even if, what they no doubt received as a grievous insult, was no more than the principles of constitutional monarchy in play.
Any problem they may have had with the behaviour of the settlers was, after the Constitution Act of 1852, something to be taken up with the Governor and/or the Legislative Assembly of New Zealand. Or, if they were desperate, with the British Foreign and Colonial Office. But discussing alleged breaches of the Waitangi treaty kanohi ki te kanohi – face-to-face – with Her Majesty? No way.
Not even when confronted by General Cameron’s imperial troops, all of whom wore uniforms adorned with the Crown and the letters VR (Victoria Regina), did the indigenous people’s faith in their distant protectress waver – not even when (imitation being the sincerest form of flattery) they were fighting for their own king.
Somehow, that faith endured: not in the Crown, which was now irrevocably associated with the Settler State, but in the wearers of the Crown, the living, breathing monarchs of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Even Wiremu Ratana, in 1924, made the pilgrimage on behalf of Te Tiriti and, just like all those who had gone before him, returned home empty-handed.
So, maybe, professor or not, PhD or not, Margaret Mutu actually believes that, if he was of a mind, King Charles III could fly out here to Aotearoa, shirt-front Christopher Luxon for his egregious failure to defend the honour of his great-great-great grandmother’s treaty. And then, honour satisfied, have David Seymour arrested, flown back to London in chains and imprisoned in the Tower.
Nonsense? Of course it is, but no more nonsensical than these words concerning the late Queen Elizabeth II, spoken by Margaret Mutu to the Waitangi Tribunal:
She was the only one as far as our tipuna could see, she knew how to control the lawless Pakehas and they accorded her the great honour of being able to exercise her own rule of law in this country for her own people in a way that had to uphold the mana and the tino rangatiratanga of our people. That was a very solemn and serious and sacred undertaking that could only be undertaken by a person who held the necessary respect.
Embedded in that nonsense, however, is Mutu’s unwavering belief that her people never signed away their sovereignty, and that the British monarch exercises authority not over Maori, but only over “lawless Pakehas”. Although quite why delegation after delegation would make those pilgrimages to Buckingham Palace, if the person living there lacked the power to address the petitions of Maori, as well as Pakeha, is rather difficult to fathom.
In the end there is something deeply embarrassing about the Maori love affair with the British monarchy. Queen Victoria was too deep in mourning for her beloved husband, Albert, to spare any tears for her Maori subjects. If she and her government could watch millions starve just a few hundred miles away across the Irish Sea, then the fate of yet another dwindling indigenous people, 12,000 miles distant, at the bottom of the world, was unlikely to elicit anything more than passing concern. And if Margaret Mutu doesn’t know that, then she does not deserve to be a university professor.
A true rangatira would have told Ngati Kahu the truth: King Charles cannot save Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Only New Zealanders, acting together, democratically, can do that.