Durie urges Government to take iwi seriously

By RUTH BERRY political reporter

The Government should consult iwi as they would other nation states, rather than bypass their governance structures to target pliant individuals, says High Court judge Eddie Durie.

The former Waitangi Tribunal head has also raised questions about the validity of some early tribunal reports, suggesting that historians preparing the evidence took a Euro-centric approach.

Justice Durie's observations were made during a speech to the Matauranga Tuku Iho Tikanga Rangahau - Traditional Knowledge and Research Ethics Conference - at Te Papa yesterday.

He was speaking about the ethical considerations involved in researching indigenous communities.

Justice Durie said he knew of several instances where, under the "guise of public consultation", researchers for Governments, local authorities and private corporations had encouraged people to give freely of their views.

The researchers had then proceeded to advise a minister or director how the objections of the community could be circumvented.

The advice often included the identification of certain people who should be dealt with in order to "weaken the position of the complainant".

"The tendency is to find people who will run with you and then bypass the others."

Justice Durie said the Government and other bodies should be obliged to deal with tribal communities as they would with other nation states.

This would ensure they negotiated with the governance structures established by the communities themselves, he said.

Justice Durie suggested the Government and other bodies should consider drawing up a Treaty of Waitangi-based code of conduct along those lines.

The code might include recognition of the need for communities to be warned that information provided by them might not always be used in their interest.

Justice Durie also said he remained "less than convinced" that some historians examining New Zealand's past were able to "work with issues of cross-cultural contact".

In an apparent reference to the tribunal's Muriwhenua inquiry - conducted in the early 1990s - he was particularly critical of some historians' evaluation of early "land sales".

He questioned whether iwi would have been familiar with, or had reason to familiarise themselves with, Western concepts of land ownership during early colonisation.