Kaipara Mayor Craig Jepson and partner Jeannette Reid in their 1840s colonial settler costumes at Waitangi Treaty Grounds in 2024.
Kaipara Mayor Craig Jepson and partner Jeannette Reid in their 1840s colonial settler costumes at Waitangi Treaty Grounds in 2024.
Opinion by Simon Wilson
Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues. He joined the Herald in 2018.
”When I left New Zealand in 1966 I was Kiri Te Kanawa and I went overseas and I was known as a New Zealander and I was Māori, which was sort of unique.
“I’ve come back to New Zealand to find that I am a Māori andMāori is being spoken when it was not spoken before I left. I’m thrilled that Māori is spoken on a regular basis.” – Dame Kiri Te Kanawa speaking to RNZ on the occasion of her 80th birthday last year.
“Mood Of The Nation” declared the headline for the 2023 Fashion Week Viva special in the Herald. The magazine showcased the work of many designers, some of whom were Māori, and featured young Māori models: “Generation Next”, Viva called them.
The photoshoot took place at Takaparawhau, better known to most as Bastion Point, where Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei has its marae.
From Viva's Mood of the Nation 2023 fashion shoot at Takaparawhau (Bastion Point). Photo / Rob Tennent
“I wasn’t sure if the iwi would be open to this,” said fashion editor Dan Ahwa, “as it’s quite a radical proposition and the location is layered with so much historical significance”.
But, he added, they wanted to showcase Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei as a home where design and creativity flourish.
“So much of what the iwi represents is progress without compromising on what’s come before, with respect to the power of art, design and creativity to uplift us all.”
Across the city that same month, at an election meeting in Greenhithe, NZ First leader Winston Peters was asked, “What are you going to do about the Māorification of New Zealand?”
We’re stretching in opposite directions.
Waitangi, by the way, is an occasion for its own fashion statements. Defence Force chiefs like to turn up in beautiful kōrowai, or cloaks.
Defence Force chiefs at Waitangi celebrations. Photo / Simon Wilson
Every election year since 2014, TVNZ’s Vote Compass survey has been asking respondents, “How much of a role should the Treaty of Waitangi have in New Zealand law?”
In 2014, 15% said more. In 2017, that rose to 18% and in 2020 it reached 27%. But in 2023 the figure dipped, to 24%.
As for the rest, they were fairly evenly split between those who think the Treaty should play less of a role, and those who think it’s about right now.
This is the context of the debate on David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill, now before Parliament.
ACT leader David Seymour, architect of the Treaty Principles Bill, with members of his party caucus, speaking to media at the Treaty Grounds during Waitangi celebrations in 2024. Photo / Michael Cunningham
There’s a clear age difference. In 2023, 40% of young adults thought the Treaty should have a larger role, but 54% of those aged over 55 thought it should play a smaller role.
Meanwhile, Te Kāhui Tika Tangata, the Human Rights Commission, has released the latest results of its own annual survey, which suggest 72% of us agree that “harmonious race relations through honouring Te Tiriti” is important. That’s up from 66% in the previous year.
The traditional Rarotongan voyaging canoe Te Au O Tonga on the Hauraki Gulf.
The difference between science and mātauranga Māori is one of the hot topics in the race-relations debates. Sir Ian Taylor (Ngāti Kahungungu, Ngāpuhi) has some thoughts. He’s a tech entrepreneur whose company’s many achievements include revolutionising the way the world watches sailing and other sports on TV.
Taylor says it’s worth thinking about the multi-generational journey of the first inhabitants of this land, a journey “that has been described as the greatest voyage in the history of human migration”.
About 1000 years ago, the Lapita people spread throughout the Pacific, discovering “every piece of land” in “the largest expanse of water on the planet”, and arriving here in about 1300.
“It’s an amazing story that needs to be told if we are to move our Pasifika and Māori tamariki, along with their friends from all other cultures, into those high-value jobs that are increasingly based on science and innovation.”
Those early voyagers could not have crossed and recrossed the ocean “without developing a deep knowledge of astronomy, astrology, science, maths and engineering”.
In English, we think of most of those things as Stem subjects. But they’re also included in the Māori way of seeing the world, known as mātauranga.
“We need to be telling these stories in our schools to inspire our young people that this thing we call Stem is in their DNA,” says Taylor.
“It is only now that I have come to understand how deeply that was ingrained in my DNA. This has led me to understand that it is the combination of mātauranga, alongside the maths, physics and science expertise that my Pākehā colleagues have brought with them, that can truly explain our company’s position as a global leader in the world of technology.”
New Zealand businessman and founder of Animation Research, Sir Ian Taylor.
Taylor included astrology in his list, although it’s not a science in any conventional sense. But saying that is to miss the point.
To use the stars for navigation, you need scientific knowledge, whether or not you call it that.
And Māori, just like people everywhere, have always had stories about the firmament above us.
The star cluster Māori call Matariki is also called the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters, the Orphan Boys, Subaru, Myoseong and the Hen, among many other names, and is associated with the change of seasons all over the planet.
The story of Christianity begins with a star shining brightly above Bethlehem.
Whether you believe these stories come to us as revelation or divine guidance, or as a people’s best efforts to explain the world around them, they share two powerful roles.
One is to bind us together as societies.
The other thing stories do is provide us with tools — memory aids — to look closely at the heavens and work out how to use what we see. That’s storytelling, powering the science of navigation.
By about 2043 it's estimated a third of all children in New Zealand will be Maori. Photo / Ben Fraser
By about 2043, one in three children in New Zealand is likely to identify as Māori, according to a 2022 Statistics NZ report.
The 2023 Census revealed that already 20% of us identify as Māori: almost a million people, up 12.5% since the 2018 Census.
Those children will soon be paying the taxes that fund the superannuation of people who are middle-aged today, along with their healthcare and other public services.
Kaipara Mayor Craig Jepson and Te Moananui o Kaipara Māori Ward’s Pera Paniora. Photo / LDR/Susan Bot
When Kaipara mayor Craig Jepson stopped councillor Pera Paniora in the middle of her karakia at the Kaipara District Council, shortly after they were both elected in 2022, he said she “wasn’t being respectful of everybody”. Religions and cultures, he had decided, should not be included in meetings.
A week later, he banned karakia altogether, although they’d been part of council meetings for the previous two decades.
“It’s not racist at all, in my opinion,” he explained. “I’m not a racist person. I wanted to run a secular council. I’m quite happy to have all groups included.”
But Paniora criticised him for “a lack of respect or courtesy” and said it felt like Māori “aren’t valued or included”.
There it was: our clash of values. Jepson believes people are treated equally when they are treated the same. Everyone is welcome in his house, but leave your differences at the door.
Ngāpuhi leader Tāmati Wāka Nene signing Te Tiriti o Waitangi, as depicted nearly 100 years after the event by the artist Marcus King.
Paniora believes Jepson doesn’t own the house, it belongs to everyone. Enforcing his rules on others doesn’t make the situation equal, it creates inequality.
She says if he wants to show respect to Māori, he will allow them the right to decide how to present themselves. To be who they are, not who he wants them to be.
As it happens, Jepson and his partner Jeanette Reid put this idea into practice themselves at Waitangi last year, and joined in the fashion fun, when they turned up dressed as colonial settlers.
It’s not widely known, but in 2014 the Waitangi Tribunal resolved that Māori did not cede sovereignty when they signed the Treaty of Waitangi. My colleague Audrey Young wrote an excellent explainer about this on Saturday.
As she revealed, the evidence is so clear it should not still be a matter of dispute.
But that’s a different thing from saying the Crown does not have sovereignty over all New Zealanders today. It’s equally clear that it does: we are all subject to the same law.
The task today is to work out, as Sir Ian Taylor might put it, how to navigate a course between these two realities.
The surveys suggest most of us don’t want to do this by fighting with our backs to the wall, so Taylor, with roots in both the “greatest voyage in the history of human migration” and cutting-edge technology, offers a valuable lead.
Understanding how science informs mātauranga Māori, and how the reverse can happen, too, has led to the most extraordinary achievements. Can we take the knowledge and the skills and the goodwill, crossing into each other’s worlds, and do it again?
