Letters: Waitangi Day celebrations should not just be up north

Yvonne Rapana waves the flag of the United Tribes of Aotearoa in a salute to the waka Taiamai on Waitangi Day in Northland. Photo / Peter de Graaf

I agree with the sentiments of your contributors Trish Bailey (Letters, February 7) and Raymond Hophepa (Street view, February 6) in regards to our public discussion about this important, to me, subject.

The importance of Waitangi Day may very well "run deep for some" but the converse, to my mind, means it does not run deep for others; whomever "some" and "others" may be.

The street view sentiment of Raymond Hohepa is one I concur with; with the addition of my sentiment that it, the first signing of our Treaty with Māori, was on Ngapuhi territory and the subsequent many signings of this Treaty with other tribes was on their own Aotearoa/New Zealand sovereign territories.

This is all the more reason to have a national Aotearoa/New Zealand day which can be justly celebrated locally by all sovereign tribal signatories on their own territories without "heading up North" to sign this, to them, significant milestone agreement and while I am at it; all the more reason to teach our own Aotearoa/New Zealand actual history to our young future citizens from pre-treaty days to the present.

Our verified history did not start with the Treaty or did it to "some"?

Joseph Gielen
Rotorua

Cultural rights not equal to citizens' rights

Why did the council not celebrate Waitangi Day? It is because the Treaty's articles run counter to what I see as their belief in co-governance via an exclusive partnership?

Recall, in the first article of the Māori version of the Treaty, the chiefs ceded government over their land absolutely and forever to the Queen of England. In the second, the Queen agreed to protect chieftainship over lands, villages and treasures, and that land would only be sold at agreed prices to the Queen's purchasing agents. In the third, the ordinary people were given the same citizenship rights and duties as the people of England.

Nothing on partnership or co-governance. That interpretation was invented in the late 20th Century. Indeed, in November 2000, David Lange argued:

"Democratic government can accommodate Māori political aspiration in many ways. It can allocate resources in ways which reflect the particular interests of Māori people. It can delegate authority and allow the exercise of degrees of Māori autonomy. What it cannot do is acknowledge the existence of a separate sovereignty. As soon as it does that, it isn't a democracy. We can have a democratic form of government or we can have indigenous sovereignty. They can't coexist and we can't have them both."

My view is that celebrating the Treaty of Waitangi is important to prevent cultural rights being elevated over the equal rights of citizens – which would be unwise because it could undermine democratic sovereignty, private property rights and equality under the rule of law.

Reynold Macpherson
Rotorua

Future of floaties

The Float Festival sounded like it was a fantastically successful event for Rotorua and lots of fun for those participating. I just wondered what has happened to all the plastic floaties I saw pictured in the Daily Post. Do the organisers have a recycling programme or does it all just go to the landfill or potentially end up in our oceans?

Barbara Jenks
Lynmore