Treaties True and False – a short story The ACT party has recently publicly remarked "over the last 40 years a combination of the Waitangi Tribunal, the courts, and successive Labour and National governments have quietly but progressively changed the definition of what the Treaty means." This is not widely known, much less understood, by most New Zealanders.
Waitangi Tribunal In 1975, the then Labour government established the Waitangi Tribunal 1, ignoring that full and final settlements for unresolved Treaty grievances were completed by the Fraser government in the period 1944-19472. The Tribunal was corrupt from its beginning when the Waitangi Tribunal Bill drafters and their advisors reconstructed from initial draft notes the “official” English language Treaty version that was released as a Schedule to the establishing Act.3. Copies of the original 1840 final English draft were known to exist overseas but no apparent effort was made to obtain a copy of any of these documents 4. The Treaty of Waitangi version that is used today is based upon a composite English text, originally created by Hobson’s secretary, James Stuart Freeman, from the early rough notes of the treaty. Following the signing of the Treaty at Waitangi, Freeman concocted a variety of “Royal Style” versions, earmarked solely for despatch to overseas capitals. This is evident in the verbose and pompous style as seen below. Since then the Tribunal, Maori extremists, and activist judges have relied on these false English Treaty versions, at various times denying that sovereignty was ceded, enabling the invention of new Maori rights, pursuing unjustified and endlessly extended financial settlements that ignore previous “full and final” resolutions, transfers of land based on dubious claims, and unelected iwi-led race-based power in increasingly broad spheres, with co-governance now routinely the default mechanism for pacifying activists’ demands. Democracy is under threat. The “official” cobbled together English version of the Treaty was impossible to reconcile in translation with the true Treaty in Maori, which is easily understood when considering the very different sources and the motives of the Tribunal members, yet Justice Minister Geoffrey Palmer set up a unit within the Justice Department that created a 15-page booklet titled “The Principles for Crown Action on the Treaty of Waitangi” which was adopted by Cabinet and published on July 4, 1989. It includes and supports the nonsense of “partnership”. Sadly for New Zealand, only four months earlier the Littlewood draft Treaty had been found, as described below. Initially the Waitangi Tribunal only heard claims against the Crown for breaches of the Treaty after 1975, but a subsequent amendment in 1985 extended the time period back to 1840, which opened the floodgates creating a “grievance industry” with endless taxpayer funding for all participants. As a tribunal not a court, the quality of evidence accepted is lower and much of it is oral not written. The Waitangi Tribunal and our legislators are knowingly using a rejected and discarded early rough draft version when fashioning and interpreting our laws, which should have been replaced by the Littlewood final English draft, its existence becoming widely known in 1992. That alone justifies a review of all prior decisions back to 1975. To compound the deceit, the Maori language version has never been used officially.
Various political parties have over time proposed the disestablishment of the Waitangi Tribunal but none has delivered. The simple act of passing legislation to recognise the Littlewood draft Treaty as the only entirely accurate English version should be sufficient to justify the winding up of the Waitangi Tribunal.
Littlewood final English draft Treaty TheTreaty in Maori that was signed by over 540 chiefs beginning on the 6 th of February 1840 is the only true Treaty. st
In the National Archives there are twelve pages of Treaty drafts and notes written from the 31 of rd January to the 3 of February 1840. On the 4th of February 1840 the final draft was written by the British Resident James Busby, at the direction of Captain William Hobson who then handed the document to Reverend Henry and Edward Williams at 4 p.m. that day for translation into Maori by the missionaries, father and son. The next day Te Tiriti O Waitangi was explained in both English and Maori to the chiefs who had travelled to Waitangi. That final English draft went missing in February 1840. 4 149 years later, in March 1989, a Treaty document in English dated the 4 th of February 1840 was found in Pukekohe, South Auckland, after the death of the mother of the Littlewood family. Analysis by historians over its provenance, and verification of the handwriting in the document by experts of the Alexander Turnbull Library, has confirmed this Littlewood document is the long-lost final draft. The Littlewood document was suppressed by hiding it from the public for most of the 17 years that followed its discovery: 1989-2006, while government-paid researchers, academics and media argued at a glacial nit-picking pace that the Littlewood draft was a ‘back translation’ of the true Maori language Treaty4 and dreamed up other spurious challenges to its authenticity. These false claims now discarded are no longer material5 although their persistence is evidence of the document’s potential threat to the power groups in our society. What really does matter is: The Littlewood final draft Treaty in English mirrors the true Maori version exactly. The Maori Treaty and Littlewood final draft Treaty are accurate contemporary translations of each other. To establish what any part of the signed Maori language Treaty meant, the answer is in the Littlewood draft in English, so the duplicitous deletions and additions shown in the table below are fully exposed. The Waitangi Tribunal created the “official” English Treaty version in 1975. In 1989, while a member of and claimant to the Waitangi Treaty, Professor Sir Hugh Kawharu created a fresh translation from the Maori Treaty to English. This version was also adopted by the Tribunal and is often the “official” version used in claims. The Tribunal chooses which to use. Both are false. The following page compares these three versions, with the Littlewood at the left as the original final draft English Treaty text. A cursory amateur examination of the differences reveals: • The phrase the people of New Zealand in the Preamble of the Littlewood version repeated in the Second and Third Articles is benevolent and inclusive wording that confirms the Crown’s intent. • The Waitangi Tribunal version deletes the people of New Zealand from the Preamble, Second, and Third Articles, and in the Third Article introduces Natives of New Zealand as the only party worthy of the Queen’s protection. This self-serving reverse-drafting could be interpreted to change the Treaty to be exclusively between the British Crown and Maori. In Freeman’s use of the Royal Style, the primary text used in the Tribunal Treaty version, he added Forests [and] Fisheries to the list of possessions Maori would not forfeit, whereas the Littlewood draft specified only “lands, dwellings and all their property” - just land occupied and actual property in the chiefs’ possession at Treaty signing. Modern claims over forests or fisheries are false as those words do not exist in the true Maori Treaty either. • The Kawharu version deletes mention of the people of New Zealand in the introduction, then includes chieftainship6 in possessions in the Second Article. But the Littlewood version only refers to “land” in the Preamble and “lands, dwellings and all their property” in the Second Article so the addition of chieftainship is an attempt to reinterpret the core of the Treaty. Historically, chiefs retained the power of life and death over their tribes including slaves captured in war. But in 1840 the chiefs strongly desired the rule of British law.7 The Treaty drafters would not have included chieftainship. • The Kawharu version further undermines the Treaty by replacing Sovereignty 8 in the Littlewood Preamble and First Articles with government in the former’s First Article which is a lesser level of power, thereby fuelling the false argument that Maori never ceded Sovereignty. • Finally Kawharu twisted the Second Article’s use of possessions which was translated into ‘taonga’. Its definition in 1820, noted by Hongi Hika is "property procured by the spear" (ie in battle or as war booty). By 1838/1844 in Williams’ Dictionary it was “property”, and that meaning has evolved to today’s: “treasure”, which can mean anything the separatist claimants choose to demand.
Are Maori Indigenous? It has been established beyond doubt that Maori travelled to NZ between 1350-1400, so around 400-500 years before Europeans and the Treaty era9. They are just one of several waves of immigrants, but not the first as Professor Ranginui Walker, past head of Maori Studies at Auckland University had this to say about the Maori canoe people that arrived in the 14 century, “The traditions are quite clear on one point, whenever crew disembarked there were already tangata whenua (prior inhabitants). The Treaty of Waitangi also refers to the people that signed the Treaty as “tangata maori” not “tangata whenua”. Governor Hobson and Rev Henry Williams would have known in 1840 that Maori were not the “tangata whenua”
v8 - 16July2022 Note: segments of the text above have been copied from others’ web sites, with deep appreciation for the research they have pursued.
References 1. https://waitangitribunal.govt.nz/treaty-of-waitangi/ Treaty of Waitangi government web site with sub-topics in links in the left panel. 2. https://nzhistory.govt.nz/people/peter-fraser 3. https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1975/0114/latest/DLM435834.html 4. https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/stout-centre/research-units/towru/publications/The-Littlewood-Treaty.pdf Analysis by Dr Donald Loveridge in 2006 re authenticity & distribution of Treaty copies - refuted in next reference5. 5.http://www.treatyofwaitangi.net.nz/LoveridgeResponse/LoveridgeResponse.htm This site is often offline – download from https://app.box.com/s/63b8cuzfo401afvroqglr37fw2mqeb4g Lengthy (approx 60 pdf pages) and detailed rebuttal by Martin Doutré of government historians’ attempts to discredit Doutré's book. In July 2006 Dr Phil Parkinson acknowledged the Littlewood Treaty as the final draft. See from section “7. EPILOGUE” to the end for the final acceptance by the senior Treaty historian. 6.The meddling of Hugh Kawharu: in 1989, Professor Hugh Kawharu decided to produce his translation into English of the Maori version of the Treaty. He conveniently changed the meaning of three key words: rangitiratanga meant possession - Kawharu made it “chieftainship” kawanatanga meant sovereignty - Kawharu made it “government” taonga meant simply property - Kawharu extended it to mean “treasures” The professor was both a member of the Tribunal and claimant – hardly a disinterested contributor. He ignores that the full Treaty in English and Maori was read and explained to the assembled chiefs before they signed. 7. https://nzhistory.govt.nz/james-busby-arrives-as-first-official-british-resident. Maori accepted they needed British law to survive. 8. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/sovereignty standard generic definition. Also: https://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-NgaTrea-t1-g1-t1.html 1922 Treaty Explained by by Sir Apirana Ngata. Pages 6 & 7 explain sovereignty and surrender of chiefly authority. NOTE: Sir Apirana Ngata is referencing the Maori Treaty. 9. http://onenzfoundation.co.nz/customary-rights-to-indigenous-people-but-maori-are-not-indigenous-to-newzealand/
Other related longer article links by various authors: [?] https://www.democracyaction.org.nz/free_speech_bruce_moon_speaks_out_in_nelson A longer description of the Treaty’s creation, times, people and events. Masterful piece from a top historian. [3] http://www.treatyofwaitangi.net.nz/TreatyBook/Precis.htm A more detailed and longer document is this précis of Martin Doutré’s book “The Littlewood Treaty: The True English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi - Found” which is a forensic analysis by this researcher. http://www.treatyofwaitangi.net.nz/TheLittlewoodTreaty3.html By the same author – includes much of the previous item – and colourfully! Describes efforts to obfuscate, and “disappear” important documents - click on “News suppression”, “1992 Publicity”, or “Authenticity” buttons in left column for more reports. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/whanganui-chronicle/news/true-waitangi-treaty-suppressed-says-author/ WPIYGT7FJ3WSV4XAFYGVDKAQUU/ Herald report on Martin Doutré attending a Whanganui conference to highlight false Treaty. http://onenzfoundation.co.nz/articles/treaty-of-waitangi/maori-nation-what-maori-nation/ A rich site on Treaty matters and more. Many sub-topics under right side column headings. http://onenzfoundation.co.nz/articles/new-zealands-new-constitution/gross-misinformation-by-theconstitutional-advisory-panel/ http://www.investigatemagazine.com/jan4treaty.htm long-form magazine article from Ian Wishart's investigate magazine titled: the end of the golden gravy train?, from January 2004, with many references to the political issues of the time. Unfortunately his predicted future has never happened. https://waikanaewatch.org/2021/02/06/what-did-the-treaty-of-waitangi-say/ A brief Waikanae Watch article by a recognised Treaty expert explaining what’s happened to each version of the Treaty. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2189236 Geoffrey Palmer’s Principles presentation.