Our website is currently under construction — thank you for your patience.

This Week’s Issue

Through the Portal

Would Maori Sovereignty work like this?

Want to promote your business or idea?

We Support Local

Written by

Trevor Ammundsen

Published on

December 11, 2024

THROUGH THE PORTAL

BY TREVOR AMMUNDSEN

Well, the hikoi has come and gone, and as expected, nothing has changed yet.

This doesn’t surprise me as I thought the Treaty Principles bill was largely an administration tidy up which no one should be too upset about. However, this thought was corrected by Te Pāti Māori leader, Rawiri Waititi, who stated that the hikoi was really about Māori Sovereignty and the good fight would continue. When I read this, I started to think about how Māori Sovereignty could exist, how it could be structured and so on. Essentially, I decided to think about how this could be achieved, rather than how this could be stopped.

Sovereignty means “supreme power over a political body” with the body generally being a country.

The Treaty of Waitangi gave that power to the Crown and from there to our Parliament however the second clause of the Treaty indicates how Māori Sovereignty could be approached.

This clause states that the chiefs, sub-tribes, and all people of New Zealand are to be protected in the unqualified exercise of Chieftainship over their lands. If Maori did not sell their land, they were in charge of it. Perhaps it is possible to structure some form of self-governance/authority based upon this.

In some overseas countries, the self-governance of a population segment is always based around geography. This really has to happen in this way if boundaries are to be defined. An example is the Indian Reservation system in the USA where ethnic Indians manage their own affairs.

Police for example can only pursue to the border of the reservation with the Reservation Authority in charge once that border was crossed. The problem with these reservations is that generally the land is poor quality and the opportunities to generate income are limited. I do not believe we really want such a model here but there are aspects of it that we may appreciate.

It would seem that a self-governance system could be put in place based around the Treaty and some overseas ideas but the first requirement would be to define Maori land and who is a Maori. These definitions would be needed as if laws come from two different places, it would be necessary to easily clarify when either version of the law was to be applied. Both definitions should be reasonably straight forward to put in place with the electoral role used to define a Maori and a set of rules (size, presence of Marae etc) used to define Maori land.

With these structures being in place, it invites the transfer of power from the country to the Maori land entities. There are a number of services that can be setup for Maori to control on their land. A good example is education, where the existing Charter Schools programme could be used. Potentially, other such services could be tapped into, such as Health Care. Another example would be rates where Maori land blocks would not pay any general rates yet would need to pay for services (Water, Storm Water etc) if they were required. They could of course develop their own such services and could develop their own rules. For example, a Maori block may decide to ignore the established local authority building rules and define their own. This would have the effect of lowering costs but may have a negative effect on any bank financing that is required.

As soon as issues such as housing come up, the major problem of finance is raised. Any houses built on the Maori Land Blocks we are discussing would be only available to Maori. This means a smaller market so perhaps would take longer to sell. This may mean the banks would be less interested in lending on such houses. An eventual cure for this problem could be to start a Maori Bank, using funds from the wealthier tribes, potentially from other banks and possibly the Government. This is a very big task and a race-based bank might be a challenging democratic principle.

The challenge for such Maori land blocks (MLBs) is to not let them turn into only homes for beneficiaries with a gathered community ruined by the effects of drugs, alcohol and separation.

This has been a major problem overseas but I believe we have the land quality to help ensure this does not happen. The MLBs should generate money through tourism, farming, hunting and related sales as well as associated activities (eg contracting, driving, etc) selling their products and services to the outer world. This could work well for people such as the Tuhoe in the Ureweras with a large expanse of land available for the generation of income. If they wished they could, for example, partner with a foreign operator to build a tourist hotel by Lake Waikaremoana and further boost income.

Further challenges could be discussed, My musings do lead me to think however that a form of Maori self-governance could be put in place, but I wonder whether or not they would really want this once it gets past the rhetoric stage. Would anyone really want this kind of societal structural change?