The ‘Pondering:…’ column is where people from within the ‘Team of 40,000 Baptists’ can share issues they are thinking about in a way that opens up a topic from a particular perspective. Feel free to comment on these pieces on Facebook or our new Mailbox or contribute your own pondering. Opinion pieces are the views of individuals and need to be considered within the context of the diversity of our union of Baptist churches in New Zealand. When commenting or contributing, please follow our Guidelines for articles, opinion pieces and online comments.
Alan Jamieson is the General Director of Arotahi, the New Zealand Baptist mission arm.
The following is a response to Robert Jensen’s opinion piece (19 Oct 2024) titled ‘Keeping Tiriti Hikoi on track’. Like Robert, I would like to state that my opinion here does not represent Arotahi — he and I are offering our own personal perspectives. I have discussed these views previously with him in person and through lengthy email dialogue, often disagreeing. In all of our conversations, I have respected his deep concern and love for Jesus and the church. Robert is choosing to publicly state his views, and I therefore feel the need to respond publicly as I see these views as hurtful and factually incorrect
I am not an historian nor a treaty expert, and I do not have Māori whakapapa. I am a fifth-generation Pākeha. As Tāngata Tiriti, the covenant of the Treaty of Waitangi (drafted by Christians, translated by Christians, and carried around the country and explained to Māori leaders by Christians) inspires me to follow Christ in the ways we understand and live in Aotearoa. It offers a distinctly biblical way of being in relationship with Māori. I see no disparity between the essence of Scripture and the heart of the Treaty, but sense the treaty as aligned with the gospel and resonating with the path of scripture.
I, as a Pākeha may find Robert’s perspective annoying and frustrating. However, for many Māori it is more than frustrating — it is deeply wounding. Despite a genuine intent not to cause harm, perspectives like this add to the vitriol Māori continue to experience in Aotearoa and once again awakens the intergenerational memory of past abuse, re-traumatising and deepening their impact.
Robert’s argument seems to be that contemporary perspectives of the Treaty of Waitangi, specifically the official statements of the Baptist Union, Carey Baptist College and Arotahi, are revisionist and do not align with the original understanding of Māori present at the signing of the Treaty. He suggests that there may not be internal agreement within the Treaty or between the versions of the Treaty (something many historians, e.g Paul Moon, do not agree with). That the Māori version does not have legal precedence (yet this is the version more than 500 Māori chiefs signed[i] and is the ruling of international law). That the circumstances of the signing point to a different meaning to key words than is understood today (something research does not show) or that Māori knowingly, ceded sovereignty. The later was not the finding of the Waitangi Tribunal or the Crown after a decade of investigation into the Ngāpuhi Waitangi claim which analysed more than half a million pages of evidence, produced a 2,000 page report finding that Ngāpuhi did not cede sovereignty.
Robert evidences his views through the words of a single Māori leader at the Kohimarama Conference of July/August 1860. In truth, many leaders spoke at Kohimarama and their views differed. At the conference's close, they “passed a unanimous resolution, called the Kohimarama covenant, which both recognised the Crown’s sovereignty and confirmed chiefly rangatiratanga[ii].”
To quote Claudia Orange:
“The most important idea retained by Māori leaders from the conference was that Māori mana had been guaranteed. Partly this was because Governor Browne and the conference chairman Donald McLean had stressed this in their explanations of the Treaty. But it was also because the conference itself was a recognition of rangatiratanga. Māori leaders had expressed their dissatisfaction about the unequal participation of Māori in law and government. They petitioned the Governor to make the conference a permanent institution. The government agreed, and promised to reconvene the assembly in 1861[iii].”
Tragically, that never happened. Only a year later Governor Browne was demanding ‘submission without reserve to the Queen’s sovereignty’; a substantial shift in viewpoint. He was replaced by the return of Governor Grey and on the 12th July 1863, the Crown launched an attack on Māori in the Waikato. The Land Wars had begun. If understandings behind the meaning and heart of the Treaty had changed, I think it is plain to see on which side they were changing.
In the 1860’s, the vast majority of Māori were Christian. But the silence of many European churches during the Land Wars and subsequent confiscation of land, meant Māori felt their Christian whānau had largely let them down. As Desmond Tutu said, “when the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.”
Robert's article goes on to suggest that the so-called ‘revisionist’ views now popular in Baptist statements of the Treaty have been influenced by disparate 19th century thinkers who reimagine human identity without God and have led to the distortion of contemporary Baptist interpretations of the Treaty. Specifically that Māori have rights under the treaty that were not understood by Māori chiefs in 1840 as they debated and signed the treaty and were not in Māori minds twenty years later. In fact Māori leaders, historians, the Waitangi Tribunal and the Crown[iv] do not agree that our understandings of the treaty have been re-interpreted or fundamentally changed. Such views are simply historically false and to perpetuate them is disinformation. Yet, they are not only false. They are divisive, hurtful to Māori, and explicitly unhelpful in the present cultural moment.
Instead I suggest the breathed-vision of God is seen in the church from its birth (Acts 2) to its culmination (Revelation 7). The church’s core focus and heartbeat is the Lord Jesus Christ. It is around and through Christ that a diversity of cultures, languages and peoples is heard, seen and celebrated. The vision of God is not the oneness of assimilation, but instead a deep appreciation and awe for the rich diversity of people’s, languages and cultures gathered in the worship of the Lord Jesus Christ. The church should be a place of all cultures and peoples worshipping and serving Jesus in the fullness of their own rangatiratanga[v], language, culture and waiata.
Other responses
Pondering: Whether we are legally obliged to honour the Treaty or not is not the point by Ngaire Button
Te Tiriti opinions should be informed by true knowledge of and relationship with Māori. That wasn't. by Luke Kaa-Morgan
More opinion pieces
Read other contributions to our ‘Pondering…’ column here.
Endnotes
[i] Less than 40 signed the English version
[ii] https://teara.govt.nz/en/te-tiriti-o-waitangi-the-treaty-of-waitangi...
[iii] Orange, Claudia (2022) The Story of a Treaty: He Kōrero Tiriti (Bridget Williams Books; Wellington) P69
[iv] In treaty settlements and the implementation of Treaty Principles
[v] Self-determination and self-management
Photo credit: Alan Jamieson at Hui 2023, by Morgan Dews
