♪ Different faces ♪
♪ Many races ♪
♪ Living in the sun ♪
According to advertisers
like coffee maker Gregg's, 1970s New Zealand was
a harmonious utopia.
And so, 150 years on,
the great, great granddaughter of Queen Victoria
arrived in Waitangi
escorted by a thousand warriors
in these magnificent long war canoes.
And while the country has long been lauded
for its integration and tolerance,
not everyone shared such a rosy view.
In the background, the shouts and yells
of Maori activist protesters
as they tried to get closer to the Queen.
Colonized by the British in the 19th century,
the indigenous population, the Maori,
would lose 97% of their land,
often through deception and violence.
Maori have been disadvantaged ever since.
We have horrific health statistics,
education statistics.
We are 17% of the population,
but make up 52% of the prison population.
Something had to be done to mitigate
the horrific atrocities that have been committed.
A reparations program was created
to reconcile the wrongs of the past
and formalize settlement agreements
between the State and the Maori people.
Settlement procedures have contributed
to empowering Maori in a big way.
We're relatively now a wealthy tribe
with net settlement assets
of close to 1.6 billion and rising.
They've been able to give them an economic opportunity
to start developing something
that we would've never been able to before.
So are New Zealand settlement agreements
an example of how best to tackle historical grievances?
There are no easy answers in the search
for that elusive concept known as justice,
so long after the event.
The islands in the South West Pacific,
now known as New Zealand,
were once inhabited only by the Maori.
They formed tribes and subtribes, known as iwi and hapu.
As the tentacles of Western imperialism spread
around the world in the 18th century,
White settlers landed in what was then called Aotearoa,
looking for resources to exploit.
By the start of the 19th century,
it was like the Wild West.
A lot on them were sealers and whalers.
It was just debauchery all over the place,
drunkenness, murder,
every non-civilized behavior was there.
Our ancestors became increasingly frustrated
that they could not get these people to abide
by the laws of the country.
In 1840, the British made an agreement
with over 500 Maori chiefs
that would forever define their relationship:
The Treaty of Waitangi.
The treaty that was entered into in 1840
was to give over responsibility from our leaders here
to the British leader, who at that time was Queen Victoria.
In addition, Maori chiefs thought
the treaty would give them more say on trade and land sales,
but the language of the treaty is contentious.
Two versions; one Maori, one English, didn't help.
The Maori copy promised they would continue
to own their lands, forests and fisheries.
The English version gave the Queen
"all the rights and powers of sovereignty" over their land.
In the Maori language,
there isn't a direct translation for the word sovereignty
because there was no singular ruler over the land.
The British government insisted the treaty placed
the Maori under British authority.
In our culture, if you want to include people
in the culture, you give them over land
so that they will become part of you.
Well, the British misinterpreted that as being
that we had sold our lands to them and given everything up,
which simply just wasn't true.
There was a great deal of land initially, for settlement
and the Crown acquired it mostly through purchasing,
but the purchases were forced purchases, basically
and the
promises made to Maori were
essentially broken
and then when that land started to run out,
then the Crown invaded areas that were resisting.
So essentially, we have typical colonization procedures
to alienate Maori land and
to marginalize Maori culture
and to try and assimilate Maori into the Western ways
of thinking and seeing and doing.
Wars, Western diseases, poverty;
the effects of colonization decimated the Maori population.
Estimates suggest there might've been 100,000 Maori
by the end of the 18th century.
The 1896 census counted just 42,000.
Within a generation the Maori went from being landlords
for the White settlers to being their laborers
and all at the hands of their own government.
It wasn't just resources that they took off us,
they tried to destroy us as well as a people,
take away our language, take away our culture,
write legislation making them illegal,
not allowed to be taught in schools.
My father and his generation were all physically punished
and physiologically punished if they spoke Maori in schools.
That's one of the reasons
that we have such difficulty in shifting the status quo,
is that the British came out here
to seek their fortune in a land that was not their own
and in the process of doing so became very privileged
very wealthy, very powerful
and not prepared to give that up.
New Zealand used to pride itself on being the country
with the best race relations in the world
and from about the 1960s, 1970s onwards,
people increasingly challenged that.
After the Second World War,
Maori began to migrate to the cities
in search of employment and modern life.
The speed of this transformation highlighted the gulf
between the two sets of people.
Maori experienced discrimination
in housing and employment, were expected to learn English
and abandon their customs.
But this new generation
of urban Maori would have a huge impact.
Maori in the cities had much more capacity
to challenge the Crown and to get the Crown
to actually listen to their grievances,
particularly younger Maori, who were educated
and knew how to make their way in the White world,
the Pakeha world.
Younger Maori were terribly influenced
by the protest movements right around the world
in the 1960s and including Black power in America,
the American Indian Movement.
But then the Maori land march in 1975,
that was tremendously important
at bringing Maori issues to Pakeha attention
and that was the combination of elders
led by a very revered kuia female elder,
Dame Whina Cooper
and in association with a lot of younger,
more radical people.
Suffering with arthritis,
80-year-old Whina Cooper led 5,000 people
on a 700-mile march to protest stolen Maori land.
Where's the justice?
This period of cultural and political revival
is now known as the 'Maori Renaissance'.
It helped unify Maori opinion on land reclamation
and it opened the eyes of White New Zealanders
to Maori causes and race more broadly.
You started getting some sort of understanding
amongst the general population
that things weren't all that good for Maori
and maybe that did explain why Maori were so poor
and so not able to keep up
with the rest of the country.
But there was no understanding of how deliberate
and how the bad faith that was involved
in what the British did,
was simply not there.
The same year as the Land March,
the New Zealand government launched the Waitangi Tribunal
to investigate contemporary breaches of the 1840 treaty.
Maori culture was being revitalized and better protected.
Huge numbers of New Zealanders also protested
the visit of the South African rugby team,
who maintained the segregationist policy of apartheid.
As both national and international attention increased,
the New Zealand government amended
the Treaty of Waitangi Act
to investigate historical grievances
dating back to the treaty of 1840.
They began to realize that
if you have a large indigenous population
that's dissatisfied with fundamental aspects
of the way you're running the country
and the way you have run it,
then the only way forward in a meaningful way
is to address their grievances.
By 1985 the tribunal was hearing claims
from individual tribes
and started making settlements varying
in size and substance
and offering more
than just monetary compensation.
Some included formal apologies from the Crown.
The apology was tremendously important for Maori
and the initial tribes we negotiated with,
they insisted on an apology
and the Crown was incredibly reluctant to do so.
They probably thought, well, they certainly thought
that there might be legal ramifications for that.
Some claims had cultural significance
such as the restoration of Maori names
of geographical features.
One iwi had so much economic success resulting
from its settlement agreement
that it became a blueprint for others to follow.
The Ngai Tahu loss, economic loss
was valued at 20 billion, 20 billion
and we settled on the cash offer of the 170 million.
The Ngai Tahu land in the South Island,
which is equivalent in size to
the State of New York,
was taken by the British for just £14,750.
Our people were split.
There were those who did not want to settle
because the quantum,
the value that we were settling for
was significantly less than what
the assessment of what the value should have been.
Despite the discrepancy in value,
the Ngai Tahu have built a successful portfolio
and intergenerational wealth through savvy investment.
As of May 2019, Ngai Tahu's fund boasts
an average annual return of more than 15%,
according to the iwis investment arm.
We're relatively now a wealthy tribe
with net settlement assets of close to 1.6 billion.
Today, Ngai Tahu has interests in fishing, tourism,
property, as well as a diversified
equities portfolio,
all of which are managed
through Ngai Tahu Holdings Limited,
our commercial company.
Structurally, there are two parts to the organization.
So we have one arm that makes the money
and we have another arm that spends the money
and we keep them very separate.
The settlement at that time was a relief for our people.
It meant that our grievances were acknowledged.
It meant the wrongdoings of the Crown were acknowledged.
It meant that we could finally have redress
that could assist us to develop a strong economic base
to support our people
and for our elders, the apology part of settlement,
meant that they felt that our tupuna,
our ancestors before us,
the wrongdoings had been acknowledged.
Today, we are strong enough and honest enough
to learn the lessons of the last 150 years
and to admit that the treaty has been imperfectly observed.
Despite wide acceptance of the need
for settlement agreements, the process is found wanting
from both sides of the divide.
Some criticize the increasing number of claims and expense.
Many Maori argue settlements don't even begin
to scratch the surface of their losses.
The amount that they were offering to settle
these claims was minuscule.
I'm talking 1% of what was lost
and no consideration at all for the socioeconomic damage
that had been done.
The grinding poverty
and the grinding marginalization, deprivation,
just became too much for our people
and so they started accepting just a little bit
to get themselves up off the grinding poverty.
And once they started doing that,
the government machine was relentless
and it just drove settlements
and I was one of the negotiators.
My iwi decided we would try to see
if we could get our lands back
and under the settlement process,
it was the most horrific, demoralizing
process that I've ever been through.
They would come into your iwi,
divide your iwi so that you're all fighting each other.
And that was the biggest damage that was done,
was the internal conflict that it caused
and all of that for the return of
1% of your lands.
Settling is also contentious for some Maori
who aspires to rangatiratanga,
which translates as the right of Maori people
to rule themselves.
Another issue was how the Crown could give away land.
Owners of private land who gained it through legal means
cannot have it taken from them.
The Crown can only give its own land
or money for the tribes to purchase land.
It had to offer packages that could never fully
compensate the tribes, but were large enough
to help them rebuild.
They also had to be kept in line with the other tribes,
of which they are around 100.
Some iwi aren't close to settling either.
The claims process is far from perfect
and will always attract conflicting views.
But what the majority agree
is that it offers a roadmap on how to acknowledge events
of the past and build for the future.
What extends beyond the negotiating table?
That is not the end of our relationship
nor is it the end of the Crown's responsibility.
It's the fact that not everyone has a decent home,
a decent place to live
and it's the incarceration
of the Maori people disproportionately to everyone else.
That is the distance between us
and so long as that exists,
we have failed in our partnership,
but I inherently believe in our power to change.
I look back to the time before treaty settlements
when Maori were in fear
of getting anything much at all out of the Crown,
any kind of respect for rangatiratanga
and where Pakeha thought
that we had perfect race relations.
There wasn't much of a problem.
I think most New Zealanders of European descent
wouldn't think that now at all.
They know that there was a typical colonial past
for New Zealand and that Maori were
disenfranchised and disadvantaged and marginalized.
While systemic issues remain in New Zealand,
settlements have revitalized communities,
increased intergenerational wealth
and reconciled differences.
The Maori economy is now worth
almost 70 billion New Zealand dollars.
That's up from an estimated 50 billion in 2013.
I don't wanna kind of leave it with too rosy a view,
but I do think that we have made enormous progress
and we're on quite a good platform
for better progress still.