POSTSCRIPT 2: Rangatiratanga as Ownership

Following on from my book review of Ned Fletcher's English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi, this is POSTSCRIPT 2: 

Article Two of the Māori text of Te Tiriti promises to preserve tino rangatiratanga [1]; courts have interpreted this in various ways to mean that chiefs (Rangatira) retain some kind of chiefly power.  Fletcher says the English text agrees with this, saying the concept of sovereignty ceded was “compatible with ongoing tribal self-government,” suggesting then that “tino rangatiratanga” means Māori self-government. His view is both an expansion and a clarification of the mainstream view of what “tino rangatiratanga” might mean.

Context is important. It is Article One that whose focus is on sovereignty, whereas Article Two has a focus on land and resources. There was a logical progression from one Article to another, with the first Article, logically and in law, taking precedence. (Sovereignty first; then clarifying what that sovereignty is for.)

So in this context then, what is chieftainship about? It is primarily about ownership. Even individual ownhership. In his book One Sun in the Sky, author Ewen McQueen argues however that Williams's translation reverts to the collective:

“It is true that in translation [he says] Henry Williams has taken an approach that better aligns with the more [collectivist] Māori world-view, rather than the more individualistic European outlook. As such the Māori version does not refer to individuals holding exclusive possession of property. Instead we find chiefs exercising “chieftainship over the lands, villages and all their treasures.” [2]

As I say above, this makes for a disastrous confusion. “In particular the reference to chieftainship is about collective tribal rights over land. As [former Chief Justive] William Martin wrote in 1860,

‘This tribal right is clearly a right of property… To themselves they retained what they understood full well, the ‘tino Rangatiratanga,’ ‘full Chiefship,’ in respect of all their lands…’” [3]

“Even the ‘tino’ of the Māori version is better understood in this context,” notes McQueen. “It does not mean that the chiefs’ authority is unqualified in a government sense. Rather it is Henry Williams’s translation of how the chiefs would retain possession of the lands, forests and fisheries. The English version emphasised such possession would continue ‘full exclusive and undisturbed.’ Williams has rendered this concept as ‘tino’ rangatiratanga. It is about Māori retaining full agency over their land and resources. It is not a statement about unqualified political sovereignty.”

So “rangatiratanga” relates to ownership. “Tino” gives force to this relationship, giving it the force of a property right.

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[1] Hugh Kawharu back-translates te tino rangatiratanga as 'the unqualified exercise of their chieftainship' -- the Queen guaranteeing "to protect the Chiefs, the subtribes and all the people of New Zealand in the unqualified exercise of their chieftainship over their lands, villages and all their treasures ..."

 In Fletcher's reconstructed English text, the corresponding phrase is full exclusive and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates, Forests Fisheries and other properties ... "

[2] Ewen McQueen, One Sun in the Sky, Galatas Press (2020), p. 42-43. 

[3] William Martin, The Taranaki Question, The Melanesian Press(1860), p. 9. Quoted in McQueen, p. 43