No, native schools did not ban te reo

 While considering Elizabeth Rata's recent Research Report into the History of New Zealand Education -- which I recommend, by the way -- I remembered a long-ago 'Cue Card' that appeared here on the topic of Education, contrasting liberal, conservative, and libertarian views on the subject:

The 'liberal' view [of education] is that all that is wrong with state education can be fixed with more money, better staff-student ratios, greater control of curriculum, more qualified teachers and more paperwork. But as more and more money spent on education has shown that more of the same just produces more and more failure.  

The view of conservatives is generally that public education needs to be made more efficient. With more efficiency, they say, 'delivery' of education will be better.

Libertarians however maintain that state education is all too efficient: it has been ruthlessly efficient at delivering the state’s chosen values. After generations of indoctrination at the knee of the state we now have several generations who are 'culturally safe' and politically correct -- ‘good citizens’ unable to use the brains they were born with, unthinkingly compliant in every respect with the values in which they've been totally immersed; braindead automatons to whom group-think is good and for forty-two percent of whom the reading of a bus timetable or the operation of a simple appliance is beyond them.

In previous decades the government's chosen values included banning the speaking of Maori in schools; speaking Maori in schools is fast becoming compulsory, along with the teaching of the ordained versions of Te Tiriti and the inculcation of the ideas of multiculturalism and the inferiority of western culture. Governments and their values change, but their use of their factory schools for indoctination doesn't.

The government's recently chosen values are "fairness, opportunity and security." We know that because [then-Prime Minister] Helen Clark said so. Orwell would have recognised these words, as he might the rigid orthodoxies of what passes for teacher training. "What happens in our schools is a very big part of shaping the future of New Zealand," says Ms Clark in the same speech, acknowledging that this is the way to make subjects out of citizens. Libertarians agree with Ms Clark's statement, which is precisely why we want governments away from the schools and away from control of curricula. 

Both Liberals and conservatives endorse state control of schools and of curricula, and they both seek to be the state. Libertarians don't.

They still don't.

But I made an error in the above 'Cue Card,' which Ms Rata's Report neatly corrects.

It is of course a historical fact that it's wasn't so much that the state banned the speaking of Māori in schools. What actually happened, as she reports, is that from George Grey's Education Ordinance of 1847 on, Māori were insisting that their children be taught in English, the lingua franca of the day. This is from Māori parents, Māori politicians, and Māori tribal leaders.

This is unsurprising. English was the entry into 19th century industrial technology – metallurgy for the new era of factories, rail, road and steamships, animal husbandry for livestock farming, and soil cultivation for grain and fruit production. Older crafts included leatherwork and blacksmithing. Combined with the English language, technological knowledge added to the already established Māori involvement in national and international business and trade.

The 1858 Native Schools Act continued the 1847 Ordinance's requirement for English language and industrial training. ...

The purpose of the Native village schools was to ensure that children would be bilingual: Māori at home and in the community and English acquired at school. English was a foreign language to many children so second language teaching methods and English content was used.

These were schools located in Māori villages, at the specific request of Māori elders, often with Māori parents attending classes as well, And in those "native schools" as they were called 

W. Rolleston, first inspector of Native Schools ... noted [in 1867] widespread dissatisfaction with the syllabus and with Māori as the language of instruction.

There was too much of the Bible taught, and too little of other subjects. They were taught moreover in their own language, whereas what they wished to learn was English.

The 1867 Native Schools Act directly addressed these concerns. Māori Members of Parliament supported implementing the Act. Karaitiana Takamoana (Eastern Maori) noted that the missionaries had been teaching the children –

“for many years, and the children are not educated. They have only taught them in the Maori language. The whole of the Maoris in this Island request that the Government should give instructions that the Maoris should be taught in English only”

Four more petitions to Parliament followed: In 1876 from Te Hakairo and 336 others; in 1877 from Renata Renata Kawepo and 790 others; and in 1877 from Riripi Ropata and 200 others. 

The schools gently prised education from the hands of missionaries into those of the state. They were funded by the taxpayer, with control of government funding and the school management transferred to village committees "at least 5 who are elected annually by parents of the children at the school." But above all:

The [Native Schools] Act required teacher competency, English language instruction, and syllabus quality:

The English language and the ordinary subjects of primary English education [said the Native Schools Act, 1867, S. 21] are taught by a competent teacher and that the instruction is carried on in the English language as far as practicable.

In short, while training Māori in English was one of the state's chosen values, it was at the express invitation of Māori parents, patriarchs, and politicians -- and was not to the exclusion of the Māori language itself.

* * * * 

Ms Rata discusses this topic and much more in a fascinating podcast interview with the NZ Initiative's Michael Johnston:

Were Maori environmentalists? [updated]

A friend who wrote a thesis several years ago on common law solutions to environmentalism asked me this question a few weeks ago, and I've only recently got around to answering (I've paraphrased the question just a little):

Q: How did Maori activists [he asks] attain the apparent status they now possess in the environmental movement? In other words, why do NZ environmentalists bow to Maori prejudices? When I wrote my thesis this absurdity was not evident as it is now. Please can anybody shed some light on this?

So here's my rather belated answer.

On the facts of pre-European Maori environmental stewardship , the best I've read is a shortish piece by M.S. McGlone et al: 'An Ecological Approach to the Polynesian Settlement of New Zealand' published in The Origins of the First New Zealanders [Auckland University Press, 1994.] Unfortunately, it's not online (although I do quote from it briefly in this article), but it does rather give the lie to the idea of Maori as sound environmental stewards.

Take bird life for example. 

"James et al estimate that untouched Oceania may have had more than 9000 bird species -- more than the total of surviving species on Earth today. Most of this incredibly rich fauna was eliminated by the direct or indirect effect of [pre-European] settlement... The amount of accessible fat and protein per square kilometre on a Pacific island may have been unequalled anywhere in the world...  

Direct evidence exists for this superabundance of bird and marine resources on unexploited islands... In the initial settlement period [of New Zealand], the early abundance of bird bone must have represented a truly incredible exploitation rate... [Yet] NZ midden evidence shows that the consistent exploitation of birds in the late prehisoric results in few bird-bone remains...

The extinction of birds other than moa and of reptiles, and the shrinking of the range of many other species are well-attested (Cassels 1984)... the absence of these species in natural deposits such as caves, swamps and sand dunes after about 1,000 years ago strongly suggests early and vigorous depletion...

In summary: the birds were being killed and eaten in great numbers, in complete disregard it seems of any long-term consequences.

The case is the same for New Zealand flora. Slash and burn agriculture "rapidly destroyed much of the forest cover... By 600 years [Before Present] many animals had been driven to extinction or close to it, and very large areas of country, even in remote inland South Island valleys, were being burnt regularly... A degree of burning may been beneficial, for a [short] time at least."

However, over the longer term: "Extensive burning of inland valleys and ridges offered no obvious advantages in terms of food production..." The result of indigenous environmental stewardship over the longer term? Population grew rapidly in the North Island of NZ from 800 years BP, before slowing down about 400 years BP (following the major forest clearance phase) and plateauing about 200 years BP at about 100,000 when resources began diminishing (see graph at right).

After the initial settlement phase, New Zealand moved directly into a subsistence mode which characterised other island populations only during famine or when pushed into highly marginal lands... By the end of the prehistoric period New Zealand was no longer resource-rich, and the very scarcity of resources and reliance on hard-won wild foods had created a situation from which no larger political entities could easily arise.

So the idea of Maori as sound environmental stewards is not supported by the archaeological evidence. As 'sustainable' environmentalists they just weren't. So how to explain then the apparent status they now possess in the environmental movement? The reason is more widespread than is contained in environmentalism alone.

I think there's perhaps three legs in answer to the question, all related.

1. The Noble Savage

The first is the notion, first given currency by Rousseau, of the 'Noble Savage' -- the romantic idea of wild, untamed human creatures 'uncorrupted' by civilisation. It might be noted that this creation of 'romantic primitivism' was postulated entirely without evidence.

As Roger Sandall amongst others has noted, "A 'savage,'' untouched by civilization, would be akin to an animal, and neither noble nor a good role model for a society. By viewing civilization as something that corrupts or taints a person's pure or natural state, 'new tribalists' are succumbing, like Rousseau, to the romantic idea that the natural state of a human being, without the moderating effect of civilization, is somehow better. To the critics this notion is easily refutable, either by comparing human quality of life before civilization, or as humorist P.J. O'Rourke pointed out, by considering the natural state of children."

In Sandall's view, [summarises Wikipedia] romantic primitivism places far too high a value on cultures that were often characterised by, among other aspects, limited human rights, religious intolerance, disease and poverty. Other negative aspects he discusses include domestic oppression (usually of women and children), violence, clan/tribal warfare, poor care of the environment and considerable restriction on artistic freedom of expression.

'The Four Stages of Noble Savagery: The Moral Transiguration of the Tribal World' is the Appendix to Sandall's book, 'The Culture Cult,' and is highly readable on this question. He concludes by discussing the 'Disneyfication' of the 'Noble Savage':

Sentimentalism begets puerility. The ruthless scalpers of yesterday become Loving Persons. One-time ferocious fighters are discovered to be Artists at Heart. Hollywood becomes interested...  
Combined with this a suffocating religiosity now descends on public discussion, enforced by priests and judges, journalists and teachers, poets and politicians, all of whom claim that native culture possesses a “spirituality” found nowhere else. Soon the primitive is elevated above the civilized. In the words of one observer in New Zealand it is said that the whites “have lost the appreciation for magic and the capacity for wonder” while white culture, besides being “out of step with nature. . . pollutes the environment and lacks a close tie with the land.”

Few are unkind enough to note that “the imagined ancestors with whom the Pacific is being repopulated”—Wise Ecologists, Mystical Sages, and Pacifist Saints—“are in many ways creations of Western imagination.”

Just like Pocohantas. Or Chief Seattle.

2. 'The National Question'

The second leg is specifically political, the idea that Lenin called 'The National Question' -- a specific strategy adopted by Marxist-Leninists to help destabilise a colonised country by use of the grievances, real or otherwise, of indigenous populations.

This movement came to attention in NZ in the late seventies (made most visible with the 'Treaty is a Fraud' movement), and you might say that reached its apogee under Neville Bolger's appeasing stewardship (when it suddenly transmogrified into an'Honour the Treaty' movement).

When mainstream Marxism collapsed following the collapse of the Berlin Wall -- and with it any claim that Marxist societies would ever be able to produce (or be good environmental stewards) -- rather than give up their authoritarianism, the custodians of 'The National Question' stampeded into local and overseas environmental movements. Consequently, the numbers of 'National Question' adherents and other fellow-travellers (the gullible type whom Lenin called Useful Idiots) who call themselves 'green' but are still red on the inside would seem to be quite large.

3. Multiculturalism

The third leg, related to and in some sense underpinning both, is the notion of 'multiculturalism' -- the idea that all cultures are equal (apart, that is, from the cultures of the west). 'Multi-culti is one of the many foolish notions of postmodernism, (encompassing both moral relativism and political correctness) that captured the academies in recent years.

Naturally when the least are made equal to the best, the least win out. If all cultures are asserted (without evidence) to be equal, then one is disarmed from finding evidence that would disprove such an assertion. To find and assert such evidence would, according to the multiculturalist, be 'racist.'

The consequence is this: If one is disarmed from judging a culture -- which is one of the goals of moral relativism -- then the worst cultures are left free from moral judgement, and moral judgement itself becomes bereft of any evidential-base: the only immorality to a multiculturalist is to challenge the assertions of multiculturalism. That too would be racist.

But as Thomas Sowell points out, you can judge cultures, and in fact if human life is our standard then morality demands that we should judge them.

Cultures [he insists] are not museum-pieces. They are the working machinery of everyday life. Unlike objects of aesthetic contemplation, working machinery is judged by how well it works, compared to the alternatives. The judgment that matters is not the judgment of observers and theorists, but the judgment implicit in millions of individual decisions to retain or abandon particular cultural practices, decisions made by those who personally benefit or who personally pay the price of inefficiency and obsolescence."

Anyway, on this last point you might want to have a good look at:

• My own Multiculturalism archives.
• Thomas Sowell's book Conquest and Cultures.
• George Reisman's superb pamphlet 'Education and the Racist Road to Barbarism,' which pretty much explains and explodes the process and the arguments behind multiculturalism.
• 'Multiculturalism: The New Racism,' a special issue of the Ayn Rand Institute's 'Impact' magazine.' [Cover story here]
• And for a background to how they get away with it philosophically, you might take a good look also at Stephen Hicks's superb book Explaining Postmodernism [free PDF here] - you can read a summary of the book's thesis here in an interview with Hicks.

REFERENCES CITED ABOVE IN McGLONE et al:
- Cassells, R., 1984: 'The role of prehistoric man in the faunal extinctions of New Zealand and other Pacific Islands,' in Martin et al Quaternary Extinctions, Uni of Arizona Press.
- James et al, 1987: 'Radiocarbon dates on bones of extinct birds from Hawaii,' Proceedings of the Nat. Academy of Sciences of the USA, 84.
- Leach, H.M., 1980: 'Incompatible land use patterns in Maori food production,' New Zealand Archaeological Ass. Newsletter, v.23.

UPDATE: Matua Kahurangi takes a look at a current example of non-kaitiakitanga where bureaucratic management, bad incentives and pisspoor efforts at conservation combine in the worst of all worlds ....

For years, the Ureweras have been celebrated as a showcase of iwi stewardship and environmental guardianship. But the reality is far bleaker. Tūhoe leadership is presiding over mismanagement, neglect, and a shocking lack of accountability, turning what should be a model of co-governance into a cautionary tale of waste and incompetence. ... huts and infrastructure deliberately left to rot or burned down, sensitive areas mismanaged, and allegations of intimidation or threats towards white Kiwis attempting to access the land. These are not isolated incidents - they are a pattern.

It's the chieftainship, stupid [revised]

The Government goes to Waitangi this week expecting to be challenged on water, on Ihumatao, and on Whanau Ora. That is to say, they expect tribal leaders to challenge them on the issues of tribal control of water, the tribal control of land, and the direction of government welfare payments and welfare services through Maori tribal hands.

Ever wondered why, in a world that's said to be about individuals and individual achievement, we still seem to have government support of a tribal system?

What happened?

Thousand of years ago Polynesian voyagers set out into the vast blue seas to explore and occupy the South-eastern Pacific. Several eventually discovered and settled in New Zealand. And then for just over five-hundred years, isolated from the rest of the world, they developed their own culture. They became Maori.

So in that great migration "out of Africa," New Zealand was the world's last great land-mass to be settled by human beings. And then almost the last to be brought back into the worldwide division-of-labour.

This should be something to celebrate, no? Yet if the headlines are to be believed, the descendants of these former adventurers see their own great conquest as creeping tribal capture of the government chequebook.

Tribal life

Those early New Zealanders were welcomed into the worldwide division-of-labour by whalers, sealers, timber-traders and assorted wanderers and adventurers who offered Maori things for their labour they's never seen before. And in return for tools, technology and new foods, they sold trees and flax and kumara, and crewed ships, built houses and travelled the world.


The treaty signed at Waitangi by tribal chiefs and a recently-arrived Royal Naval captain promised all these New Zealanders their own Emancipation Proclamation, and held out hope of liberating tribal serfs from tribalism. Instead, 180 years later, here we are barrelling down a path back to tribalism. Something Elizabeth Rata has called neo-tribalism: the intentional production of a neo-tribal elite who are busily "marching through the institutions," in which they play "a decisive and self-interested role in controlling shifts in the interpretation of the treaty of Waitangi." [1]

The result: the empowerment of a neo-tribal elite, in which tribal leaders have the upper hand again. And instead of the hope and optimism of those early adventurers, the predominant emotions now are shame and guilt -- shame as a necessary precursor to this tribal shakedown.

Something clearly went wrong.

One reason is the way that treaty was written: hastily. It was written in just a few days by folk wholly unqualified to write a thing that some erroneously call the country's "founding document." It's not that, and never has been. And nor does it contain enough to merit that description.

But what it does have is the material which the neotribalists have been able to exploit. One of which is the problem of 'chieftainship.'

The problem of chieftainship

The problem is this: that instead of the treaty being written to protect individual Maori, it promised instead to placate tribal chiefs. It's right there in the wording and in all the arguments today about rangatiratanga. It's understandable. After all, it was their signatures the British Colonial Office was after before allowing colonisation here to receive their imprimatur. "Alive to the record of native extinction that had come with settlement in Tasmania and the Caribbean, and was threatened in Australia," the treaty's aim was to "recognise the rights of the Maori as subject in the agreement, with rights and interests to protect." [2] But in placating those chiefs of the 1840s, instead of promoting individualism and recognising real individual rights, the document has helped promote the neotribalism of today.

It's been argued -- and I've been one of those doing the arguing -- that the Treaty of Waitangi liberates individual Maori. It should have done -- it should have treated all Maori as individuals instead of as members of a tribe. But it really does nothing of the sort except by implication.

Instead, as written, it cemented in and buttressed the tribal leadership and communal structures that already existed here -- encouraging the survival of this wreck of a system until it morphing, as it has today, into this mongrelised sub-group of pseudo-aristocracy: of Neotribal Cronyism.

The problem was there from the start. Maori in 1840 paid more attention to oral discussion than to written documents, and there's enough evidence to suggest those wily old chiefs knew what they were talking about;  what they discussed and what was read to them in 1840 was this [3]:
The treaty's preamble states the "concern to protect the chiefs and the subtribes of New Zealand" and the "desire to preserve their chieftainship." Nothing in that to promote or protect individualism. Everything to preserve "chieftainship" and to protect the chiefs in their rule.

• In Clause 1 the chiefs grant the Queen complete governorship -- kawanatanga katoa -- over these islands. Non-chiefs, i.e., individual Maori, are neither asked nor recognised. Because they are not part of this agreement. 
• In Clause 2 it's there again: protecting chiefs in their land, forests and fisheries. Specifically, protecting "the chiefs, the subtribes and all the people of New Zealand in the unqualified exercise of their chieftainship [their tino rangatiratanga]" over all their various treasures -- while prohibiting their sale to anyone but the government. (Note that this does not protect or recognise full ownership or real property rights except by implication: after all, Maori of 1840 had no such concept, except perhaps for small personal possessions; no words for "owner," so difficult for a translator to find one. But they could express ownership for these small things at least -- the preposition na for example (or sometimes no), meaning 'belonging to.' [4] But this was not used. Instead, the agreement promised to protect only the unqualified exercise of chieftainship, something not available to "all the people of New Zealand," even if they do get a mention, but only to those of that status. Only chiefs. 
• Clause 3, however, does promise to "protect all the ordinary people of New Zealand," and to "give them" the "same rights and duties of citizenship as the people of England." Not recognise rights, which is how it should have been written, but give them, which makes them a political gift -- the gift of those who do exercise sovereignty by this treaty: the governor and the chiefs. So by then, the damage is done -- and those with "a decisive and self-interested role in controlling shifts in the interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi" are now able to interpret this not as a promise of individual rights (since earlier clauses and the preamble take precedence), but instead as the chiefs essentially holding the rights of their people in trust, with the governor "being or becoming a 'father' for the Māori people." And "this attitude has been held towards the person of the Crown down to the present day, shaping (according to the self-interested neotribalists who now interpret these things) "the continued expectations and commitments entailed in the Treaty." [2] 

It's evident from documents of the time that the Colonial Office in London had not intended to lock Maori up into that pre-existing tribal structure. Their intention was, as that last clause almost says, to recognise the same rights in every Maori as were enjoyed by all British citizens. But the treaty's wording and practice has essentially limited those rights while elevating chiefly status. It's the chieftainship, stupid. In other words: the problem is failing to properly recognise and to protect individual rights -- and instead to protect and nurture the status of those tribal leaders.

Is it any wonder today's tribal leaders favour the perpetuation of the tribal structure? Any surprise that the feudal structure continues? Or that today's neotribalists wish to continue benefiting from their feudal privileges of the past? With the government as "father" and taxpayer as today's serf ...

Poor drafting, poor treatment

Without a doubt, government and settlers often treated Maori poorly in those early days. But the biggest structural harm was the failure to properly recognise them as individuals instead of as part of a tribe. By treating all Maori as part of a collective, there were few chances offered to change this trajectory. The poor draftsmanship of this treaty is reflected in the poor treatment of Maori in those early days.

As a rights-respecting commentator says of the treatment of native Americans in the United States of America, "it could have been done in a more rational way, a much more rights-respecting way, and in a way that would have led to a lot less violence at the end of the day." (Later quotes are from this same source.) It could have been done here in a way that recognised Maori as individuals, with individual lives, rights and choices. But for the most part, it didn't.

Yes, colonisation here was far less violent here than in Australia, or in the Americas. And thank goodness for that: It was still not entirely peaceful, but in the Americas and Australia it was savage -- particularly if you think of how the British treated the Aboriginals in Tasmania, or the Spaniards treated the natives of South America. And in the case of America itself, "the American government made treaties with the Indians and then reneged on them whenever it was convenient to do so." [5]

Not so much here, at least. The treaty signed here was offered with the best of intentions, but the poorest of drafting. It barely lived up to the intention, and the neotribalists now exploit the drafting.

But the biggest mistake, the biggest ongoing tragedy -- there, as here -- is that the respective governments did not treat either Indians or Maori as individuals possessing rights. They treated them instead just as members of a tribe. Of a collective. Not as individuals with their own individual rights demanding recognition and protection, but as members of a tribe whose chief no longer held the power fo life and death, but still held the power of property, and of making choices for them all.

And therefore [in the United States] all the deals, all the negotiations, were between the U.S. Government and a tribe -- a tribe who was fundamentally a collectivistic unit that was oppressing its individual members. And what the American government in my view should have done was in a sense annex the Indians into America, recognised their innate individual rights (the fact that every Indian like every human being on the planet has individual rights), protected those individual rights under the law, divvied up the property of the tribe among individuals (let American Indians own their own land, not just give it and have the tribes own reservations; the whole idea of reservations was a horrific idea).  They should have basically integrated Indians into American society: by treating them as individuals, by endorsing individualism among the Indians. And then, if the Indians then wanted to get together and live in a commune, then so be it.  But the American government's position should have been: "We are dealing with you as individuals. Here is your land; here is John Smith's land; here is somebody else's land... If you want to now unite those lands and do some collective-type stuff then that's your problem. But here's the benchmark: 'We're a country of individuals. That's the principle'."  And instead, they didn't do that. There was a lot of racism and there was a lot of just treating them as a collective and, as a consequence, slaughtering whole villages and so on.  Now, that is not to say that there weren't a lot of American Indians (and a lot of indigenous people around the Americas) who were very violent and needed to be dealt with violently. I'm not criticizing violence when it was motivated by self-defense.     I am however criticizing violence when it was not necessary for the defense of the European immigrants or settlers, and there was basically an attempt just to you know annihilate certain indigenous peoples.  And again that happened more in Latin America than it did in the United States America. But it happened here as well. So you know it's a tragic part of history and to some extent inevitable because it seems to happen whenever a kind of a civilization encounters barbaric tribes, barbaric peoples, that inevitably lands up in a physical violent struggle.     I think that particularly in the United States of America it could have been done in a more rational way, a much more rights-respecting way, and in a way that would have led to a lot less violence at the end of the day. [5]

Same here.

The tragedy is that in the United States, when the idea of individualism was in its ascendancy, Indians were treated as tribal because they were considered less than human. The results were often brutal. Yet as ideas changed, and Britons began to realise that non-Britons were human too -- as the anti-slavery movement won its battles and organisations like the Aboriginal Protection Society became influential -- by then the idea of individualism itself had become less powerful, and the impulse instead was to protect indigenous populations in their tribal structures. To protect them not as individuals but (in today's common phrase) as "members of their tribal community." The result was less immediate harm, but the cause of much long-term damage -- most especially the perpetuation of the tribal structure.

Could it all have been different? Yes. Yes, of course it could. But shaming today's New Zealanders by the actions of people in the past is not primarily about history -- the shaming of New Zealanders today is intended simply to precede and encourage their ongoing shakedown tomorrow. That's the effect of today's neotribalism: to put taxpayers on the hook for the perpetuation of this chiefly privilege.

In this new postmodern neo-tribal age, history doesn't provide lessons from the past so much as an arsenal full of weapons. The neotribalists, and their enablers, are happy to pick them up and use them.

NOTES: 
1. Elizabeth Rata, '‘Marching through the Institutions’: The Neotribal Elite and the Treaty of Waitangi,' Sites (December 2005)
2. James Heartfield, The Aborigines' Protection Society: Humanitarian Imperialism in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Canada, South Africa, and the Congo, 1836-1909 (London, 2011) p. 126
3. Te Tiriti: Translation of the te reo Māori text by Hugh Kawharu
4. Raymond Firth, Economics of the New Zealand Maori (Wellington 1972), pp. 338-366 passim
5. Yaron Brook, 'Q: To what extent was the European treatment of the indigenous peoples of America immoral?' www. Peikoff.Com (3 August 2015)

UPDATE:
Peter Winsley has a different view, arguing that "Article Two transfers Magna Carta and English common law property rights to Māori. "

These tino rangitaranga rights over land and other properties (taonga) were given explicitly to individuals and whanau as well as chiefs and tribes...
Treaty of Waitangi settlements have so far focused on iwi or hapu on the assumption that these collectives will act for all their members. What is lost sight of is that individuals are specifically mentioned in Treaty Article Two, yet Treaty settlements have not been made to individuals. In a future post, this issue will be discussed....

The case for ‘co-governance’ ...

"The case for ‘co-governance’ between the government and iwi is justified according to cultural recognition and social justice beliefs. However, that is to make a fundamental error, one that ignores the dangers of including ethnicity into the political arrangements of a democratic nation... there is a fundamental incompatibility between the two sociopolitical systems...
    "From the 1980s, the rather benign idea of recognising Maori culture in the wider society became a political biculturalism that has enabled a small but extremely influential group of retribalists to capture the moral high ground of social justice advocacy – but in their own interests.
    "(It shouldn’t be forgotten that the numbers of Maori in poverty has actually grown during the bicultural decades.) ...
    "Throughout these four decades of biculturalism the retribalists sit easily, even smugly, on the side of the righteous. They use a history, written by the Waitangi Tribunal in the interests of the submitters, to claim the inheritance of the past. The Treaty is the document of that inheritance.
    "The justification for this elite’s power is its claim to represent a tribal people – so such a people must be created and maintained – hence the aggressive retribalisation that we have seen in recent years ... It is no longer enough to be Maori; one must be tribal Maori...
    "One of the benefits of colonisation, and there are a number, is the destruction of tribalism. For slaves and lower caste people it was liberation. Of course the chiefly caste did not agree and today we see the resurgence of those who would be their inheritors. The new elite is a self-proclaimed aristocracy justifying their ambition in romantic appeals to an Arcadian past.
    "Tribalism must be destroyed for democracy to exist... The history of progress in the world is the history of detribalisation and the race or ethnic politics that goes with tribalised societies...
    "So the question for us is not why is the iwi elite using retribal strategies to gain increasing political power and economic wealth – any emerging elite that chances upon a direct and easy means to get its way will take it. The intriguing question is how has a population with 161 years of democracy under its belt allowed this to happen."
    ~ Dr. Elizabeth Rata, from her 2013 op-ed 'Democracy and Tribalism'
.