Rangatiratanga as Power
by Ross Himona, 20th March 2000
Introduction
Rangatiratanga is most often defined as chieftainship, and tino-rangatiratanga as full chieftainship. Tino-rangatiratanga, as it was used in the Treaty of Waitangi and interpreted today, has connotations of sovereignty, and of self-determination.
I see the Treaty of Waitangi as a political document, and I see that its intent, well understood by both Crown and Maori, was to negotiate and formalise the sharing of political power in Aotearoa New Zealand. This included agreement over the control over economic resources. The original understandings in the Treaty later came undone under economic pressure from resource hungry settlers, and under political pressure from settler politicians who refused to countenance any form of power sharing with Maori.
Aim
In this paper I explore this interpretation of tino-rangatiratanga as power. This exploration will hopefully add more light than heat to the Treaty debate, and to the debate on the reform of New Zealand's constitutional arrangements. It may also help to remove some of the idealistic and romantic mist that has built up around the Treaty, tending to obscure some of its original intent. It might perhaps help to de-mystify the Treaty.
Maori Understandings of Power Sharing
Prior to the introduction of central governance, first under the Governors and later under settler governments, Maori had no concept of centralised power beyond the localised hapu / tribe.
It is clear however that all hapu well understood the need to live, most of the time, in relative peace with their neighbours, in order to ensure as much prosperity as possible for the hapu, and thus to ensure its survival. This required an understood system which would regulate the balance of power between hapu. The system included ritualised and formal peace-maintaining systems, including an acceptance of the need for occasional but nevertheless regular shows of military strength.
Inter-tribal warfare was almost always conducted on a small scale, limited by the need not to expend too many scarce food resources maintaining warriors in the field, and limited by the very real need to avoid the two edged taiaha of large scale slaughter.
Peace and power sharing were maintained as well by the concept of whanaungatanga or the maintenance of kin relationships between related hapu. It was very often reinforced by the arrangement of strategic marriages between the chiefly families. Whereas many historians, Maori and non-Maori, have tended to view tribal history as a series of inter-tribal conflicts, I think that in my various hapu at least, the strategic marriages are of far greater political and historical importance.
The concept of utu or reciprocity ensured that not only would evil be repaid by evil (mutually assured destruction) but it also underpinned the practice of reciprocal gift giving or koha, which at the level of inter-hapu politics was another aspect of maintaining mutually beneficial political and economic relationships. It was an important means of maintaining balanced power relationships.
The rituals of encounter, or powhiri, were an affirmation of balanced, and sometimes unbalanced, power relationships.
Between hapu these were shows of warrior strength, as well as oratorial exchange, and were a means of ensuring that most formal encounters were ritually guided to a peaceful conclusion. The paepae, which is today seen mostly as a speakers' platform, was in former times the citadel, manned by the fighting men of the hapu. Old men, women and children sheltered behind the citadel, in case the encounter turned to warfare. In tribal societies women, whose lives were more essential than men's for tribal survival, did not often serve alongside the fighting men on the paepae, although there are recorded cases where this did happen.
Manuhiri or visitors approached the paepae with a great deal of caution during the exchange of greetings. The men on the paepae watched closely and listened intently in order to discern the peaceful or warlike intent of the manuhiri. Haka were exchanged during which the rangatira on both sides would assess the quality and spirit of each other's fighting men.
At the peaceful conclusion of this part of the ritual, koha were given, the relationships were sealed with the hongi, and kai was shared. The continued existence of a state of peaceful relationship, and balanced and shared power, was thereby affirmed. This was not always, or even not often, an equality of power. It was however mutual acknowledgement of the state of balance.
The sources of power were undoubtedly population numbers, and food resources, and the two were inextricably linked. Only with access to sufficient food could the population of a hapu be increased, and maintained over a sustained period. Access to food required that a hapu exert control over lands, seas, rivers, lakes and forests. It also required the maintenance of trade relationships to obtain foods, or access to foods, not readily available to the hapu.
The sources of power were demography, geography and economics.
Within hapu, the sources of power were birth (rangatira), intellect (tohunga) and skill.
To this day, although most real political and economic power has been usurped by Parliament, the agencies of the State, and business and economic interests, hapu still retain and practice the concepts and rituals of power sharing between hapu. There remains a strongly entrenched cultural understanding that power belongs to the people, and is exercised by hapu, even though in recent times 'iwi' runanga and corporate 'iwi' have maneuvered to usurp the traditional power of hapu.
The Maori cultural understanding of power sharing remains to this day at odds with non-Maori understandings.
European Understandings of Power Sharing
The same tribal and inter-tribal system once prevailed throughout Europe, with the same understandings of power sharing.
However, over a period of thousands of years of social, political and economic evolution and revolution in Europe, tribal organisation was gradually eclipsed by more and more centralised systems of rule and governance.
Power sharing became a moving balance at a different level, between kings and prices and barons, and later between kings and parliaments, and kings and the elected representatives of the people.
There was also a long period in Europe where the highly centralised Church played a significant role in power balances, and itself participated in the ebb and flow of the continual power struggle.
By 1840 in England power was well and truly centralised in Westminster, and the government was well and truly the pre-eminent power in the land. The Sovereign was even by then a ceremonial and titular concept. The concept of the Crown was the concept of the Queen in Parliament. In effect, the Sovereign had already been captured by Parliament, and did not have the power to act alone, or even to act at all, except to rubber stamp decisions of the Parliament.
Whilst Parliament theoretically acted as the representative body of the people, the Westminster system was not based on written constitutional agreements, but claimed that an unwritten constitution guided its governing arrangements. In effect however, power had been ceded by the Sovereign to the Parliament, and had not been formally ceded to the People.
Power Sharing - Europe vs Maori
The Treaty of Waitangi should be seen as an attempt to negotiate and formalise understandings of power sharing between Maori and the Crown.
All parties to the Treaty understood this intent.
But the parties to the Treaty did not have the same understandings of the rules of engagement. There is ample evidence that the Maori signatories thought that they were entering into a personal agreement with Queen Victoria, through her personal representative, William Hobson, when in fact the agreement was not with Queen Victoria as rangatira, but with the Queen in Parliament.
This was an interpretation and misunderstanding that was to guide much subsequent protest against the later actions of the Queen's governments. It caused delegations to travel to England to attempt to protest in person to the Queen, in the mistaken understanding that the Sovereign had the power or rangatiratanga to over-rule parliaments.
At the time of the Treaty, the balance of power was well and truly in favour of hapu all over the country, and those rangatira who signed the Treaty well understood that. Some however did have doubts about whether that situation would continue to prevail. Many also thought that the Treaty merely granted the Crown the ability to exercise rangatiratanga over Europeans only.
The British however knew that for them it was just a bridgehead for the creation of another colony. It was a temporary device to legitimise a subsequent increase in the number of British settlers, and the inevitable shift in the balance of power that that would entail.
From the beginning it was a deeply flawed arrangement, based on different understandings of leadership, and different understandings of power sharing.
Added to that confusion were the different cultural and linguistic understandings of the text of the Treaty. This latter aspect has been well researched and documented through the Waitangi Tribunal process.
However, both parties must have well understood that balances of power, and power sharing arrangements, in both cultures, had always been a fluid and evolving process requiring constant attention and affirmation. There was also in both cultures a constant imperative to continue to seek to alter the balance of power in one's own favour.
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