Those taking part in the hīkoi, along with supporters around the country, both Māori and non-Māori, consider the Bill to be a betrayal of the commitments made at the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.
The Waitangi Tribunal has voiced its deep concern, saying that if the Bill were to be enacted, it would fundamentally change the nature of the partnership between the Crown and Māori by "substituting existing Treaty principles for a set of propositions which bear no resemblance to the text or spirit of the Treaty of Waitangi/Te Tiriti o Waitangi".
Likewise, in September this year, 440 Christian leaders signed an open letter to MPs urging them to oppose the introduction of the Treaty Principles Bill. Why should this be a matter of concern to Christian leaders?
Soon after the Treaty had been signed in 1840, Māori began to refer to the Treaty as a covenant. This is biblical language.
Covenant is the word used to describe an unconditional commitment that God makes to humankind; it is a commitment grounded in love and describes a relationship that is to be unbreakable and in which the parties involved seek the welfare of the other come what may, "in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, till death do us part", as the traditional vows of the marriage covenant put it.
Māori understood, apparently, that the Treaty established a relationship of this sort. God’s faithfulness and steadfast love and, derivatively, the faithfulness and commitment of marriage partners to one another was the model for the relationship established between the Crown and Māori signatories on behalf of their respective iwi.
The Treaty Principles Bill is yet another attempt to annul the promise of the covenant relationship that Māori saw embodied in the Treaty.
There were other biblical concepts in play when the Treaty was signed.
The word used in Te Tiriti, the Māori translation of the Treaty, to describe the authority being granted to the Crown is "kāwanatanga".
That is not a native Māori word. It is a word coined to translate the term governorship. The governor in English became the kāwana in te reo Māori.
Such a word was needed to translate the office held by Pontius Pilate, who is described in Matthew 27:15-26 as the governor. Pilate, of course, was not the Emperor, he was not sovereign. He was an official answerable to a higher authority elsewhere and had strictly circumscribed authority himself.
His primary role was to maintain law and order. This was the level of authority being accorded to the Crown in the first article of the Treaty.
What kind of authority is then assigned to Māori in the second article? The words used in this case are ‘tino rangatiratanga’.
Rangatiratanga means chieftainship, sovereignty, self-determination.
It too appears in the Māori translation of the Bible, notably in the Lord’s prayer, where the disciples of Jesus are enjoined to approach God with the prayer ‘Your kingdom come’ — Kia tae mai tou rangatiratanga.
Then at the conclusion of the prayer they are instructed to pray, "For yours is the kingdom ..." — Nou hoki te rangatiratanga.
The modifier "tino" used before rangatiratanga in the second article of the Treaty heightens the quality being referred to. It means that something is unrivalled or of great intensity.
Within the framework of biblical thought, with which Māori had now become very familiar and which the Reverend Henry Williams, translator of the Treaty, likely appealed to when encouraging the chiefs to sign, rangatiratanga is clearly a more elevated authority than kāwanatanga.
The biblical provenance of the language used in Te Tiriti should dissuade us, therefore, from the frequently heard contention that in signing Te Tiriti Māori ceded sovereignty. What they ceded was kāwanatanga, the same kind of authority to maintain law and order that Pontius Pilate held as Governor of Judaea.
It was promised to Māori in return that they should retain their already existing tino rangatiratanga, their sovereignty, over "o ratou wenua o ratou kainga me o ratou taonga katoa", that is, over their lands, their homes (or habitats) and over all their treasures.
With the Native Lands Act of 1863, a mere 23 years after the signing of the Treaty, this promise had been betrayed, the land confiscations had begun.
Far from betraying further through the Treaty Principles Bill the covenant relationship that was understood to have been established at Waitangi in 1840, we should instead be devoting our efforts to rebuilding the relationship on the terms that were first agreed.
■Murray Rae is a University of Otago professor of theology.
