Tribunal’s Maori sovereignty report “re-writing history”

14 November 2014

Tribunal’s Maori sovereignty report “re-writing history” says academic

Auckland University of Technology Professor Paul Moon – who is a Treaty specialist – has criticised the Waitangi Tribunal’s Inquiry into issues of Maori sovereignty, which has been released today, claiming it got basic aspects about the Treaty’s history wrong.

“I was shocked by some do the statements contained in the report,” says Professor Moon. “This is not a concern about some trivial detail, but over the fundamental history of our country, which the Tribunal has got manifestly wrong.”

“In particular, the Tribunal alleges that ‘Britain went into the treaty negotiation intending to acquire sovereignty, and therefore the power to make and enforce law over both Maori and Pakeha’. This is simply not true,” says Professor Moon, “and there is an overwhelming body of evidence which proves precisely the opposite. I cannot understand how the Tribunal got this so wrong.”

Professor Moon is also critical of the way which the Tribunal elevates the importance of the 1835 Declaration of Independence: “The Tribunal sees the Declaration as some profound assertion of Maori Sovereignty. However, the Declaration had no international status, and was regarded by British officials at the time as ‘a silly as well as an unauthorised act.’ For some inexplicable reason, the Tribunal has again ignored all this evidence.”

Professor Moon says the most concerning aspect of the report is the way in which the Tribunal seems to be re-writing history with little apparent regard for evidence. “This report may serve the interests of some groups,” he says, “but it distorts New Zealand history in the process, and seriously undermines the Tribunal’s credibility”

ENDS

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