Waitangi Day 1980s - Waitangi Day
Protest poster, 1983
Police at Waitangi, 1983
The Early 1980s: Confrontation and Disruption
Concerns over land and other matters continued to be voiced by Maori in the 1980s. The call was for greater Pakeha awareness and acceptance of Maoritanga, seen as guaranteed by the treaty, and for acknowledgement of Maori as the tangata whenua (people of the land). It was a move to emphasise the multicultural aspect of national identity - to take in migration from the Pacific Islands - that raised the volume of Maori protest and focused it.
When officialdom began to use the treaty as the unifying symbol of the emerging multicultural society, Maori suggested that the government was avoiding grappling with treaty problems and the bicultural partnership. Maori opinion was divided, both on treaty issues and on Waitangi Day events. Activists called for a boycott of Waitangi Day until the terms of the treaty were 'honoured', but there was no unified response.
Tensions between activists and older leaders were most obvious to the public at Te Tii marae. Northern leaders had traditionally regarded the treaty as a covenant of a sacred nature negotiated by their tupuna. In the annual marae discussions leading up to Waitangi Day they showed marked resistance when younger speakers branded the treaty as a 'fraud'. The marae became a place of confrontation between young and old, with marae trustees struggling to keep control. In 1981 an honours investiture of Graham Latimer and the elderly Whina Cooper at the marae was disrupted.
Each year problems of security on the treaty house grounds confronted organisers. Larger numbers of police were required. Government representatives and other speakers grew more cautious in talking of 'one people', but commemoration seemed farcical when numerous police in riot gear were needed at the 1983 ceremony. By then a sympathetic understanding of treaty issues was evident among a widening circle of Pakeha (in part influenced by academic writing), and church leaders were becoming reluctant to take part in Waitangi Day ceremonies in the manner officially required.
1984 was a watershed year. A hikoi (march) to Waitangi, organised in protest against 'celebrating' the day, included representatives of many tribes, church leaders and some Pakeha. The impact of the protest was blunted when Governor-General David Beattie, James Henare and Hiwi Tauroa waited in vain for two hours to meet hikoi leaders. But the expression of kotahitanga (oneness of purpose) was impressive, and two hui followed, calling for a Maori consensus on the treaty and no further Waitangi 'celebrations' until the treaty had been 'honoured' (a term much used thereafter).
The Late 1980s: Labour Plays it Down
Labour won the election in mid 1984, and late in the year decided on a strategic repositioning of Waitangi Day: a low-key official ceremony in Wellington's Beehive and a brief morning commemoration on the treaty house grounds. There were protests at both functions and the northern Maori opinion, as expressed by Graham Latimer, was that Tai Tokerau's special part in the day had been bypassed.
In 1986 a similar programme was followed, with more promotion of the day as a national celebration: there were two partners to the treaty, but the Pakeha partner now had many cultures to be acknowledged. When the dual commemoration pattern was repeated in 1987, protesters at Waitangi made speech-making nearly impossible. It was obvious that dual ceremonies were not going to silence protest.
The government decided that in 1988 there would be no official commemoration. Local authorities could begin to consider appropriate ways of recognising the 150th anniversary of the treaty in 1990. Northern Maori recognised Waitangi Day, but protest was controlled. The far northern Maori group Te Kawariki was given a right to speak: 'The real issue', said its leader Shane Jones, 'is sovereignty over our resources.'
Labour had pledged to deal with treaty issues and had set in motion a series of measures to change the treaty's position in the nation's life. By the end of the 1980s these included several pieces of legislation, the requirement that government agencies be more bicultural in their mode of operation, and an extension of the Waitangi Tribunal's powers allowing it to investigate claims dating back to 1840. But the process of resolving claims was slow.
As Shane Jones observed in 1988, Maori sovereignty or control over resources remained an elusive goal. Yet Maori sovereignty - defined over the years in various ways as mana motuhake, autonomy, self-determination, or self-regulation - has been one of the most enduring Maori understandings of the treaty's second article (in which te tino rangatiratanga was not ceded but guaranteed). In the 1990s this was to be far more explicitly expressed in protests.
Next page: Waitangi Day 1990s 
