Immigration reset allows us to honour the bargain struck in te Tiriti

Friday, 25 June 2021

Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi) will be part of the Aotearoa history curriculum, which now won't be taught to year 1 to 10 students until 2023.

OPINION: The Government’s plan to “reset” our immigration laws and policies includes, for the first time since 1840, a consideration of the relevance of both te Tiriti o Waitangi and te ao Māori perspectives. Of course there is no single Māori position on immigration, and there are some quite concerning racist views towards migrants by Māori.

Putting those views aside, what could a Māori or Tiriti lens add to our national debate as to the makeup of our population and our relationships with one another and the land on which we live?

Immigration was at the heart of the bargain struck in te Tiriti – made in the context of a rapidly changing landscape, where Pākehā were seeking new opportunities in the fledgling settlement.

The Tiriti is the blueprint setting out the relationship between Māori and these new peoples – between “tangata whenua” – the peoples of this land – and “tangata Tiriti” – all New Zealanders of non-Māori origin, both Pākehā and other tauiwi. In return for the right of the British Crown to govern its own peoples, whose presence is recognised and affirmed in te Tiriti, Māori retained the rights of self-government and equal citizenship with the settlers.

Peter McIntyre’s painting ‘Maori Children, King Country’: Within 30 years of the Treaty of Waitangi’s signing, Pākehā settlers outnumbered Māori by 10 to 1.

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Despite this vision, within 30 years of its signing, Pākehā settlers outnumbered Māori 10 to 1, and tangata whenua have never been consulted on immigration law or policy since. This exclusion, along with perceptions that migrants are competing for jobs and resources that further entrenched iwi Māori at the bottom of New Zealand society, may provide some rationale for xenophobic views of some Māori.

Concerns include not only numbers, but origin of migrants, with Tariana Turia claiming some years ago that a key issue was policies that privilege some migrants over others. For Māori, this is just not tika – not fair, right or just.

While we think of immigration largely in international terms today, Māori society, like all communities, had internal migration protocols based on customary laws and principles. People would move from one territory to another for a variety of reasons including economic need, warfare, and intermarriage. Residence in a new community was always relationship-based – and subject to the setting of mutual obligations based on respect for the local people of a territory.

The principles underpinning these practices include manaaki, aroha and utu. Manaaki refers to the ethic of host responsibility – and the reciprocal action of “aki”, inherent in the lifting up of the mana of others. Utu also captures the aspect of mutuality – similar to the idea of social contract in Western terms – that protection and safety may be offered in return for the resources, efforts, and skills of newcomers.

Aroha, of course, refers to love and compassion – which might include taking refugees or those in need of shelter and care, who may take some time to add value to the host community – emphasising the ongoing relationship inherent in migration practices.

Māori have always maintained these protocols – even in post-Tiriti Aotearoa. Twenty years ago, New Zealand accepted 150 Afghan refugees rescued by the Norwegian freighter Tampa. Despite not being part of their formal legal immigration process, mana whenua iwi of Auckland released a media statement welcoming the Tampa men and boys – a declaration probably lost on the general population, but understood by tangata whenua both as an assertion of their status as first peoples, and acknowledging the new residents in accordance with traditional tikanga principles.

These values-based principles are those that should underpin and inform our immigration policy reset, and our ongoing relationship with migrants. When migrants struggle on our whenua, we feel whakamā – the embarrassment of being poor hosts – which undermines our mana and status as first peoples.

Migration and citizenship policy should also be considered together – so that, like many other nations, new arrivals are required to know of our history, position and interests as Māori. A growing number of nations, including the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, require candidates for citizenship to pass a “knowledge of society” test, that assesses civic and cultural knowledge of the host society.

These “deserving citizenship” tests are potentially fraught with difficulty as tools of assimilation, so we would need to be careful not to replicate colonising or Orientalising power dynamics. However, it is interesting to note that I am unaware of any nation that includes knowledge of its indigenous peoples in such tests, which could be a world first for Aotearoa.

Immigration policy of the past three decades has seen the promise of biculturalism embedded in te Tiriti bypassed by defensive calls for multicultural approaches to accommodate our new neighbours. Demographers label this an “ethnic-cultural tension point”, pitting Māori against migrants in the cultural politics of our nation.

These aspirations are not mutually exclusive – we can frame our migration policies in ways that recognise and provide for indigenous rights and recognition, whilst sharing our land in the spirit of manaakitanga. There is ample evidence that migrants desire a relationship with Māori, and knowledge of our culture, reo and histories.

Marae regularly host wānanga for migrants and provide social support for new arrivals, and groups such as “Asians for Tino Rangatiratanga” staunchly support Māori political claims and causes.

Key to this relationship is shifting focus from concerns about numbers of migrants to realising that our power and status as tangata whenua do not rely on our numbers, but on our position as first peoples and partners to Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

If those criteria are part of our immigration reset, that bodes well for our future as a nation of diverse peoples with a bicultural foundation.

Associate Professor Khylee Quince is acting dean at the School of Law, Auckland University of Technology.