Stephanie Rodgers

Here’s my submission – made at the last moment because I’m a neurodivergent millennial – on David Seymour’s terrible legislation. If you’re reading this the day it’s posted, you have one more day to get yours in!

Tēnā koutou katoa. He uri ahau no Ingarangi, no Kōtirana, no Aerana, no Nōwei. I tae mai ōku tīpuna ki Aotearoa I te tau 1840. Ko Thomas Rodgers tōku tīpuna. Ko Oriental tōna waka. Ko Tāmaki Makaurau te whenua tupu; ko Te Whanganui-a-Tara te kāinga.

Ko Stephanie Rodgers tōku ingoa.

I oppose the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill, which seeks to rewrite our founding document, our history and our democratic norms.

I am a sixth-generation New Zealander of Pākehā descent. I am a citizen of this country not only by birth, but through the contract formed in te Tiriti o Waitangi between Māori and the British Crown. I am tangata Tiriti: a person of te Tiriti. In its absence, my family could be better described as invaders.

I lose nothing by acknowledging that Māori are tangata whenua, the indigenous people of this country, and who hold a special relationship with this land. I lose nothing by accepting that the Crown, on my behalf as the descendant of English settlers who arrived here the very month te Tiriti was first signed, has systematically and deliberately failed to uphold its side of the contract for nearly two centuries.

This Bill seeks to upturn the foundational document of our nation by pretending that te Tiriti does not say what it says, and does not mean what it means, and that its authors and signatories were not thinking of their own context and priorities in 1840s New Ulster, but were fully cognisant of and committed to 21^st century libertarian definitions of property rights.

Many of our rightwing politicians are fond of describing things they don’t like as “Orwellian”; this Bill’s objective of compelling an entire nation to erase the knowledge of its own history actually is.  

We cannot move forward by rewriting the past and ignoring the justified grievances of Māori. We move forward by owning up to our mistakes and working in genuine partnership, as the signatories of te Tiriti intended.

I urge the Select Committee and Parliament to reject this legislation in full.