He Whakaputanga — The Declaration of Independence of New Zealand
On the 190th anniversary of the signing of He Whakaputanga - the Declaration of Independence of New Zealand, I am sharing an extract from a 2017 publication on He Whakaputanga for which I contributed an introduction. For the full introduction see this 2018 E-Tangata piece.
It is also worth noting that today is also Te Pūtake o te Riri - He Rā Maumahara, the national day of commemoration for the New Zealand Wars. The date was deliberately selected to serve as a reminder of the rangatiratanga and authority Māori fought to defend and preserve throughout Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa, as affirmed and enshrined in He Whakaputanga.
He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni was debated, agreed upon, and ultimately signed by 34 rangatira at Waitangi, in the Bay of Islands, on 28 October 1835, and later by a further 18 chiefs from the north and elsewhere, through until 22 July 1839.
Also known as the Declaration of Independence of New Zealand, this Māori-language document is often called by its shortened name, He Whakaputanga.
That can mean “an emergence”, referring to the birth of a new nation, Nu Tireni — New Zealand — but also marking steps towards unified forms of governance among the many different rangatira and their hapū and iwi.
This new sense of nationhood was still in its infancy at the time of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. Yet for many Māori, the Treaty did not, and could not, erase the clear assertion of rangatiratanga — chiefly authority or sovereignty — made through He Whakaputanga.
For that reason and others, He Whakaputanga remains a taonga of great significance today.
In its first article, the hereditary chiefs of northern New Zealand declared their country to be an independent state (whenua rangatira) under the designation of “The United Tribes of New Zealand”.
Article two declared all sovereign power (kīngitanga) and authority in the land (mana i te whenua) to be held by the chiefs in their collective capacity. There was to be no other legislative authority, except by persons they appointed, acting under the authority of laws they had enacted in congress.
In the third article, the rangatira committed to meeting in congress at Waitangi each autumn for the purposes of framing laws, and invited southern tribes to set aside their animosities by joining the confederation of united tribes.
In the final article, the chiefs agreed to send a copy of their agreement to the English King. They asked that he be a parent (matua) to their infant state and protect it from all attempts on its independence.
All but two of the 52 signatories to He Whakaputanga came from Northland. They represented a diverse range of communities, including rival hapū and tribal alliances that had recently been at war with one another.
However, the final two rangatira to sign extended its reach considerably. Firstly, Te Hāpuku of Ngāti Te Whatuiāpiti in Hawke’s Bay signed the agreement during a visit to the Bay of Islands in September 1838. He was one of the most senior rangatira from his region.
Te Wherowhero (later known as Pōtatau Te Wherowhero), a leading Waikato–Tainui rangatira and future Māori King, also signed through his kaituhi (scribe), Kahawai; the circumstances under which this took place (including the location) are unknown. However, following earlier intertribal fighting, Te Wherowhero’s brother Kati had married Matire Toha, the daughter of powerful Ngāpuhi rangatira Rewa, thereby sealing a tatau pounamu (peace agreement) between the tribes.
Authorities in New South Wales were lukewarm in response to news of the document signed by the northern chiefs. However, in May 1836 the British government acknowledged receipt of an English translation of He Whakaputanga, promising “those Chiefs such Support and Protection as may be consistent with a due Regard to the just Rights of others and to the Interests of His Majesty’s Subjects”.
Although this stopped short of being a formal acceptance of He Whakaputanga, it did constitute a form of recognition, which would prove crucial in the longer run. The acknowledgement was duly noted by rival powers France and the United States.
Yet by the time that British recognition of the agreement reached New Zealand, warfare had again broken out in the north between rival alliances of hapū, dashing hopes for an annual congress of chiefs.
Any attempt at convening such a gathering was fraught under the circumstances, and official British Resident James Busby became increasingly convinced that further British intervention in New Zealand would become necessary.
Busby’s role in drafting the document, his obvious ulterior motives in doing so, and the apparent failure to convene any gatherings of the “united tribes” before 1840 have all contributed to a tendency on the part of scholars to dismiss He Whakaputanga as of little importance. It has often been considered no more than a minor prelude on the journey to the Treaty of Waitangi.
Yet such a viewpoint considerably undersells He Whakaputanga.
For one thing, it was British acknowledgement of the validity of the Declaration of Independence that made it necessary to seek a cession of sovereignty when the British government decided to intervene further in New Zealand in 1839. The Crown had recognised the sovereign authority of the United Tribes of New Zealand and would need the agreement of those rangatira in order to alter that situation.
For this reason, the text of the Treaty explicitly refers to the “Chiefs of the United Tribes of New Zealand” (“nga Rangatira o te wakaminenga”). Considerable efforts were made to gain the signatures, marks or moko of those who had signed He Whakaputanga when it came time to secure agreement to the Treaty. Officials tried — and failed — multiple times, for example, to gain Te Wherowhero’s signature.
Without He Whakaputanga there might have been no Treaty of Waitangi.
But there is much more to the story than that.
Recent Waitangi Tribunal hearings in Northland have highlighted a different narrative about He Whakaputanga, one that was previously little known or appreciated beyond the descendants of those involved.
Claimants told the Tribunal that Te Whakaminenga — Busby’s intended congress of chiefs — was not an abstract concept but a concrete reality in the north from as early as 1808.
Māori communities in the north were already experimenting with new ways of managing their own affairs, meeting regularly to discuss and debate common concerns (such as how best to manage the newcomers in their midst). According to this narrative, a process of nation-building had been under way for decades before Busby even arrived on the scene.
Ngāpuhi witnesses before the Tribunal also maintained that their ancestors had direct input into the drafting of He Whakaputanga, which reflected local idiom and dialect, and that young Eruera Pare Hongi was not merely a scribe but was influential in formulating the wording.
He Whakaputanga, from this perspective, was not just Busby’s creation but also the product of substantial Māori involvement. And the document itself reflected trends and developments that were already apparent in the Māori world. The rangatira who assented to He Whakaputanga were, in the words of the Tribunal, “not mere passive recipients of a declaration conceived and created by agents of Britain”.
He Whakaputanga had deepened Ngāpuhi’s existing alliance with the British Crown — something that northern Māori had consciously entered into, firstly through the relationship with Philip Gidley King on Norfolk Island, and later through Te Pahi’s trip to Sydney, and Hongi and Waikato’s meeting with King George IV in London.
At the same time, He Whakaputanga had announced their mana and sovereignty to the world. For all of Busby’s efforts at indirect rule, rangatira and their communities remained in control of their own affairs. And although Busby never convened the congress of chiefs after 1835, Ngāpuhi witnesses before the Tribunal maintained that Te Whakaminenga had continued to meet after that date.
That process of diverse Māori communities coming together to consider how best to manage their own affairs was one that continued long after 1840. It could be seen, for example, in the Kīngitanga, or later in the Kotahitanga movement, which sought unity under a Māori Parliament.
Many of those later movements looked to He Whakaputanga as a source of rights for Māori in the post-1840 world. The text of the document was published in Māori newspapers such as Te Wananga, was read aloud during gatherings of iwi at Ōrākei and Waitangi in the early 1880s, and cited by the Māori MPs and in petitions to Parliament as a basis for Māori claims to self-determination. Hōne Heke Ngāpua, the MP for Northern Māori, read the full text of He Whakaputanga in Parliament in 1894, for example, when introducing the second reading of his Native Rights Bill, an unsuccessful attempt to secure constitutional rights for Māori to administer their own affairs.
He Whakaputanga was — and remains — proof that the rangatiratanga and mana of Māori had been clearly articulated and asserted. New Zealand had been a sovereign land under the authority of the united tribes before 1840; and, according to the Waitangi Tribunal, that sovereignty was not extinguished by the Treaty of Waitangi.
The Treaty itself was another step in the ever-deepening alliance or covenant with Britain. And as later events made clear, Ngāpuhi expected that relationship to be maintained and reciprocated by the Crown after 1840. Instead, matters in the north quickly turned sour.
Like the Treaty, the physical document that is He Whakaputanga has had an interesting and at times severely testing life. It had been nibbled by rats and threatened by fire prior to being transferred to the National Archives (now Archives New Zealand).
In 2017, it was first displayed alongside Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the 1893 Women’s Suffrage Petition, in the He Tohu exhibition housed at the National Library of New Zealand.
Signed 112 years before the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act saw New Zealand gain full sovereign status in 1947, He Whakaputanga serves as a powerful reminder of a much earlier assertion of independence and mana.
Aku mihi
Vincent O’Malley