HONE SHOW SOME RESPECT!

Hon Hone Harawira February 25, 2010.
MP for Tai Tokerau
Parliament Building
Wellington
New Zealand.

Dear Hone Harwaira

We feel it's time you and your ungrateful mates showed some respect for the people who have allowed you to live without fear, become politicians, and share all the home comforts of the modern world – something that was unheard of by your ancestors, pre1840.

If it hadn't been for your ancestors asking Britain to protect them in 1831, after Hone Hika had travelled south, slaughtering an estimated 60,000 defenceless people whose tribes began arming themselves to travel north for utu and annihilate the northern tribes, you might not have seen the light of day. There is no denying, the Treaty of Waitangi gave Maori, especially the northern tribes, protection from self-inflicted extermination/genocide.

Through continuing intermarriage with other races of their own free will, Maori today are no longer the “distinct race of people” that signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. The many Acts of Parliament attempting a definition of Maori since the Native Land Act of 1865 illustrates this fact.

We have no problem with people with a minute trace of Maori ancestry calling themselves Maori, it is their right, but it is not their right to claim it as though they were the people that signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. This race of people vanished long ago when their ancestors intermarried with other races of their own freewill. It was their right and decision.

“If you think these things are wrong, then blame your ancestors who gave away their rights when they were strong”, ‘The Treaty of Waitangi – an Explanation’, by Sir Apirana Ngata, 1923.

Remember Hone, without “the white motherf...ers" intervention, your family portrait and that of many of your mates might have
looked like this!

Instead, you and your family are protected from the atrocities of the past by a Treaty that both our ancestors signed to give the same protection and same rights to all the people of New Zealand under one flag, one law, irrespective of race, colour or creed. There is no denying, intermarriage between the races sealed the deal and we all became New Zealanders!

“He iwi tahi tatou – We are now one people”, the true “living spirit” of the Tiriti o Waitangi!

(Compiled by Ross Baker, Researcher, One New Zealand Foundation Inc.)


P.S. On behalf of the people of New Zealand, we challenge the Government to answer the following questions.

1. Are Maori today the same race of people that signed the Tiriti o Waitangi in 1840?

2. Should Maori today be able to claim as if they were the "distinct race of people" that signed the Tiriti in 1840?

3. Where in the Tiriti o Waitangi does it say the Tiriti was a "partnership" between Maori and the Crown?