Le traité de Waitangi

Le Traité de Waitangi (ou Te Tiriti o Waitangi en māori) fut signé le 6 février 1840 à Waitangi, dans la Baie des îles (Bay of Islands, north island), en Nouvelle-Zélande, entre les représentants de la couronne britannique, et les chefs de la Confédération des Tribus unies de Nouvelle-Zélande ainsi que d'autres chefs tribaux māori.
Le Traité, comme les Néo-Zélandais l'appellent simplement, fit formellement de la Nouvelle-Zélande une colonie britannique, et il peut plus généralement être considéré comme l'acte de fondation de la Nouvelle-Zélande en tant que nation. Ce traité, et l'interprétation donnée des mots forgés dans sa version en māori, occupe encore une place importante dans la politique néo-zélandaise moderne et reste l'objet de vives controverses.

La signature du Traité

Le Traité fut d'abord proposé par le capitaine William Hobson à son retour de sa première expédition dans la région. Il reçut dès lors mandat du gouvernement britannique pour mettre son plan à exécution et reçu le titre de Lieutenant-Gouverneur. Revenu en Nouvelle-Zélande, il rédigea avec l'aide de James Busby, représentant britannique sur l'île, un traité qui fut traduit par le missionnaire Henry Williams (qui assura également la traduction orale du texte lors de la signature). Busby avait également participé à la rédaction de la déclaration d'indépendance de la Nouvelle-Zélande, signée par plusieurs chefs māori, en 1835.
Hobson était à la tête des plénipotentiaires britanniques. De la quarantaine de chefs māori présents, le rangatira (chef de haut rang) Hone Heke de l'iwi Ngā Puhi fut le premier à apposer son paraphe. Pour renforcer la légitimité du Traité, huit copies furent rédigées et envoyées dans tout le pays pour collecter des signatures supplémentaires, à savoir :
- la copie dite Manukau-Kawhia ;
- la copie Waikato-Manukau ;
- la copie Tauranga ;
- la copie de la Baie d'Abondance (Bay of Plenty) ;
- la copie d'Herald-Bunbury ;
- la copie d'Henry Williams ;
- la copie de la Côte Est ;
- la copie originale.
Entre février et septembre 1840, plus de 50 réunions de discussion furent organisées, et près de 500 signatures supplémentaires furent collectées. Un nombre équivalent de chefs de tribus refusèrent de signer.
La Nouvelle-Zélande fut officiellement déclarée une colonie distincte de la Nouvelle-Galles du Sud le 16 novembre 1840.
Le Traité échappa de peu à la destruction lorsque les bureaux gouvernementaux d'Auckland furent ravagés par le feu en 1841. Les différentes copies furent par la suite reliées et déposées dans un coffre dans les locaux du Secrétariat colonial à Auckland puis à Wellington, lors du changement de capitale.
Une liste de signataires fut produite en 1865, et le texte original en anglais fut publié en 1877, avec quelques lithographies des documents originaux qui furent remis sous clef sitôt après. Ce ne fut qu'en 1908 que le Dr. Hocken s'aperçut que ces documents avaient été endommagés par des rongeurs : la restauration dura jusqu'en 1913. La première véritable exposition publique du Traité eut lieu en 1940, lorsqu'il fut rapatrié et exposé au Musée du Traité de Waitangi pour la célébration de son centenaire.
Le Traité fut par la suite confié à la Bibliothèque Turnbull (en 1956), où il fut exposé dès 1961. De nouveaux travaux de restauration furent entrepris en 1966 et entre 1977 et 1980, jusqu'à son dépôt à la Banque nationale. Depuis 1990, le Traité est accessible au public dans la Salle de la Constitution des Archives Nationales néo-zélandaises, à Wellington.
L'anniversaire de la signature du Traité est désormais commémoré sous la forme d'un jour férié du nom de Waitangi Day, le 6 février. Le premier Waitangi Day eut lieu en 1934 mais ne fut officiellement férié qu'à partir de 1970. Cette commémoration a souvent été l'occasion pour les Māori de manifester contre le gouvernement et fait l'objet d'une controverse récurrente.

Signification et interprétation

Le Traité en lui-même est passablement court : il ne regroupe que trois articles.
- L'article premier reconnaît la souveraineté de la Reine d'Angleterre sur la Nouvelle-Zélande ;
- l'article deux garantit aux chefs signataires le maintien de leurs prérogatives et possessions immobilières. Il précise également que les Māori ne peuvent vendre leurs terres qu'à la Couronne ;
- l'article trois garantit l'égalité des droits entre Māori et sujets britanniques.
Des différences significatives existent cependant entre les versions anglaise et māori du texte, ce qui est la source de difficultés récurrentes dans son interprétation et limite grandement sa portée : la critique principale repose sur la nuance entre les mots māori kawanatanga (soit gouvernorat, au sens littéral), qui décrit les pouvoirs cédés à la Reine à l'article premier, et rangatiratanga (soit commandement) qui est le pouvoir conservé par les chefs tribaux. La nuance entre les deux concepts pouvait paraître obscure à de nombreux Māori de l'époque, et certains se demandent si ces derniers avaient réellement conscience de ce sur quoi ils s'engageaient. Le concept de propriété foncière dans le monde māori étant sensiblement différent de celui en vigueur dans le monde anglo-saxon, cela devint effectivement source de problème : les chefs māori se voyaient comme des kaitiaki, ou gardiens de la terre, et confiaient dans la pratique l'usage d'une terre pour un temps et dans un but donnés. Il est possible que certains des signataires pensaient vendre l'usage de la terre plutôt que la terre elle-même.

Conséquences du Traité

À court terme, le Traité eut l'avantage d'empêcher l'acquisition de terres māori par quiconque autre que la Couronne. Cette provision avait pour but d'empêcher les marchés de dupes qui s'étaient déjà réalisés entre colons peu scrupuleux et indigènes dans d'autres parties de l'Empire, où les autochtones se voyaient expulsés de leurs terres ancestrales pour le prix de quelques pacotilles. En substance, le Traité avait donc pour but d'établir un système de registre foncier, avec la Couronne comme gardien et interlocuteur pour prévenir les éventuels abus. En prévision de la signature de ce Traité, la Compagnie de Nouvelle-Zélande effectua d'ailleurs plusieurs achats de terre précipités et installa plusieurs colonies, partant du principe que l'occupation aurait dès lors valeur de possession.
Les résultats de cette politique furent dans les premiers temps particulièrement positifs : les Māori voulaient vendre, et les colons voulaient acheter et la Couronne s'assurait dès lors que les transactions correspondaient à un prix correct pour l'époque. Cependant, les Māori devinrent avec le temps de moins en moins enclins à céder de nouvelles parcelles de leur territoire, alors que la Couronne subissait une pression de plus en plus forte de la part de colons acheteurs. Nombre de fonctionnaires furent alors impliqués dans des transactions douteuses, qui causèrent nombre de révoltes, réprimées dans le sang, et par la confiscation de nouveaux territoires. L'escalade aboutit aux guerres māori, à l'issue desquelles la plus grande partie de Waikato et Taranaki fut confisquée.
Le rôle de supervision fut par la suite confié aux tribunaux fonciers indigènes, renommés par la suite tribunaux fonciers māori (Māori Land Court). Les communautés māori commencèrent cependant rapidement dans les années 60 et 70 à se plaindre des abus et des violations continues du Traité et des législations subséquentes par le gouvernement, ainsi que de décisions jugées inéquitables (ou à tout le moins excessivement défavorables) rendues par le Tribunal foncier māori et qui expropriait les Māori de leurs terres. Le Tribunal de Waitangi fut établi par agrément royal du 10 octobre 1975. Le Treaty of Waitangi Act qui lui donnait naissance avait pour but de réaffirmer les principes énoncés dans le Traité et de créer un juridiction capable de juger des violations avérées de celui-ci. Le mandat du Tribunal, limité à l'origine aux conflits récents, fut à partir de 1985 étendu pour couvrir tous les conflits fonciers depuis 1840, y compris durant les guerres māori.

Le Traité aujourd’hui

Sa brièveté et son champ limité ne sauraient conférer au Traité valeur de constitution. Il fait cependant partie du mythe fondateur de la nation néo-zélandaise, et la vie politique nationale fait encore fréquemment référence aux principes ou à l'esprit du Traité, bien que l'interprétation de ce concept varie avec les interlocuteurs. Si pour certains il consacre l'union de deux peuples en un seul (Hobson est cité comme ayant déclaré « Nous sommes désormais un peuple » le jour de la signature) il est, pour d'autres, le symbole d'un partenariat entre la Couronne et les Māori. Il n'en reste pas moins qu'au vu de la pratique des puissances coloniales (y compris la Grande-Bretagne) en vigueur dans le monde à l'époque de sa signature, ce texte reste un modèle de progressisme dans son approche des relations entre colons et peuples indigènes.
Le Traité n'est pas, toutefois, simplement un document historique sans valeur ni signification juridique à l'heure actuelle. La loi de 1975 (Treaty of Waitangi Act) reconnaît au Traité un statut officiel au sein de la législation néo-zélandaise, confirme sa validité juridique contemporaine, et établit le Tribunal de Waitangi. Ceci permet aux Māori de porter à l'attention du tribunal toute violation du Traité commise par les autorités pakeha (non-Maories) depuis 1840, et d'obtenir réparation.
Le 25 juin 2008, un accord, communément appelé Treelords a été signé au Parlement de Wellington rendant à sept tribus maories 176 000 hectares de forêts dans le centre de l'île du Nord. Le montant de l'opération s'élève à un demi million de dollars néo-zélandais (environ 200 millions d'euros).

The Treaty of Waitangi

The Treaty of Waitangi (Māori: Tiriti o Waitangi) is a treaty first signed on February 6, 1840, by representatives of the British Crown, and various Māori chiefs from the northern North Island of New Zealand. The Treaty established a British governor in New Zealand, recognised Māori ownership of their lands and other properties, and gave Māori the rights of British subjects. However the English and Māori language versions of the Treaty differ significantly, and so there is no consensus as to exactly what was agreed. From the British point of view, the Treaty gave Britain sovereignty over New Zealand, and the Governor the right to run the country; Māori seem to have had a range of understandings, many of which conflicted with the British understanding. After the initial signing at Waitangi, copies of the Treaty were taken around New Zealand and over the following months many other chiefs signed.

Until the 1970s, the Treaty was generally ignored by both the courts and parliament, although it was usually depicted in New Zealand historiography as a generous and benevolent act on the part of the Crown. From at least the 1860s, Māori looked to the Treaty, with little success, for rights and remedies for land loss and unequal treatment by the state. From the late 1960s, Māori began drawing attention to breaches of the Treaty, and subsequent histories have emphasised problems with its translation. In 1975 the Waitangi Tribunal was established as a permanent commission of inquiry tasked with researching breaches of the Treaty by the Crown or its agents, and suggesting means of redress.

Today it is generally considered the founding document of New Zealand as a nation; despite this, the Treaty is often the subject of heated debate. Many Māori feel that the Crown did not keep its side of the bargain, and have presented evidence of this before sittings of the Tribunal, despite a contrary view from some in the non-Māori population that Māori pay too much attention to the Treaty and use it to claim 'special privileges'. The Crown is not obliged to give effect to the recommendations of the Tribunal, but nonetheless in many instances has accepted that it breached the Treaty and its principles. Settlements to date have consisted of millions of dollars in money and assets, as well as apologies. 

Subsequent history

In 1841, the Treaty narrowly escaped destruction when the government offices in Auckland were destroyed by fire. When the capital was relocated, the Treaty documents were fastened together and deposited in a safe in the Colonial Secretary's office in Auckland and later in Wellington. The documents were untouched until 1865 when a list of signatories was produced. 1877, the English language rough draft of the Treaty was published along with photolithographic facsimiles of the Treaty, and the originals were returned to storage. In 1908, Dr Hocken found the Treaty in poor condition, eaten by rodents. The document was restored by the Dominion Museum in 1913. In February 1940, the Treaty was taken to Waitangi for display in the Treaty house during the Centenary celebrations - this was possibly the first time the Treaty had been on public display since it was signed. After the outbreak of war with Japan, the Treaty was placed with other state documents in an outsize luggage trunk and deposited for secure custody with the Public Trustee at Palmerston North by the local MP, who did not tell staff what was in the case. But, as the case was too large to fit in the safe, the Treaty spent the war at the side of a back corridor in the Public Trust office. In 1956, the Department of Internal Affairs placed the Treaty into the care of the Alexander Turnbull Library and it was eventually displayed in 1961. Further preservation steps were taken in 1966, with improvements to the display conditions. From 1977 to 1980, the Library extensively restored the documents before the Treaty was deposited in the Reserve Bank. In anticipation of a decision to exhibit the treaty in 1990 (the sesquicentennial of the signing), full documentation and reproduction photography was carried out. Several years of planning culminated with the opening of the Constitution Room at the then National Archives by the Prime Minister in November 1990. The documents are currently on permanent display in the Constitution Room at Archives New Zealand's headquarters in Wellington.

Meaning and interpretation

The Treaty itself is short, consisting of only three articles. The first article of the English version grants the Queen of the United Kingdom sovereignty over New Zealand. The second article guarantees to the chiefs full "exclusive and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates Forests Fisheries and other properties." It also specifies that Māori will sell land only to the Crown. The third article guarantees to all Māori the same rights as all other British subjects.

The English and Māori versions differ. This has made it difficult to interpret the Treaty and continues to undermine its effect. The most critical difference revolves around the interpretation of three Māori words; Kāwanatanga (literally, governorship) which is ceded to the Queen in the first article; Rangatiratanga (literally chieftainship) which is retained by the chiefs in the second, and Taonga (precious things/properties), which the chiefs are guaranteed ownership and control of, also in the second article. Few Māori had good understanding of either sovereignty or 'governorship' and so some academics, such as Moana Jackson, question whether Māori fully understood that they were ceding sovereignty to the British Crown.

Furthermore, kāwanatanga is transliterated from 'governorship' and was not part of the Māori language per se. There is considerable debate about what would have been a more appropriate term. Some scholars, notably Ruth Ross, argue that mana (prestige, authority) would have more accurately conveyed the transfer of sovereignty.[6] However, it has more recently been argued by others, for example Judith Binney, that 'mana' would not have been appropriate. This is because mana is not the same thing as sovereignty, and also because no-one can give up their mana.[7]

The English language version recognises Māori rights to 'properties', which seems to imply physical and perhaps intellectual property, whereas the Māori version mentions 'taonga', meaning 'treasures' or 'precious things'. In Māori usage the term applies much more broadly than 'properties' and since the 1980s courts have found that the term can encompass intangible things such as language and culture. The pre-emption clause is generally not well translated, and many Māori apparently believed that they were simply giving the English Queen first offer on land, after which they could sell it to anyone. Doubt has been cast on whether Hobson himself actually understood the concept of pre-emption. Another, less important, difference is that Ingarani, meaning England alone, is used throughout in the Māori version, whereas "the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland" is used in the first paragraph of the English.

The entire issue is further complicated by the fact that, at the time, Māori society was an oral rather than literate one. Māori present at the signing of the Treaty would have placed more value and reliance on what Hobson and the missionaries said, rather than the words of the actual Treaty.

Māori beliefs and attitudes towards ownership and use of land were different from those prevailing in Britain and Europe. The chiefs saw themselves as 'kaitiaki' or guardians of the land, and would traditionally grant permission for the land to be used for a time for a particular purpose. Some may have thought that they were leasing the land rather than selling it, leading to disputes with the occupant settlers.

Effect of the Treaty

The treaty was never ratified by Britain and carried no legal force in New Zealand until receiving limited recognition in 1975. The Colonial Office and early New Zealand governors were initially fairly supportive of the Treaty as it gave them authority over both New Zealand Company settlers and Maori. As the Crown acquired more substantive sovereignty over New Zealand, the Treaty became less useful, although it was used to justify the idea that Waikato and Taranaki were rebels against the Crown in the wars of the 1860s. Court cases later in the 19th century established the principle that the Treaty was a 'legal nullity' which could be ignored by both the courts and government. This argument was supported by the claim that New Zealand had become a colony when annexed by proclamation in January 1840, before the treaty was signed. Furthermore, Hobson only claimed to have taken possession of the North Island by Treaty. The South Island he claimed for Britain by right of discovery, by observing that Māori were so sparse in the South Island, that it could be considered uninhabited.

Despite this, Maori frequently used the Treaty to argue for a range of issues, including greater independence and return of confiscated and unfairly purchased land. This was especially the case from the mid 19th century, when they lost numerical superiority and generally lost control of most of the country.

The short-term effect of the Treaty was to prevent the sale of Māori land to anyone other than the Crown. This was intended to protect Māori from the kinds of shady land purchases which had alienated indigenous people in other parts of the world from their land with minimal compensation. Indeed, anticipating the Treaty, the New Zealand Company made several hasty land deals and shipped settlers from England to New Zealand, assuming that the settlers would not be evicted from land they occupied. Essentially the Treaty was an attempt to establish a system of property rights for land with the Crown controlling and overseeing land sale, to prevent abuse.

Initially this worked well. Māori were eager to sell land, and settlers eager to buy. The Crown mediated the process to ensure that the true owners were properly identified (difficult for tribally owned land) and fairly compensated, by the standards of the time. However after a while Māori became disillusioned and less willing to sell, while the Crown came under increasing pressure from settlers wishing to buy. Consequently government land agents were involved in a number of very dubious land purchases. Agreements were negotiated with only one owner of tribally owned land and in some cases land was purchased from the wrong people altogether. Eventually this led to the New Zealand Wars which culminated in the confiscation of a large part of the Waikato and Taranaki.

In later years, this oversight role was in the native land court, later renamed the Māori Land Court. It was through these courts that much Māori land became alienated, and the way in which they functioned is much criticised today. Over the longer term, the land purchase aspect of the treaty declined in importance, while the clauses of the Treaty which deal with sovereignty and Māori rights took on greater importance.

However irrelevant in law, the treaty returned to the public eye after the Treaty house and grounds were purchased by Governor General Viscount Bledisloe in the early 1930s and donated to the nation. The dedication of the site as a national reserve in 1934 was probably the first major event held there since the 1840s. The profile of the Treaty was further raised by the centenary of 1940. For most of the twentieth century, text books, government publicity and many historians touted it as the moral foundation of colonisation and to set race relations in New Zealand above those of colonies in North America, Africa and Australia. Its lack of legal significance in 1840 and subsequent breaches tended to be overlooked until the 1970s, when these issues were raised by Māori protest.

The Treaty today

Because of the short length and limited scope of the Treaty, it is not a suitable document to be a formal written constitution and is not recognised as such. However, it is seen as an important document and the principles of the treaty continue to influence political and legal discourse in New Zealand.