Imagining Te Tiriti-centred Futures

By Asians Supporting Tino Rangatiratanga (Pōneke)

You may have heard of Asians Supporting Tino Rangatiratanga (ASTR) – a group of tauiwi from various Asian backgrounds who work as a collective to support tino rangatiratanga and mana motuhake for Māori in Aotearoa. The work to honour Te Tiriti is a vast one, and one that requires a pretty strong muscle to be able to go beyond despair, and imagine a hopeful future. These are what some members of ASTR Pōneke imagine Aotearoa – and the world – could look like if Te Tiriti o Waitangi was fully honoured. 

Sam - My parents sent me and my siblings here for a better education, sold on the narrative that New Zealand was ‘the next best place’ after England. How much fuller our values would’ve been, had we been able to grow in an Aotearoa that honoured Te Tiriti! We would have learned far less about dominance of resources and more about te Taiao and our role within it. We would have learned less about stepping on others to get ahead, more about strength in community and acceptance of our whānau. Less of putting your head down and being the ‘model minority’ for a colonial setup, and more about a reo and tikanga that centres acceptance and kotahitanga with the people and environment around us - such that everyone has an equal chance to live well in Aotearoa.

LL - I imagine that if we moved to an Aotearoa that honoured Te Tiriti, we'd be going into a country to learn two new ways of being, and learning to grow equally comfortable navigating both worlds. Instead of expecting to learn English, we would expect to gain fluency in both English and Te Reo Māori. We’d become as comfortable in Māori spaces as in Pākeha spaces - and Māori spaces will be as common as Pākeha spaces, whether that be legal, educational, or healthcare institutions, or social settings. We would know that we can bring our own cultures with us, because we’d be living in a country that celebrates difference, rather than fears it.

Selvi - When considering how to honour Te Tiriti, my mind goes back to Level 1 History. I didn’t know what Te Tiriti even meant before learning about its history, its origins, how colonialists breached it and why. I would have also added forms of Māori resistance from 1840 until now. You can’t honour something if you are willfully ignoring whole parts of its story. Only then I was able to see myself as an active partner to Te Tiriti as tangata tiriti, and feel responsibility in ensuring it’s honoured. Feel responsibility in keeping the taonga alive and thriving - the language, the land and environment, and tikanga. 

Nabilah - If decolonisation is a wave that can only get stronger, a Te Tiriti-honouring society in Aotearoa will not only have an impact on these lands, but elsewhere - including in my own homeland (Singapore). I imagine this future as one where we recognise our kinship not just internally, but internationally. A future where when people think of Aotearoa, they know more about a place where Māori are Indigenous to, about te ao Māori and its rich history, rather than about New Zealand as a 'Western' white nation. When students in Aotearoa open their history textbooks, there will be less talk of the pioneering ingenuity of Pākehā, and more honesty about the violence of settler colonisation, and generations of Māori-led movements built to repair the harms of it. 

In our foreign policy, there will be less talk of militarisation, AI capabilities, and border control, and more discussions about how we honour our local and regional treaties, build strong alliances with our Pacific neighbours, and care for Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. 

When immigration laws are penned, Māori communities are part of the decision-making on who they welcome to their home. When doors are opened to refugees and migrants, their safety and wellbeing are prioritised, rather than their labour, and our profits. 

Our economy will not run on the rattling wheels of capitalism, where the rich get richer, but on mutual aid and care, on local co-operatives, on sustainable, mana whenua-led initiatives, on communities that have reciprocal relationships with land. When we drive through places like Taranaki, we will be greeted with a whenua re-Indigenised, and iwi-led efforts at returning it to the temperate rainforest it once was, instead of the vast, thirsty flatlands of exploitative dairy farms. When I return home to Singapore and tell my family about this other home of mine, our conversations will be less about the colonising myths surrounding New Zealand, this place of Western liberal democracy. Instead, I'll hear about how my own communities back home have taken inspiration from tangata whenua, how Indigenous solidarity has been fostered transnationally, and how decolonial lessons from all of the places we call home can feed one another. 

Decolonisation comes in waves that can only get stronger, and I imagine we'll see what it means to honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi not only in the way this land transforms, but in how the world inevitably will too.