As a Pākehā amazed by the so-called Māori renaissance, I feel very motivated to comment on Danyl McLauchlan's article “Entreaties of Waitangi” (February 10). First, it refers many times to the “ambiguity” of the treaty. But any Pākehā who has learned a non-Indo European language – that is, one unrelated to English – will notice ambiguity abounds there. It is very disorientating and it requires some effort to moor oneself and reach anything like true understanding.
Second, the article says the English language version was lost and had to be patched together. This surely denotes carelessness, even a lack of sincerity of commitment to the agreement. The version that lasts after having travelled around the country for signing must be the respected version. The two key terms of te tiriti seem to be rangatiratanga ‒ the meaning of which over time refers to chieftainship, domain of a chief, attributes of a chief and has come to mean sovereignty for Pākehā and Māori ‒ and kāwanatanga, originally said to be the Māori word for governor, kāwana, plus an abstract suffix, and said to mean giving the British right of governance. The lost latter-day English version apparently contradictorily conveyed the meaning of Māori ceding sovereignty but it cannot fairly, in my Pākehā view, be belatedly read that way.
Of course, I am no authority, but it seems these words contain the “ambiguities” that Act leader David Seymour, whom I’ve never heard spontaneously utter an original sentence in te reo, and his fellow travellers have to get
