Self-determination and the Waka vision

 The combined Waka and Kanak vision of self determination is a blast from the past that can project us into the future uniting all Pacific peoples to fight for self-determination

Treaty debates are futile and miss the point that Māori need self-determination now to save both Aotearoa and the planet. Te Tiriti will be locked up in the colonial state apparatus for decades while various interpretations are fought over, and meanwhile the climate catastrophe makes the planet uninhabitable and humans face extinction.

Naturally, Māori did not wait for Hobson to turn up to stake their claims to sovereignty. The Treaty was always a fraud because it pretended to grant Māori sovereignty when they already had the real thing, that is, the use of the land and the ocean, based on their customary occupation of both. This actually existing sovereignty was then backed by the 1835 Declaration of Independence of the Northern Tribes which was recognized as a valid claim to political sovereignty by the British Crown.

The Treaty is an artificial encumbrance devised by the British Crown. The settlements under it fall far short of what Māori must have – that is, their land rights as the basis for their social and economic organization to meet their unmet needs. It was no more than an agreement by the chiefs of the Northern Tribal chiefs and the ‘governor’ to allow the British to control the settlers without repudiating the 1835 Declaration. This was the fraud!

Fortunately some farsighted Māori have a vision to rectify the accumulated destruction of two centuries of colonial settlement by transcending the Treaty debate and staking a claim to cultural guardianship of the sunken continent of Zealandia from which Aotearoa emerges and which extends as far as Kanaky (New Caledonia) on its northern edge.

This is a revolutionary vision because it unifies Māori self-determination with the post-colonial self-determination of Aotearoa for all who live in her, by restoring land and sea resources to common ownership.

Existing private property rights would be dealt with as a key part of the process of self-determination. Those who treat these rights as sacrosanct need to face the truth of history, that humanity began and in many places continues on the basis of the common use of land. Its privatization over many millenia led to the destruction of nature and now risks human extinction. It is time to return land to nature and live with it in harmony making the right to use land contingent on the needs of all humans and of other species.

It is easy to see this revolutionary vision expressed in Waka Developments which along with the FLNKS in New Caledonia has staked a claim for the use-value of Zealandia as a resource base that must be protected and utilized in the common interests of all those who live on her and off her. We can get a rough idea of what that vision is by referring to the joint letter signed by Waka and the FLNKS recently stating their basic objectives. We reprint it from the news platform Scoop.

    “Indigenous groups in New Zealand (Māori) and New Caledonia (Kanaky) have joined forces to protect the 8th continent of the world Zealandia (Te Riu-a-Māui). Both indigenous groups are concerned about the exploitation of Zealandia’s vast natural resources in minerals, gas, oil and fisheries by French and New Zealand politicians.

Kanaky and Waka leaders Christian Tein and Haydn Solomon respectively say –

‘’Who will speak up for Zealandia if not the indigenous people of Zealandia (Te Riu-a-Māui)’’ Kanaky leader Christian Tein (FLNKS – Kanaky and Socialist National Front) is fighting for independence of New Caledonia from France. Waka Chair and spokesperson, Haydn Solomon is concerned the New Zealand government is colluding with big business interests offshore like Black Rock to extinguish Māori customary rights to mine the continent of Zealandia.

Both the Kanaky and Māori are indigenous peoples currently being oppressed in their own countries by colonial derived governments from France and England respectively. Riots in New Caledonia earlier this year were a reminder of the ongoing struggle and fight for independence from France by the Kanaky people. While in New Zealand, its current government is hell bent on marginalizing Māori by removing the Treaty of Waitangi, Māori Wards and Māori language and by committing the largest land grab in New Zealand’s history by amending the Foreshore and Seabed legislation because it doesn’t suit them.

“We are not just fighting for independence for New Caledonia by joining forces with Waka, we are fighting for independence for Zealandia too. Freedom from capitalist greed and the oppression of indigenous people.” says Kanaky leader Christian Tein.

Waka leader Haydn Solomon states “Once again the Government is putting profit before people and the planet. However, Waka is a vehicle for all New Zealanders (not just Iwi) who care about people and the planet. Waka is focused on building a society in harmony and an economy of abundance where laws are in balance and our environment is thriving.”

Waka Pacific and the FLNKS assert their guardianship on behalf of their people. They want to put ‘people before profit’. This concept is not some free floating liberal notion coming out of the European Enlightenment, rather it is rooted in the culture of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific. While the Enlightenment made much of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, these values were for bourgeois private property owning individuals only and were not intended to apply to wage workers let alone non-European peoples in pre-capitalist societies.

Thomas Piketty shows how unequal capitalist society is, and how difficult it is to overcome inequality when one class owns the means of production as private property and the other has to sell its labour power to subsist and make profits for the bosses! His advice is that disgruntled workers should build mass parties and take their ‘fair share’. But this has proved a mirage. The end game for late stage capitalism is that global corporates like Black Rock will own everything – land, oceans and space, and super-exploit the labour-power of landless workers to make mega profits. This leads inevitably to the massive deaths and the destruction of the ‘people’. Capitalism offers no survival off ramp for those who work to produce wealth.

For the indigenous peoples of the Pacific however, who lived or still live in societies rooted in kinship modes of production, society was organized along egalitarian lines. Land was for use, not for private profit, work was shared and governance was collective. Even when kinship modes got subordinated to tributary modes, where a chiefly class lived off the ‘tribute’ of commoners, the chiefs were obligated to ensure the wellbeing of the commoners or face a revolt against their rule!

So when the leaders of Waka and the FLNKS today speak of the ‘people’ they mean those who share equitably the land, the fruits of their labour, and the benefits provided by nature including their own work. Since such egalitarian or communal societies have existed for 100,000s of years, they cannot be relegated to a ‘dead’ past. That past is very much alive in the present. Both Māori and Kanak societies are examples of kinship modes that survive relatively intact despite the impact of colonisation.

The Waka vision then, draws upon age-old wisdom to inform the present. If humanity is to survive the collapse of capitalism, nuclear wars, and climate disaster, we need to create a form of communal society based on the principles of past and present societies that lived and continue to live as part of nature.

As Marxists we argue that the current attack on the Treaty by the National led coalition is a racist diversion to divide the country. The ruling class in Aotearoa still defends the history of white colonial settlement because it enshrines their land rights – private property. It wants to remove every last barrier to the rip, shit and bust of whatever land, foreshore and seabed remains, to exhaust nature’s resources to feed their accumulated profits and power.

Opposition to the Treaty Principles Bill needs to shift its focus from legal arguments in the parliamentary theatre and go to the heart of the problem – how to mobilize the commoners to occupy and manage the land and oceans to protect them and improve the chances of the survival of Māori and non-Māori alike. Sidestep the legal swamp around the fraudulent Treaty, return to the Declaration of Independence and campaign for the Waka vision fused with the Kanaky struggle for independence and grasp the future!

The combined Waka and Kanak vision of self determination is a blast from the past that can project us into the future uniting all Pacific peoples to fight for self-determination which puts the material needs of humans in harmony with nature first, against the destructive impact of the rule of the capital bent on burning up the planet and its people in genocidal wars and a climate catastrophe.