20 November 2024
More protesters have taken to New Zealand’s streets this week than ever before in the country’s history. At least 50,000 marched through Wellington to parliament yesterday, our comrades among them. Toitu Te Tiriti, an activist group associated with the liberal-nationalist Te Pāti Māori, called these demonstrations against the Treaty Principles Bill, which passed its first reading in the House of Representatives last Thursday. The bill would effectively void legal principles which derive from the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, the framework through which Māori obtain limited recognition of their right to autonomy in their own affairs and partial redress to the crimes of colonisation.
This bill stands in a long tradition of attacks on Māori from New Zealand’s overwhelmingly white ruling class, which retains national supremacy despite the bicultural gestures of recent years. New Zealand conducted wars for Māori land, privatised much of their remaining collectively owned land, co-opted their movements, suppressed their language and forced the majority into the most underpaid, underemployed sections of the working class. But attacks aimed at breaking Māori as an independent factor in national life tend in the long run to backfire. The Treaty Principles Bill has in fact unified and strengthened the movement for Māori autonomy.
As in previous decades, resistance has been oriented towards demands for kotahitanga (unity) and mana motuhake (autonomy). Such movements have historically provided a check against the worst anti-Māori elements in the ruling class, but they have also proven limited in effectiveness against a state that is committed to maintaining Māori oppression. The New Zealand bourgeoisie will never allow an end to Māori oppression, nor even limited autonomy as a people, while it holds the military and economic power.
The capitalist state and its exploitative economy must be replaced, but such questions are absent from the programme of biculturalism, constitutional change and entrepreneurship schemes favoured by both the leaders of the mainstream Māori nationalist movement and the progressive wing of the Pākehā bourgeoisie. Only the joint revolutionary struggle of Māori and Pākehā workers can accomplish this task.
Defend Te Tiriti from crown attacks!
Wawao Te Tiriti i ngā whakaeke a te karauna!
For a workers’ government!
Mō te kāwanatanga e ngā kaimahi!