The Treaty of Waitangi is not even that good of a treaty. But it is better than any treaty the Crown signed with indigenous peoples
And it absolutely was not meant to be
The treaty as written screws over Māori, and was written in Te Reo Māori and English with deliberately misleading translations to Te Reo Māori. I'm not an expert by any means, but basically the Te Reo Māori version has clauses that promise much more independence and sovereignty, while the English version does not
The English version promises them rights as Citizens
From what I remember from University 10+ years ago, this clause, this sentence, was added last minute by the writer of the treaty. Like, right before the big signing at Waitangi.
Because now they had a legally binding document that promised, in their own language, to treat Māori with the same rights as they would English. Which was absolutely not the goal. The goal was to trick Māori into signing away their lands and that honestly still did happen. The treaty was not a good faith proposal by the Engliah.
But its still better than anyone else got, and it's better than no treaty. And because nowadays we can't just ignore the Te Reo Māori side of the treaty, the government's of the past few decades have been honouring Māori sovereignty, honouring their stewardship of the land, and undoing a lot of the bad faith "sales" or straight up stolen land.
Except our current fuck nuggets, who want to make Te Reo Māori an endangered language again, and steal back that land because they want to mine on it and sell it and they hate that Māori stewardship is so environmentally focused and not profit driven.
So, in a way, the current government is more true to the intentions of the Crown who initially came up with the treaty.
But since those guys were colonising bastards, I don't see "honouring" them as anything good.
Even with criticism of the treaty, without it, Māori would lose a lot of protections to their lands, their culture, their language, and as a country we would go backwards to a time when they were even more discriminated against
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