A Creative Tino Rangatiratanga 2

I feel that our thinking about tino rangatiratanga has been too dominated by our history of colonisation. (Understandable tho'.) Meaning, we have been dominated by a need to 'talk back', to react and to respond to kāwanatanga, we have found it necessary, and for understandable reasons, to talk about 'survivability' and 'struggle' and so on. But I am absolutely sure that our ancestors did not have this in mind when they signed the Treaty. Why would you sign something that you knew would commit you and your people to hardship, struggle and impoverishment? Rather I think they had in mind the idea of the whole continuum of their history and its momentum and saw that momentum moving forward dynamically into the future. Furthermore, I believe they had views regarding the organisation of the whole country not just one part. I mean just as kāwanatanga now pertains to and affects all who live in Aotearoa, so tino rangatiratanga ought to too. The trick is that tino rangatiratanga must mean and be something fundamentally different to kāwanatanga, and so I believe it is. Here's a quick list - its about mana not power, its regionally based not a centralised power system, its about a maunga, a river, an ancestor, that is, it is about being tangata whenua, the health and prosperity of the people is inextricably linked with the health and prosperity of the land. Our models of collectivising are the schools of fish and the flock of birds. Our model of family is the flaxbush, te pā harakeke. Tino rangatiratanga is about being tangata whenua, hence, at a deeper level it is about the degree to which human consciousness is in alignment, a conduit of the natural world. It is not about the power to project one's will onto the world.

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