Quite a well thought out response from the chief executive of Te Papa regarding the treaty exhibit and the damage done to it.
For better or worse, the English version on display was the original document, and represents what the European powers that be thought they were agreeing to. It deserves to be displayed, in my view.
As I understand it, the issue is that it presents the two side by side without sufficient context, giving a misleading impression to visitors that English text is a direct translation of the Te Reo version when that isn’t actually the case.
The English version was drafted first, translated into Te Reo with multiple changes to make it into something that Chiefs would sign.
The Aotearoa History Show by RNZ touches on this. It’s about all of NZ’s history (back to the dinosaurs) but as expected it spends a lot of time on Māori/Pākehā relations. From memory, it basically says that the translation was written by two white guys who spoke Māori as a second language, and many words were made up and wouldn’t have been familiar to Māori signing it (notably the stuff about the crown). Their interpretation (a little different to the protestors) is that Māori believed that there would be a figurehead “crown” governing the country, but that the actual control would be delegated to a premier and Māori of the same rank to govern together (co-governance).
I’m probably misremembering things, you can find the show here on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheAotearoaHistoryShow
And here for the podcast: https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-aotearoa-history-show
That page is odd though. It has season two listed with the latest episode first, going back to episode one halfway down the page, then after that it has season 1 episode one counting up as you go down the rest of the page. The two episode 1s are together in the middle of the page…
I didn’t actually realise there was a season 2 until I went looking for this, so I’ll have to find time to watch it
That’s all pretty fair criticism, really…
