Seymour and Winston line up against Te Tiriti, but are they missing the point? / A.J. Hendry

This week the conversation around honouring Te Tiriti heated up with David Seymour and Winston Peters both hitting out against Te Tiriti based polices. But, is their rhetoric missing the point?

This year there has been a lot of kōrero about co-governance, Te Tiriti, and what it really means to honour our foundational document and agreement.

The conversation has continued to intensify this week with David Seymour announcing that a referendum on Te Tiriti would be a bottom line for any Government (read National) he partnered with.

Winston Peter's, looking to cut through the political fog and get his voice above the noise, called any policy that saw the Crown seek to honour Te Tiriti by sharing power with Māori, racist and anti-democratic.

When I hear such rhetoric it concerns me that the focus of this conversation is being misdirected in an unhelpful direction.

One of the key points that Winston and Seymour continually make, is co-governance and policies thst seek to address inequalities for Māori are race-based policies and are undemocratic.

However, the point that is be obscured here is that this isn't about race, but about our Treaty. It's about the fact that this Treaty was broken, and as a result severe harm as been done to one party, through the benefit of another.

This is not about granting any special privileges based on race, it is about the Crown upholding their obligations and responsibilities to Tangata Whenua under the agreement between our peoples within our founding document. And it is about making right, the wrongs the Crown (acting on behalf of Pākehā) have done.

We forget too easily that our ancestors signed a Treaty which granted both the Crown and Tangata Whenua certain privileges and responsibilities. Tino Rangatiratanga, self-determination, is not a privilege granted to Māori by the Crown, but theirs by right.

When we start talking about getting rid of Te Tiriti, I get concerned.

As Pākehā the legal right for myself and my whānau to live within this land derives from Te Tiriti.

As a result I am committed to continued kōrero around how we as pākehā can uphold our responsibilities under the Treaty in order to continue benefiting from the privileges we've recieved through being welcomed into this land by tangata whenua.

The reality is that tangata tiriti have not upheld our responsibilities. Thus we have an obligation to take certain actions in order to make right the wrong that has been done as a result of our betrayal.

Undermining and devaluing our founding document is not one of those actions.

Any suggestion of revoking Te Tiriti should concern all of us, especially pākehā.

Because without it, we have no legal right to call this place home.