commissioned by the Waitangi Tribunal, written by Suzanne Woodley, and sent to the claimants in July 1993. This report concluded that there was no basis for the claimants’ allegation.⁵²

Early in 1993, a trustee of the Mayor Island Trust Board, the trust administering the island on behalf of its Maori owners, stated to the Maori Land Court that the Wai 159 claim was preventing the transfer of shares in the island from the Crown to the trust. The chairperson of the Tribunal was concerned that, if the Wai 159 claim were not based on sufficient evidence, it should not be allowed to hold up the return of the shares. He therefore directed that the claimants file with the Tribunal before the end of April 1994 ‘precise particulars’ of the alleged Crown acts or omissions in breach of the Treaty and the evidence supporting any such allegations. Since no such filing was made by the Wai 159 claimants in the time prescribed, we declined to inquire into or report on the claim.⁵³ However, other claims concerning Tuhua are covered in this report, as we have noted above.

1.5 Treaty Principles

1.5.1 The Treaty of Waitangi

The Waitangi Tribunal is required by its empowering statute, the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 and its amendments, to examine claims by Maori that they have been prejudiced by any legislation, policies, acts, or omissions of the Crown since 1840 that are contrary to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. The Act recognises the English and Maori texts of the Treaty, and section 5(2) authorises the Tribunal, in claims before it, to ‘determine the meaning and effect of the Treaty as embodied in the two texts and to decide issues raised by the differences between them’. There are considerable differences in meaning between the two texts. The Treaty was originally written in English and then creatively reworked into Maori by the Reverend Henry Williams, who wanted to construct a text that he was confident Maori would sign.⁵⁴ For some key concepts, Wiliams used transliterations of English words or put Maori words to new uses.⁵⁵

One example that is relevant to the claims before us concerns sovereignty. In the Maori text, Williams used the coined word ‘kawanatanga’ for sovereignty. The word was formed by joining the transliteration of ‘governor’ (kawana) with the Maori suffix ‘tanga’. In article 1 of the English text, the chiefs ceded to the Queen of England ‘all the rights and powers of sovereignty’. But, in the Maori text of article 1, they gave to the Queen ‘te Kawanatanga katoa o o ratou wenua’ (‘the complete government over their land’, as Sir Hugh Kawharu translates it⁵⁶).

52. Paper 2.27; doc a7

53. Claims 1.3, 1.3(a); paper 2.36

54. Claudia Orange, The Treaty of Waitangi (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books Ltd, 1995), pp39–43

55. Bruce Biggs, ‘Humpty-Dumpty and the Treaty of Waitangi’, in Waitangi: Maori and Pakeha Perspectives of the Treaty of Waitangi, edited by I H Kawharu (Auckland : Oxford University Press, 1989), pp 300–312

56. I H Kawharu, ‘Appendix’, in Waitangi, p 321