River spirits have Parliament’s backing
HIDESIGHT
Just when you think it can’t get any sillier, it does.
It proves yet again that we lack sufficient imagination for just how silly government can be.
On August 30 Minister of Treaty Settlements Chris Finlayson signed an agreement (Tutohu Whakatupua) with Brendon Te Tiwha Puketapu, chairman of the Whanganui River Maori Trust Board.
The agreement records the “Te Awa Tupua” elements that will form the basis of the Whanganui River settlement.
This records that “Te Awa Tupua” captures the Whanganui iwi view that the river is a living being, an indivisible whole incorporating its tributaries and all its physical and metaphysical elements from the mountains to the sea.
Among the elements agreed is statutory recognition for this religious mumbo-jumbo. And statutory recognition of Te Awa Tupua as a legal entity with standing in its own right.
There is to be Te Pou Tupua (as Guardian of the River) to represent the interests of Te Awa Tupua.
There will be two of them, one appointed by the Crown and one by iwi. Their role is to be the human face of Te Awa Tupua and to speak on its behalf.
These two will owe their responsibilities to Te Awa Tupua. They are not responsible to the government or to the people of New Zealand, but to the living, interconnected river and its spirits.
So in 2012 we have state-sanctioned treaty priests answerable only to river ghosts. The long-held separation of church and state is overturned and the religion that Parliament is backing is animism.
What are implications?
I have no idea what the implications of all this are. I am sure that no one else does either, least of all the authors of this agreement or the legislation it promises.
What does it mean to have animism backed in statute? Goodness only knows. Will it become an offence to make fun of the river spirits?
Quite possibly.
In fact, it could be the river spirit that takes action against you.
The river, its people, its spirits are all one and that one is to have legal standing. The one’s representative is Te Pou Tupua.
These two characters will be able to do what they like and have the legal authority to do so.
They are the ones that according to statute will have a hotline to the river gods and their only accountability is to the river gods. What the river gods will be telling them to do only they will know.
Certainly, by law there will be no one else to hold them to account.
Worst fears realised
We know from recent experience that such legal adventurism will prove bigger and more problematic that we can even imagine in our worst fears.
What would seem impossible will become every day and accepted.
Twenty years ago no one would have believed that the Resource Management Act would see a taniwha hold up development. Now it’s not even news.
I travelled around New Zealand warning of the implications of passing the Resource Management Bill into law. I worried at the time I might be exaggerating the possible ill-effects.
In hindsight, I wasn’t even close to how bad the legislation has turned out.
I know, too, the worst law has always been passed being dismissed as symbolic only and nothing of substance.
We laugh at King Canute ordering the tide not to come in. In truth, he was demonstrating the limit of his kingly power. He wisely knew that there were some things he just couldn’t do, no matter what his advisers thought.
And now today we have our parliament and our government believing they can breathe life into a river, make it live and give it a legal identity.
I have no idea what they’re thinking. I have no idea what it means.
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Comments and questions53
Mr Hides saturday opinion pieces are now my essential reading and once again we have an expose of a matter that has left me a little numb. Still visiting the nasa site and marvelling at the pictures of mans achievement and continued explorations.... yet we have taxpayer funds and politicians embracing the stone age and paganism. I despair for the country and its people.
if you call this essential reading I suggest you broaden your outlook.
No doubt these two Guardians will require funding. I hope the Whanganui Council have some fat in their budget.
There is no "h" in Wanganui.
Also the Maori of the region say "Wanganui" not "Whanganui"
you must be a Maori of the region then?
Anonymous: you made my day. Thank you.
Lincoln: This one's going to cost us all. The Nats completed the Waikato deal that Labour had advanced promising it would be a once off. The river deals have now been ratcheted up and up, river by river, deal by deal.
Rodney you forget that thier are two parties one is Goverment appointed, so there fore one may safely assume removal off one if nonsense started to perpetuate its self. That would nullifie a majority.
Are you kidding? This BS feeds on itself and will rapidly become a growth industry. I want to register myself and my family as guardians of the spirits of State Highway One. Who do I get the funding from?
You voted National in mate, sleep in it.
Ummm, Labour is just as entrenched in this BS, in fact they started it. Bad memory?
This is why burning at the stake needs to be brought back to deal with witchcraft
Queen Victoria would turn over in her grave at such bewildering nonsense.
The Treaty was intended to allow both Maori and Pakeha to co-exist peacefully, so that Maori were protected as a separate people from being squeezed out of existence, and in return Pakeha could live without fear of being attacked.
We are not separate people any more. They are part of the system, paying taxes and enjoying the benefit of our social systems. Job done.
Has everyone lost sight of this? The Treaty was never intended to be a living document 150 years after the fact.
Wake up New Zealand
You omitted family.... lovers/wives/children, nieces, nephews and all the other cuzzy bros. Finlayson and his ilk (ie the legal profession) want to tear us apart, so they can live high on the hog of the taxpayer, for generations to come. Don't blame Maori... an entire industry of leaches has been created to offer Maori hand out, after hand out.. Who can blame them when the Govt continually capitulates to them? And how the most dangerous indivdual to racial disharmony and discord in NZ societry (Ie. Finlayson) exists in Govt, beggars belief. What on earth is wrong with this lot???.
Paull Marsden
Actually I do blame Maori
Why would anyone look a gift horse in the mouth? Until the Govt says sod- off, they'll keep pushing the boundaries. Hell, if were Maori, I would. Wouldn't you??
The bind moggles.
From Wikipedia - (there's lots more there)
Māori academic Dr Ranginui Walker, in a detailed letter to the Waikato Times, said that in the modern age a taniwha was the manifestation of a coping mechanism for some Māori. It did not mean there actually was a creature lurking in the water, it was just their way of indicating they were troubled by some incident or event.[
As a child, my dad told me not to go down to the creek because "the bogey man will get you",
I suspect the taniwha was their bogey man, to stop the kids getting eaten by passers-by
And one has to wonder what the one and only true God of Heaven & earth thinks of this sad return to superstition - especially when He specifically came to set us all free from the fears, falsehood and slavery of spiritual bondage!
"And one has to wonder what the one and only true God of Heaven & earth thinks of this sad return to superstition"
Are you serious? And wtf is his name?
To be fair, monotheism still has a lot more going for it than the pantheism advocated here. What you call that one god doesn't really matter.
He has heaps of names Jesus, YHWH, Jehovah, I am...
He is total love & truth - and He offers complete freedom (not bondage) to all who truely seek Him and call on Him to help. He is real and He does care - He has truly changed my life for good and had filled that huge emptiness (around the meaning of life) that's deep within. I do hope & pray that you will ask Him to reveal Himself to you today - because if you do with all sincerity, He truly will because He loves you.
Right.... the god who created the earth before he made the sun, the moon and the stars (read: other suns). The same god who flooded the earth and made the rainbow because he felt guilty later. The same god who had a wife called Asherah (just read your buybull, remnants of her name is still in there). Ah, the god who offers complete freedom (not bondage) - your words, kind sir - but allows the jews to enslave their neighbouring tribes. The same god who does not forgive anyone who rejects the holy ghost/poltergeist.
Ahhhh... sonny jesus. The dude who said mustard seeds grow into trees. The dude who didn't know certain species of birds DO store away their food (woodpecker, crows, nuthatches, jays, chickadees etc). The dude who knew exactly what will happen on judgement day and all the tiny weeny details but says he didn't know the exact date. But he says, it's coming. It's coming soon.
JUst like any other godless venture, such as same sex marriage legislation
Prehistoric superstitious BS, and to think any government fell for it. Oh well, I'm sure the spirits like modern day hard currency. That will resolve any spritual 'misunderstandings'. When will this BS stop?
Whats the going price on one of these Taniwha? Halloween is coming up and I want to rent one for a party.
And what dollar value has been placed on any offering required to appease the taniwha?
And who receives such offerings?
Be assured, the money isn't wasted, it goes straight on booze, weed and McDonalds, so I suppose in a way it all comes back.
Through taxpayer handouts or taxbreaks - neither Taniwha's or monotheistic gods neither should be able to freeload on the taxpayers money.
When it comes to singular stupidity, nothing beats the kiwis in the Land of Sheep.
So Rodney & others, the majority of the voting public are in agreement with the absurdity of this particular gravy train, what on earth do we do about this ?
There's this mohttp://www.nzcpr.com/petition_EqualRights.php
and this http://johnansell.wordpress.com
We have to get off our backsides and actually support the very few who are actually doing something to stop the racist nonsense
Become a republic.
It's high time this taniwha nonsense and simlar Maori mumbo-jumbo was laid to rest. If anyone wants to believe in this mythology, that's fine. Just don't expect the rest of us to support your views or grant any concessions based on such fairytales.
What to do about it: Show some courage - back politicians that uphold laws that treat everyone as citizens equal before law, not aristocracy under "we were here first" notions - Affirmative action silliness- or indigeneous rights - or special interpretations of a treaty of cession.
I say stop taking these pollies & natives seriously & start laughing at them.
You won't be laughing when you start getting a bill for water every month. Abolish the treaty. Sign the petition now. http://www.nzcpr.com/petition_EqualRights.php
Of course it's all about money.
Why would any group not take advantage of the stupidity of a weak government?
The hand outs will continue until we have a government with some backbone.
liberte
I honestly can't beleive the bigotry and ingrained racism that still exists 150 years later not to mention the myopic views of NZérs per se.Get your heads out of your rear ends and wake up rednecks, because man's progress is destroying the planet, and laws like this will save parts of it - or are you too dumb to see this too?
Apart from being unable to spell what you can't believe, would you like to travel to parts of the planet that "man's progress" is not destroying and report back?
You could try Afghanistan, Romania, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Burma, and Bangladesh for a few examples. Then contrast their environmental record with that of the upper end of the OECD. Then figure out just who is dumb.
Like you I see the rascism. In my opinion, the Waitangi Tribunal is a racist organisation and your intolerance to differing opinions is bigotry.
oops - make that racism- sorry Alan.
Racist Maori separatism and facist green eco-romanticism has combined into a truly heady brew.
The weak-minded politician's and journos have gotten out of their trees on the stuf. When will the party end is the real question?
you stupid stupid person.
Except you cannot dispute the facts, only the person ....
Rodney is just about as confused about all this water right garbage as the silent majority. 23 Irrigation Schemes in Central Otago which held mining privileges in perpetuity (999) years had those replaced by deemed permits for 21 years from the passing of the Resource Management Act with no rights to compensation.
Surely Maori water rights were also subject to the same provisions in the RMA. A large part of Central Otago would revert to desert if water is not available for farmers & fruit-growers alike so water rights are right now a very sensitive issue.
I was intrigued by Donna Hall's explanation of a disputed water right in Whangarei because local local Maori believe they have been deprived of a very old customary right which has now been acquired legally by Whangarei Council. Donna's position was quite different to the local Iwi opinion and how many other customary rights no longer exist because of what she explained in her interviewn 'Close-Up'
In commenting on the subject matter, we need to look at historic actions, I think. Many are the cases where roads cut through Christian Holy Ground, churches, even an airport runway planned to cut through a cemetery in our own generation. Why one rule for others? So, I support some pragmatic thinking about diverting roads for Taniwha.
But the tone of your articles is interesting, Rodney. You profess to be a Christian, which many people believe to be "mumbo-jumbo". I find it interesting to see you and your ACT ilk oftentimes belying your "libertarian" ethos. You say you are about freedom of thought, but the ACT Party is currently in a position of trying to impose its free-thinking policies on the 98.5% who would love the freedom to choose something else - a Catch22 if there ever was one. And then we keep seeing examples from you, from Brash and from Banks where you don't support free-thinking at all - witness the "cups of tea" where ACT essentially wanted to usurp more influence than the public was freely giving it.
Your own beliefs are yours to proclaim, others' beliefs are called "mumbo-jumbo", presumably because they don't line up with yours. Libertarian? Totalitarian, I would have said.
Don't kill the messenger. Rodney brought it to our attention. No need to attack him.
This Mr Finlayson is a bit of a worry particularly when he is quoted as saying how enriched his life was when suing the crown on behalf of Maori interests.We need to know more about this man as something seems amiss and as Minister he seems to be invoking his Crown warrant as if it was the Age of Kings and forgetting he is representing all New Zealanders.There must be some tension in the Cabinet room with him sitting there and when he leaves as he will the legacy will be the biggest law changes in private property rights ever in New Zealand history without a sanctioning election.The Whanganui River law is utterley remarkable and will be a future problem for New Zealand Governance long after he has retired on his earnings from the taxpayer and the fees from Maori as I presume he wasnt suing the Crown for free.
Of course his life was enriched, millions of dollars of our money and he took his cut.
MASSIVE CONFLICT OF INTEREST HERE.
Prior to Finlayson being appointed to parliament he was representing maori interests as a lawyer against the crown.
FINLAYSON IS USING HIS PERSONAL AGENGA THROUGH HIS NOW CROWN APPOINTMENT
Arguably, the statutory basis for water rights and the RMA is already religious: refer Genesis 1:26