Last month, Te Runanga o Ngāi Tahu made the call to cancel this year’s Waitangi Day Treaty Festival.
Instead, they will be sending a delegation to Waitangi itself, as an act of pan-iwi solidarity.
It was an unexpected but understandable decision, but it’s still sad for us here in Ōtepoti: it was Ōtakou’s turn to host it this year, on its three-yearly cycle of sites where Te Tiriti was signed.
The formal bits in the morning are an opportunity for dialogue between mana whenua, the Crown and local government. But the broader festival itself offers so much to the growing numbers of visitors who come along.
Presentations and discussions that build our shared understanding of who we are and where we’ve come from, all courtesy of our hosts on the marae.
This year is a timely reminder that tau iwi (non-Māori) really need to be doing more of that work ourselves.
And we want to.
Despite all of the political raruraru (trouble), or perhaps partly because of it, the appetite at a community level to better understand and honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi is growing by the day.
A former colleague of mine on the West Coast told me they’ve started offering Treaty training courses in their community for the first time in decades, due to popular demand.
Māori language courses across the motu can’t keep up with demand (although it’s still good to learn about raupatu before you learn the reo).
Even in the more contentious political arena, a recent survey tells us a majority of New Zealanders think the Treaty of Waitangi has either the right amount of influence, or even not enough influence, over government decision making.
It is increasingly obvious that populist politicians are pandering to a shrinking, but noisy, base.
Last year, Inspiring Communities ran a workshop on Te Tiriti responsiveness in community-led development. It sold out faster than anything in recent memory.
This is clearly where the energy is. The same energy that filled the Octagon twice in 2024, the biggest rallies I’ve seen in Dunedin outside of the public health system, in support of Te Tiriti justice.
The catalyst for those protests was legislation in Parliament, but what if we focused our efforts at a neighbourhood scale?
One of the lessons of the Labour government’s water reforms was that we have a very poor understanding of our own country’s history. Teaching it in schools is important, but we don’t have time to wait for that to bear fruit.
If we really wanted to start on a path of long-term healing, we need to invest in education and training at the grassroots of community. Forge a new, shared sense of nationhood from the ground up.
The benefits of this would extend far beyond holding the Crown accountable for its obligations.
We are naive to think that we might be immune to what’s happening all over the world.
Two of the biggest threats to our way of life right now are adapting to our changing climate, and the resurgence of the far right.
The latter actively seeks to divide us, to turn us on each other. This isn’t an abstract idea: the connection between Dunedin and the Christchurch mosque terrorist is far too close for comfort.
But that’s a lot harder to do when we know our neighbours, their stories and what we have in common.
Community led development gives us a platform to create those conditions, by way of building shared aspirations and understanding.
We also know that when the proverbial weather hits the fan, as we’ve seen with devastating consequences in the North Island this summer, tight neighbourhoods are much more likely to make it out the other side. Whether we want to call it resilience, or climate adaptation, or social cohesion — the answers are all the same.
A document signed at Ōtakou some 185 years ago might just be our best shot.
• Aaron Hawkins is the director of Inspiring Communities, a nationwide training and capability building organisation supporting community-led development.
