The Littlewood Treaty, The True English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi, Found
Chapter: Précis 1 2 3 4 5a, 5b, 5c, 5d, 5e 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Lord Normanby's Brief Additional Resources
Chapter 7
DOWN-PLAYING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE “LITTLEWOOD TREATY” IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA
With no convincing body of proof to substantiate their argument, certain historians are saying that the written date, found at the end of the Littlewood Treaty document, is a mistake by its author, James Busby.
The mainstream media has been silent about the Littlewood
Treaty since September 1992. The last word on the matter, other than resurrection
of the issue in a National Business Review article of March
2005, seemed to come from historian Claudia Orange over twelve years previous,
wherein she concluded the following in a newspaper article:
(For the full article refer back to page 12)
NZPA Wellington. N.Z. Herald, 12/9/92.
TREATY EXPERT COOL ON DRAFT FIND
‘Dr. Orange said it would be difficult to establish why this draft of the treaty was written. She said it might not date from 1840 at all even though it was on old paper.
“It may date from the 1850’s. All we know is that it is very old. The watermark of 1833 may simply indicate it is paper that was hanging around the solicitor’s office and was used.”
Dr. Orange warned people about placing too much importance on the find.
“This is always the case when we get an interesting
find, from an historical sense it is very interesting, but we shouldn’t
get too excited about this, especially in the political sense.”
The date written on the Littlewood Treaty is positively the 4th of February 1840, the same day the final English draft was finished and handed to Reverend Henry Williams for translation.
Dr. Claudia Orange stated that the Littlewood Treaty might not date from 1840, but that it could have been written on some old paper hanging around a solicitor’s office in the 1850’s. During a period in excess of 12-years, neither she nor her colleagues have attempted to find out if that assumption is plausible. Despite releasing a new book in September 2004, there is still no mention of the Littlewood Treaty in her publications, even after she acted as primary expert commentator before the public, at the forefront of the issue, in 1992. Dr. Orange hasn’t mentioned that her colleague, Dr. Phil Parkinson, has concluded the document is in the handwriting of James Busby. This dynamic factor alone negates the possibility of the Littlewood Treaty being a back-translation written on old paper lying around a solicitor’s office in 1850.
On the 1st of March 2004, historian Ross Baker wrote to Dr.
Claudia Orange and asked, in part, the following question:
‘At the time [1992] you stated in the newspapers you were
convinced from your research that this document was just another copy of
the Maori translation by an unknown author. I am interested to know, is
this still your view today?’
On the 2nd of March 2004, Dr. Orange replied:
‘Ross, I have not had the time nor do I at present to research this
and I would not venture to make any comment until I have…Claudia’.
One would think that twelve years was ample time!
What the Treaty truly is or means could have been sorted out
over a decade ago if our historians had provided us with the correct, in-depth
information. “Interpretation” of the “treaty” is an
utterly futile undertaking, until such time as the Littlewood document’s
significance is scientifically addressed.
Dr. Michael Bassett states: ‘What you have been dealing with these
last 30 years are some very inventive people stretching the wording of the
treaty so far it is falling apart because of the games that are being played
with it’ (See National Business Review, March 2005).
After the Littlewood Treaty emerged back into public focus in the December 2003 - January 2004 issue of Investigate Magazine, Ian Wishart, editor and talk show host, stated on air that his media colleagues had told him there was a general media ban on saying the words, “Littlewood Treaty”.
Despite this, on the 18th of March 2004 one journalist, Audrey Young, quoted directly from a speech by the Hon. Winston Peters and qualified his statements to show he was talking about the “Littlewood Treaty”. This text went out in an early Herald edition to the Bay of Plenty. The offending “Littlewood Treaty” text was, it seems, discovered by censors and quickly eliminated before the next printed edition.
The two articles (early and later editions) remained exactly the same physical size and general layout, except for the later edition’s exclusion of the instances when the “Littlewood Treaty” was mentioned. Filler text was inserted in place of the earlier material, thus changing a dynamic article into something quite nondescript and reasonably sterile.
Most assuredly, the fact that Mr. Peters advocated using an altogether different English version of the treaty as the basis of our legislation, in place of the “official” English version, was immensely newsworthy.
If the treaty interpretation we adhered to was, indeed, wrong, it was the story of the century for New Zealanders.
Now you see it... Now you don't