Abstract:
Over the past twenty five years, judges and lawyers and commentators have castigated the ‘simple nullity’ view of the Treaty. The ‘infamous’ case has been seen as symbolic of the neglect of Maori rights by settlers, government and the law in New Zealand. In this book, David V. Williams takes a fresh look at the Wi Parata case – the protagonists, the origins of the dispute, the years of legal back and forth – affording new insights into both Maori–Pakeha relations in the nineteenth century and the legal position of the Treaty. The factual background to the Wi Parata case, Williams argues, tells us much about nineteenth-century Maori acting as they thought best for their people and about debates in Pakeha jurisprudence over the recognition or rejection of customary Maori rights. Behind the apparent dismissal of the Treaty as a ‘simple nullity’ lay deep arguments about the place of Maori and Pakeha in Aotearoa New Zealand. Those arguments are as relevant now as they were then.