Tikanga Flashcards
First Law
Tikanga is the first law in New Zealand and Maori are tangata whenua: tikanga is part of the values of the New Zealand variety of the common law.
Tikanga Maori
A set of values, customs, practices, laws and philosophies that operate within te ao Maori.
Wananga
A Maori method of teaching and learning.
Common Law
We mean the common law of the courts. An adaptation of the English Law.
Kupe
Kupe was the first man to find New Zealand. He arrived by waka and decided that he would install his values into the land.
Whanaungatanga
The defining principle - “The glue that held, and still holds, the legal system together”.
Mana
Authority, control, power and leadership.
Tapu
Sacred, respect.
Utu
Reciprocity, a notion of revenge?
Kaitiakitanga
Stewardship, guardianship. Relationship to the land.
Marae
Everyone can speak, everyone stays until a consensus is found.
Runanga
Council, tribunal council, assembly, board, iwi authority.
Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu Act 1996
Body corporate, power to purchase, hold, transfer property, to sue and be sued, having all the rights and powers of a natural person.
International Law - 1
A nation discovering land with no proper owner may acquire sovereignty and property… will be recognised by the law of the nations so long as the nation takes actual possession.
International Law - 2
Does it matter if the land is already inhabited?
International Law - 3
Not if the other nations are ‘erratic’ with a ‘scanty population’, ‘incapable of occupying the whole’, ‘unsettled habitation’, ‘savages’ who made ‘no actual and constant use’ of the land.
De vattel’s theory
Each state has the right to govern their own land without external interference. Sovereignty is foundational to this.
He Whakaputanga
1835 - All sovereign power and territory resides entirely in the chiefs in their collective capacity. Our declaration of independence.
Treaty of Waitangi
February 6th 1840.
May 1840
Hobson declares sovereignty over NZ.
November 1840
New Zealand becomes a colony.
R v Symonds
1847 - “Maori customary rights are recognised”.
Native Lands Act
- The land is removed from under Maori law and centralised under common law.
Wi Parata
1877 - “A simple nullity” because it cannot bring into something that does not exist. Maori cannot cede sovereignty if they never had it.
Baker v Nireaha Tamaki
1901 - Wi Parata was too late in the day to establish that Maori never had sovereignty. This was the first superior decision not acknowledged by a lower court.
Ninety Mile Beach
1963 - Overlooked Baker - Keeps the decision in Wi Parata alive. Maori cannot own land if their property rights had been previously extinguished.
Treaty of Waitangi Act
1975 - First legislation to confirm Te Tiriti as a legal document.
State Owned Enterprises Act
1986
Foreshore and Seabed
2003
Marine and Coastal Act
2011
Peter Ellis Case
2017
Taranaki Maunga + Whanganui river given personhood.
2019 - 2020.
Imperium
Sovereignty, empire and power.
Dominion
Domain, land, property, ownership.
New Zealand’s Constitution
- Unwritten. Not one single document.
- Not entrenched.
- Not supreme.
