Toitū Te Tiriti
Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Treaty of Waitangi, is an important agreement for everyone who calls Aotearoa New Zealand home. It’s what gives us all a place to stand.
Greenpeace Aotearoa is committed to honouring Te Tiriti.
Connecting through Te Tiriti
‘Toitū’ for us means to be sustainable, to remain whole. Toitū Te Tiriti is to support and honour Te Tiriti, to respect our foundational document as a guide for living together in this land we call home.
As we strive for the restoration of thriving biodiversity and a safe climate future, we also seek to reconnect to nature and each other.
This is at the heart of why Greenpeace Aotearoa is committed to honouring this country’s founding document, Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Honouring Te Tiriti means respecting tino rangatiratanga – the self-determination – of iwi and hapū.
Honouring Te Tiriti provides the framework as a nation to navigate the painful truth of the history of colonisation and its present day impacts. Even though it has been slow and difficult, there has been extraordinary progress.
This progress is also critical in the fight to protect and restore nature. For example, Parliament’s recognition of the Whanganui River with legal personhood in 2017 was a landmark legal step. It recognised the ancestral connection of Whanganui iwi and is the basis for the long-term protection of the awa.
Read the Greenpeace Aotearoa Te Tiriti Policy.
A new threat to Te Tiriti and Te Taiao
As the New Zealand Government is busy waging a war on nature by removing hard-won protections for the natural ecosystems, they’re also launching a blatant attack on indigenous rights.
The Act Party’s proposed ‘Treaty Principles Bill’ is an attempt to fundamentally change the interpretation of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and, incredibly, to remove all references to Māori from the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
The forces pushing against indigenous self-determination and the right to protect the natural world as taonga are the same forces that have no regard for the importance of the natural world. To protect nature from pollution and destruction is entwined with the struggle for indigenous justice.
Te Tiriti is a vital agreement between the crown and Tangata Whenua. Join us in saying ‘no’ to the attempt to erase Māori from our history, creating division and hate. Let’s say ‘yes’ to a future Aotearoa New Zealand filled with unity and hope.
Greenpeace Aotearoa and Te Tiriti
In campaigning for the environment, the Greenpeace crew has learnt over decades the power of working together with tangata whenua. Our struggles are often the same struggles as mana whenua. Local relationships with iwi and hapū were integral to the achievement in 2018 of the offshore oil exploration ban that Greenpeace is so proud to have been part of.
Read the story of how an alliance between Greenpeace, iwi, and the wider community faced down the oil giants.
Connected kaupapa
The March For Nature and many other protests we saw a blending of messages about protecting nature, defending Te Tiriti and stopping the war on Palestine. In episode two of Greenpeace LIVE, we discussed why that’s such a natural and powerful convergence of kaupapa. Bianca’s korero is a must-watch…