46 Maranga Mai! In te reo version, rangatira were granting the Queen the right to govern her people, in the exercise of Kāwanatanga, but not ultimate authority over the land. That sovereign right would rest with rangatira Māori who were agreeing that: We will allow you to come here and exercise control over out-of-control Pākehā. But we will retain the rangatiratanga, the authority, with regard to our people. And in the way you relate to us, you have to recognise that independence, and fundamental to that is you will not treat us, any worse than how you treat your own citizens (Jackson, 2021a). From the perspectives of rangatira, the Queen’s power was entirely subordinate to theirs. The ceding of sovereignty or mana and rangatiratanga, as a form of supreme authority, was inconsistent with the notion of governorship. Governorship and sovereignty are fundamentally different concepts. That rangatira granted kāwanatanga to the queen was itself a sovereign act. The British assured Māori that their authority would remain in place under Article Two [of te reo text], underpinning the ideal of a shared authority in Aotearoa (Orange, 2012). Rangatira upheld their side of the agreement by showing manaaki and protection to Pākehā, in return for economic benefits and protection against outside threats to their rangatiratanga. For Matike Mai Aotearoa, Te Tiriti: Created a new constitutional configuration with the grant of kāwanatanga for the Crown to exercise over its people while providing for a joint site of power where Māori and the Crown could work together in a Tiriti-based relationship (Independent Working Group on Constitutional Transformation, 2018, p. 101). This is not what unfolded. Despite rangatira signing te reo Māori text, the British presumed that sovereignty had been ceded to them, despite Hobson’s signature on the Māori version. Indeed, the infamous 1877 case of Wi Parata v Bishop of Wellington dismissed Te Tiriti as a “simple nullity”. To the Independent Working Group on Constitutional Transformation, proceeding with the fallacy of “sovereignty ceded”, and ignoring the constitutional arrangement detailed in Te Tiriti, “remains the most egregious of all of the Crown’s breaches of Te Tiriti” (Independent Working Group on Constitutional Transformation, 2018, p. 101). That rangatira would give up the essence of who they were, their mana, was ludicrous: I’m not aware, at any time, of the King of England waking up and saying ‘…I don’t want to be [the] King of England anymore, I’ll go and ask the King of France to make all our decisions.’ Yet we’ve been taught to believe, that on the 6th of February 1840, every Māori in the country suddenly woke up and said, ‘We don’t want to make our own decisions anymore; we’re going to ask a lady in London we’ve never met to make them for us.’ That is such a gratuitous lie and insult, that I’m amazed the Crown still has the effrontery to promote it (Jackson, Brown-Davis, & Sykes, 2016, p. 5). Furthermore, the notion of ‘cession’ did not exist in the Māori world: The fact that there is no word for ‘cede’ in te reo is not a linguistic shortcoming but an indication that to even contemplate giving away mana would have been legally impossible, culturally incomprehensible, and politically and constitutionally untenable (Independent Working Group on Constitutional Transformation, 2018, p. 35; Jackson, 2016). The right of tino rangatiratanga meant Māori were subject to no higher authority: [Māori would] remain citizens of our iwi and hapū. We do not become your citizens [under the Crown]. If we retained our rangatiratanga, we would never have been subject to someone else. Ngāti Porou could not claim to be Ngāti Porou if they were subject to the authority of Ngā Puhi. It’s not comprehensible (Jackson, 2021a). For Erima Henare, this amounts to a manipulation of the past: The bias comes with the myths that explain and justify the New Zealand State and the idea of undivided parliamentary sovereignty. The history invoked is not the Māori history. The Treaty invoked is the English version, not the Māori version (Henare in Waitangi Tribunal, 2014, p. 527).