48 Maranga Mai! enabled “land of any rebellious tribe” to be taken as punishment (Waitangi Tribunal, 2009, p. 161). At the same time, the Suppression of Rebellion Act (1863) was passed to “suppress a rebellion and punish those responsible for certain acts of ‘atrocity and outrage’” (Waitangi Tribunal, 2009, p. 295). This legislation was passed at a time when settlers were demanding more land (Webb, 2017, p. 685). Both acts resulted in the confiscation of over four million acres of Māori land, centred mainly on the fertile lands of the Waikato, Taranaki, and Bay of Plenty regions (Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 2021). The suppression of rangatiratanga, the destruction of tribes through war, and the seizure of lands reinforced by unjust legislation, became the pathway by which the settler-colonial society in Aotearoa legitimated the falsehood that the British Crown had gained sovereignty in 1840. Historical amnesia and misremembering The Victorian interpretation of the ‘sovereignty wars’ exaggerated British victory, emphasised British power, and invented British triumphs. The British were lauded as intelligent, strategic, and strong, in comparison to the ‘savage’, disorganised, and weak Māori (Belich, 1988, p. 316). The education system taught this view in schools and accepted it as ‘correct’ well into the twentieth century. This included manufacturing rebellions where none existed, such as at Ihumātao (Waitangi Tribunal, 1985, pp. 17–8) and in Tainui. These were direct violations of Te Tiriti, as the Waitangi Tribunal noted: All sources agree that the Tainui people of the Waikato never rebelled but were attacked by British troops in direct violation of Article II of the Treaty of Waitangi (Waitangi Tribunal, 1985, p. 17). The experience of colonisation has included the manufacture of false narratives. This “deliberate misremembering” (Jackson, 2019, 2016) has been pivotal in undermining the self-determination of Māori, for it invented myths that Māori were rebellious and belligerent, and forcefully defeated by the Crown. The reality was that despite the overwhelmingly larger resources and armed forces of the British, Māori were more than a match for the British in battle. Māori defeated the British in two of the four major wars and regularly defeated forces several times their numbers (Belich, 1988, p. 291). Māori were easily able to match British officers in quality of leadership. There were no incompetent Māori leaders because, if they were incompetent, iwi withdrew their support for them. Māori were the first to develop trench and bunker warfare which the British had no experience of (Belich, 1988, p. 297). The New Zealand Constitution Act (1852) The establishment of English law proceeded swiftly during the sovereignty wars further legitimising the illegitimacy of British actions in Aotearoa by dismantling the rangatiratanga of Māori affirmed and guaranteed in Te Tiriti. The New Zealand Constitution Act (1852) was one of the first key pieces of legislation authorising a law-making body with power to create legislation over New Zealand: Pākehā laws were pivotal in undermining our selfdetermination. Self-determination was enshrined and affirmed in Te Tiriti. But the Constitution Act instituted a formal and official undermining of our self-determination in our land (Ngata, 2021). The Act purported to grant Māori a vote alongside Pākehā settlers. However, tied to holding the individualised title of land by men, the Constitution Act resulted in non-Māori voters far outnumbering Māori (Derby, 2012). The Native Lands Acts (1862, 1865) Historians have shown that the Crown’s early nineteenth century policy of negotiation with Māori concerning land acquisition was to avoid provocation of Māori, and any consequences for Crown settlements, rather than any commitment to Te Tiriti relationship. By the 1860s settlers outnumbered tangata whenua and insisted that accommodations of Māori interests were no longer required. By the 1870s, settlers had achieved the full removal of early Crown protections of Māori land and successive governments were generally dismissive of Māori concerns and interests including honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Marr, 1997). The undermining of self-determination proceeded hand-in-hand with the dispossession of Māori land.