Māori lawyer goes viral for educating people on Treaty Principles Bill

Riana Te Ngahue (Ngāti Porou), a young Māori lawyer, started making TikToks for people like her uncles "who don't really care about the Treaty".

But now her bite-sized breakdowns of complex Māori issues are educating audiences far beyond Aotearoa.

Her recent breakdown of David Seymour's Treaty Principles Bill has sparked particular interest.

The proposed legislation, which seeks to redefine the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, has drawn criticism for undermining Māori rights.

Te Ngahue's ability to unpack these legal and cultural implications has made her videos a go-to source of information, with one of her videos attracting over 1.3 million views and counting.

"The thing that got me posting on TikTok was the Section 7AA stuff for the Oranga Tamariki Act. I saw a lot of comments and discourse online that to me seemed like most people didn't understand what Section 7AA actually does."

This is what lead to her first "yapping video".

"When I made my TikToks, I was trying to talk to people like my uncles who don't really care about the Treaty that much and aren't going to go read the Treaty articles and the stuff from the experts."

But her videos have gained massive traction online, gaining interest from Māori and non-Māori.

"I've had so many messages from Pākehā New Zealanders saying 'Oh my gosh, I had no idea that this is what it's all about. I can't believe I ever had negative feelings towards it.'"

Te Ngahue said she would normally sit back and allow experts to speak, but with her background in law, having read the legislation and listened to said experts, she thought she could add value "to bridge the gap" between the experts and those new to the kaupapa.

"That's all I was trying to do. And I didn't realise it would upset David Seymour."

Treaty Principles Bill

Te Ngahue believes the Treaty Principles Bill is "misleading" and said it was insulting for Seymour to turn the "is everyone equal?" question into a simple yes or no.

"There are all kinds of yes or no questions that you could make for a tino rangatiratanga argument. But the reality is, is that it's not that simple."

Te Ngahue uses a rugby analogy to explain her thinking.

"To me, it's like if somebody came up to me and said, 'Should Damian McKenzie play tight-head prop?' And I'd be like, 'I don't know. I don't know what a tight-head prop does.' And they go, 'Is Damian McKenzie a good rugby player or not? Should he play tight-head prop?' And I'd be like, 'I don't know.'

"To me, that's what David Seymour is trying to do to all of us. And so that's why I made my video."

While ACT Party leader David Seymour said the Treaty Principles Bill aims to provide "certainty" and "clarity" and to "promote a national conversation" about their constitutional role, Te Ngahue argued it misrepresented the Treaty's true intent.

She said the principles themselves are already a significant compromise, given the English version of the Treaty has shaped New Zealand's legal foundation but was not the version agreed to by Māori chiefs.

"All of the Treaty experts say that the 'English version' of the Treaty doesn't count," Te Ngahue said.

"The Māori chiefs who signed it were only offered the English version, and they were given an oral interpretation of what the Māori text said. The Māori version, Te Tiriti, is the true foundation of New Zealand's agreements, and it guarantees tino rangatiratanga in a way that is not difficult to understand once you look at the Māori words."

David Seymour's critique

In a video shared to the ACT Party social media page, Seymour expressed his disagreement with Te Ngahue's interpretation of the bill.

While he acknowledged that her video was "friendly" and informative, he said that it failed to present the "full picture".

"If you want to disagree with me, that's fine, but you've got to explain how it's going to work to have a society based on two different types of people ... when actually there isn't two types of people, there are just human beings."

Te Ngahue argued against the ACT Party leader's position and quoted a statement made by him while speaking to The Hui, where he said, "What is good for everyone is good for Māori".

"That's a lie ... Māori have the worst prison statistics, they have the worst state care statistics, they have the worst suicide rates, and the government literally just apologised the other week for the horrific abuse that Māori children suffered in government institutions," Te Ngahue said.

'Tino rangatiratanga is about helping everyone.'

From Te Ngahue's perspective, tino rangatiratanga was "about the right to do things in a Māori way," and said this was guaranteed under the Treaty of Waitangi.

"Doing things in a Māori way means having the obligation to look after people and look after the environment."

She said if tino rangatiratanga was granted, non-Māori will not miss out on anything.

"You're not going to be disadvantaged in society. That's never going to happen. Ever. Tino rangatiratanga is about helping people and helping everyone."

All New Zealanders are equal under law in Aotearoa, under the Humans Rights Act and the Bill of Rights, Te Ngahue said.

"I wholeheartedly believe that anyone who actually understands what tino rangatiratanga is will be on board with it because it's not scary. It's good for everyone and nobody misses out on anything."

She said granting tino rangatiratanga was a way forward to ensure equitable outcomes for those affected by colonisation.

"Tino rangatiratanga is a way for us to provide better solutions and actually fix things that are objectively undeniably broken in the system."

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.