Becoming Tangata Tiriti: Working with Māori, Honouring the Treaty.

Abstract

Avril Bell’s Becoming Tangata Tiriti: Working with Māori, Honouring the Treaty arrived at a moment when the political ground it described was actively shifting. Published in August 2024, it appeared as the incoming coalition government’s Treaty Principles Bill was generating fierce public debate in Aotearoa, and just months before over 40,000 people – many of us identifying as Tangata Tiriti – marched on Parliament to protest it in the hīkoi mō te Tiriti in November of that year. In the months that followed, I recognised one of Bell’s central arguments in news and social media commentary on the coalition government’s hostility to Te Tiriti o Waitangi: that non-Māori (Pākehā especially) need to learn the art of stepping up and stepping back as we work with Māori toward a Tiriti-based society.