Natalie Coates

To understand our past is to see our future

When Natalie Coates first learned about Te Tiriti o Waitangi at school, it was painted as a relic of the past, an agreement signed way back when.

“We were taught about the signing of Te Tiriti as a historical fact, not so much a contemporary, on-going relevant thing,” she says.

It wasn’t until she got to university that she began to understand the Treaty was so much more than an 1840 event.

“I started to understand what it meant, the consequences that were supposed to flow, and how the deep grievances from its subsequent breach explained the current Māori reality and how society and power is structured today. It’s not until you understand that history that you get a sense of the significance of Te Tiriti.”

Natalie (Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Tūhourangi, Tūhoe, Te Whānau a Apanui) grew up around Te Teko, in the eastern Bay of Plenty. She earned an honours degree in law and arts (Māori Studies) from Otago University before being awarded multiple scholarships and obtaining a Masters of Law from Harvard University. 

She is a partner at Kāhui Legal where she does a lot of work in the Treaty space.

But despite now having a deep, institutional understanding of Te Tiriti and the issues, Natalie says it doesn’t need to be complicated. 

“At its heart, the Treaty was a straightforward arrangement. It was the promise and guarantee of how society would operate and function,” she says.

“It’s the foundation of our modern nation state, the thing that legitimates everybody’s place in Aotearoa.”

Where things become trickier, she says, is how we deal with the injustices that flowed from the breaches of Te Tiriti almost right from the beginning. 

“The thing that we need to grapple with is how Te Tiriti translates into a contemporary context given the water that has flowed under the bridge. What does it look like now?”

But again, she says, there is reason to be optimistic and she’s hopeful that we might find a future in which the promise of the Treaty is delivered, for the good of all.

“The promise of Te Tiriti o Waitangi is a really beautiful one and I think there’s opportunity and space for us to move away from a state of repeated breach and come together as a nation to have a conversation around what honouring it looks like. My hope is that is the constructive space we move to.”

Over the past 30 years, Treaty settlements between many iwi and hapū and the Crown have helped to address some of the grievances. “But those have mostly been about saying sorry for past Crown mistakes.  That’s really only the start.  The important thing is how we move to space where apologies are no longer needed.”

The good thing, she says, is we’re seeing slow change and threads of what Treaty consistency looks and feels like, through things like Waitangi Tribunal directions and the outcomes of the settlement process. 

The settlement of claims over the Whanganui River, for instance, has meant multiple stakeholders have come together to rejuvenate the awa (river).

And in Whakatāne, Ngāti Awa is leading a pest eradication programme which has resulted in an increase in birdlife – you can now hear kiwi at night.

“They’re really powerful examples of Te Tiriti starting to operate in practice” says Natalie.

“And the benefits are not only for Māori, there’s a wider, flow-on. If Māori are rising, then society is doing better as a whole. If we’re connected and culturally-grounded and able to manaaki (take care of) our taiao, there are benefits for everybody.”

So, how can we get to that place, then? To see past the fear and misunderstanding?

Natalie believes that part of the answer is kōrero – talking to each other, including to those it would seem we don’t agree with.

“We sometimes exist too much in our own little silos and bubbles where our fears and ideology are re-iterated and echoed back at us. We need spaces for those bridging conversations to happen, where we can address the concerns and understand where the fear comes from.  Is it an emotive response based on evocative taglines?  Or is there a rationality behind it that needs to be unpicked and examined?”  

Those conversations aren’t necessarily easy or comfortable, but if they can be teased out and worked through, “I think you can find some common ground”, she says.  

And on that common ground can be found the promise of what Te Tiriti offered.  

“To me the diversity of thought and culture and the bridging of worlds is what makes Aotearoa a beautiful place. I’m a product of that – my dad’s Māori and my mum is Pākehā.”

“Te Tiriti though helps us navigate the dynamic relationship between these worlds.  It is the pre-nup and divorce is not an option.”