Is it right that 42% of the Nation's Fisheries and 36% of its Forestry have been given to 14% of the population? This has created an ethnic plutocracy of extravagant and alarming proportions. The Fisheries, given to Maori to provide work for Maori youth, were immediately sold off to overseas interests. As for forestry, it is doubtful if pre-Treaty Maori planted a single tree let alone a State Forest.

Te Tiriti O Waitangi or the version in Maori signed on February 6th 1840 is the only true version of the Treaty. Article 2 in this document gave Maori the specific right of ownership of their Lands, Dwellings and Taonga (property gained by the spear , {something tangible} the definition in the Maori/English Dictionary published at Cambridge University in 1820) The version of Article 2 giving control of their Lands, Forests and Fisheries is the Freeman version which was never signed and is therefore a nullity. The Littlewood version,which was lost but rediscovered in 1989, is the English draft that was used by Henry Williams and his son, Edward to translate into Maori. There is no differentiation between the Littlewood version and Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

This inequitable state of ownership has been the result of the actions of successive governments to the detriment of the rest of us, 86% of the population. They have cursorily given away our national wealth for imagined injustices to Maori that were suggested by Maori activists and Treaty revisionists.

Bryan Johnson, Omokoroa.