Birth of a Nation

Today, Wednesday February 6^th is Waitangi Day in New Zealand. This is the national holiday of New Zealand that Kiwis use to celebrate their nationhood. I’m thankful for the day off as that permits me the time to write this blog and enjoy another glorious sunny day in a summer that has been abundant in such days and which may turn out to be one for the record books because of an extended drought. This political junkie is also happy to be at home writing this with the TV on and listening to the news reports of the Super Tuesday primary election results. As of 3:45pm New Zealand time it sounds like McCain is as predicted picking up more delegates then his closest rival Mitt Romney and that Clinton is leading Obama. I’m personally taking advantage of an e-voting option via an SSL web session that is being offered to registered Democratic expats by a Democratic Party organization called Democrats Abroad. It’s sort of a state with out borders and 22 delegates are at stake. The voting is being done on the honour system with voters being asked to pledge that they will not also vote as absentee voters in their home states.

But I digress and back to Waitangi Day. This holiday is akin to the Fourth of July or Bastille Day but unlike similar holidays in many nations it is in keeping with the relative peaceful history of New Zealand. That means that it lacks the tumult of insolent colonials priming their muskets in anger with the redcoats or of the sans-culottes offing the heads of reactionary aristocrats. It commemorates the 1840 signing of a treaty by emissaries of the British crown and Maori chiefs. This treaty was not the settlement of a war or conflict between these two parties but rather an agreement where the British recognized the Maori rights to the ownership of their land as the Maori in turn accepted English suzerainty. That year was also the beginning of the serious migration of English and Scottish settlers to New Zealand. Within a few decades the Pakeha (Europeans) would surpass the Maori in number and become the predominant ethnic group. The treaty was not too specific on how disputes over land between the two groups would be adjudicated and it’s only recently that legal remedies became available for Maori litigants. The New Zealand government acknowledged that it was a nation with both a European and a South Pacific nature in 1987 when it declared Maori along with English to be official languages. So that’s today’s history lesson. My attention is now focused on the returns that are just coming in from California.