Seeking to find a te reo word to describe the unfamiliar concept of property rights has made for a disastrous confusion

"Article Two of Te Tiriti promises to preserve tino rangatiratanga; courts have interpreted this in various ways to mean that chiefs (Rangatira) retain some kind of chiefly power. But Te Tiriti itself fails to fully clarify of what that power consists. Lawyers since have taken full advantage of this imprecision ... 

"In seeking to find a te reo word to describe the unfamiliar concept of property rights, [Te Tiriti's authors have] unfortunately conflated a legitimate recognition of an individual right to property with an analogy to feudalism and a non-existent claim to a collective right. But feudalism is a busted flush. And "the expression 'collective rights' is a contradiction in terms.”

"This then makes for a disastrous confusion. Confusion, because the intent of Article Two is to impart property rights, an individual right. But the reference to "chieftainship" makes the promise about collective tribal rights over land with the tribes' rights embodied in a chief.  Disastrous because Te Tiriti should have treated all Maori as individuals instead of as members of a tribe. But it really does nothing of the sort except by implication.

"Instead, as written, it cemented in and buttressed the tribal leadership and communal structures that already existed here —encouraging the survival of this wreck of a system until morphing, as it has today, into this mongrelised sub-group of pseudo-aristocracy: of Neotribal Cronyism. 

"This is not what was aimed at, but it is what was written. But the law cannot protect a non-existent right. As [former Chief Justice] William Martin wrote in 1860, in seeking to understand the intent of the authors,

'This tribal right is clearly a right of property… To themselves they retained what they understood full well, the "tino Rangatiratanga,""full Chiefship," in respect of all their lands…"'

"This is not trivial. This is why sovereignty, was ceded. This is what we must understand. Tino rangatiratanga ('a right of property') under kāwanatanga katoa (the 'complete Government') of the British Queen.

“'EVEN THE 'TINO' OF the Māori version is better understood in this context,' argues [Ewen] McQueen. 'It does not mean that the chiefs’ authority is unqualified in a government sense. Rather it is Henry Williams’s translation of how the chiefs would retain possession of the lands, forests and fisheries. The English version emphasised such possession would continue ‘full exclusive and undisturbed.’ Williams has rendered this concept as ‘tino’ rangatiratanga. It is about Māori retaining full agency over their land and resources. It is not a statement about unqualified political sovereignty.' [Emphasis mine.]

"So 'rangatiratanga' relates to ownership. 'Tino' gives force to this relationship, giving it the force of a property right."

~ Yours Truly from my post 'Rangatiratanga means "Ownership"'