Today, Aotearoa (better known in the rest of the world as New Zealand) acknowledges that this nation began with a treaty. A treaty that was misunderstood by both sides in the beginning, and thereafter frequently broken or ignored. But a treaty that, nonetheless, we have returned to again and again, to work out what our country means. It is not just an historic document, it is part of Aotearoa’s unwritten constitution; by law, government legislation and actions need to be measured against the principles of the Treaty.

On 6th February 1840, the Treaty of Waitangi was signed. The video below, first in a series of four, dramatises the lead up and the occasion.