John Miller (Ngāpuhi, Ngāi Tawake ki te Tuawhenua, Te Uritaniwha, Ngāti Rēhia, Te Whiu) – Honour the Treaty Waitangi Treaty Grounds, 2001

Britain proclaimed sovereignty over Aotearoa New Zealand in 1840 and established it as a separate Crown colony the following year. Māori resistance to land seizure and the erosion of their authority over their lands has continued ever since. Photographed on Waitangi Day, 6 February 2001, John Miller’s triptych shows demonstrators holding a banner reading HONOUR THE TREATY as police stand opposite them. Waitangi Day commemorates the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (“the Treaty of Waitangi”) in 1840 by Māori chiefs and representatives of the British Crown. This Māori-language agreement affirmed Māori authority and self-determination. Across three frames, enlarged here to billboard scale, HONOUR THE TREATY is broken into separate words. The demand, repeated by Māori year after year, calls on the Crown to honour its commitments under the Treaty and address the continuing dispossession and violence produced by its failure to uphold them.

John Miller is a Māori photographer whose work has documented Māori struggles and movements for social justice and civil rights over six decades. He has photographed some of the most significant socio-political events in the history of Aotearoa New Zealand.

In showing these images to the world, the artist wishes to acknowledge and pay respects to all those depicted in them, who have since passed away. Na reira, e Rangatira mā, haere, haere, haere. Moe mai ra i runga ite rangimarie