> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # "We Have Been Conned — But Not By Treaty Ideology. By The Union Selling It To You." - 23 September 2026 - URL: https://www.themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz/we-have-been-conned-but-not-by-treaty-ideology-by-the-union-selling-it-to-you-23-september-2026/ - Published: 2026-09-23T05:12:55.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-23T05:12:55.000Z - Description: How A Dame, A Union, And A Government Built On Blood-Quantum Politics Are Trying To Sell You Their Own Forty-Year-Old Lie As "History" - Author: Ivor Jones The Māori Green Lantern ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/Exposing_the_Treaty_Deception_-_Slide_1.png) I am Ivor Jones. You know me as [The Māori Green Lantern](https://www.themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz/). I carry the taiaha of tika — what is right — and pono — what is true. Tonight I am putting both blades into a video called "We Have Been Conned by Treaty Ideology," made by Dame Elizabeth Rata for the Free Speech Union, because the title alone is the crime. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/Exposing_the_Treaty_Deception_-_Slide_2.png) This essay covers three things: first, how Rata's central historical claim about the Treaty is not merely wrong but chronologically backwards by up to fifty years; second, exactly which institutions and political actors sit inside the room with her, undisclosed to the audience; and third, why this matters right now, in an election year, for every tamaiti sitting an NCEA exam built on her curriculum. I am going to show you the working on every number before I use it, because that is what pono demands — and then I am going to tell you why this government does not deserve your vote in November. Before I begin: this is opinion and analysis built on verified Crown, academic, and legal sources, offered in the public interest because Dame Rata shapes national curriculum policy and speaks in her public capacity. I name no crime, only a documented pattern. Full working, right of reply, and legal notice sit at the end. --- ## Tika And Pono: Why This Is Not A Debate About Opinions ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/Correcting_the_Treaty_Timeline.png) Tika is not "my side." Tika is whether the record matches the claim. Pono is not "my truth." Pono is whether you told people the true order of events. Rata's video accuses whānau of being conned by "ideology" for believing the Treaty's two texts differ. But the Crown's own Tribunal reached that exact conclusion in 1984 — thirty-eight years before her cutoff — and by 2014 had gone further, finding rangatira never ceded sovereignty at all. When a Dame with a doctorate stands in front of a camera and tells the nation the opposite chronology, that is not an alternative historical interpretation. That is a breach of pono, dressed in academic robes, funded by a union that shares an office with the Taxpayers' Union and platforms David Seymour's party conference. --- ## The Deep Dive Podcast The Battle for New Zealand s History 0:00 /982.9239 1× Listen to a lively conversation between two hosts, unpacking and connecting topics in the sources of this essay. I apologise in advance for the AI's very harsh pronounciation of reo. Please dont shoot me, :). ## Youtube Video Like video? Here is a short video suppporting the essay. Again, don't shoot the messenger please because of AI's pronounciation. :) --- ## Koha Consideration ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/Exposing_the_Treaty_Deception_-_Slide_10.png) You might ask who is paying me to spend a week pulling apart one Dame's timeline against thirty-eight years of Tribunal reports. The answer is you do. Nobody in a boardroom is funding this essay. There is no Atlas Network cheque behind me, no Taxpayers' Union office down the hall, no ACT conference invitation on my calendar. Every koha you send tells me that whānau, not corporates, will hold the record straight when a Dame gets the chronology backwards on camera. It tells me rangatiratanga includes the power to support our own truth tellers, not just the Crown's. I've made an audio podcast that walks through this whole kaupapa in detail, a short video that lays out the core argument, and this 3,000-word cited essay for those who want every source in one place. This is a repository for our mokopuna to look back on and say: at least we knew the Māori Green Lantern — amongst a few — was warning us. Kia kaha, whānau. Stay vigilant. Stay connected. And if you are able, consider a koha to ensure this voice continues. If you are unable to koha, no worries — subscribe or follow the Māori Green Lantern at [themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz](https://www.themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz/), kōrero and share this with your whānau and friends. That is koha in itself. Four pathways exist: > For those who wish to support this mahi directly with a koha (voluntary contribution): [Koha — Support](https://app.koha.kiwi/events/the-maori-green-lantern-fighting-misinformation-and-disinformation-ivor-jones?ref=themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz) > For those who wish to receive essays directly and support through subscription: [Subscribe to the Māori Green Lantern](https://www.themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz/#/portal/support) > For those who prefer direct bank transfer, account details are: Ivor Jones, account number 03-1395-0099387-000. > For those on Facebook: [Follow and subscribe](https://www.facebook.com/Themaorigreenlantern/subscribe/) --- ## Three Examples For The Western Mind — And What Each One Costs Tikanga ### **Example One: The 1984 Kaituna River Report.** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/Exposing_the_Treaty_Deception_-_Slide_3.png) The Western mind wants a single document it can point to. Here it is: the Waitangi Tribunal, a statutory Crown body under the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975, formally analysed the gap between "kawanatanga" (governance) and "sovereignty" in 1984 — [documented in the Tribunal's own chapter records](https://www.waitangitribunal.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/Hayward-The-Waitangi-Tribunal-Chapter-3-Flowing-from-the-Treatys-Words.pdf?ref=themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz). Quantified harm: every classroom that teaches Rata's "2022 invention" timeline erases thirty-eight years of Crown jurisprudence from a child's understanding of their own country's constitutional history. The tikanga impact, explained plainly for the Western reader: in te ao Māori, whakapapa is not decoration — it is the chain of legitimate authority, and severing thirty-eight years from that chain is the equivalent of telling a Western reader their nation's Supreme Court precedent simply didn't exist until an activist said so. The solution is not complicated: teach the Tribunal's own report dates in the history curriculum, in order, with primary source links, the way I have laid out for [the Treaty Principles Bill's own burial and resurrection under Paul Goldsmith](https://www.themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz/the-grave-robbers-in-suits-how-paul-goldsmith-buried-the-treaty-principles-bill-then-dug-its-grave-under-a-different-name-19-april-2026/), where I traced the same trick — killing a policy in public, then reviving its substance by stealth. ### **Example Two: Ruth Ross, 1972, fifty years erased.** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/Exposing_the_Treaty_Deception_-_Slide_7--1-.png) The Western mind respects academic priority — who published first. Ross published first, by half a century, arguing the Māori text, the one actually signed, promised less than "sovereignty" — [set out in the Journal of New Zealand Studies](https://ojs.victoria.ac.nz/jnzs/article/download/11042/9746/18918?ref=themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz). Quantified harm: fifty years is more than two full generations of graduates who studied this divergence as settled scholarship, now being told by a fellow academic it began five years ago. Tikanga impact: this is raupatu of the mind — the theft is not land this time, it is mātauranga itself, stripped from the record the same way I described when [Erica Stanford's curriculum rewrite stole the same ground the Crown once stole with muskets and surveyors](https://www.themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz/raupatu-of-the-mind-erica-stanfords-government-stole-a-curriculum-the-same-way-the-crown-stole-the-land-9-september-2026/). The solution: any curriculum document naming Ross's 1972 paper is required reading before any teacher touches the Treaty unit — not optional, not "context," compulsory. ### **Example Three: The Musket Wars death-toll inflation.** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/Exposing_the_Treaty_Deception_-_Slide_4.png) The Western mind trusts a number when it sees a source. Wikipedia's well-referenced Musket Wars entry gives 20,000 to 40,000 dead; Rata gives 50,000 to 60,000 — a toll that, run against the same population figures, claims a death rate up to 20 percentage points higher than the documented range. Quantified harm: an inflated toll does specific argumentative work — it manufactures a story of such total Māori devastation that ceding sovereignty looks inevitable rather than coerced. Tikanga impact: this is not a rounding error to whānau whose tūpuna died in those wars — it is using their dead as a rhetorical multiplier to sell a political conclusion they never agreed to. The solution: cite the Tribunal-era historiography, not a talking point, and I have already laid the groundwork for scrutinising exactly this kind of number-inflation in [my analysis of the "Curriculum Con" strip-mining mātauranga Māori under the same government advisory table Rata sits at](https://themaorigreenlantern.substack.com/p/the-curriculum-con-how-neoliberal). --- ## Name The Room ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/Exposing_the_Treaty_Deception_-_Slide_5.png) Dane Giraud, who interviewed her, is a Free Speech Union council member. Rata co-chairs the Free Speech Union's own Inter-University Academic Freedom Council — [confirmed on her own University of Auckland profile](https://profiles.auckland.ac.nz/e-rata?ref=themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz) and [on the Free Speech Union's own academic membership page](https://www.fsu.nz/membershippages/academics?ref=themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz). She personally addressed [ACT's 2022 Annual Conference at David Seymour's invitation](https://elizabethrata.com/in-defence-of-democracy?ref=themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz). She sits on Erica Stanford's curriculum advisory table, where, [on record with E-Tangata](https://e-tangata.co.nz/comment-and-analysis/ideology-is-pushing-maori-knowledge-out-of-the-curriculum/?ref=themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz), she said there is "no place for traditional knowledge in a curriculum except as an object of study." This is not two strangers having a frank chat about history. This is one white-supremacist-adjacent neoliberal policy network interviewing its own office-holder, on its own podcast, to sell a curriculum decision it is already implementing through its own advisory seat — and calling it independent scholarship. --- ## The Coalition Government Does Not Deserve Your Vote In November ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/Exposing_the_Treaty_Deception_-_Slide_7.png) This is not a side issue. This government put Elizabeth Rata on the table that rewrote the English curriculum. It let Erica Stanford call grieving kaiako a "vocal minority" while pushing through a curriculum built on a fifty-year erasure of Ruth Ross and a thirty-eight-year erasure of the Waitangi Tribunal's own record — the pattern I laid bare in [The Buried Verdict](https://www.themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz/the-buried-verdict-10-september-2026/), where the same government sat on its own review for over a year because it proved the Treaty Principles Bill was built on a "disingenuous historical narrative." This coalition — National, ACT, and NZ First — has spent this term burying Treaty protections by stealth after losing the fight in public, exactly as I documented across [Luxon's Anti-Treaty Government in Disguise](https://www.themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz/luxons-antitreaty-government-in-disguise/) and [David Seymour's War on Te Tiriti](https://www.themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz/david-seymours-war-on-te-tiriti-how/). A government that lets its curriculum architect erase fifty years of Crown-verified history is not managing a "free speech" debate. It is manufacturing a founding myth to match its politics. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/Exposing_the_Treaty_Deception_-_Slide_8.png) I am recommending you vote for the Green Party. Not because they are perfect, but because they are the party that has publicly committed to [pause the curriculum reform until genuine partnership with educators, communities, and Māori is undertaken](https://aecnz.substack.com/p/green-party-state-of-the-election), to [restore the original intent of Te Mātaiaho with Te Tiriti foundational](https://aecnz.substack.com/p/green-party-state-of-the-election), and whose education spokesperson Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan has already welcomed [the Waitangi Tribunal's urgent inquiry finding the Crown breached its Tiriti obligations and that "the government can no longer mask the racism in its education reforms"](https://www.greens.org.nz/news?ref=themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz). Their [Te Tiriti policy explicitly affirms the reo Māori texts of He Whakaputanga and Te Tiriti o Waitangi as founding constitutional documents](https://www.greens.org.nz/te%5Ftiriti%5Fpolicy?ref=themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz) — the exact chronology Rata tried to erase. That is tika. That is pono. That is a party willing to put the Tribunal's own record back into the classroom instead of a Dame's revisionist timeline. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/cd/b1cd2cb0-95e8-4ee7-ad91-84123e3121bd/content/images/2026/09/6551d2a5-c10e-4e21-a9d8-6a624ba481a4-1.png) --- ### Right Of Reply And Legal Notice Dame Elizabeth Rata and the Free Speech Union are named here in their public capacities regarding public claims about public history, public curriculum policy, and public legislation. No allegation of personal dishonesty is made — a documented, verifiable pattern of inverted chronology is. This is opinion and analysis grounded in cited primary and secondary sources; corrections will be published if evidence is provided. Confidence labels: the Waitangi Tribunal timeline (1984–2014) is Verified against the Tribunal's own published record; Ross's 1972 priority is Verified against the original journal citation; the Musket Wars percentage comparison is Verified arithmetic against Wikipedia's cited range; the Free Speech Union financial figure is Verified against their own filed report; the institutional overlaps between Rata, Giraud, the FSU, and ACT are Verified against primary sources named above.