Ancestry, a national treaty, and why it still matters (from New Zealand)
Published 4 months ago • 2 min read
Hello — and welcome.
If this is the first email you’ve received from me, I’m glad you’re here.
My name is Simon, and I run One Ancestor at a Time — a project where I explore family history, identity, and how the past continues to shape the present. Most of this work happens on YouTube, through weekly live conversations, and then gets distilled into writing like this.
This week’s piece comes from Waitangi Day, New Zealand’s national day. (Watch the latest YouTube live video here) It marks the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi (1840) — an agreement between Māori (the Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand) and the British Crown. The Treaty still sits at the centre of New Zealand’s politics, law, and national identity, and it remains deeply contested.
In my latest blog post, I reflect on that day through a personal lens: my own ancestors were settlers arriving in New Zealand at roughly the same time the Treaty was being signed.
The piece explores:
how commercial colonisation - driven by private companies, not just governments - shaped early New Zealand
why Māori could not have understood the Treaty as giving away sovereignty
how the impacts of colonisation extended far beyond land into language, systems, and identity
and what it means, as a non-Indigenous New Zealander, to think of myself as Tangata Tiriti - a person who lives here because of that agreement
My 3rd-great-grandfather T.U.McKenzie bringing ashore the young woman who was to be his wife, my 3rd-great-grandmother Margaret Fraser, in January 1840, just weeks before the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Although the story is specific to New Zealand, the themes will be familiar if you’re interested in: settler colonial history, Indigenous-state relationships, ancestry, or how inherited systems shape our lives today. Similar questions play out in countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, and South Africa.
If you prefer to listen and engage live, I host weekly YouTube livestreams where I unpack these ideas in real time, respond to comments, and follow the threads wherever they lead.
Thanks for being here — whether you came for genealogy, history, or big questions about identity and responsibility. I’m glad to have you along for the journey.
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