Jock Phillips begins his journey through our Waitangi collection by recalling an awkward encounter with a security guard at the treaty grounds. Wandering 50 years between the first film in this collection and the last, Phillips explores changing attitudes to the Treaty. Discover everything from Mike King on the treaty trail, to trench warfare, waka-building and epic drama.

In 1973 Prime Minister Norman Kirk announced that the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi would be a unifying national holiday called New Zealand Day. The inaugural 1974 day featured a royal entourage, was watched by 20,000 people and screened live for TV. Excerpts include the Aotearoa pageant (from giant moa to the Age of Aquarius, including kapa haka, settler cabaret, and Howard Morrison as Kupe), and Kirk’s iconic — and more enduring — speech. New Zealand Day was abolished by the next (National) Government, who renamed it Waitangi Day.

This docudrama follows an imaginary news reporter who travels back in time to cover the days leading up to the Treaty of Waitangi’s signing on 6 February 1840. Dropping the usual solemnity surrounding Aotearoa’s founding document, it uses humour and asides to camera to evoke the chaos and motives behind the treaty. Written by Gavin Strawhan, with input from novelist Witi Ihimaera, What Really Happened screened on TVNZ for Waitangi Day 2011. Its nominations at the Aotearoa TV Awards included Best Drama, director (Peter Burger) and actor Jarod Rawiri (who played Hōne Heke). 

This third episode of Mike King’s Treaty series heads north. After the 43 signatures at Waitangi on 6 February 1840, Queen Victoria decreed that more were needed for the Treaty to gain legitimacy, and Governor Hobson took the Waitangi Sheet to the people. King talks to Professor Pat Hohepa about the role of missionaries, and his tīpuna Mohi Tawhai. He visits key Northland locales — where he hears of anti-Treaty Pākehā like ‘Cannibal’ Jack Marmon — and meets a descendant of Nopera Panakareao, who recalls his ancestor’s famous shadowy reading of the Treaty.

This special 1984 episode of the long-running te reo news programme looks at Waitangi Day. Series founder Derek Fox is presenter; the news item follows the journey north of a train that the Tainui tribe hired to take their people to Waitangi. Topics of protest aired include land rights, the Waikato River and the Māori language. Among those appearing are Sir Hepi Te Heuheu (Tūwharetoa), Sir Robert Mahuta and Pumi Taituha (Tainui), Sir James Henare of Northland, and Sir Kingi Ihaka (Aupōuri). 

Episode two of comedian Mike King’s acclaimed Treaty of Waitangi series travels to the Bay of Islands, to talk to historians and signatory descendants, and explore the background to the Treaty's original signing: from debaucherous colonial Russell to Governor Busby’s Declaration of Independence, and William Hobson’s drafting (and controversial translation) of the Treaty. Constitutional lawyer Moana Jackson, author Jenny Haworth and MP Hone Harawira give their takes on the Treaty's birth, and its reception by Māori during this pivotal time in NZ history.

Māori Television hit the airwaves on 28 March 2004. This collection demonstrates how the network has staked its place as Aotearoa's indigenous broadcaster. The kete is overflowing with tasty morsels — from comedy, waiata, hunting and language learning, to award-winning coverage of Anzac Day. Māori Television HOD of Content Development Nevak Rogers backgrounds some MTS highlights here, while Tainui Stephens unravels the history of Māori on television here: choose from te reo and English versions of each backgrounder. 

For this 1987 Kaleidoscope report, architectural commentator Mark Wigley uses Kiwi resort towns as fuel for an essay on local architecture. He visits Waitangi, arguing that Aotearoa should have followed the "rich ornamental example" of the Whare Rūnanga, instead of the restraint of the Treaty House. He praises Paihia’s "cacophony of bad taste" motels. In part two, he compares Queenstown and Arrowtown, and admires a gold dredge and the Skyline gondola. Wigley, then starting his academic career in the United States, would become an internationally acclaimed architectural theorist.

Actor Rawiri Paratene was 16 years old when he joined Māori activist group Ngā Tamatoa (Young Warriors) in the early 1970s. "Those years helped shape the rest of my life," says Paratene in this 2012 Māori TV documentary, directed by Kim Webby. The programme is richly woven with news archive from the 1970s, showing protests about land rights and the Treaty of Waitangi, and a campaign for te reo to be taught in schools. Several ex Ngā Tamatoa members — including Hone Harawira, Tame Iti and Larry Parr— are interviewed by Paratene, who also presents the documentary.

This TVNZ production screened at the end of 1989, just before the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. Filmed at Government House, presenter Ian Johnstone oversees passionate kōrero as a panel of youngsters, academics and Māori and Pākehā elders debate the place of New Zealand’s founding document. Don Selwyn and Angela D’Audney explore its history, and Sir Paul Reeves begins by musing on chief Te Kemara’s famous about-turn, when, after first opposing the Treaty, he turned to Hobson and said: “How d’ye do Mr Governor”.