Today is Waitangi Day – New Zealand’s version of Nation Day or the 4th of July. As an outsider, I find Waitangi Day a most peculiar holiday, because it isn’t a celebration.  It is, at best, a sort of uneasy acknowledgement of the beginnings of New Zealand as a nation. This is my understanding of Waitangi Day: Waitangi Day specifically commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi at Waitangi in the Bay of Islands on 6 Feb 1840. The Treaty of Waitangi is to New Zealand what the Magna Carta is to the UK, or the Declaration of Independence is the US: it’s our founding document. In some ways, it’s a good founding document.  It’s short, and simple.  It did three basic things: it establishes a British governorship over NZ (the NZ government essentially inherited this governorship), recognised that the Maori owned NZ, and had a right to their land and properties, and, finally, gave Maori the rights of British citizens. Well, sort of.  At the same time, it’s a terrible founding document. You …