When Intent Doesn’t Matter
Mistranslations, Disinformation, and the Material Cost of Harm
Dear Curious Minds,
I still toss and turn over whether it’s my place to speak on certain topics. It’s not about confidence, but more about respect for the shoulders I stand on, not wanting to misrepresent their expertise and knowledge. I love learning, but I am often told I have a scarily high bar for the level of expertise that justifies taking up space. So, I’m still waiting for the ‘right time’ to experience Waitangi Day at the treaty grounds while getting infinitely envious for the community experience that is evident each year. Thank you for being here, I appreciate you.
I came to Aotearoa as a child in 1996. I knew little about the country, but whenever I travel outside it, I meet people who regard it favourably as a country that sold itself on partnership, biculturalism, and a different way of doing things. What I’ve learned in the decades since, through endless well-meaning conversations with people who only ever heard the whitewashed version, is that New Zealand’s favourite fiction is that we did colonialism better.
The most common exhibit, “At least we had a treaty”. Ok, so we are socialised to trust a document signed under mistranslation somehow makes land theft more humane? Sure. Equally common rhetoric, “Not like Australia”. Right, as if comparative atrocity is the benchmark for moral achievement. As if colonialism and its continuing, material and harmful malicious consequences need any more cushioning than it’s already received.
The Treaty of Waitangi is both a promise and a betrayal, and the space between those two things is where most of us live awkwardly, sometimes shamefully, often paralysed by complexity we’ve been taught to mistake for nuance. But when people say “it’s complicated,” and let it end at that, all I hear is “I’d rather not reckon with what we know because I don’t have to.”
Today, as Waitangi Day comes to a close, I am ready to unpack about the tangled thoughts. About when we stop asking about intent and start reckoning with impact. Because the Treaty teaches us something essential: good intentions or claims of ignorance become irrelevant when the material harm is undeniable and ongoing.
It’s about how we discern truth from fiction in 2026, not just what happened in 1840, when disinformation dresses as documentary, when propaganda wears the costume of free speech, and when the same structural question applies: do we centre the claimed intentions of those causing harm, or the lived reality of those being harmed?
