ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the subsequent re-enactment of Law's deception through the repression of the Maori version of the Treaty in three cases decided between 1847 and 1987 that are pivotal in the maintenance and re-production of a unified New Zealand. Highlighting the performance of the good citizen of free trade imperialism in the process of the Treaty translation makes visible parallel stories of national and individual identity. The chapter argues that the production and legitimation of the dominant story of the founding of New Zealand as a unified nation-state is dependent upon the repression of the appropriative mistranslation of the Treaty of Waitangi into Maori. In the dominant story Maori people cede sovereignty to the British; in 1840 pressure from humanitarians meant that consent to British sovereignty from Maori was necessary to legitimate Britain's colonisation. Britain's free trade imperialism was a synthesis of capitalism and territorialism.
