Returning to Our Roots: Reflections on Waitangi Day 2026

By Bishop Justin Duckworth, Anglican Bishop of Wellington

As I write this, my hands still bear the honest dirt of this morning's gardening. There's something deeply grounding about tending to the whenua around our home – the simple act of pulling weeds, nurturing seedlings, and watching things grow in their own time. It's a rhythm that slows me down and reminds me that I am not the owner of this land, but a guest, a kaitiaki for a brief season of its long story.

This week, I'll be heading north to Waitangi for several days of commemoration, and I find myself thinking about that connection between gardening and gathering – between the soil beneath our feet and the sacred text that shapes our life together in Aotearoa. To paraphrase Six60, it's a time to "remember our roots," and I mean that quite literally.

As the Anglican Bishop of Wellington, I carry a particular awareness of our church's role in the creation of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It was my predecessor in ministry, the Reverend Henry Williams, who was given one night – just one night – on February 4th, 1840, to translate William Hobson's English draft into te reo Māori. Together with his son Edward, Henry worked through the darkness to find words that would carry meaning across worlds, to craft a document that he hoped would protect Māori and enable both peoples to dwell together in peace.

I don't carry this history lightly. The translation was imperfect, as all translations are. The decades that followed brought suffering, broken promises, and wounds that are still healing today. And yet, Te Tiriti remains what it has always been: a covenant between peoples, a vision of partnership and mutual respect that calls us forward rather than holds us back.

When I tend my garden, I'm reminded that good things take time, that healing happens slowly, that some plants need space while others thrive when brought together. The same is true of our journey as a nation. We are still learning what it means to honour Te Tiriti – to truly live as tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti in right relationship with one another and with this precious land.

Waitangi Day has become, for me, an annual pilgrimage of sorts. There's something about standing on those grounds, feeling the history seep up through the earth, watching the cultural performances and hearing the debates and discussions that reminds me why this matters. Over 40 rangatira signed on that first day in 1840, and in the months that followed, more than 500 Māori leaders added their names. They did so with hope – hope for protection, for partnership, for a future where their people could flourish.

That hope is still alive. I see it in the young people who gather at Waitangi each year, learning their history and stepping into their identity. I see it in the conversations happening across our communities about what genuine partnership looks like. I see it in the Treaty settlements and in the growing understanding that we are better together than apart.

The gardener in me knows that you can't rush growth. You can't force a seed to sprout or a tree to bear fruit before its time. But you can create the conditions for flourishing – good soil, adequate water, patient tending, and the wisdom to know when to intervene and when to simply let things be.

This Waitangi Day, I'm looking forward to those days at Waitangi not just as a commemoration of the past, but as an act of tending the present. The whenua was here long before us. Iwi Māori were here long before us. And both will be here long after we're gone. Our calling, as people who love this land and each other, is to be good kaitiaki – good guardians – for this season we've been given.

Te Tiriti o Waitangi offers us something rare and precious: a framework for living together that honours both difference and unity, that makes space for diverse traditions while calling us toward common purpose. Like any living thing, it needs tending. It needs honest conversation and genuine partnership. It needs us to be willing to dig deep, to pull out the weeds of prejudice and misunderstanding, and to nurture the good growth we want to see.

So this week, as I join thousands of others at Waitangi, I'll be thinking about roots – the roots of our shared history, the roots of relationship, the roots that ground us in this place we call home. I'll be thinking about Henry Williams and the weight he carried that night in 1840, and the continuing responsibility we all share to honour the vision of Te Tiriti.

And I'll be thinking about my garden, waiting patiently for my return, reminding me that the work of tending and caring is never finished. It's the work of a lifetime, the work of generations. It's work worth doing.

May this Waitangi Day be a time of remembering, of honest reflection, and of renewed commitment to the partnership and peace that Te Tiriti promises. May we be good kaitiaki of this land and of each other.