The document discusses the events leading up to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi between British colonists and Māori chiefs in New Zealand in 1840. It describes how Captain William Hobson was tasked with establishing a treaty but did not have a template, so he consulted with James Busby who drafted the first version in English. This then needed translating to Māori, but Henry Williams only had one night to do so without input from Māori on word choices, resulting in differences between the English and Māori texts. Students are assigned homework tasks analyzing why the versions say different things.