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1.0
New ZealaNd’s Political
Histories
Janine Hayward
New Zealand’s colonial history has been described as ‘Janus’ faced (King 2003, p. 191); that is,
Māori and colonial recollections of events and people look in two different directions at the same
time. In fact, as the chapters in this part of book demonstrate, New Zealand’s political history has
many faces and many stories to tell. There are moments when these stories bump against each other
and familiar characters appear in adjacent stories; at other times these narratives collide—some
events are so powerful that they dominate all accounts. But more often than not, these stories run
parallel to each other and paint the same moments in time quite differently, focusing on a slightly
different cast of characters and telling the story from an alternative perspective. This first part of the
book tells the stories of New Zealand’s political history in several contrasting ways.
Michael J. Stephens (Chapter 1.1) shares one telling of Māori political history. His story centres
on the values at the heart of Māori political developments from around 1860 to 1960, specifically the
health of Māori families and the integrity of collectively owned natural resources. Māori sought to
protect and promote both of these important values in the face of a burgeoning colonial government,
dramatic and devastating shifts in the Māori population, and constant pressure on Māori land.
While Māori were striving tirelessly to assert their tino rangatiratanga (absolute chieftainship
or sovereignty), the machinery of colonial government was gaining momentum. Neill Atkinson
(Chapter 1.2) details the process of building the strong and stable majoritarian government that
dominated New Zealand’s political history until the 1990s. Two major political parties developed
after 1935—National and Labour—and the policies and values associated with those parties
underpinned dramatic and turbulent political times through to the 1950s. By the 1970s political
stability was re-established and those two parties presided over electoral politics, with the National
Party in government more often than not.
Brian Roper picks this story up in the mid-1980s (Chapter 1.3) and shifts the focus from electoral
politics to public policy. In 1984 the fourth Labour government came to office and ushered in the
most dramatic period of economic and social change in New Zealand’s political history. Espousing
neoliberal principles popular elsewhere in the world at the time, Labour irrevocably changed
New Zealand’s social and economic landscape. As Roper demonstrates, New Zealand politics post1984 reveals that political change is the rule, rather than the exception.
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But the story of New Zealand’s political history is much wider and deeper than even these
versions suggest. New Zealand is rapidly diversifying. Fiona Barker (Chapter 1.4) reflects on how
New Zealand’s national identity has been forged over time, presented overseas and accepted at home
in a contemporary context. It is here where we see how Māori and colonial stories came together
in the 1980s as the government acknowledged the Treaty of Waitangi and notions of biculturalism
first appeared in politics. As Barker points out, aspects of the Māori–Pākehā relationship are among
the most visibly contested aspects of national identity. But in recent years New Zealand has begun
dramatic ethnic, linguistic and cultural changes resulting from immigration. From this emerge
competing visions of national identity and new ways of thinking about New Zealand; this diversity
itself is becoming a feature of national identity as the nation moves forward.
Reflecting on New Zealand’s place in the world invites yet another telling of New Zealand’s
political history. New Zealand has been described as a nation that ‘punches above its weight’ in
the international context. Iati Iati (Chapter 1.5) discusses New Zealand in the world and identifies
key events in trade and security relations with other nations that show how the nation features as
a player on the international stage. The story is not just about detachment from Britain, but also a
journey to carve out New Zealand’s identity and future in the global system.
Most recently, New Zealand, along with almost every other nation, has been greatly affected by
the global financial crisis. Rod Oram (Chapter 1.6) explains why this crisis occurred and how it has
affected and will continue to shape New Zealand. New Zealand’s responses to the crisis have deep
roots into the reforms of the 1980s and beyond. The ways that New Zealand has weathered the crisis
and its ongoing response to further events are very much a part of the histories discussed here. The
challenge is to recognise and understand these many and varied political narratives in order to better
understand New Zealand politics today.
REFERENCES
King, M. 2003, The Penguin History of New Zealand, Penguin, Auckland.
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Māori Political History
1860–1960
Michael J. Stevens
He wahine, he whenua, e ngaro ai te tangata. (People are lost to women and land.)
The above whakatauki (proverb) refers to the way that women and land are considered central to
the survival and mana (authority and prestige) of Māori kin-groups. Prior to sustained European
contact and until the colonial government achieved substantive sovereignty, concern for these
things frequently led to open warfare within and between Māori, and later between Māori and nonMāori. Although they have not commonly resulted in armed conflict for well over a century, wahine
(women) and whenua (land)—shorthand for families and collectively owned natural resource
bases—have remained at the centre of Māori fears and aspirations. They have therefore exacted a
heavy toll on Māori leaders, from pā rifle pits to parliament’s bear pit.
Through reference to some key moments and personalities between 1860 and 1960, this
chapter argues that the proverbial women and land, which are necessary for the physical, cultural
and economic maintenance of polities, substantially explain Māori political thought and practice.
While the chapter permits only a partial exploration of the variables and personalities at play, it
nonetheless shows when and how different Māori groups were incorporated into the particular logic
and institutions of the New Zealand settler state during the latter half of the nineteenth century. In
turn, it shows how Māori groups responded to these things up until the so-called Māori renaissance,
which began in the 1960s.
‘HE WAHINE’: THE POLITICS OF INTERMARRIAGE,
HEALTH AND DEPOPULATION
By 1860 the islands of New Zealand had been formally part of the British Empire for two decades.
However, as New Zealand’s fourth governor, Thomas Gore Browne, remarked in 1859, ‘English law
prevails in the English settlements, but in native districts the Maoris are not yet willing to accept it’
(Hickford 2014, p. 11). Overarching colonial jurisdiction, as Hickford puts it, was for a long time
aspirational; ‘hapū-centred polities and indigenous norms’ continued to prevail across most of what
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eventually became ‘New Zealand’ (Hickford 2014, pp. 6, 12). In other words, Māori kin-groups
and their territories were incorporated into the colonial body politic between 1840 and 1880 in
an ambulatory manner. This occurred in a variety of ways including, but not limited to, military
conquest. A central strategy was ‘racial amalgamation’ (Salesa 2011, pp. 14–15; Wanhalla 2013,
pp. 47–49). This idea stemmed from the New Zealand Company, a private entity that sought to
colonise New Zealand from the late 1830s in a systematic and profitable manner. However, while
the archipelago of New Zealand was imagined as a tabula rasa from England, the enactment of a
colonial society required Māori acquiescence and this was not always forthcoming. In 1843, for
instance, the company sought to expand its Nelson settlement into the Wairau Valley, which the
Ngāti Toa chiefs Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata pointed out had not been sold. The chiefs
and their people therefore escorted surveyors off the land and burnt their temporary shelters. In
response, a party of about fifty colonists tried to arrest the two chiefs on charges of arson. This
resulted in a fight that killed approximately twenty-two colonists and at least four Māori (Mitchell &
Mitchell 2004, pp. 323–24; Salesa 2011, p. 46).
The Wairau affray, incident or massacre, as it is variously known, shocked colonists and
underscored the precarious nature of the colonial settlement overseen by Governor Robert FitzRoy.
However, material support from London and assistance from some Māori enabled his replacement,
George Grey, to crush Ngāti Toa resistance a few years later in the Wellington region where it had
regathered. He also personally oversaw military responses to Ngāpuhi factions antagonistic to
Crown authority during the so-called Northern War of 1845 to 1846. Although prepared to use
military force, Grey stated a preference for building a racially amalgamated society, to which he was
deeply committed, in other ways. He more than any other official enshrined racial amalgamation in
New Zealand ‘as a policy and as a policy objective’ and gave it much of its shape (Salesa 2011, pp.
107, 109). It became a key measure of progress or improvement in his descriptions of Māori.
Grey was especially interested in ‘half-castes’: children born to Māori and Pākehā parents.
Although most of these people self-identified as Māori and lived in identifiably Māori ways, the project
of racial amalgamation made them ‘disproportionately significant’ as they ‘lay at an intersection of
domestic, economic, sexual and legal concerns’ (Salesa 2011, p. 111). The importance of interracial
families was evident in late 1847 when Grey oversaw the development of a law recognising
marriages between Māori and European couples but not between exclusively Māori couples. This
meant that when Māori women married European men, the most common form of Māori–Pākehā
intermarriage, Māori women (in line with Pākehā women) relinquished their property rights to
their husbands (Salesa 2011, pp. 112–13). Many Māori women brought property, especially land,
into such marriages, meaning that this was one way the state simultaneously eroded the natural and
social capital of Māori communities. This throws into sharp relief the ‘connection between “regular”
marriage, morality and land settlement’ (Wanhalla 2013, p. 53).
In 1840, when New Zealand began to be formally colonised, several regions were, by historical
comparison, underoccupied or even unoccupied by Māori. This was one consequence of a massive
increase in the scale, frequency and destruction of Māori warfare in the first decades of the nineteenth
century. This resulted from the acquisition of potatoes and muskets by Ngāpuhi rangatira, especially
Hongi Hika, in the Bay of Islands. Hongi Hika used these to project and consolidate his mana
by trading potatoes with visiting ships for muskets, shot and gunpowder. Potatoes also fuelled
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musket-bearing war parties, which ranged further than ever before, primarily in pursuit of captives
to tend to potato crops, thus amplifying the pattern described (Belich 1996, pp. 158–59). This
triggered an arms race and a series of conflicts that touched nearly every tribal group between the
1810s and 1830s and ‘warped the social fabric of Māori society’ (Thompson 1997, p. 216).
This epoch has enduring significance for Māori politics vis-a-vis the geographic location and
size of iwi (tribes) and hapū (subtribes) as part of the Treaty claims process. In the 1840s, though,
these conflicts were noteworthy because of the impact they had on the Māori population, which
was both reduced and displaced. It is estimated that about 20,000 Māori (out of a population of
approximately 100,000) died as a result of these conflicts. This figure is slightly higher than the
number of New Zealanders killed in the First World War (when the New Zealand population was
over 1,000,000) (Belich 1996; Crosby 1999).
These are dramatic figures and the period must have been terribly traumatic; however,
demographers maintain that introduced diseases killed more Māori than introduced muskets.
Māori had limited resistance to the likes of measles, influenza, tuberculosis and venereal diseases,
especially syphilis, which accompanied Europeans to New Zealand from at least the 1790s. It is
estimated that the Māori population declined somewhere between 10 and 15 per cent per decade
from 1840 to 1880. This demographic decrease fed into the idea of the ‘dying Maori’, a colonial
discourse that paralleled that of the ‘vanishing Indian’ in North America. Furthermore, Māori who
were assimilated, biologically or even just culturally, ceased being ‘Māori’ in the eyes of key state
officials. The combination of disease and racial amalgamation meant that Māori ‘extinction’ was
confidently predicted and eagerly anticipated. In raw numbers, the Māori population declined until
the 1890s, when it began a recovery identifiable by the 1910s. As the poet Karlo Mila puts it, pun
intended, the dying race ‘did the dirty’ and lived longer (Somerville 2012, p. 151).
Setting aside the actual reduction in the Māori population caused by muskets and disease, and
even the imagined decline due to intermarriage and acculturation, Māori were outnumbered by
Pākehā not through attrition but through the rapid and ongoing influx of immigrants. As Ballantyne
writes, ‘Migrants, not rifles, were the most potent instrument of empire and it was demography
rather than brute military power that ultimately marginalised Māori’ (Ballantyne 2014, p. 98).
Māori outnumbered Pākehā nationally by about 40:1 in 1840 but at the end of the 1850s there
was near-parity. Pākehā outnumbered Māori by 1860 and by 1878 did so at a ratio of 10:1 (Mein
Smith 2012). This significant shift in power relations helps to explain rising tensions over Māori
land sales in the late 1850s and a slide to war in parts of the North Island in the early 1860s, which
is outlined below.
In this new world of diminished power and options, Head suggests that Māori mistook political
modernity as Christianity in action (Head 2005). Even so, in the late nineteenth century, a group
of young, Western-educated Māori attempted to arrest demographic decline and retain Māori
land in Māori ownership from a Christian position. The Te Aute College Students’ Association
(TACSA) was formed in 1897 from a gathering of old boys from Te Aute College, the leading
Anglican boarding school for Māori boys. The group’s aim was to reverse Māori population decline
‘by a direct onslaught on harmful modes of Māori life’ (Lange 1999, p. 116). Characterising
Māori political autonomy as an unrealistic goal, they also put land grievances to one side and
concentrated instead on improving the social, economic and moral affairs of Māori communities.
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In recent decades, scholars have labelled TACSA’s advocacy for policies such as the individualisation
of communally owned land as assimilatory and harmful to Māori culture. However, as Paterson
points out, ‘TACSA’s very existence as a Māori movement was predicated on the desire for Māori
to survive … and not to be completely absorbed within Pākehā society’ (Paterson 2007, pp. 28–29).
The most well-known members of TACSA, at least in collective Pākehā memory, are the ‘three
Māori knights’, who all served as parliamentarians: Sir Maui Pomare, Sir Peter Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa)
and Sir Āpirana Ngata. However, although Ngata served as the member for Eastern Maori from
1905 until 1943 and was arguably the greatest Māori leader of the first half of the twentieth
century, he relied on large networks of support within and beyond TACSA and his own Ngāti
Porou people (Paterson 2007). He certainly built on the groundwork and intellect of a Ngāti Porou
kinsman, Rēweti Kōhere. Kōhere was one of TACSA’s leading intellectuals and the role of Māori
women was an important cornerstone of his highly gendered, Anglican-inflected political views.
He thus criticised communal sleeping as an inappropriate commingling of males and females, and
believed that girls needed to be better guided from infancy to become useful daughters, sisters,
wives and mothers. In his ideal Māori village, men would be hardworking, houseproud and teetotal
(Paterson 2007).
An important ally of TACSA was the remarkable politician and cultural intermediary Sir James
Carroll of Ngāti Kahungunu, the first Māori to serve as Native Minister (1899–1912). Carroll
worked within the Liberal government at the executive level from 1892 to advance Māori institutions
that he considered beneficial to Māori (such as elected management committees to manage and
develop Māori land with multiple owners), but considered separatist Māori political and religious
movements to be impractical and regressive. TACSA was also referred to as the Young Maori Party
and the group formally adopted this name from 1909. As indicated, several of its members made
it into parliament, but the group did not function as a political party or even as a united electoral
bloc. It was ‘an association of professional men’ (King 2003, p. 329) who aligned themselves with
pre-existing political parties to pursue broadly agreed aims.
By the late 1930s the Young Maori Party had been overtaken by another Christian-based
Māori movement that also sought to raise Māori living standards. Led by its eponymous founder,
Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana of Ngāti Apa, until his death in 1939, this syncretic and prophetic
religious movement won its first seat in parliament, Southern Maori, in a 1932 by-election. This was
won by Eruera Tirikatene of Ngāi Tahu, who focused on the statutory recognition of the Treaty
of Waitangi in his maiden speech. In 1936 the movement, whose members numbered somewhere
between one– and two-thirds of the Māori population, entered into a formal alliance with the
New Zealand Labour Party and in 1943 the Rātana movement won all four of the Māori seats and
held them almost exclusively for the next fifty years (see Chapter 5.3).
Following the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Ngata urged Māori to fully support
the war effort, especially by enlisting in the armed services. The three Rātana Māori MPs also
shared this view. All four Māori MPs thus requested the formation of a Māori military unit and
the government agreed to this within a month of war breaking out. Within three weeks nearly
900 Māori men had enlisted in the 28th New Zealand (Maori) Battalion, which was shipped
overseas in 1940 (Orange 2002). This contribution lay at the heart of the ‘price of citizenship’
(Ngata 1943), the potential for Māori to attain equality and a greater role in New Zealand society
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after the war as a result of wartime sacrifices. The Maori Battalion served with distinction and
received more individual bravery decorations than any other New Zealand battalion, including one
Victoria Cross. This came at a heavy cost: more than 600 of the 3618 men who enlisted were killed
and some 1700 were wounded. This casualty rate was almost 50 per cent higher than for other New
Zealand infantry battalions (Ministry for Culture and Heritage 2012).
Because there was no Māori electoral roll until 1949 ( Jackson & Wood 1964, p. 393), the
government struggled to identify Māori individuals for war service and workforce direction for
essential industries during the Second World War. The Māori MPs, led by Northern Maori member
Paraire Paikea, responded with a proposal for an organisation to handle Māori recruitment and
other war-related activities. On 3 June 1942 the government approved the establishment of the
Maori War Effort Organisation (MWEO). Within six months the country was divided into
21 zones with 315 tribal committees. Committee work was voluntary and received no government
funding. In Orange’s words, ‘The efforts made were enormous for a people who were by and large
poverty-stricken’ (Orange 2002, p. 240). Many essential industries, such as freezing works and dairy
factories, could not have operated without Māori labour. All told, more than 27,000 Māori (out of
a total population of just over 95,000) were in the armed services or essential industries during the
Second World War.
The MWEO provided a unique opportunity to demonstrate Māori leadership and planning,
and tribal groups seized the opportunity, so much so that the committees expanded their operations
into education, job training and land use: ‘activities that bore little or no relationship to their
formal tasks’ (Hill 2009, p. 527). As Orange puts it, ‘Māori were moving into participation in the
mainstream of New Zealand life, but on their own terms’ (Orange 2002, p. 241). It was therefore
widely hoped among Māori that the MWEO would provide a platform and model for postwar
Māori development. However, cabinet and senior bureaucrats reasserted centralised Pākehā control
of Māori affairs, albeit with a few concessions to Māori demands. This was given effect in the Maori
Social and Economic Advancement Act 1945, unreasonably described as a ‘compromise’ (Hill 2009,
p. 528). So while statutory recognition was given to tribal committees, they were located within the
framework of a paternalistic bureaucracy and government policies.
Ongoing paternalism was highlighted in early 1960 when the deputy chairman of the Public
Service Commission, J. K. ( Jack) Hunn, was made the acting secretary of the Department of Maori
Affairs. The minister of Māori affairs at this time was the Prime Minister, Walter Nash. In response
to fragmented Māori land holdings, Nash asked Hunn to account for Māori assets. Hunn took the
widest possible interpretation of this brief and commissioned studies on the Māori population, land
settlement and titles, housing, education, employment, health, legal differentiation and crime. These
issues were brought together in a comprehensive and disturbing report on the comparatively dire
state of Māori that he presented to Nash in August 1960.
The Hunn Report, as it became known (published in 1961), made far-reaching recommendations
for Māori social reform and became the policy touchstone for the second National government in
the area of Māori affairs. The report argued that racial ‘integration’ was the ‘obvious trend and also
the conventional expression’ of New Zealand’s Māori–Pākehā race relations, but that it could and
probably should lead to full assimilation. As part of this, Hunn graded Māori into three categories.
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Those Māori who had retained aspects of culture and language—Group C—were described as the
‘most retarded’: ‘a primitive minority complacently living a backward life in primitive conditions’.
Group A was said to be a ‘completely detribalised minority whose Maoritanga is only vestigial’,
whereas Group B was described as ‘the main body of Maori, pretty much at home in either society
and who like to partake of both’. Hunn’s view was that Group C should be eliminated by raising
its members to Group B status, whereupon they could choose to stay there or rise up to Group A
(Williams 2004). Some mention was made of preserving Māori culture but none of its ongoing
development in changing conditions. In fact, of the report’s approximately one hundred conclusions
and recommendations, none mentioned the preservation or adaptation of Māori culture. It likewise
contained little reference to the Treaty of Waitangi.
The Hunn Report proposed investing in Māori education to promote better employment,
housing and health outcomes, and recommended the establishment of a national Māori education
foundation to finance secondary and university scholarships for Māori students. Hunn proposed
financing this, in part, through the compulsory sale of uneconomic Māori land interests. Although
funding was sourced elsewhere, major changes were nevertheless introduced to the administration
of Māori land between 1965 and 1967. The government argued that these changes were necessary to
make ‘idle’ Māori land profitable and they included increasing its power to compulsorily acquire and
sell ‘uneconomic interests’ in Māori land. This brought about almost universal Māori condemnation
of what was termed the ‘last land grab’. This was one catalyst for the Māori protest movement that
emerged in the late 1960s and grew considerably as the 1970s unfolded.
‘HE WHENUA’: ‘IF A MAN … HAS NO LAND, WHAT DOES HE
LIVE FOR?’*
* Tame Parata, Member for Southern Maori, Parliament, 1904 (Broughton & Ellison 2012)
From 1840 to 1860, land was exclusively purchased from Māori kin-groups by the Crown via the
right of pre-emption established in the Treaty of Waitangi 1840. Pre-emption prevented colonists
from buying land directly from Māori and affirmed that only the Crown could lawfully extinguish
native title. By 1860 native title had been extinguished in about two-thirds of New Zealand,
including most of the South Island and the Wairarapa, Auckland and Hawke’s Bay regions of the
North Island. However, Māori groups in Taranaki, the Waikato and the Bay of Plenty still owned
the majority of their land and most resolved to keep it intact. This was one of the factors that led to
the establishment of the Kīngitanga in 1858 (Belich 1996).
The inauguration of the powerful but aged Waikato chief Pōtatau Te Wherowhero as the head of
this unprecedented pan-tribal collective underscores the desperation of hapū and iwi groups to stem
the ongoing alienation of Māori land. It also highlights the way in which Christianity and literacy
were shaping Māori political ideology and aims. Indeed, one of the movement’s key architects and
theorists, Wiremu Tamihana, had earlier built a Christian village (Head 2005, p. 68) and the Māori
bible was ‘the central ritual object in the coronation’ and has been used in subsequent coronations
(Ballantyne 2005, p. 52). As Mein Smith writes (2012, p. 71), ‘Christianity was politically
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empowering’; it ‘gave Maori a new voice and a way forward’. Established values were at play too:
Pōtatau had an impressive whakapapa (genealogy) and had close relationships with governors.
He also oversaw ‘an area rich in resources’ that was ‘strategically located in the centre of the North
Island, surrounded by powerful tribes’ (Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 2014). However, several
important iwi including Ngāpuhi, Te Arawa and Ngāti Porou did not join the Kīngitanga. There has
therefore been longstanding criticism of the idea and title of ‘Māori King’.
Although hapū were generally resisting land sales in the late 1850s, some were bitterly divided
on the issue, as was made clear in Taranaki. In March 1859 a junior Waitara chief, Te Teira Manuka
of Te Āti Awa, offered to sell land at the mouth of the Waitara River to the Governor, Thomas
Gore Browne. This was a strategically important location that colonists had long coveted and Gore
Browne accepted the offer. However, Wiremu Kingi Te Rangitāke vetoed the sale as senior chief, a
position that reflected the position of his wider kin group. Kingi had earlier assisted George Grey
by helping to protect Wellington during battles with Ngāti Toa and he wanted friendly relations
with settlers, but argued that he should not have to sell land to achieve this. Revealing again the
connections between land, women and mana, Te Teira’s actions were apparently due to a woman
marrying Kingi’s son even though she was betrothed to Te Teira’s brother (Mitchell & Mitchell
2004). In any event, the government signalled that it was prepared to accept the offer of an
individual Māori without the sanction of their wider kin group and welcomed the Waitara dispute
as an opportunity to exhibit its power to both Māori and colonists. However, in February 1860
Kīngi’s supporters interrupted surveyors who had commenced working there. British forces based
at New Plymouth therefore immediately occupied the disputed area and Te Āti Awa responded by
building a major fortification on a ridge overlooking the British position. In March 1860 British
forces attacked the pā (fortified settlement) hoping for a quick victory in the region; however, this
was not forthcoming.
In July 1860 in response to the turn of events in Taranaki and the development of the
Kīngitanga, Gore Brown invited approximately two hundred chiefs to a month-long hui (meeting)
at Kohimārama, present-day Mission Bay, in Auckland. Seeking to isolate the Kīngitanga and its
supporters, the governor did not invite the chiefs whom the Crown deemed rebellious—those from
Taranaki and the Waikato. In short, Gore Browne invited a select group of chiefs to Kohimārama
to publicly win their support for the Taranaki war and to denounce the Kīngitanga. Not only did
the hui barely fulfil the government’s desires, it did not come cheap: aside from military actions, it
was ‘perhaps the largest and most expensive single event the government had ever directed towards
Māori in the first few decades of colonial rule’ (Paterson 2011, p. 40). Funds were, however, set
aside for another hui the following year, but Gore Browne’s replacement (also his predecessor)
George Grey ruled out staging it, considering it not ‘wise to call a number of semi-barbarous Natives
together to frame a Constitution for themselves’ (Paterson 2011, p. 39).
From 1862, but especially from 1865, the whole process of Māori land purchasing was replaced
with an entirely different approach. This centred on converting remaining land held in Māori
customary title into a Crown-granted tenure and making it the legal property of low numbers of
individuals, as opposed to kin collectives. The Native Land Court was established to oversee this
process by investigating and determining the physical parameters and owners of a given block of
Māori land and translating this into individual land titles. The legal owners were then free to sell to
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private buyers on the open market. While this did away with the pre-emptive framework that Māori
widely disliked, the Native Land Acts that framed the new approach were not designed to assist
Māori, but instead to assist colonisation by making more Māori land available for colonists. And this
it did: the process alienated much more land than the so-called raupatu or land confiscations of the
mid-1860s that followed war in Taranaki and the Waikato. As well as accelerating the loss of Māoriowned land, the court process was expensive for Māori, who bore all manner of direct and indirect
costs. In 1883 the New Zealand Herald noted that ‘more money is expended [by Māori] in securing
[lands] than they are worth’ (quoted in Taonui 2012).
The individualisation of land titles also severely affected Māori social organisation, but this was a
clear goal of the legislation. In the widely quoted words of the then Minister of Justice, Henry Sewell,
the land court was not only to ‘bring the great bulk of the lands in the Northern Island … within
the reach of colonisation’ but also to hasten ‘the detribalisation of the Maori—to destroy, if it were
possible, the principle of communism upon which their social system is based and which stands as a
barrier in the way of all attempts to amalgamate the Maori race into our social and political system’
(Williams 1999, pp. 87–88). In 1885 one settler politician affirmed that ‘we could not devise a more
ingenious method of destroying the whole of the Maori race than by these land courts’ (Williams
1999, p. 195). Contemporary scholars have rightly described the court as a ‘veritable engine of
destruction’ (Williams 1999, p. 88).
Widespread discontent with the Native Land Act framework contributed to another notable
form of pan-tribal Māori cooperation: the Kotahitanga movement, which called for the Native
Land Court to be abolished and replaced with native committees overseen by a Māori parliament.
This movement also sought dialogue with the government along the lines of Kohimārama and was
disenchanted with the four dedicated Māori seats in parliament that had been created, initially
temporarily, in 1867 (see Chapter 5.3). By 1892 ‘a general unity of sentiment’ (Williams 1968,
p. 52) coalesced into Te Kotahitanga o Te Tiriti o Waitangi. This was an organisation with a
96-member elected lower house and a 50-member appointed upper house, a premier and speaker,
tribally based electorates and marae-based women’s committees. Many of those engaged in this
movement came from regions and groupings close to settler society and parliament, as seen in its
structure, but several of its aims echoed those of the Kīngitanga, such as the retention of Māori land
and peaceful relations with settlers. Unlike the latter, however, the Kotahitanga movement did not
wish to live apart from colonial society or reject European culture, but merely ‘wanted to choose
what to borrow in their own way and in their own time’ and objected to full assimilation (Williams
1968, p. 62). This movement, then, has been described as an attempt at ‘loyal self-determination’
(Hill 2004, p. 38).
The Māori Parliament met annually for a decade in various North Island locations until 1902.
During this time the New Zealand Parliament ignored and voted down attempts for its formal
recognition. This meant that questions raised by Māori women in 1893 about their role in the
movement—whether they should be able both to vote and to stand as candidates—were never
fully explored. Premier Richard John Seddon attended sessions at Pāpāwai (in the Wairarapa),
often with the governor. However, he described the gathering as a rūnanga (council) rather than a
parliament and in very prescient words stated that there was only one parliament in New Zealand
and that it would ‘never give up control of the Maoris or their lands’ (Martin 2014).
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PART 1: ForGiNG a NatioN
CONCLUSION
‘… e ngaro ai te tāngata’?
By 1960 the racial amalgamation of Māori appeared substantially complete. Urbanisation, which
had accelerated during the Second World War and stepped up again in the decades that followed,
was seen as the proof and also the key driver of this state of affairs. The government and the wider
power culture eagerly anticipated that Māori land would cease being a distinctive tenure, while the
descendants of its erstwhile owners would all become ‘sun-tanned ANZACs’, as Prime Minister
Keith Holyoake is said to have remarked (McCrone 2014). By the same logic, the four Māori
parliamentary seats would soon no longer be required.
However, some contemporaneous New Zealand scholars did not see Māori as vanished or even
vanishing and suggested that quite a different picture might unfold in the following decades. For
instance, in 1964 the political scientists Jackson and Wood referred to urbanisation as a situation
that forces Māori and Pākehā to face race relations at a personal level. In tandem with the high
Māori birth rate, they suggested that as Māori numbers increase ‘they will presumably become more
vocal and able to push with greater force for full social and economic equality’ ( Jackson & Wood
1964, p. 394). In 1965 Pocock similarly wondered whether ‘Hori and Decent Joker’ would ‘live side
by side in stereotyped contentment’ in a society of ‘low pressures and modest ambitions’ or whether
a Māori ‘middle class or intelligentsia’ would emerge to challenge the status quo (Pocock 1965,
pp. 12–13). Jackson and Wood’s and Pocock’s comments, which demonstrate a good understanding
of New Zealand politics generally and the dynamics at play in Māori politics in particular,
foreshadowed what unfolded in the 1970s and beyond: the Māori renaissance (see Chapter 3.2). In
so doing, they essentially affirmed a comment made a century earlier: that the ‘Maories are, in their
opinions and sentiments, the most independent people in the world, and exhibit an individuality
which would delight Mr John Stuart Mill’ (Gorst 1864, p. 59).
In conclusion, while most New Zealanders did not anticipate the so-called Māori renaissance
and many simply see it as part of the reformist agenda of the fourth Labour government (1984–
1990), this chapter suggests that it was born out of enduring concerns held by Māori people and
communities. These are tied to distinctive Māori conceptions of self-definition and property rights
and therefore the ongoing relevance of genealogy and forms of collective ownership or, more simply,
the importance of women and land.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1 to what extent did ideas of racial amalgamation shape state policies towards
Māori until 1960?
2 in what ways did christianity shape Māori political thought and action between
1860 and 1960?
3 Was the Maori War Effort organisation an opportunity gained or an opportunity
lost for Māori in the 1940s?
4 Which tactic was more successful for Māori groups in achieving political aims
between 1860 and 1960: engaging with the state or disengaging from it?
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