Ngaitahu S.I. land grievance 138 years old, ‘but we shall never stop speaking’

Press, 23 July 1986, Page 19

Ngaitahu S.I. land grievance 138 years old, ‘but we shall never stop speaking’

By

GARRY ARTHUR

The Ngaitahu Maori Trust Board’s dramatic claim under the Treaty of Waitangi to more than 2.5 million hectares of Crown pastoral land in the South Island is the latest move to settle a grievance which has “festered” for 138 years. From the time the signing of the first land purchase document at Akaroa, in 1848, public officials, courts, politicians, and commissions of inquiry have all acknowledged that the South Island Maoris were robbed of their entitlement to adequate reserves for their own use.

Attempts have been made to compensate them, notably through a cash award in 1921 (not paid until 23 years later), but the Maoris have never received the reserves they were promised. Now that the Waitangi Tribunal has been empowered to consider grievances going back as far as 1840, the Maori people of Canterbury and Marlborough are asking the tribunal to support their claim as compensation. Under the Treaty of Waitangi, which leading Ngaitahu chiefs signed, the Maori people were guaranteed “full exclusive and undisturbed possession” of those lands they wished to retain for their own use. However, the Ngaitahu Trust Board says, these rights were denied them in the purchase negotiations. Indeed, the provisions of the Treaty of Waitangi seem to have been forgotten almost before the ink was dry on the parchment. There is no reference to the treaty in documents relating to land purchases from the Ngaitahu, and even in subsequent official hearings of their grievances, the promises made in the Treaty of Waitangi appear to have been ignored by all parties. The Canterbury Plains purchase was set in train by Governor Grey, who instructed E. J. Eyre, the Lieutenant-Governor of New Munster (the South Island), to arrange to buy land south of the Ashley, reserving "ample portions” for the Maoris’ present and prospective wants. Eyre sent H. Tacy ! Kemp, assistant Protector of Aborigines, to Akaroa to negotiate the purchase. On June 12, 1848, the document known as Kemp’s Deed was signed by 40 leading Ngaitahu, selling 20 million acres between the Ashley and the Otago boundary for £2OOO. Their pa sites and cultivations were guaranteed to them, but no reserves were defined or surveyed. This serious omission got Kemp into trouble, and two months later Commissioner Walter Mahtell was sent to remedy the matter by defining Maori reserves on the plains. At these negotiations, the Maoris demanded an eight-mile wide strip between the Waimakariri and

Ashley rivers, and extending back to the mountains. Mantell, however, Induced them to accept a 2560-acre reserve at Tuahiwi, the old Kaiapohia pa site, and some other reserves of a few acres each. They came to about 10 acres for each of the Ngaitahu people.

The Ngaitahu had relied on the Government’s promise to reserve further land for their use after the purchase, but Mantell made no effort to honour that promise. When questioned about it in 1888 by a Parliamentary select committee, he was quite frank — it was his career that he was concerned about. “I naturally desired to make the best bargain I could for the Government, because I looked to the Government for my future employment,” he said. On the subject of reserves, Mantell explained: “In carrying out the spirit of my instructions on the block purchased by Mr Kemp, I allotted on an average

10 acres to each individual, in the belief that the ownership of such an amount of land, though ample for their support, would not enable the natives, in the capacity of large landed proprietors, to continue to live in their old barbarism on the rents of a uselessly extensive domain.” It was at the select committee hearings that Mantell revealed that the Government had actually promised the Ngaitahu the large reserves they sought. He volunteered to tell the committee of an incident which he believed was not on record: "At an interview the natives had with the Lieutenant-Gover-nor (Eyre) at Akaroa before we commenced proceedings, when I acted as interpreter, the Natives of Kaiapoi, or rather those interested in Kaiapoi, were present in large numbers," he recalled. “They spoke to the Governor about reserves to be made for them. They said they would like to have a block commencing at the Kowhai on the north and south to the Waimakarlri, or Walkiriki, or Selwyn, and extending that width across to the West Coast. "The Lieutenant-Governor said that they could have it. I said to him in a low voice — for many

of the natives understood English — that, if this was promised, at all other places similar reserves would be required; the Island would be cut up into a succession of belts all across, and it would be hardly of any use for me to proceed.

“The Lieutenant-Governor was rather angry, but he then left the matter for me to decide.”

Questioned by the select committee, Mantell agreed that it looked as if the Maoris distinctly understood that very large reserves of land would be made for them — and that they would not have parted with their land unless they had imagined that they would have those large reserves.

Land north of the Ashley had not been bought by the Crown, and yet “notwithstanding repeated remonstrances” by the Maoris, they had been occupied by pakeha settlers for some six years.

The Government had previously paid the Ngatitoa of the North Island £l5O for all the country from the Wairau to Kaiapoi because of the conquest of Ngaitahu about 15 years earlier by Te Rauparaha. The Ngaitahu disputed this view, saying that if title rested on conquest, they had pursued Te Rauparaha to Port Underwood and driven him off the coast. Later they destroyed a canoeful of Ngatitoa and those deaths had never been avenged. Furthermore, Ngatitoa had never occupied Ngaitahu lands to maintain their right to it. The Government accepted that the Ngaitahu were the true owners.

J. W. J. Hamilton, who had persuaded the Ngaitahu to surrender their remaining 80,000 acres on Banks Peninsula to the Crown for £2OO and the reservation of 400 acres at Onuku, Wainui, and Little River, was well aware of the Ngaitahu be- > lief that they still owned most of North Canterbury. “It is a fact worthy of notice that so early as the year 1850, when the Canterbury Association’s surveyors first crossed the Ashtey (Rakahauri), the Kaiapoi natives complained to me that the land north of it had never been sold by them,” he wrote in a letter to the Chief Commissioner of Land Purchase on December 11, 1856, the day of the Akaroa purchase. “The Kaikoura Maoris had previously asserted the same thing to me.” Hamilton was commissioned to "extinguish” the native title to their lands north of the Ashley. On February 5, 1857, he was able to report that the Port Levy, Rapaki, arid Kaiapoi natives had

surrendered the remaining lands north of Kaiapoi (1,140,000 acres, extending 50 miles up the coast and 60 miles inland) for just £2OO. Hamilton drew attention to the fact that the land was already almost entirely occupied by English settlers as freehold or “sheepwalk.” On the subject of reserves, he reported: “By reserving any new tract for the Maoris, serious complications might be created, and the necessity for reference to the Land Office would delay the purchase greatly. “This was my chief reason (not made known to them) for declining their proposal to accept £l5O and a reserve, which otherwise I should have at once agreed to. “But under existing circumstances it seemed absolutely indispensable to pay a large purchase money and make no reserve.” (Hamilton’s adjective “large” in respect of the £2OO referred to the smaller amount which he had been told to try and settle for). Hamilton reported that he would have gone as high as £3OO but that might have influenced some of the Maoris to sign "as it were, on speculation.” He told the Governor that the Maoris first demand for £5OO was very reasonable, but that they had “grasped at what was within their reach, fearing further delay.” Two years previously, he noted, a 30,000 acre block “between Waipaoa and the Hurunui River” was sold by the Government for £15,000. In consideration the £2OO might be considered a "gross fraud practised upon the Maoris,” were it not for certain factors. These included Hamilton’s belief that the Government would be generous to the Ngaitahu in future; that they did not have the knowledge to make use of it themselves; that it was to their advantage for it to be in "profitable occupation by ourselves”; and that the reserves of 2640 acres that they did get were now

very valuable because of the European presence. But Hamilton obviously still felt guilty, in spite of these arguments on his own behalf. He went on: “When they at last agreed to the terms I was able to offer, I regretted they had done so, for I felt convinced that in holding out for their demand of £5OO and referring the proposal to His Excellency, it must inevitably have been acceded to.” Donald McLean, the chief Native Land Purchase Commissioner, recommended that Hamilton be authorised to pay the Ngaitahu an extra £2OO for relinquishment of all their claims, including the large reserves at Hurunui and Motunau which they demanded . “and which it would be most inconvenient to grant, from the various European interests it would involve.”

Two years later, on February 25, 1859, James Mackay, Assistant Native Secretary, Collingwood, assembled all the Ngaitahu interested in the Kaikoura district to negotiate with them the purchase of their lands. Reporting to Donald McLean, he complained of the Ngaitahu's “exorbitant demand” of £5OOO for the 2.5 million acres they claimed to own. ■ .

“They appear to have a thorough knowledge of the value of land,” he wrote, “and seem to be acquainted with the sums which have been paid by runholders for land in the Amuri district.” The Ngaitahu claimed land from Hurunui to Cape Campbell, inland to the Wairau Plain, and south to Lake Tennyson. Most of it was already occupied by farmers who had bought the land from the Crown. Mackay was instructed to buy the lot for £l5O, but he said he

might have to go to £5OO. On April 19, 1859, he was able to report, however, that the Ngaitahu had surrendered all of the land north of the Hurunui for £3OO. Describing the bargaining process, Mackay said that when he offered £2OO, the Maoris said they would not surrender all their land for that — they wanted to keep 100,000 acres already being rented from the Government by three settlers, Fyffe, Keene and Tinline. They had threatened to eject those settlers, who had freeholded some of the land. “The European settlers did not feel themselves secure unless the purchase was completed,” Mackay wrote, “the natives having, in various ways, annoyed them by driving sheep off the runs, preventing the settlers cutting timber and from erecting buildings on their runs, and on several occasions threatening that if they were not paid for the land, they would turn them off.” Mackay warned that if the settlers were turned off land they had bought from the Crown — but which was not owned by the Crown — compensation could be expensive. Mackay told Chief Kaikoura (Whakatau) that he believed he had earlier offered to sell all the land for £l5O, but he denied that, saying the price was now £lO,OOO. The Ngaitahu pointed oiit that the Government had sold a small piece, of the same land to Mr Robinson for £7BOO, and instanced other similar sales. The Maoris were so reluctant to accept the Government’s terms that Mackay said he had. to make a false start to Port Lyttelton before they could be brought to assent to the sale for £3OO. He agreed to native reserves totalling 5566 acres and felt guilty about even that miserable amount. “This quantity of land may appear large,” he reported, “but it is of the most useless and worthless description, especially the block of 4800 acres (between the Parangarau and Hapuka rivers) and the total value of it cannot be estimated at more than £450 or £5OO. In fact it is

questionable from the nature of the reserves whether they will be found more than barely sufficient for the wants of the native population.” So inadequate were they that the Maoris immediately asked if they could buy back from the Government 400 acres of the land they had just sold. The Ngaitahu never ceased protesting at the injustices done to them, and eventually their claims were dealt with by the Native Land Claims Commission which considered their petition in 1921 and recommended compensation of £354,000. Nothing was done about it until 1944 when the Ngaitahu Claim Settlement Act was passed, providing for payment to a Ngaitahu Trust Board of £lO,OOO a year for 30 years, one third of the money being required to be invested.

The commission debated what actual reserves should have been made, but concluded that “at this date there is, however, no land which can be set apart, or, if there were, the setting of such apart would not be conducive to effective settlement of the Dominion.”. . . The Ngaitahu did not accept Mantell’s decisions about their reserves meekly. Their > complaints were loud and long. In October; • 1849, Matiaha Tiramorehu wrote to Lieutenant Governor Eyre: about the meanness of the reserves. “You,' are aware,” he wrote, “when Mantell first commenced his work in this place, his first mistake was at Kaiapoi — viz., he would not listen to what the owners of the land wished to say to him; they strenuously urged that the part that should be reserved for the Maoris ought to be large, but Mantell paid ,no attention to their wishes.” He told Eyre that "although you should return to England, we shall never cease speaking to the white people who may hereafter come here.”

Looking after his career

‘Extinguish’ the native title

Threatened to ' eject settlers

No attention to wishes