‘Discriminatory legislation inflicted on tribe’

Press, 8 December 1987, Page 22

‘Discriminatory legislation inflicted on tribe’

By

JANE ENGLAND,

Maori affairs reporter Discriminatory legislation inflicted by the Crown divorced Poutini Ngai Tahu from their land and sealed their fate of poverty and landlessness, the Waitangi Tribunal heard. Mr Jim McAloon, a Christchurch historian seconded from a national organisation, Project Waitangi, was concluding evidence on the Ngai Tahu Maori land claim in Arahura (West Coast). The evidence, a 64-page book backed by more than 600 documents, had acts of "greatest bad faith” by the Crown and several breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi. The tribunal had earlier heard that the "true amount,” of £4OO being offered for the Arahura block, which the tribe wished to sell for £2500, was concealed from the tribe and it was “threatened, promised or induced” into selling land within Mawhera, Kotukuwakaho and Okitika (Grey, Arnold, and Hokitika Rivers). The Crown had no right to persuade the tribe to sell land it did not wish to part with and breached the treaty in doing so, Mr McAloon said. The Crown later broke the treaty in failing to respect the reservation of the Arahura riverbed, wich now forms a substantial part of the tribe’s land claim. Although part of the riverbed in a line to the river source was allocated in 1976, the rest remained in Crown ownership. Mr McAloon said the commissioner for native land purchases and reserves, James Mackay, made it clear on the map of the deed that the riverbed from the sea to the Main Divide would remain in tribe ownership.

The treaty was also breached through the Crown’s failure to recognise the pre-emptive right of the tribe to buy certain lands.

In allocating a reserve from the mouth of the Arahura River, Mr Mackay had assured the tribe that the whole of the land from the mouth to Mount Tuhua was virtua pre-emptive right over

that which was not included in the 1050 acres they chose, to make it their own. But the Crown later made over 14,150 acres to the Hokitika Harbour Board. “There is no evidence at all that the Crown asked the tribe’s consent. The Crown had no right whatsoever to make this land over to the Harbour Board,” Mr McAloon said. The Fletcher Trust and Investment Company which owns 1050 acres later sold by the Maori owners, and the land the Crown made over to he board, recently offered to sell it back to the tribe for $3 million. A 1977 report by the secretary of Rehua Marae, Mr Terry Ryan, revealed that land in many of the tribe’s other reserves was never allocated. Land in Bruce Bay was taken in 1940 for a defence aerodrome but never used for that purpose, 150 acres in Pakihi was never brought under the Native Trustee as required and now holds the site of the Inchbonnie Railway Station, and 109 acres in Kawatiri still remained “unaccounted for.” In Mawhera (Greymouth) there were 16 cases of land being taken by proclamation, Mr McAloon said. “In every case compulsory acquisition was a breach of the treaty, whether compensation was paid or not.” Compensation was paid in only two of the 16 cases.

Land in the Mawhera reserve was leased when the town of Greymouth began developing. The leases were later set under terms which broke the treaty. The 1856 Native Reserves Act provided for the administration of reserves by three commissioners and allowed leases of terms up to 21 years or longer if the Government consented. In 1887, leasholders pressed the Government to allow freeholding of the land they leased from Maori owners. The continued agitation for sales in Mawhera led the Government to establish a commission of inquiry. Maori owners had consistently refused to sell

land, which was linked with their identity, Mr McAloon said. But, as a possible compromise between the leaseholders and owners, the Government imposed the 1887 Westland and Native Reserves Act which established 21-year leases to be renewable in perpetuity. “This was almost totally against the wishes of the owners,” Mr McAloon said. “This separation from their own property is imposed on few other classes of people in this country.” The leases are still contained in perpetuity today. When the bill proposing perpetual leases was first introduced in Parliament it met strong objections from the M.P. for Southern Maori, Mr Tame Parata. He complained that the Government was attempting to keep Maori members ignorant of the proposals in the bill by delaying a Maori translation and rushing legislation. It concerned him that the act could give the Public Trustee the power to hand over native lands to the Department of Public Works. In the Legislative Council, Mr H. K. Tairoa also had some objections to make: “I have grown grey but the Government has never given me any support. My father gave 30 million acres to the Government on the understanding that they would provide for me. I am still waiting for them to send me to school. “Now I am as a beggar ... a bill is brought in by which I am treated as a child, and the management of my land, leases, and improvement, any of everything else, is to go to others.”

The bill was passed despite Mr Tairoa’s strong objections against a law which had been promoted by a pakeha member of Parliament, Mr Arthur Guinness, who was also a leading lawyer handling the Greymouth Borough Council’s affairs. The leases were put up for public auction at the time of renewal. In 1905 it was discovered that leaseholders of Greymouth had a long-standing agreement to refrain from bidding against each other as a ally their property and they only had to exercise

means of keeping the rent artificially low, Mr McAloon said. The South Island Landless Natives Act was introduced in 1906 for Maoris who had no land or insufficient land. “From the first to last the story of the act is one of land inadequate both in area and quality to support Poutini Ngai Tahu,” he said. The Crown acted in bad faith and further breached the treaty by allocating land in poor, rugged areas, or failing to allocate the lands promised. In 1920 the District Offiice of Native Affairs was created with an officer to act as custodian of leases.

“It will not be argued that there was a wholesale flouting of the law by the office of the public, native or Maori trustee. What will be argued is that the office was responsible for an almost total lack of consultation with the Maori owners in the uses to which the land was put.” The trustee allowed land to be taken for scenic reserves, roads, railways, local bodies and defence. At Mawheranui 1000 acres of Maori land was logged in 1971 at the direction of the trustee without the owner’s knowledge, he said. The Maori Affairs Act,

1967, had two important consequences for reserve lands. It allowed leaseholders to freehold with the consent of beneficial owners, and raised the possibility of Maori owners forming an incorporation to manage their reserves — the Mawhera Incorporation. In resisting ownerincorporated management, the native trustee office displayed more than “a trace” of the attitude that Maori people are not able to administer their affairs, Mr McAloon said. This indicated a failure to take the treaty seriously and was a source of major grievance during the hearings of the 1975 Royal Commission. The situation of separating a people from their property has persisted till today, with the Crown failing to heed the bulk of recommendations made by the commission. “Failure to implement the desires of the owners relating to leases as recommended by the commission is a continuing breach of articles two and three of the Treaty of Waitangi,” said Mr McAloon. He asked the tribunal to find if the Crown had broken the Treaty of Waitangi in the ways outlined and "that suitable remedies be recommended.”