NATIVE LANDS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 34, 10 February 1927, Page 11

NATIVE LANDS

CROWN CONFISCATION

CASE FOR THE MAORIS

SCOPE OF. THE INQUIRY

(By Telegraph.)"

(Special to "The Evening Post.") ' WAITARA, This Day.

The t hearing of the case for the Natives in support of their plea for reparation in respect' of lands alleged to have been wrongly confiscated after the Maori wars was opened before the Royal Commission this morning.

Counsel for the Natives (Mr. D. S. Smith), in his address to the Commissioners, said that the Commission, was meeting on historic ground. Waitara, lie said, was a name to conjuro with. It had . assumed a sacred importance. Waitara stood for the wrongful confiscation of Maori land, and that confiscation had exercised a powerful influence on practical affairs. There was vivid evidence on all sides of a sense of deep wrong and injustice. After the Great "War, when the flower of Maori manhood' fought shoulder to shoulder with their white brethren on the slopea of Gallipoli and the plains of Europe, it. was felt that the Government would listen to their grievances. Petitions poured into Parliament, and deputations approached Ministers, and as a result the Commission had been appointed.- It was the realisation of sixty years of hope deferred. Not frequently in history had a powerful Government submitted- to the judgment of an impartial tribunal the question of the justness- .of Acts of State. It marked an advance in the t ethics of State. rThe time was too short for the complete obliteration and burying of the past, but sufficient time had elapsed to allow of a dispassionate and an unclouded: survey of the situation as it then existed. ■ . t'air and just inquiry. The Commission would readily understand the responsibility which rested upon it, and upon the Crown, in seeing that the fullest and fairest inquiry was made into those matters which were the foundation of the Native grievances. Ever e since the Waitara dispute there had been a deep and abiding sense of wrong and of injustice, for which the Natives had sought an investigation. Land had always been of paramount importance to the Native. He drew his sustenance directly from it. He knew nothing of the specialisation, of industry and the exchange of goods. Ha himself cultivated and hunted on the tribal land, and that land was directly the source of life to him and his tribe. Members of the Commission might have seen a Native with ,hand uplifted, calling to High Heaven to sustain him while he presented his claim to the lands of his ancestors. In those circumstances could one wonder at the intense devotion of the Native to his land and of his objection to any alienation of it? As between themselves, in the old tribal' days, though land was conquered, the vanquished.did not lose their rights in'it unless the conquest were made immediately "effective;' by actual settlement and possession. The conquest by one tribe of the lands of another tribe had been used as an argument by apologists for the confiscations, but it would be shown later that it was an argument by analogy in which there were no points of resemblance between the two cases. It would suffice for the time to say that the Europeans who brought Christianity to the country and set lip new standards must indubitably be judged by those standards, and that in any event the Europeans in general had no.t confiscated, the act of confiscation, being an act of State. It could be laid down as axiomatic that any alienation of Native land must, xo satisfy the Native mind, be fair and just, not merely to the European, but to the Native also. That, then —the question of the alienation of Native land, in one form or another—was the main question which the 'Commission had to consider. It was the cardinal in.fluence in Native polity. Even to-day it was the topic of discussion in every Native settlement, and it had been for the last sixty years. It was at the back of all the sporadic movements which had occurred from tjme to time. It had been behind the delegations which on various, occasions had visited the Mother Country for the same purpose. It was. manifestly in the.interests of both Europeans and Natives that the cause of disaffection should be impartially investigated and reparation made, if need be, even at this late hour. RESPONSIBILITY FOR WARS. It is understood that \he Crown proposes to object to the ventilation of any contentions by 'the Natives in regard to the responsibility for the Taranaki wars which led up to the confiscation of Native lands. That, of course represents the case of the Natives, who hold that the war was not of their seeking, but that they were forced into it. They assert that they did not at any time repudiate the Sovereignty of Queen Victoria, although admittedly they took up arms against the troops. This, however, they say, was forced upon them, as they instinctively and naturally rose to protect their homes against "what they regarded as military aggression. Te Whiti, after the cessation of hostilities in 1870, offered his passiv3. resistance to the aggression and held his followers'in check. The Natives have all along interpreted the appointment of the Commission as indicative of a desire on the part of tho Government, firstly, to fix-the 'responsibility for the war; secondly, to ascertain whether the punishment-meted out by the confiscation of their lands, if at all justifiable, was excessive; and, thirdly, if the punishment waa not justified or was excessive, to arrive, at some equitable arrangement in. the matter of reparation. It is stated locally that if the inquiry is restricted in scope to the extent that it will be if the history preceding the war is not to be touched upon, the desire of the Natives for a fair and impartial investigation will by no means be satisfied. It is anticipated that legal argument at considerable length will take place on this important point, and until it has been disposed of the task of considering individual petitions cannot be comn ?nced.