NALTIES OF REBELLION

Taranaki Daily News, 29 September 1928, Page 15

NALTIES OF REBELLION

NATIVE LAND CONFISCATION FINDINGS OF BOYAL COMMISSION. ANNUAL COMPENSATIONS PLAN. CABINET TO GIVE CONSIDERATION. •j Teteeraph.—Press Associate*. Wellington, Last Night. Sympathetic consideration to the recommendation of the Royal Commission which inquired into the confiscation of Native lands which followed the Maori Wars and into other grievances of the Maori people was promised by the Prime Minister iu the House of Representatives to-day when the report of the commission was laid on the table. The commission was set up in 1926 and devoted its attention principally to the grievances of the Maoris in Taranaki, Waikato and the Bay of Plenty districts. The members of the commission were Sir W. A. Sim, the Hon. Vernon Recd and Mr. William Cooper. The first question they were asked to consider was “whether, having regard to all tire circumstances and necessities of the period during which proc, lamations and orders in council under the New Zealand Settlements Act, 1863, were made and confiscations affected, such confiscations or any of them exceeded in quantity what was fair and just, either as a penalty for rebellion or as providing for protection by settlement as defined in the Act.”

The report says this question assumes that in every case confiscation was justified and directs an inquiry only as to the extent of confiscation.

Council for the Natives claimed that notwithstanding this apparent limitation of the inquiry the Natives were entitled to raise the question whether or not there should have been any confiscation at all. This contention was not really disputed by counsel for the Crcwn and in each case the question whether or not there should have been any confiscation at all was raised and discussed. It was contended on behalf of the Maoris that in dealing with this question under several petitions tha commission was not bound by the limitations imposed by the fir st question, and that the Natives who had denied the sovereignty of the Queen and who had repudiated her authority could claim the benefit of the provisions of the Treaty of Waitangi.

In dealing with these petitions and in ascertaining what accords with good conscience and equity, the commission says it should treat petitioners whose ancestors were rebels as not entitled except in special cases to claim the benefits of the treaty. UNJUST TARANAKI WARS. The commission says both Taranaki wars ought to be treated as haring arisen out of the Waitara purchase, and it judged accordingly that the Government was wrong in declaring against the Natives for the purpose of establishing the supposed rights of the Crown under that purchase.

It was, as Dr. Featherston had called it, an unjust and unholy war, and the second war was only a resumption of the original conflict. Although the natives who took part in the second Taranaki war were engaged in rebellion within the meaning of the New Zealand Settlements Act, 1863, the commission thinks that in the circumstances they ought not to have been punished by the confiscation of any of their lands. A total of 462,000 acres was finally confiscated and the report says it is difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion as to the value of the land at the date of its confiscation.

The commission recommends that the wrong done by the confiscations should be compensated by making a yearly payment of £5OOO, to be applied by the board for the benefit of the Natives of the tribes whose lands were confiscated.

The history of the Waikato trouble was traced at some length by the commission, which says it is true that the Government did afford tie Maoris of that district some excuse for their resort to arms. Had the natives contented themselves with providing fox their own defence when attacked and with providing for maintaining law and order in their midst and for the regulations of sales of native land they might have been declared to be blameless; but they w’ere not content to do that, and formed a plan for the destruction of Auckland and the slaughter of its inhabitants. POSITION OF WAIKATO REBELS. The commission says it is not justified in saying that the tribes who took part in the Waikato war ought not to have suffered some confiscation of their lands as a penalty for the part they took in the rebellion. After reviewing all the circumstances the commission says that the confiscation was excessive, and particularly so in the case of the Mangere, Ihumatu and Pukaki Natives. It recommends that this excessive confiscation should be compensated for by making a yearly payment of £3OOO, to bo applied by the board for the Natives whose lands were confiscated. With regard to the Tauranga confiscations the commission finds that they were justified and not excessive, and that natives have not made out any case for the inquiry asked for by them in regard to the rights of the loyal natives to an area of 50,000 acres and in regard to a contention that both loyalists and rebels were entitled to as full a ehare in that land as if it had not been confiscated. Dealing with the Bay of Plenty confiscations which were the outcome of events following the murder of the Rev. C. Volkner at Opotiki on March 2, 1863, and the murder of James Fulloon at Whakatano on July 21, 1865, the commission says it is clear that the Natives of Opotiki and Whakatane were engaged in rebellion when they resisted with arms the advance of forces sent to capture the murderers. The confiscations were justified. COMPLICITY OF VARIOUS HAPUS. “It is impossible at this distance of time to determine exactly the hapua concerned in the rebellion or to ascertain

their respective interests in the land confiscation,” states the report. “It would be idle to attempt to discriminate now as to the complicity of the different hapus, and all that can be said now is that it has not been proved to the satisfaction of the commission that the land of innocent liapu was confiscated.” The commission finds that except in the case of the Whakatoliea tribe, which was left with 347,130 acres of its 491,000 acres, the confiscations in the Bay of Plenty did not exceed what was fair and just. In the case of the tribe mentioned it was excessive, but only to a small extent and the commission recommends that a yearly sum of £3OO should be provided for the purpose of higher education for the children of members of that tribe.

In reply to a question as to whether any lands included in any confiscations were of such nature that they should have been excluded for some special reason, the commission says it is clear that any general attempt to restore these places now is quite out of the question. It aeke, for example, what the use of a canoe-landing place would be to Natives who have no canoes and who now travel in motor-cars.

The commission also deals at length with a number of petitions affecting the cases of individual hapus. In the majority of cases application was made for relief by way of giants of land, but the commission has found that few have established a case.