Towards Full Individual Ownership

Te Ao Hou, October 1956, Page 10

Towards Full Individual Ownership With this arose fresh problems. Since all were included in the title, a sale of the land required the execution of a deed of conveyance by all, including minors and other persons under disability. No relative shares were at this stage defined. This made the process of alienation well nigh impossible particularly where the members of the owning tribe might reach some hundreds, until at last the time came when the law permitted the sale of undivided interests which might be cut out by partition for the purchaser. Ultimately the Court was required to define interests. This was normally, in fact, arranged by the owners themselves reaching agreement and submitting the result to the Court. The flow towards the individualisation of interests once commenced was irreversible and it resulted in more and more difficulties, complicated by the constant spate of legislation and it is true to say that it was not until the Act of 1909 that one coherent and clear system of dealing with Maori Land Titles was set forth. Here despite earlier foreshadowings we first have a clear system of dealing by vote of the owners in the assembled owners procedure; the incorporation system enabling the owners to work their land by means of an incorporation; the governing body being an elected committee of management; the relatively clear system for cutting up and leasing lands vested in the Maori Land Boards which, for reasons often quite unforseeable, were to go so astray—also a comprehensive code for the purchase of Maori Land by the Crown. It was well on in the 1920's before any workable system of financing the development of Maori land for Maori settlement was formulated.