Report on Waitangi Hui

Tu Tangata, Issue 21, 1 December 1984, Page 9

Report on Waitangi Hui

by Charlton Clark

Ngaruawahia from 14th September to 16th September 1984

A major event in the Maori world in recent months was the Treaty of Waitangi hui at Turangawaewae Marae, Ngaruawahia, in September, which came up with some important recommendations for the future of race relations in Aotearoa.

In the following pages, Tu Tangata presents three articles by Waikato Times Maori Affairs reporter Charlton Clark, two of which that paper published as backgrounders to the Maori people’s concern and anger over the treaty and a further article, specially written for Tu Tangata by Clark, is a report from the hui itself.

The ink on the Treaty of Waitangi was barely dry before it was in trouble.

The first to feel cheated were Maori landowners who were quite willing to sell land, but found themselves prevented from doing so by the treaty’s pre-emption provisions, which the Crown interpreted as meaning it had the sole right to buy Maori land.

Maori chiefs complained that this was not what they had understood when they signed the treaty, but to no avail.

Hobson had little money with which to buy land for the Crown, and in any case was quite candidly cynical about it when pressed by settlers to interpret the pre-emption clause more liberally: “There is no necessity for doing so, for having no competitors in the market, we can do so on our own terms whenever it is convenient to do so.”

The irony of it all now is that in those early days many Maori people were queuing to sell land, as settlers were queuing to buy. But events were to show that successive British and New Zealand governments preferred to acquire Maori land on much more favourable terms than would have been the case in a free market.

Little more than a year after the treaty was signed, laws began to be made that were designed to part the Maori people from their land on pakeha terms. The first of many was the Land Claims Ordinance of 1841. (See accompanying story).

But before condemning the early settlers out of hand as rapacious land grabbers, it is wise to consider the widely differing value systems of Maori and pakeha.

Putting aside for the moment those white people were little better than greedy speculators and there were enough of them the pakeha conception of land was a material, economic entity, meant to be used to support material prosperity.

It does not take much imagination to understand their feelings on arriving in a vast and empty land where millions of hectares lay idle at least in their

terms it was idle. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to use it if the Maori people weren’t “using” it. There certainly seemed to be plenty to go around.

The Maori people, however, felt about the land in a way that it is probably true to say that pakeha people still find difficult to understand. They endowed it with spiritual qualities, calling the Earth, Papatuanuku, the Earth Mother from whom humanity was originally born to whom it eventually returned. The land was called whenua, which was also given to the afterbirth, which was always buried in the soil under a tree to complete the human life cycle, and preserve the integrity of the unity of Mankind and the Earth.

Land contributed to the mana of the chiefs and tribes who laid claim to it, and mana was one of the most powerful motivating influences in classical Maori society.

There was also a belief among the pakeha people that theirs was an intrinsically superior form of society, and that they had a divine mission to bring the “benefits” of their society to the “ignorant savages” living in cultural and spiritual “darkness”. Maori society was not physically pretty to pakeha eyes, and the cultural and spiritual sophistication of classical Maori society was not readily apparent to pakeha people underneath its “primitive” language and technology.

So it was not surprising that the cultural clash soon gave way to physical conflict. In the 1843 Wairau Incident, the Ngati Toa chiefs Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata attempted to stop a surveying party entering land in Marlborough which the tribe claimed. The clash developed into a shoot-out, in which Te Rangihaeata’s wife was the first person killed. The surviving surveyors were rounded up and executed, apparently despite Te Rauparaha’s pleas for clemency.

War broke out in Northland when Ngapuhi chiefs, led by the treaty’s first signatory. Hone Heke, realised that the pakeha now considered they ran the country. The Ngapuhi were eventually

crushed at the battle of Ruapekepeka Pa, the attack on which demonstrated

the British hypocrisy the army hit the pa on a Sunday while the inhabitants were at church, an event the Ngapuhi chiefs thought unthinkable.

In less than 20 years the Maori chiefs moved from being willing to sell land, as long as it was on fair terms, to being alarmed by the rate at which the pakeha was reducing Maori landholdings.

The pakeha’s main tool for doing so was the law, and as long as their acquisition of land was within the law, they felt justice had been done.

But the Maori people rapidly came to suspect that justice and British law had little to do with each other. The law was made by the British, administered by the British, and changed by the British for British purposes and according to British values. The Maori people and their values were not considered worthy of a place in the lawmaking process.

In the same period New Zealand established its own Parliament, and in time more and more MPs were people who had had nothing to do with the treaty.

So when Maori people complained that their rights under the treaty were being violated, it was easy for the new settler government to pass the buck to the British government, which of course passed it straight back, saying it had no rights to interfere in New Zealand affairs.

By the late 1850 s the treaty was beginning to slip from pakeha consciousness, but it was still very much a live issue in Maori minds. It was all they had to protect themselves, short of physical force.

In 1858 several Maori tribes formed the Kingitanga and chose their first king, the old Waikato warrior chief Potatau Te Wherowhero, to protect Maori interests against the incursions of the pakeha on Maori land and sovereignty.

Predictably, pakeha people saw the Kingitanga as a threat to the authority of Queen Victoria. Tensions mounted as they viewed the Kingitanga’s military might, and imagined it was planning to drive out the pakeha.

In 1860, some tribes held a major hui at Kohimarama, Auckland, to discuss the treaty. If it achieved nothing else, it served to remind pakeha people what Maori people were thinking.

Within a year or two, Maori people in several places were beginning to physically resist the encroachment of pakeha people on to their land.

Tensions rose to war fever as frustrated, land-hungry settlers demanded the interfering savages be removed to prevent their further impeding “progress”.

Fighting broke out in Taranaki, and the tribes there appealed to King

Tawhiao for help, but he declined because he could see that would have been just the excuse Governor Grey needed to invade the Waikato to appease the settlers. Unfortunately for Tawhaio, Ngati Maniapoto went to the aid of their Taranaki neighbours. Grey tarred the rest of the Kingitanga tribes with the same brush, and ordered General Cameron into the Waikato. The war spread to Tauranga, and in little more than a year of fighting, the Maori people lost 1.2 million hectares of land by confiscation and more than 2000 people killed. The confiscations were “justified” by draconian legislation passed in 1863 (see accompanying story), and the dispossessed Waikato people were forced to withdraw into the King Country with their Maniapoto cousins.

Land disputes simmered on in Taranaki until the end of the century. There, the prophets Te Whiti and Tohu led the people in a campaign of passive resistance. At Parihaka in 1881, 1300 troops destroyed the pa and arrested dozens of Maori men when they resisted the surveying of the Waimate Plains, which was confiscated land the Government wanted to sell. Again, ruthless laws were passed to deal with Maori activists, providing for arrest and imprisonment without trial. Many Maori men languished in jail for years without trial. Meanwhile in the South Island, land purchases and confiscations had been pushed through with promises of reserves being set aside adequate for Maori needs. Most of them never eventuated.

In fairness to the governments, it should be noted that about half the land confiscated during the 1860 s wars was either returned to the Maori people or paid for later, but it was too little, too late to ameliorate their demoralisation and despair.

When Tawhiao emerged from the King Country and made his peace with the Government, the Maori people tried a new weapon to persuade the pakeha to honour the treaty, which they had examined and decided was not at fault.

In 1882 they sent a deputation to appeal to the Queen for a royal commission to restore unlawfully taken land. But Secretary of State Lord Derby killed the petition with vague promises to put it before the Queen.

In 1884 Tawhiao led a deputation of chiefs to again seek a royal commission to investigate. Derby told them the English Parliament would use its influence with the New Zealand Government to have the grievances considered. Nothing happened.

In 1924 the politician-prophet Wiremu Ratana sought redress in England but the New Zealand High Commissioner prevented him from getting and audience with the King of Prime Minister. So in 1932 he presented a 30,000 signature petittion to the New Zealand Parliament asking for the treaty to be ratified.

Parliament stalled until 1945, when the Maori Affairs Select Committee recommended that copies of the treaty be hung in schools as a “sacred affirmation” a hollow gesture.

By 1928 the Maori people owned only 1.6 million hectares of the 26 million they originally owned, but still the pakeha’s legal wizards continued to devise ways of getting hold of more land on pakeha terms. It is estimated nowadays that the Maori people own only about 800,000 ha.

Meanwhile in the 1880 s the Maori people held meetings at Waitangi to discuss pakeha violation of the treaty. In the 1890 s those meetings led to the formation of Te Kotahitanga (unity) of the Treaty of Waitangi, with its own Parliament. In 1916 the Kotahitanga united with the Kingitanga to seek Maori rights guaranteed under the treaty.

In the 1920 s the new Labour Party made “ratification” of the treaty part of its policy, but when it won power in 1935 it failed to put the treaty on the statute books.

By the 1930 s pakeha consciousness of the treaty was increasing, starting with the creation of a national shrine at Waitangi when the Governor-General donated the Treaty House property to the nation.

This was celebrated in 1934, an event of great significance to the Maori people. But the 1940 celebrations of the centenary of the founding of New Zealand as a British colony were the major event for pakeha people.

In 1960 February 6 was named Waitangi Day, and later made a national holiday in honour of what the speechmakers presented as a sacred pact between the races. But it also served to irritate Maori sensibilities and give rise to the latest form of protest marches and stirring. But at the same time as successive New Zealand Governments were applying meaningless and cosmetic gestures to the treaty, they were still passing laws against its spirit, and the courts were treating it with ill-con-cealed contempt. As early as 1847, Chief Justice Martin said in the Supreme Court: “The right of the Crown ... is not derived from the Treaty of Waitangi; nor could the treaty alter it. Whether the assent of the natives went to the full length of the principle (of pre-emption, which was being challenged in the case before

Martin) or ... to a part only, yet the principle itself was already established and in force between Her Majesty and her British subjects.” In other words, the treaty was irrelevant. Judges over the years have rejected claims made under the treaty on the grounds it was not a true treaty because it was not made between two sovereign states. In the case of Wi Parata v the Bishop of Wellington in 1877, the court said the treaty merely confirmed the title which the Crown had already acquired “by discovery and priority of occupation as a territory inhabited only by savages”. Maori landowners were to discover to their dismay they could be held liable for the debts incurred by pakeha lessees of their land. But in disputes between two pakeha people over title to

Maori land, when one pakeha held title obtained from the Crown and the other held title obtained directly from the Maori owners, both claims held good over any Maori claim.

Actions for trespass against pakeha interests squatting on Maori land have failed on the grounds that Maori rights of tenure according to custom were not equal to pakeha rights of tenure according to British law.

In a case in 1912, the judge said bluntly: “The Treaty of Waitangi is binding only upon the honour of the Crown and can be disregarded at the discretion of the Crown.”

The question arises: if British sovereignty over New Zealand, and that of its New Zealand Government heirs, was not derived from the Treaty of Waitangi, from what was it derived? What it seems to amount to is that the British helped themselves to sovereignty, and cloaked their usurping of power with an air of respectability in the form of a “treaty” with the Maori people. The law and military force ensured they hung on to their sovereignty if the Maori people objected.

There has, however, been the occasional bright spot on the Maori horizon. In 1928 Native Affairs Minister Sir Apirana Ngata devised the Native Land Amendment and Native Claims Adjustment Act, which made available to Maori land-owners loans from public money to develop their properties.

Before then it was easy for pakeha people to justify their land grab on the grounds the land was not being “used”, conveniently ignoring the fact that it was nigh on impossible for the Maori people to raise the money to develop their land.

In 1945 the Labour Government passed the Maori Social and Economic Advancement Act, which provided for the return to the Maori owners of some Maori land after leases expired. But control over all land transactions remained in pakeha hands.

And in 1975 a particularly uncharacteristic Act was passed which set up the Treaty of Waitangi Tribunal. This body can inquire into Government actions which the Maori people believe violate the principles of the treaty and prejudice their interests. It can also examine and report on any proposed legislation if directed to do so by the Government.

But the tribunal has no teeth, having only powers of recommendation, and it can only examine matters dating back to 1975. In other words, it gives the Maori people the right to seek protection when they have almost nothing left to protect.

But it has already succeeded in seriously embarrassing a National Party Government over the Motunui effluent disposal issue in Taranaki. It remains to be seen whether it will ever be allowed to do so again.