From next year children aged 5 to 15 will study New Zealand History. A draft curriculum has been circulated for public comment and you can access this through: Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories in our national curriculum – Education in New Zealand Having a browse at the proposed prescription will be helpful in following the articles.
Today we begin a series examining this important document.
What the government says will be covered
By Roger Childs
Back in 2019 the Ministry of Education announced that there would be seven over–arching themes.
- The arrival of Māori to Aotearoa
- First encounters and early colonial history of Aotearoa
- Te Tiriti o Waitangi and its history
- Colonisation of, and immigration to, Aotearoa, including the New Zealand Wars
- The evolving national identity in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries
- The role of Aotearoa in the Pacific
- Aotearoa in the late 20th century and the evolution of a national identity with cultural plurality
No mention of New Zealand. Alarm bells immediately started ringing and well-known historian Paul Moon commented: Of course, there are risks that if done poorly, compulsory history in our schools could veer in to the realm of indoctrination.
Warts and all
Many historians and teachers emphasised that there should be a “warts and all” approach so that students would not merely be given a sanitized version of our history. Some people voiced fears that iwi leaders and Maori academics might have too much say in the final shape of the prescription. If this happened, the final document might have an over-emphasis on the Treaty of Waitangi, the evils of European colonisation, breaches of the Treaty by “the Crown”, the New Zealand Wars and the Waitangi Tribunal.
Would the curriculum developers – half of whom are Maori – include “warts” like
- the extermination of the moa, Haast’s Eagle and many other bird species
- the burning of huge areas of forest by Polynesian settlers
- the devastating inter-tribal wars
- cannibalism and slavery
- the genocide in the Chatham Islands
- the scores of breaches of the Treaty by Maori such as Te Kooti’s massacres at Matawhero and Mohaka
- the destruction of the natural environment by European settlers to create farms. infrastucture and towns
- the Gallipoli disaster
Concerns about the “big ideas”
There are three.
- Maori history is the foundational and continuous history of Aotearoa New Zealand.
- Colonisation and its consequences have been central to our history for the past 200 years and continue to influence all aspects of New Zealand society.
- The course of Aotearoa New Zealand history has been shaped by the exercise and effects of power.
Each “big idea” is followed by a paragraph of explanation – 6-9 lines – which you can find by accessing the document. Some thoughts on each of the big ideas.
Maori history is not the foundational and continuous history of our country. There were people in the country when Polynesians first arrived in the 13th century. In New Zealand today over 80% of the people are non-Maori and their history has been important in transforming the environment, building a modern economy, constructing infrastructure, expanding the labour force and creating a modern welfare state. Such developments have benefited all ethnic groups.
Colonisation was not designed to …assimilate Maori through dislocation from their lands and replacement of their institutions, economy and tikanga with European equivalents. There was a desire, supported by many chiefs, to end the worst elements of tikanga at the time – inter-tribal wars, killing prisoners, cannibalism, abducting women, slavery and female infanticide. After the Treaty Governors Grey and Gore Browne offered Maori chiefs wide powers of local government – runanga – under the colonial government and the umbrella of the rule of British law.
Overall, colonisation has been hugely beneficial for all New Zealanders — raising living standards; increasing life expectancy; providing education, health and transport services; and introducing modern technology.
The big idea on the exercise and effects of power incudes reference to ways that have led to damage, injustice and conflicts. Is the implication here that the actions of governments and colonial troops adversely affected Maori?
Will 5, 6, 7 year old and older learners understand these big ideas? They would challenge university students.
How about these for “big ideas”?
- New Zealand is a nation of immigrants who have arrived at different times.
- The early Pacific Island immigrants were mainly hunters and gatherers who lived as different tribes across the country.
- The tribes were often at war with one another and practiced cannibalism and slavery.
- James Cook and other European explorers made the existence and resources of New Zealand known to the world.
- The Inter-tribal wars between the native tribes halved their population.
- There was no united New Zealand nation until 1840.
- The British reluctantly took on New Zealand as a colony and made a treaty with the native peoples and settlers which was as far-sighted as any in human history.
- There was conflict between the government and a minority of central North Island Maori tribes in the 1860s and 1870s.
- British and other settlers transformed the landscape and economy to develop farms, industries, infrastructure, towns and cities.
- A welfare state was created by the Liberal and Labour governments and added to by governments after World War Two.
- Depressions and World Wars affected all New Zealanders.
- Maori New Zealanders generally benefited greatly from colonization but there have been social problems and economic disparities.
- All ethnic groups have provided inspirational leaders who have contributed to the development of national identity and the reputation of the country.
- Asian and Pacific Island peoples immigrated in large numbers from the 1960s on and enriched New Zealand’s culture and made a significant contribution to the economy.
- New Zealand has had an on-going close relationship with Pacific countries and the wider world.
This is not totally comprehensive, but would make sense to children and give them an idea of what they will be studying over the years.
(Article 2 will examine the question Is the proposed curriculum weighted too much towards Maori interests?)
It seems to me odd that migrants about 1200-1300AD from Polynesia are referred to as “indigenous” whereas Europeans several centuries later are said by some to be “invasive” or similar derogatory adjectives. What’s the difference? Both were migrants.
History should teach that. Te problem is much of “Maori” history is handed down by word of mouth and we all know how tales handed on though several mouths can become distorted.
So long as ALL of NZs history is taught, no problem but cherry picking of our history to suit certain races is not on.
I question the use of Aotearoa.
We are talking about New Zealand. When the Treaty was signed the Maori did not use that name. It is not in the Treaty.
I ask you be authentic and accurate.
For instance were the Moriori here before Maori.
If so clearly state it.
My understanding is Aotearoa was the name given to the South Island by the Waitaha tribe. So the sheep in TV presenters have it completely wrong. But let them act their pretentious pantomines but don’t shove it in our face. I’m surprised TV 3, not government owned, is indulging in the nonsense.
But TV3 want their handouts from the government.
Where is this “Aotearoa”?
Right next door to Peter Pan and Never-Never Land?
“Aotearoa” is nothing but a bogus political construct.
In fact, there is no such place.
The proper (and only) name of our country is NEW ZEALAND, as I will prove below.
‘AOTEAROA’ AND THE “CONFEDERATION OF UNITED TRIBES’ DECONSTRUCTED
“In the Kingdom of the Blind, the one-eyed man is King. And he that does not know his own history is at the mercy of every lying windbag.” – outgoing Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe, in his 1935 farewell address
New Zealand is increasingly referred to in the public square as “Aotearoa” or “Aotearoa New Zealand.” This appears on our passports, the letterheads and signage of government departments, our new banknotes, and has even been used on postage stamps in larger print than our country’s real name.
Fellow author, Bruce Moon, describes Aotearoa as “a quite recent upstart with scant justification, if any at all, to be used as our country’s name.’
This fiction deserves to be mercilessly deconstructed.
In pre-European times, there was no such thing as a Maori nation state, meaning Maori had no name for what is now New Zealand as a whole. It was left to European explorers to remedy this deficiency. The first to do so was Abel Tasman, who in 1642, named our country “Staten Landt” in the mistaken belief it was part of a “Great Southern Continent.”
Tasman’s error was soon corrected. The following year, 1643, the Dutch States-General renamed his discovery “Nieuw Zeelandt,” Anglicised to “New Zealand,” this has been our country’s name for the 372 years that have since elapsed.
When the Treaty of Waitangi was drafted in 1840, “New Zealand” was transliterated into Maori as “Nu Tirani” and that is how our country is described for posterity in the Treaty’s Maori language version.
Moreover, if documents were to be written in Maori, this continued to be the practice for many decades. For example, when a broadsheet in Maori was posted on the wall of the Karitane Post Office in the early 1940s, “Niu Tirani” had been modified only slightly to “Niu Tireni.” Aotearoa just did not appear.
The agenda of those today promoting Aotearoa as an alternative name for New Zealand is to imply that a pre-existing Maori nation state was rudely subsumed by 19th Century white settler governments and must accordingly be reinstated as “co-equal” to our existing government that governs for all New Zealanders.
Contrary to modern-day misrepresentation, the Treaty of Waitangi was not with a collective “Maori,” but with tribes, most of whom signed it, some of whom didn’t. When the Treaty was entered into in 1840, New Zealand consisted of hundreds of these dispersed and petty tribes, each in a constant state of war with one another, and lacking any concept of nationhood.
Some 512 chiefs signed the Treaty, while a substantial minority refused to, meaning there were probably more than 600 of these individually insignificant groups.
Assertions that a Maori nation state existed when the Treaty was signed rest upon formal recognition by England’s King William IV in 1836 of the 1835 Declaration of Independence of the so-called “Confederation of United Tribes” and associated flag.
Any “official” recognition of pre-Treaty collective Maori control of New Zealand must be placed in its proper historical context, which ethnic nationalists conveniently omit to do.
The so-called “Maori Flag” (not the tino rangatiratanga Maori sovereignty flag fudged up in the 1990s) was adopted by Northland chiefs in 1834 at the behest of British Resident James Busby, after a NZ-built ship owned by Europeans was impounded in Sydney for not flying the flag of a recognised nation state.
Busby presented the chiefs with a variety of designs. They eventually chose a flag modelled on that of the Church Missionary Society, with which they were well familiar. This was not a Maori initiative, but a Pakeha-brokered expedient to protect New Zealand’s pre-Treaty commerce.
Nor was the 1835 Declaration of Independence driven by the puny number of Maori chiefs who signed it. This “paper pellet to fire at the French” was fudged together by Busby to head off Colonial Office fears of an impending takeover by French adventurer, Baron De Thierry.
Initially carrying the signatures (or rather the thumbprints) of 35 Northland chiefs, the Declaration was ultimately signed by just 57 chiefs, all residing north of the Firth of Thames. Since these chiefs represented less than 10 percent of all the tribes of New Zealand, the Declaration can hardly be held up as evidence of a national consensus.
The arguments of Maori sovereignty activists are further undermined by the impotence of the handful of chiefs who signed the Declaration to act or even deliberate in concert. Signatories had pledged “to meet in Congress at Waitangi in the autumn of each year, for the purpose of framing laws for the dispensation of justice, the preservation of peace and good order, and the regulation of trade.” Inter-tribal animosities meant this body never met nor passed a single law, despite the common undertaking of notional members to do so.
Even had the Declaration carried any practical weight, its relative handful of 1835 signatories (or their successors) all signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, thereby rendering the Declaration redundant.
At the time of the signing of the Treaty, the North and South Islands had a variety of Maori names, the most popular being Te Ika-a-Māui and Te Waipounamu respectively. However, we must be clear that there was no pre-existing Maori name for what is now New Zealand, because as we have seen, there was no Maori nation state or national consensus to form one.
Had there been a Maori name for New Zealand, the missionaries who drafted both the 1835 Declaration and the Maori Treaty text of 1840 (fluent Maori speakers all) would have known of and used it. Instead, they used the same transliteration of New Zealand (“Niu Tirani”) in both documents to get their point across.
Maori sovereignty activists, who regard the Treaty of Waitangi as written in concrete if it advances their agenda, have smuggled Niu Tirani out of the public discourse, because its use in the Maori Treaty text underscores the total bankruptcy of their claim to nationhood. “Aotearoa” has been smuggled in as a substitute.
Aotearoa was originally an alternative pre-European Maori name for the North Island. In the late 19th Century, European authors, William Pember Reeves and Stephenson Percy Smith began using it in Maori-themed works of fiction as a fanciful name for the entire country.
That’s all it ever was.
As Muriel Newman notes in a recent article on the New Zealand Geographic Board’s proposed name changes to the North and South Islands, “The Board ruled out Aotearoa for the North Island on the basis that it has been popularised as the name for New Zealand.”
Popularised, indeed!
“Fabricated” is a far better word.
The underlying agenda of the race-hustlers peddling the “Aotearoa” fabrication is to insinuate into the public mind, through as many channels as possible, their “One country, two peoples” mantra. Constant repetition then creates the false impression of widespread popular acceptance of what is really nothing more than a propaganda claim.
We see here deployed a version of Adolf Hitler’s Big Lie technique as outlined in Mein Kampf: repeat a lie over and over until it becomes the ‘truth.’
ENDS
GENOCIDE’?
In the absence of a universally acknowledged civil government and laws to provide for land ownership, in 1840, the various tribes owned NOTHING. They simply used or occupied it until a stronger bunch of bullyboys came along and took it off them. The only universally acknowledged system of laws was “te rau o te patu” [the law of the club] aka “might makes right.”
Throughout the 1830s, various Maori chiefs were begging the Crown to intervene in New Zealand.
It seems clear that in the lead-up to the signing of the Treaty, most chiefs had come to view British sovereignty and its associated rule of law as the only way to put a conclusive end to the Musket Wars that had ravaged the land for almost two decades prior to 1840.
With the coming of the musket, the various tribes possessed for the first time weapons of mass extermination with which to be revenged upon traditional enemies. The farsighted came to see that only outside intervention could arrest this ever-escalating cycle of inter-tribal violence.
Ngapuhi had been the first tribe to obtain muskets after Hongi Hika returned from England in 1821 with a large quantity of firearms, powder and shot. These weapons were used by Ngapuhi to overrun much of the North Island in the first of the Musket Wars.
A destructive arms race ensued. Thousands of Maori were killed as other tribes acquired European weapons of their own to wage war on immediate neighbours and further afield. The Lyttelton Times of 4 September 1861 retrospectively reported that as a result, “Whole districts were depopulated, and large and powerful tribes driven from their ancestral lands.”
Tribes fleeing from Ngapuhi began pressing upon their neighbours all the way down the North Island. “[W]ar spread from tribe to tribe, till the whole North Island became one scene of bloodshed and massacre.” In 1824, this carnage reached the South Island, after Te Rauparaha, having obtained a large supply of guns and ammunition, crossed Cook Straight to attack Ngai Tahu.
These inter-tribal conflicts also led to significant indirect loss of life. Thousands of Maori died of recently introduced respiratory ailments after moving down from their well-ventilated hilltop pas to low-lying, miasmic swampland to cut flax to trade for guns. But by far the greatest killer was mass-scale starvation.
For pre-European Maori, fighting was a ritualised pursuit traditionally taking place once the kumara crop had been harvested. After the onset of the Musket Wars, fighting became a year-round activity, because many tribes no longer bothered to cultivate, thinking instead to conquer their neighbours and take their food.
Since everyone else was operating on the same assumptions, thousands starved to death if they weren’t killed and eaten first by hungry war parties. As an indication of how scarce grown or gathered foodstuffs were at that time, the Lyttelton Times reported that: “Hongi [Hika] and his party, in returning home [to Northland] through the districts they had overrun, were compelled to live almost entirely on human flesh.”
The Maori population in 1840 is today believed to have numbered around 100, 000. By various estimates, the Musket Wars had led directly or indirectly to some 60, 000 – 100, 000 deaths over the period 1821 – 1838, after which the bloodshed tapered off because every tribe now had guns.
Maori culture’s ongoing requirement to extract utu (payback) from enemies meant this uneasy balance of power would always rest on a knife-edge, and a number of commentators have suggested that only by signing the Treaty did Maori avert their complete self-destruction as a race.
Calls for a “Land Wars Commemoration Day” are misplaced, to say the least.
According to a Government website, the total death toll in all the battles and skirmishes fought between Crown troops and loyal Maori on the one hand, and aggressive challengers to the Crown’s sovereignty on the other, hardly suggests conflict that was [a] widespread; or [b] genocidal in nature or intent.
The numbers below aggregate data for individual battles fought between 1845 -1872, as provided by the historian James Cowan, “who sometimes overstated the casualties of Maori who opposed the settlers. “
Rebel Maori: 2, 154
Crown troops and loyal Maori: 745
Since there were an estimated 100, 000 natives in 1840, the total number who died opposing the Crown over the 27 years in question was just over 2% of that number.
To put these numbers into perspective, averaged out over 27 years,, that’s around 80 rebel Maori casualties per annum, or 0.08 of the 1840 Maori population in any one year. Some 8/100ths of one percent.
If this was “genocide,” the Crown was clearly either not very good at it, or wasn’t trying too hard.
According to various estimates, some 60, 000 – 100, 000 natives died either directly (murdered) or indirectly (starved to death because their tribes neglected cultivating for fighting) as the result of the intertribal Musket Wars of the 1820s and 1830s.
These numbers make it clear the true genocide of New Zealand history was Maori-on-Maori.
Far more apt that instead of a “Land Wars Commemoration Day,” we have a “Kai Tangata Day” in remembrance of the Maori people killed, eaten, enslaved, raped, or dispossessed by other Maori prior to February 1840.
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/new-zealand-wars/end
MAORI CANNIBALISM
Here follows some sample accounts of this revolting, subhuman practice, culturally institutionalised among pre-European Maori.
Hundreds more can be found if one goes looking.
Daniel Henry Sheridan, a member of a shore-based whaling party, describes the defence of the Nga-Motu Pa from 28 January to 23 February 1833, by its Maori occupants and a small number of European traders:
‘To the gun I was stationed at, they dragged a man slightly wounded in the leg, and tied him hand and foot until the battle was over. Then they loosed him and put some questions to him, which he could not answer, nor give them any satisfaction thereof, as he knew his doom.
‘They then took the fatal tomahawk and put it between his teeth, while another pierced his throat for a chief to drink his blood. Others at the same time were cutting his arms and legs off. They then cut off his head, quartered him and sent his heart to a chief, it being a delicious morsel and they being generally favoured with such rarities after an engagement.
“In the meantime, a fellow that had proved a traitor wished to come and see his wife and children. They seized him and served him in like manner.
“Oh, what a scene for a man of Christian feeling, to behold dead bodies strewed about the settlement in every direction, and hung up at every native’s door, their entrails taken out and thrown aside and the women preparing ovens to cook them!
“By great persuasion, we prevailed on the savages not to cook any inside the fence, or to come into our houses during the time they were regaling themselves on what they termed sumptuous food – far sweeter, they said, than pork.
“On our side, there were eight men killed, three children, and two women, during the siege. They got sixteen bodies, besides a great number that were half roasted, and dug several up out of the graves, half decayed, which they also ate.
“Another instance of their depravity was to make a musket ramrod red hot, enter it in the lower part of the victim’s belly [via the anus] and let it run upwards, and then make a slight incision in a vein to let his blood run gradually, for them to drink…
“I must here conclude, being very scanty of paper; for which reason, columns of the disgraceful conduct of these cannibals remain unpenned.”
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-McNOldW-t1-body-d1-d3.html
“On reaching their pa they rushed into it, but we also entered it ere they could prevent us, and then we slew so many of them inside that we wearied of man-killing, and the place was full of dead. We remained three weeks at that place, cutting up and devouring the best of the bodies. As to the others, we cut the flesh from the bones and laid it on stages to dry in the sun; it was then packed in vessels, and the fat of the bodies was melted and poured over it to preserve it. We burned the bones, lest the relatives of the dead should find them and convey them to their tapu burial places.
“We collected the heads of the slain chiefs and piled them in a heap, placing the head of the principal chief on the top of the heap. We then took other heads and threw them at the heap, by way of amusement, for this was an old time practise of our fathers. When those heads were battered, we tired of the game, whereupon the young fellows took the heads and burned them, saying that it was fine fun. We broke one end of the leg and arm bones, thrust heated fern stalks into them to extract the marrow, which was good eating.”
https://www.wcl.govt.nz/maori/wellington/landoftara7.html?fbclid=IwAR1dmuBAVijgfzNucnT3s7O50nI2zClhcNo0_hM9E1AvbHwgPiLpBHQXAFQ
“As usual on such occasions a scene of revolting cruelty and brutal lust followed, which the Europeans were powerless to prevent. Many prisoners but slightly disabled were put to death with dreadful torture, some being dragged and thrown alive on the large fires kindled by their enemies, with every mark of delight and sensuality. One of the victors made one of the enemy fast to a gun, having captured him while in the act of escaping from the pa after the battle; he unloosened the fastenings and demanding of the hapless being what the enemy intended doing next. He received no answer, as the prisoner knew his doom was fixed. A tomahawk was held forcibly between his teeth and an incision pierced in his throat, from which this vampire slowly drank the blood. His body was then quartered and the heart sent as a present to an elderly chief as a delicious morsel. The appearance now presented by the pa was a sickening ordeal for the Englishmen. Human bodies cut in pieces and hanging opposite every house within the pa were disgusting to behold. Dogs feeding on the refuse, together with the sanguinary appearance of these extensive shambles, prevented the traders from pursuing their usual work for some time.”
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/…/tei-SmiHist-t1-body1-d19…
“So the people retreated and we followed until we all reached the pa belonging to them into which they had entered and our people with them. We then commenced killing them within the pa until we were tired of it, and the pa was full of dead bodies. Then were cooked the ‘fish of Tu.’
“Three weeks we remained here feeding on the dead bodies, but could not eat them all; the rest we used only the flesh of, throwing away the bones, and put it on to stages to dry in the sun. The flesh was then gathered into baskets and oil was poured over it, the oil being rendered down from the bodies; this was done to prevent its spoiling with the damp.
“The bones of those eaten were put in the fire, lest the people of the country should return and collect them and bury them in their wahi-tapus (or sacred places). The heads of the chiefs were severed from the bodies and collected into a heap, and then some of us got other heads and flung them at the heap. The head of one great chief was placed on the summit of the heap as a special mark for other heads to be thrown at.
“It was an amusement indulged in by our forefathers, but in their case the heap was made of stones, at which other stones were thrown: but we used the heads instead of stones, until they were all smashed up. This was the doing of us older men, and as soon as they were well smashed up the young men took the heads and burnt them up in the fire. Those young fellows thought this a very amusing entertainment.
“The bones of the legs and arms had the ends broken off and with a piece of fern-stalk warmed in the fire melted the marrow inside, which we then sucked out or used it to flavour our potatoes with.”
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/…/tei-SmiMaor-t1-body-d15.html
“Those that we killed we ate; those saved we made slaves of. We used to stay in the pas we took in this manner to eat of “the fish of Tu,” and nothing but the smell of the bodies made us draw on to another place. In this manner we passed through the Taranaki and Whanganui districts, and to Whangaehu and Manawatu and beyond to Otaki, killing as we went.”
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/…/tei-SmiMaor-t1-body-d15…
“Hongi-Hika then ordered wood to be fetched, and with this elevated a platform which overlooked the stronghold, and here he placed his best marksmen. Each discharge killed some of the defenders, and soon those who guarded the entrance were all dead, and nothing opposed the triumph of the invaders. The pa was now rushed, and a fearful slaughter took place, men, women and children all shared the same fate, and with them three European sailors who were living with the people in the pa. The wounded warriors were all killed, the Thames tribe (Ngati-Paoa) losing 300 men. Hongi-Hika took the best portions to present to the families of those engaged in the expedition. The army remained on the field of battle feasting on the flesh of those who had been killed, until driven away by the putrifaction of the remains.”
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/…/tei-SmiMaor-t1-body-d30…
“It is said that twelve hundred of Te Ati-Awa and their allied hapus were killed or captured in the final overthrow of the pa. The greater part of the prisoners were women and children, and these were driven back into the pa to be killed or tortured at leisure. That day Waikato glutted themselves on the bodies of the slain lying in gore around the pa.
“The next morning the prisoners were brought out, and those amongst them whose faces were well tattooed were decapitated on a block of wood, with the view of making mokaikai, or preserving them, as trophies to be taken back to the country of the Waikatos. Others, with little or none of this decoration, were immediately killed by a blow on the skull. It is asserted that Te Wherowhero*—the head chief of Waikato and principal leader of the invaders—sat in the gateway of the pa, and as the prisoners were brought to him he killed one hundred and fifty of them by a blow on the head with his jadeite mere named ‘Whakarewa,’ and that he only desisted because his arm became swollen with the exercise. The headless bodies were thrown across a trench, which was dug to carry off the blood lying in pools about the plateau on which Puke-rangiora stood. Others, less fortunate, were killed with every conceivable form of torture; some again were cast into the ovens alive, to the amusement of their sanguinary foes. Young children and lads were cut open by incisions made hastily down the stomach, enviscerated and roasted on sticks placed round large fires, made of the palisading of the pa.”
Also interesting to note that more Maori were killed by other Maori in this one massacre, than in all the fighting between Maori and colonial forces between 1860 – 1885.
TAINUI TOFFEE
As outgoing Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe, reminds us in his 1935 farewell address: “In the Kingdom of the Blind, the one-eyed man is King. And he that does not know his own history is at the mercy of every lying windbag.”
Winston Churchill: “A lie will go halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its pants on.”
Neither “Land Wars” nor “Maori Wars” accurately explain the conflicts that race mongers now wish to commemorate so as to further stoke anti-White and race separatist sentiments. Nor were they “New Zealand Wars.” These misnomers were coined and propagated to imply the Crown made unjust war on a collective Maori in order to “steal” their land.
The wars were in fact between the Crown and specific tribes, who challenged the Crown and lost. The Crown then punished these groups with land confiscations as it had earlier warned if they didn’t lay down their arms and cease their provocations.
The tribes on which the Crown waged a series of localised wars between 1863 – 1878 were predominately based in the centre of the North Island (Tainui, Tuwharetoa, Tuhoe) and had never signed the Treaty of Waitangi in the first place. Under the legal doctrine of privity of contract, only the parties to an agreement are bound by it or can claim its protection in the event of a breach. So no Treaty breach there.
The Tainui tribes set up a “King” as a rival sovereign to the Crown and drew a handful of other tribes who HAD signed the Treaty into joining them, such as elements of Taranaki’s Te Atiawa. The Kingite Movement was thus made up of aggressive challengers to the Crown’s sovereignty and rebels against it.
The ensuing wars were brought on by a minority of Maori Chiefs who saw colonisation as a threat to their mana and power, especially as their people had begun to exit their tribal lands in order to live independently close to larger cities and towns. A plan was hatched by dissident chiefs to get rid of the Treaty, British Sovereignty, law and order, and to drive the Pakeha out once and for all.
“Sovereignty Wars” correctly describes these conflicts, since they were undertaken both to extend the Crown’s sovereignty over those who’d never acknowledged it, and to bring those who’d rebelled against it to heel.
Crown troops entered the Waikato in 1863-64 after numerous provocations from the Kingites that began several years before.
A number of Taranaki chiefs had in 1854 formed an anti-land selling league. Its ability to intimidate others who hadn’t joined the league was preventing local chiefs who wished to sell land they owned to the Crown from exercising their Treaty right to do so. In 1860, the Crown negotiated the sale of the Waitara Block with Teira, its legitimate owner. Wiremu Kingi acting as the head of the land league intervened to block the sale. The Crown upheld Teira’s right to sell.
Since the Kingite agenda was to resist further land sales and settler encroachment because they wanted the settlers gone altogether, this was manna from Heaven. After fighting erupted at Waitara on 17 March 1860, Kingite war parties travelled to Taranaki to meddle in a fight that was none of their business, hoping to ignite a more general uprising against the Crown’s authority throughout the North Island. As John Gorst reports in “The Maori King:” “It became the fashion for all the adventurous [Waikato] men to spend a month or two in the year at Taranaki, ‘shooting Pakehas.’”
Governor Thomas Gore Brown convened a month-long conference of around 200 chiefs at Kohimarama, Auckland, starting 10 July 1860, to confirm support against the Waitara rebels and to isolate the Kingites. Of the attendees, the only ones who endorsed Wiremu Kingi’s position in the Waitara Affair were his own relations.
Faithful Maori chiefs made it clear they preferred the peace of the Treaty of Waitangi to the murderous tribal wars that preceded it, and would hold to rule by Queen Victoria over the prospect of subjugation to a self-anointed upstart Tainui “king.”
The Kingites subsequently developed two plans of attack on Auckland, one involving a night attack in which the town would be set on fire in a number of places by Maori who’d taken up residence there for that purpose. Their stated intention was “to drive the Pakehas into the sea.”
The leading historian of the Maori wars, James Cowan, wrote in Volume I of his “The New Zealand Wars” that the half-caste government interpreter, James Fulloon, reported to the Governor that the Kingites planned to “execute a grand coup by attacking Auckland by night-time or early in the morning. The Hunua bush was to be the rendezvous of the main body. Another portion of the Kingite army was to cross the Manukau in canoes and approach Auckland by way of the Whau, on the west, while Ngati-Paoa and other Hauraki Coast tribes were to gather at Taupo, on the shore east of the Wairoa.
“The date fixed for the attack was 1 September, 1861, when the town of Auckland was to be set on fire in various places by natives living there for that purpose; in the confusion the war-parties lying in wait were to rush into the capital by land and sea. Certain houses and persons were to be saved; th[o]se dwellings would be recognised by a white cross marked on the doors on the night for which the attack was fixed. With the exception of those selected in this latter-day Passover, the citizens of Auckland were to be slaughtered.” (pp. 239-40)
Before any such uprising could occur, the government issued an order on 9 July 1863 requiring all Maori living north of the Mangatawhiri River to take an oath of allegiance to the Crown and surrender their weapons. Those refusing to do so were required to retire to the Waikato. A further proclamation dated 11 July 1863 warned that those who waged war against the Crown would have their lands confiscated.
Crown troops crossed the Mangatawhiri River on 12 July 1863. Maori who refused to take the loyalty oath were evicted as the soldiers advanced. Fighting occurred at Meremere, Ngaruawahia, Rangiaowhia (southwest of Cambridge) and at Orakau (near Te Awamutu) during 1863 and 1864. The final military action of the Waikato War was on 2 April 1864, at Orakau. A proclamation confiscating land was issued in December 1864 under the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863.
The Kingites formally sued for peace in 1865, though sporadic guerrilla warfare waged by small bands of dissidents hiding out in Tuhoe country continued until the late-1870s.
A total of 619 anti-government Maori were killed in fighting in the Waikato and Bay of Plenty from 1863–1864, while 162 British troops and settler militia, settler non-combatants, and pro-government Maori lost their lives.
The confiscated Kingite territory initially comprised 486,501 hectares, including virtually all of Waikato north of a line drawn from Raglan to Tauranga. The Crown’s intentions were twofold. Firstly, to defray the cost of what had been an expensive war it hadn’t wished to wage in the first place. Secondly, the Crown intended to put settlers with military experience onto land in a buffer zone to be created between Auckland and the Waikato against a renewal of hostilities by the Kingites.
Approximately 127,218 hectares were prior to 1873 returned to Waikato Maori adjudged not to have rebelled. The final confiscations totalled 359,283 hectares. It should be noted that nobody in the Waikato was turned off land that he identifiably occupied or cultivated.
Large tracts of “waste land” with no identifiable Maori owners –“Crown Land” of the Kingites being the best description of it – was simply Gazetted as Crown Land, meaning all neighbouring tribes actually lost was the opportunity to turn land they didn’t own anyway into cash at some future point in time.
Over a period of more than a decade, Governor Grey and his successors made numerous offers to ‘King’ Tawhiao to return all the confiscated lands not given to military settlers or otherwise sold, subject to Tawhiao taking an oath of allegiance to the Crown.
Tawhiao intransigently and rudely rebuffed all these attempts.
The key issue was not land but sovereignty – whether a separate state should exist within a newly united nation. Some 512 chiefs had signed the Treaty of Waitangi so as to obtain a single sovereignty over and above the ever-squabbling and fighting tribes.
Sovereignty had to be settled before confiscated lands could be handed back and this Tawhiao, the second Maori “king”, always refused, thus preventing the return of lands to the Waikato tribes.
Here’s how it went down on one of these occasions.
Days of abortive discussion included one particular day when Tawhiao and a group of his friends sat with their backs to the government delegation. Eventually, Governor Grey’s patience was exhausted:
“Three times I have had to come to you at very considerable personal trouble and annoyance. I have had many troubles and many discomforts to go through. I have hurt my health by so doing … Now, the offers which were made to you at Hikurangi were promises of gifts to be given without your undertaking to do anything in return for them.
“I shall wait until tomorrow at 10 o’clock in the morning. If then you send to me, to tell me you accept these offers, or that you are prepared to discuss them, I will remain to discuss them. If I do not hear from you that you will discuss them, after 10 o’clock to-morrow morning they will be withdrawn absolutely.”
No message came, and the offer lapsed.
According to former Ngai Tahu Waitangi Tribunal claims researcher, Dr John Robinson: “The refusal [by Tawhiao] of the oath of loyalty was nothing other than treason, particularly from a man who claimed to be a rival monarch.”
The upshot of Tawhiao’s arrogance was that Tainui lost the opportunity to regain much of the land that had been confiscated after the war. Only 26% of confiscated land was returned in the Waikato, compared with 64% in Taranaki, and 83% in Tauranga.
As Dr Robinson correctly points out with respect to more than a decade of abortive Crown attempts to negotiate a final peace that included the return of as much land as possible: “This was not the action of a Governor, or of a Government, determined to strip Maori of their land. It was the very opposite.”
Only about 4 percent of NZ’s land area was eventually – and quite rightly – confiscated from tribes who’d challenged the Queen’s sovereignty and lost. These tribes were warned in advance this would happen if they didn’t pull their heads in.
When conflict was brewing in 1863, Governor Grey made this abundantly clear:
“Those who wage war against Her Majesty, or remain in arms, threatening the lives of Her peaceable subjects, must take the consequences of their acts, and they must understand that they will forfeit the right to possession of their lands as guaranteed to them by the Treaty of Waitangi.”
Here’s Sir Apirana Ngata on this matter:
“Some have said that these confiscations were wrong and that they contravened the articles of the Treaty of Waitangi. The chiefs placed in the hands of the Queen of England, the sovereignty and the authority to make laws. Some sections of the Maori people violated that authority. War arose from this and blood was spilled. The law came into operation and land was taken in payment. This itself is a Maori custom—revenge, plunder to avenge a wrong. It was their own chiefs who ceded that right to the Queen. The confiscations cannot therefore be objected to in the light of the Treaty.”
The balance 96 percent of New Zealand’s land area was voluntarily “sold” by the chiefs in hundreds of transactions.
So the land was not “stolen” but sold. And the sales recorded in writing. Those records as compiled by Special Commissioner, Henry Hanson Turton are readily available on the Victoria University of Wellington website for anyone to see.
Here are links to Turton’s Deeds, held electronically by Victoria University of Wellington, and in hard copy at the Hocken Library and others.
Index to Deeds, Receipts, Gifts > http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Tur01Nort.html
Once peace was made, the Kingites were treated as British subjects, a far more benevolent fate than they’d have suffered had they been conquered by another Maori tribe, and indeed considerably better treatment than the Tainui tribes had meted out to others during the Musket Wars of the 1830s.
Nonetheless, for around 70 years, Tainui kept up an avalanche of complaints and petitions that the land confiscations were both wrongful and excessive. Eventually, the Labour Party buckled to this pressure, and gave them something to keep Princess Te Puea and the Kingites in the tent for Labour.
In 1946, after what one commentator at the time referred to as “the biggest and most representative hui of the Tainui tribes ever held,” the Crown and Tainui signed the Waikato-Maniapoto Settlement Claims Act, the preamble of which read: “The purpose of this Act is effect a full and final settlement of all outstanding claims relating to the raupatu confiscations …”
I call that a done deal.
Yet Waikato-Tainui were handed a second full and final settlement of $170-million in 1995, on the basis of what the Waitangi Tribunal asserted were “Treaty breaches,” despite never having signed the Treaty of Waitangi.
This settlement specifically excluded further claims that Tainui might mount over the Raglan, Kawhia, and Aotea Harbours, and to the Waikato River, so that one wasn’t “full and final” either.
The 1995 settlement went around the various Tainui subtribes for ratification, and was eventually endorsed by around 2/3 of the marae in the Waikato. A kaumatua at one of the dissenting marae famously told the New Zealand Herald at the time: “We do not see this as a full and final settlement, because who can anticipate the needs of future generations. To bind future generations like that is not the Maori way.”
And [part-] Maori continue to assert that the Crown has no honour …
ENDS
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