Bruce Moon: Hobson And Fair Dealing In New Zealand Land

Part One of this article can be seen HERE.

Colonial Secretary, Lord Normanby in his lengthy brief to Hobson had been very explicit in his instructions concerning the acquisition of land from the tribal owners, thus:

“You will immediately on your arrival announce, by proclamation addressed to all the Queen’s subjects in New Zealand that Her Majesty will not acknowledge as valid any title to land which either has been, or shall hereafter be acquired in that country which is not either derived from or confirmed by a grant to be made in Her Majesty’s name and on her behalf.  You will however, at the same time take care to dispel any apprehensions which may be created in the minds of the settlers that it is intended to dispossess the owner of any property which has been acquired on equitable conditions, and which is not upon a scale which must be prejudicial to the latent interests of the community.”

Wordy Victorian prose this may be but its intention is clear.  It was followed to the letter by Hobson, who, on 30th January 1840, one day after his arrival in New Zealand, issued a proclamation printed by the Church Missionary Society Printer at Paihia.  Transactions in land were to be brought under control immediately on terms fair to both Maori sellers and settler buyers alike and they were.

Nor was it an empty promise that only existing titles to land confirmed in Her Majesty’s name as valid would be acknowledged.  A panel of Commissioners was set up, including renowned “Pakeha Maori” F.E.Maning.  Thus the purchase of an 800-acre block at Waima by George Stephenson on 17 February 1839 was disallowed.  Another purchase by Stephenson of about 2000 acres at Rahu Rahu on the same date was also rejected.[1]

While the provision for the sale of Maori land exclusively to the Crown proved impracticable, land sales proceeded generally in an orderly fashion, given the minimal infrastructure and difficult communications in the infant colony although the Maori practice of collective ownership made identifying valid owners difficult on occasions.  Nevertheless there are meticulous records in some cases of the Maori villages, gardens and burial grounds excluded from sale, the goods with which the land was purchased, their value and the names of the sellers who signed the documents of sale.[2]

Complications occurred such as that at Waitara where Wiremu Kingi refused to let Teira Manuka sell a block of land though acknowledging his right of ownership. This incident led to open rebellion by some of the Taranaki tribes.  Ihaia Kirikumara and Tamati Tiraurau wrote a lengthy letter to the New Plymouth settlers[3] describing the turbulent conditions preceding it and reporting that some land had been paid for three times!

With the undoubted eagerness of colonists to buy land and of many Maori owners to sell, the Native Land Court was set up to facilitate transactions.  Nevertheless many tribes were dissatisfied with their situation, notably in the King Country.  Rebellion broke out and in due course some land was confiscated, fully in accordance with Maori practice, “tikanga” - surely well-understood by the rebel tribes.  Today a total of about 90% of land held under Maori title has been sold, 4½% confiscated from rebels with some being returned in due course. And, as Kake actually says, “5.2% of land is still held in Maori collective ownership”   This of course proves nothing since it flagrantly ignores the fact that much land today is held by Maori interests under standard “Torrens” title – the amount unknown in detail since records of the asserted ethnicity of owners are not kept.

However from all this, Jade Kake somehow deduces that “[i]t tracks then, that Māori are overrepresented in most measures of housing deprivation. The theft of land has robbed Māori of our intergenerational birthright ... If the land is the basis for wellbeing ... and the inextricability of ... identity from the land, then it is no wonder that the theft of land has left Māori unwell – spiritually, culturally, physically, mentally.”  Oh, yeah, Ms Kaka?  So pray tell me just how this pious pronouncement fits with the almost breakneck speed with which pre-Treaty Maoris offered land in exchange from the white man’s consumer goods and the widespread practice of victorious Maori tribes of confiscating land from those they had defeated.  And pinpoint for me the ways in which the conduct and practices of Hobson and his successors were less than honourable, given that you now know the structure initially set up by him to deal fairly with Maori owners who wanted so eagerly to sell their land?

It all smacks rather obviously of the raw politics which it is ‒ a proposal by the Green Party called apparently “Hoki Whenua Mai”.  As Kake says: “[it] presents a bold visit for Land Back, sketching out the various ways private landowners and government could return land outside of Treaty settlement processes [which] if implemented, would seek to repeal the 1993 amendment to enable privately owned land to be purchased for redress, would seek to alter the Treaty settlement process to remove the requirement for full and final settlement clauses.”

This is distinctly reminiscent of the lines from Kipling increasingly quoted today: “Once you start paying the Danegeld you never get rid of the Dane.”

You have been warned fellow Kiwis – stand up and say resolutely “No!” and keep on doing so until truth, fairness and democracy return to our shores.

References: 

[1]B. Byrne, “The Unknown Kaipara”, 2002, ISBN0-473-08831-2, 2002, lent to me by a Maori friend. October.2021 
[2]J. Jackson,”Mistaken Maori Land Claims, Book Seven, Treaty Series, Vol. 2, 2002 
[3]Quoted in full by J. Robinson, “When two cultures meet”, 2012,ISBN 1-872970-31-1, 2012,  pp. 158-160

Bruce Moon is a retired computer pioneer who wrote "Real Treaty; False Treaty - The True Waitangi Story".