A Separate Authority (He Mana Motuhake), Volume I

Establishing the Tūhoe Māori Sanctuary in New Zealand, 1894–1915

Steven Webster

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9783030410414
• eBook ISBN: 9783030410421
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Australian & Oceanian History
• Index: Social Sciences

This book is an ethnohistorical reconstruction of the establishment in New Zealand of a rare case of Maori home-rule over their traditional domain, backed by a special statute and investigated by a Crown commission the majority of whom were T?hoe leaders. However, by 1913 T?hoe home-rule over this vast domain was being subverted by the Crown, which by 1926 had obtained three-quarters of their reserve. By the 1950s this vast area had become the rugged Urewera National Park, isolating over 200 small blocks retained by stubborn T?hoe "non-sellers". After a century of resistance, in 2014 the T?hoe finally regained statutory control over their ancestral domain and a detailed apology from the Crown.

© The Author(s) 2020

S. WebsterA Separate Authority (He Mana Motuhake), Volume Ihttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41042-1_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Steven Webster¹

(1)

Social Anthropology, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

Steven Webster

End Abstract

1 A Brief Historical Overview

The following chapters attempt to reconstruct the struggle of Ngāi Tūhoe or the Tūhoe people, an indigenous iwi (‘tribe’) of Māori, to consolidate their mountain sanctuary in the Urewera under their own authority—he mana motuhake, an independent dominion—protected from the incursions of colonization in New Zealand.¹ This part of my account is focused narrowly upon a few years, especially 1899 through 1907, during which the Tūhoe were relatively successful in negotiating a settlement with the Crown and achieving their goal. Their less successful struggle against the Crown’s betrayal of this settlement between 1915 and 1925 has been available as my report to the Waitangi Tribunal (Webster 2004), now revised as a sequel Volume II accompanying this Volume I.

The 2014 Te Urewera settlement negotiated with the New Zealand government returned most control over the vast Urewera National Park to the Tūhoe. In terms of New Zealand’s history of hostility toward what in other nations has long been recognized as some form of ‘internal’ sovereignty or ‘home-rule’ of their indigenous peoples, this 2014 settlement was a reversal of the earlier reversal of the epochal 1896 Urewera District Native Reserve Act. Probably for the first time since British sovereignty was assumed in 1840, the 1896 Act established virtual home-rule for a Māori iwi over their ancestral lands. By 1907 the 1896 Act established the Urewera District Native Reserve (UDNR) for Tūhoe self-governance over the Urewera, but this statute began to be systematically subverted by 1908. By 1926 the huge reserve had been completely dismantled with over 70% of it taken over by the Crown. By the 1950s most of this Crown land became the Urewera National Park. The 2014 settlement may have finally reversed this embittered history.

The 2014 Tūhoe Claims Settlement and Te Urewera Acts formally settled Tūhoe claims to the Waitangi Tribunal pursued since the 1980s, and along with the earlier Service Management Plan intend to redress the Crown’s detailed acknowledgment and apology for 40 historical wrongs it did to the Tūhoe since 1840, including the confiscation of their best lands during the 1860s land wars (Tūhoe Claims Settlement Act 2014: 23–4; Te Urewera Act 2014). The details are unsparingly abject and the apology is eloquent; my abiding impression is that the Tribunal inquiry had been thorough and the government settlement sincere. In the 2004 hearings, I had been disappointed that, unlike many of the other reports for the Tribunal, the Crown decided not to present a counter-case to mine regarding the Crown’s subversion of the UDNR 1915–1926. However, in returning virtually the whole reserve to Tūhoe control in the 2014 Act, it went much further in redress than I had hoped.

Nevertheless, despite the laborious effort of Tūhoe leaders and government, understandably given this bitter history, many Tūhoe remain skeptical of the sincerity of the government’s long-term intentions. The major betrayals of the past had often been led by reversals of previous policies and even disregard of previous laws. Tūhoe research of similar settlements overseas was not encouraging. The recent re-runs of Crown dishonor in the 2007 ‘anti-terrorism’ raids in the Rūātoki valley of the Urewera and imprisonment of key leaders on spurious charges (Sluka 2010), and the Prime Minister’s public refusal in 2010 of any such settlement involving the Urewera National Park, of course, reinforced Tūhoe doubts. Perhaps it is true that Ngāi Tūhoe’s long battle to maintain their mana motuhake has in many ways just begun again.

The four figures included here will orient this introduction, but can also serve as an overview of major historical developments through to the Te Urewera settlement in 2014.

Figure 1.1 depicts the general locality of the original Urewera District Native Reserve (UDNR) in the contemporary North Island of New Zealand, and the main details of the area between the Bay of Plenty and Hawke’s Bay. This area includes the northern coastal lands confiscated by the Crown in the 1860s land wars and Lake Waikaremoana on the southern boundary. The Urewera Mountains are shown in shading rising from the Bay of Plenty coast to their southern-most crest in the Huiarau Range. The three main river valleys running from south to north out of the mountains to the Bay of Plenty coast are also shown, with the Whakatane (originally Ohinemataroa) River and Tauranga/Waimana River and their major tributaries centered in the UDNR.

Fig. 1.1

Location of Urewera District Native Reserve (1907) and its vicinity, the North Island, New Zealand. (Webster 2004: 13)

Figure 1.2 depicts about 38 blocks of the UDNR when it was formally established in 1907. This map also displays useful details of ranges, elevations, rivers, and tributaries. The investigation and provisional titles of these blocks are the main subject of the first few chapters, focusing primarily on the records of the 1899–1903 commission which, I argue, was dominated by Tūhoe leaders. For reasons that will be explained, these records are far more reliable than those of the appeals commission, which did not meet until 1906–1907. Some blocks were later partitioned in the Native Land Court between 1907 and 1913.

Fig. 1.2

Urewera District Native Reserve showing topography and original blocks, 1907. (Webster 2004: 331)

Figure 1.3 is a simplified version of the most detailed map of the UDNR that I have discovered. The version here depicts an obscure proposal in May 1902 to amalgamate 35 blocks of the UDNR into only 10 titles, but which was aborted when hearings resumed the following October. The original blocks as approved in 1907 are outlined within each amalgamation and can be identified by reference to Fig. 1.2. The amalgamation proposal was only briefly explained in the records, but was apparently supported by all five Tūhoe commissioners (and probably most other Tūhoe leaders) as well as the two Pākehā (‘white’ or ‘European’) commissioners who were the chairman and a Native Land Court judge. Because of its rich implications for research of Tūhoe hapū (descent group or ‘sub-tribe’) organization and the relative mana (‘prestige’ or ‘authority’) of hapū leaders, two amalgamations are analyzed in Chap. 6. The entire Part II of this volume (Chaps. 7, 8, 9, and 10) is devoted to a detailed reconstruction of the proposed Ruatāhuna-Waikaremoana amalgamation, an extensive marriage alliance, and related political alliances between hapū leaders during the period 1900–1913.

Fig. 1.3

Proposed amalgamation of 35 blocks into 10 titles, May 1902. (Webster 2004: 17)

Figure 1.4 depicts the major developments from the establishment of the UDNR in 1907, through its several decades as the Urewera National Park surrounding remnant Tūhoe lands, to the 2014 Te Urewera settlement acts returning most control of the national park to the Tūhoe. Comprehensively, this map outlines the largely congruent boundaries of the

1. (i)
   UDNR 1907–1921; Already by 1908 the Crown was circumventing the intentions of the 1896 Act and arranging purchases of individual shares in hopes of buying out entire blocks;
2. (ii)
   the four customary Tūhoe regions into which over 200 blocks owned by Tūhoe refusing to sell their shares in the old blocks were relocated in the reserve by the Urewera Consolidation Scheme of 1921–1926 (relative extent is exaggerated; in reality, it is less than 30% of the UDNR); and
3. (iii)
   the Urewera National Park that was established in the 1950s on the Crown’s 1925 award to itself of over 70% of the UDNR obtained in its purchase campaign along with more taken for surveying and road costs.

Fig. 1.4

Pupuri whenua (non-sellers) surviving shares of Urewera District Native Reserve as relocated in the Urewera Consolidation Scheme 1921–1926. (Webster 2004: 18)

The sequel Volume II of this ethnohistory examines details of the Crown purchase campaign and following Urewera Consolidation Scheme 1915–1926 which repealed the UDNR and its intended virtual home-rule (Webster 2004). The promised roads were never built, resulting in continuing impoverishment, and by the 1930s, pressure was again being applied to owners of the new blocks to sell to the Crown. Nevertheless, almost all of the over 200 new blocks held by the Tūhoe ‘non-sellers’ throughout the national park remained defiantly in their descendants’ ownership for nearly another century, importantly backing up their negotiations for the return of Te Urewera in the 2014 settlement.

Since the global ethnic revivals of the 1970s, and in some reports for the Waitangi Tribunal over the last two decades, a romantic assumption that the history of colonization is a history of victimization has often been led to a further assumption of passive acceptance by the colonized. Such assumptions are rarely supported by the facts of an actual colonial history and are furthermore damaging to efforts to redress an unjust history. To the contrary, examination of a specific history usually shows, as it does with the Tūhoe, that although the colonized may have lost much in the long run, they did not do so without a struggle, often maintained control of events at least for the short run, and in this way ensured that part of that history was made on their own terms. I argue that the era of investigation and establishment of the Urewera District Native Reserve 1894–1912, although it would soon pass, must be seen in these terms. In Volume II, with regard to the following Crown purchase campaign and Urewera Consolidation Scheme 1915–1926, I again substantiate this perspective. The Tūhoe accomplishment in regaining control of their Urewera sanctuary in 2014, nearly a century later, speaks for itself.

2 Ngāi Tūhoe and Te Urewera

One might well ask who are ‘the Tūhoe’ and what is ‘the Urewera’ (or ‘the Ureweras’)? Both terms are laden with popular assumptions and ambiguous use historically. The Tūhoe have long been notorious in New Zealand’s imagination for their defiant isolation and independence, and closely associated with the rugged wilderness of the Urewera ranges. In the musket wars before the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, the Urewera had often been their retreat from marauding Māori better armed than they, and this continued through the 1860s land wars with the Crown and the following confiscations of their more arable lands nearer the coast (now admitted to have been unjustified). Especially since the Māori cultural renaissance of the 1970s, the Tūhoe and some of their more outspoken leaders have become a popular symbol of Māori radicalism. They are also often admired among other Māori hapū and iwi as the most ‘traditional’ and stalwart of contemporary Māori peoples. It is true that, unlike most other Māori populations, many of the youth, as well as all of the elders of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• Part I. Tūhoe Hapū and the Establishment of the Urewera District Native Reserve
• Part II. Kinship and Power in Ruatāhuna and Waikaremoana, 1899–1913
• Part III. Conclusion
• Back Matter