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Maori and the State: Crown-Māori relations in New Zealand/Aotearoa, 1950-2000

Policing and Social Control

Policing and Social Control

Under the MSEA Act, volunteer Maori Wardens were authorised to provide the valuable (and cheap) service of enforcing ‘order and regularity’ within the MWO/Welfare Division’s official committee system. Some Maori committees were quick to see the advantages of this, and began operating a warden system even before the first wardens were formally designated under the Act in 1949 – a delay partly caused by the need for New Zealand Police Force vetting of appointees. As well as their formal role in community policing, Maori wardens began assuming various leadership duties at flaxroots level early in the scheme’s operation. Numbers quickly escalated. In 1950, there were 32 official wardens, a figure which increased to 134 in 1951. By 1954, there were 205 and, as their uses in controlling Maori who had migrated to the towns and cities became manifest, their numbers continued to grow. There were over 500 in 1962, and by 1975 the number of wardens had reached a thousand.

The Department of Maori Affairs saw wardens as the ‘police force’ of the tribal executives and their committees, although their only identification at first was a metallic badge, and they were not remunerated for their work. In a dispatch to welfare officers, the department described a warden’s principal job as being to ‘stamp out mischief before it becomes a crime’ – in other words, to act mainly as preventive police. Wardens were said to be the ‘eyes and ears of the Executives … They are virtually policemen without the powers of policemen’. There were substantial penalties, applicable to pakeha as well as Maori, for obstructing their work. Because wardens were responsible to elected institutions, they could be – and were – seen as a community resource. But they were also part of the coercive wing of the MWO, a state-franchised institution.

Despite such an uneasy mix, there were few demands for their disbandment. In particular, both Crown and Maori communities wanted wardens to help regulate alcohol consumption, with excessive Maori drinking increasingly seen as detrimental to both the Maori community and the ‘public good’. Wardens could order Maori off licensed premises, or prevent publicans serving them liquor. In 1951, wardens gained increased liquor-related powers, such as the ability to enter Maori gatherings on c without a warrant in order to seize liquor. On such matters involving order within Maori communities, both they and tribal committees could act even if no relevant by-laws had been passed.

In addition to wardens’ formal duties, committees frequently used them for their own, informal social control purposes. The mana of being Crown-franchised officers sometimes gave wardens a better capacity to deal with ‘recalcitrance’ than had they been non-official tribal or other authorities. Moreover, given that they were voluntary and unpaid members of thepage 21 community operating under a principle that has been described as ‘aroha ki te tangata’ (love for the people), the wardens often assumed the status of community social workers. Although integrated into the state system, they came to epitomise the determination of Maori to run their own affairs and resolve their own problems. The official committee system’s responsibility for wardens assisted its capacity to survive and, in many areas and arenas, to thrive.9