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

Quickening the Pace of Change

page 100

Quickening the Pace of Change

The Crown had, indeed, never been at ease with indigeneity. The weakening of tribal links that accompanied the move to the cities was therefore welcomed and encouraged by it, despite all the problems of social order which eventuated as a consequence. These were expected to be gradually overcome by good management, prosperity and the passage of time. In the decade after the Hunn report, the voices of those who used the language of self-determination, autonomy, rangatiratanga and the like were scarcely heeded, and state franchised urbanisation proceeded apace alongside other integrationist measures. In 1965, official commissioners noted that the way Maori had been ‘compelled to move to the towns … is so pronounced that [the Crown] already has a word which describes it. That word is relocation’.

Coordinated interdepartmental arrangements to assist urban migration had been evolving over the years, with a flurry of activity in the last months of the Nash government. The idea behind this, as Hunn expressed it in 1960, was to ‘guide [the urbanisation process] along proper channels’, given that ‘re-location from under-developed areas was already taking place on a fairly large scale’. ‘[I] nstead of standing passively aside and watching the Maoris drift aimlessly into town in a stream, we should be there to meet them … with accommodation and jobs’. Earlier efforts were now to be built upon, coordinated and supplemented. ‘Planned relocation’ was discussed by a joint departmental committee on Maori employment, a pilot scheme was established to find jobs and accommodation for single workers, and plans were developed to place families in homes and work in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington and Rotorua. Welfare officers gained resources to help those newly arrived from the country to make ‘helpful associations’ in the urban environment. In 1961, the DMA established a comprehensive relocation programme to further propel Maori people from ‘retarded areas’ in the countryside to the towns and cities. Maori were seen more than ever to constitute a ‘reserve army of labour’ (as it has been described in other contexts), ready to be called in to assist urban-based industrialisation. ‘We think’, said one official prior to the commencement of the DMA programme, ‘that this re-location of families from rural to urban areas should be continued as much as possible. There is a growing demand for labour of a permanent nature’.20

Whatever the Crown’s motivations for its Maori migration agenda, it cannot be doubted that urban relocation packages and similar bureaucratic policies assisted many Maori, both individuals and families, to greatly improve their living standards. The policies foreshadowed comprehensively in Hunn’s report also led to other positive developments for many Maori people. There was ‘tremendous improvement’, in one assessment, ‘in the standard of Maoripage 101 housing’ and, for a few years, a steady betterment in indicators of health, mortality rates and education. These occurred alongside increasing efforts ‘to take advantage of the Maori viewpoint’ in various spheres of official activity. An interdepartmental advisory Maori Health Committee, for example, channelled Maori opinion to officials in a coordinated way, and other such structures followed. While far from meeting the increasingly vocal Maori demand for Maori control of things Maori, such developments were widely seen by Maori as steps in the right direction.

In a few cases, the steps seemed considerable. In 1961, the government launched the Maori Education Foundation ‘to provide specialised assistance and information to help the Maori people improve their level of educational attainment’. It noted that the ‘economic, environmental, and cultural’ factors hindering Maori educational advancement needed to be overcome. The foundation aimed to ‘raise Maori educational standards to equal those of the pakeha’. With seeding funding and subsidies from the state, it was organised as if it were a partnership between Maori and pakeha, albeit a Crown-established one.

The foundation was described as an ‘independent statutory authority jointly managed by four Maori and four pakeha trustees [and] financed by Government and private enterprise, Maori and pakeha’. But despite its initial promise as a prototypal bicultural model, the foundation proved to be another example of short-to medium-term targeting aimed at producing the necessary conditions for integration in the longer run. As the Department of Maori Affairs reminded, ‘Maori welfare authorities consider education of primary importance in Maori adjustment to modern civilisation’. In the post-Hunn report atmosphere, the pace needed to be forced. The chair of the foundation’s Board of Trustees, D G Ball, referred to high stakes (at a time of growing race tension in the United Kingdom): ‘We are determined to avert any possibility of a racial problem in New Zealand through the Maori people having lower educational standards than the remainder of the community.’21

In the Crown’s view, Maori adjustment to modernity could not be anything but integrationist in nature. Despite some increased attention being paid to Maori opinions, the main concern of politicians and officials was to create a willing workforce of healthy, educated and westernised individuals. The state had not abandoned its longstanding policies of appropriating tribal structures, imperatives and organisational culture to assist with the process of integration. It was now, however, increasingly focussing on utilising collective indigenous in the cities. Certainly the pan-tribal nature of most of the official (and other) urban committees, and their voluntary memberships, meant that urban-based appropriation could be less efficient for the Crown than its equivalent in rural areas, with their strong kin-based forms of social control.page 102 But putting resources and time into urban Maori institutions was often seen by officials and politicians as preferable – given that tribal energies were generally regarded, even in their appropriated form, as potentially undermining that which the Crown wanted ultimately to achieve.

On the other hand, the Crown’s unwillingness to regard Maori mores, customs and social organisation as integral to urban-based life was of increasing concern to many among the Maori leadership. Such worries became more acute as the movement to the cities accelerated. The Presbyterian Maori manifesto had been unequivocal at the very beginning of feedback on the Hunn report: ‘Let it be understood that … we have no desire whatever to become Pakehas.’ Strategies for avoiding cultural submergence in the face of overwhelming government, demographic and other pressure were fraught with difficulty. But while the Crown worked towards the demise of Maoritanga, the organisations whose energies it appropriated often became sites of both political and cultural resistance to full assimilation. Even the urban committees, while assisting adjustment to capitalist and pakeha ways of doing things, were determined ‘to steer a course between two cultures, the literate and the oral’, and to affirm rangatiratanga in the process. There were many weapons in the fight to recover what the Presbyterian declaration called the ‘lost soul’ of Maoridom.22

The state could draw on the help of some Maori groups which endorsed an integrationist perspective, but even they did not share any consensus with officialdom on what integration meant. More broadly, ‘Maori attitudes towards the costs and benefits of achieving integration are clearly different from those of the non-Maori’, Kawharu would write. This was due to ‘a difference in assumptions about the nature and significance of the evolutionary trends in Maori social organisation and cultural values’. Opinions may ‘have shifted on both sides from time to time, [but] they have failed to coalesce’. Maori of various stances, and organised in discrete ways, were not about to relinquish the possibility of meaningful control over their collective destiny, whether or not they were prepared to work within the parameters of debate and policy established by the Crown.23

20 Prichard and Waetford, Report of the Committee of Inquiry, p 76 (for ‘compelled to move’ quote); Harris, ‘Maori and “the Maori Affairs”’, pp 203-4; Butterworth and Young, Maori Affairs, pp 99-100 (for ‘retarded areas’ quote); Walker, ‘Maori People Since 1950’, p 501; ‘Conference of District Officers’, Notes of Discussions, Wellington, 22–24 Nov 1960, AAMK, 869, Box 663d, Part 2, 19/1/237, Conference of District Officers, 1960-62 (for ‘guide [the process]’ quote); J K Hunn to 308 Father P J Cleary, 25 Oct 1961, MA 1, Box 655, 36/1/21, Part 4, Race Relations–Integration–Segregation, 1961-62 (for ‘[I]nstead of standing’ quote); Nightingale; Report from Palmerston North to Head Office, re ‘Housing Target 1961/62’, 28 Oct 1960, AAMK, 869, Box 663d, Part 2, 19/1/237, Conference of District Officers, 1960–62 (for ‘We think’ quote); Harris, ‘Dancing with the State’, pp 143-6.

21 Kenworthy et al, Some Aspects, pp 60, 64, 86-7, 89 (p 60 for ‘tremendous improvement’ quote, p 64 for ‘to take advantage’ quote); Department of Maori Affairs, The Maori Today, 1964, ‘Education’ section (for ‘to provide specialised assistance’ and following quotes); Butterworth, ‘Aotearoa 1769–1988, ch 9, pp 15–8; Butterworth and Young, Maori Affairs, p 103; ‘Maori Education: A New Foundation’, pamphlet, Eph A MAORI 1962, Alexander Turnbull Library (for ‘those of the pakeha’ and ‘remainder of the community’ quotes).

22 Presbyterian Church, A Maori View, p 10 (for ‘Let it be understood’ and ‘lost soul’ quotes); Jackson, Michael D, ‘Literacy, Communication and Social Change: A Study of the Meaning and Effect of Literacy in Early Nineteenth Century Society’, in Kawharu, I Hugh (ed), Conflict and Compromise: Essays on the Maori Since Colonisation, Wellington, 1975 (2003 ed), p 48 (for ‘to steer a course’ quote).

23 Kawharu, I Hugh, ‘Introduction’, in Kawharu, I Hugh (ed), Conflict and Compromise: Essays on the Maori Since Colonisation, Wellington, 1975 (2003 ed), p 16 (for ‘Maori attitudes’ quotes).