Maori and the State: Crown-Māori relations in New Zealand/Aotearoa, 1950-2000
Reaction to Crown Policy
Reaction to Crown Policy
In 1961, however, the Crown believed that Maori weapons of c lacked significant power, given both urban migration and its own hegemonic strength: things distinctively Maori could soon be relegated to a cultural and touristic marginalia. But it would quickly encounter determined resistance to the most overt of its assimilationist policies. In particular, there was profound Maori resistance to the government’s efforts to implement Hunn’s ‘solutions’ to the problems of Maori land title development. The Hunn report notedpage 103 that land title consolidation processes had become, because of the exponential laws of succession, ‘a treadmill effort, endless and hopeless’ – although it did acknowledge that the land title system was ‘a European invention imposed on [Maori] in the first place’. Maori welcomed Hunn’s criticism of the inadequacy of state policy on Maori land, but many saw his recommendations to be posited on ‘public good’ paternalism. His views, and those of the officials and politicians working with him, were considered to be those of an analyst looking to the state’s ‘natural interest’ rather than to Maori-generated, let alone Maori-controlled, solutions.
This state-led perspective can be seen in the Hunn report’s handling of the question of developing Maori rural land, including that leased out to owner-nominated Maori farmers. The productivity of many such lease-hold farms was assessed as falling far short of that which the country needed. Underutilised or idle land, Hunn wrote, was not in the ‘national interest’, which included ‘of course [,] the Maori interest’. A key problem was that many Maori farmers were deemed inadequate. In cases where more than one Maori lessee farmer had been nominated by owners, District Maori Land Committees had made the selection, but even this had not guaranteed ‘aptitude or experience’. The remedy Hunn proposed was to take, when necessary, selection of the lessee of Maori-owned land out of the owners’ hands: ‘In future, Maori owners will be asked to agree in advance that, failing a satisfactory nomination by them, the Board of Maori Affairs will have the right to select the settler. They may not take kindly to that suggestion.’ They did not, and they remarked that there were no equivalent restrictions applied to pakeha owners.
But it was Hunn’s solution to the very real problem of fragmented land tenure which created real anger within Maoridom. He argued that national production suffered as a result of multiple ownership because it ‘obstructs utilisation’. His report proposed that the Crown acquire multiple or ‘uneconomic’ interests and hold these ‘in trust for the Maori people’ while the land was developed or utilised in the name of the public good. Bureaucrats began, at the behest of the minister, to work on detailed solutions along the broad lines established by the report. As in many past policies related to land, state interventionist impulses took scant heed of Maori concerns and wishes – which often centred on overcoming impediments faced by collectivities in acquiring development capital. Soon, officials were recommending that, since it was in the national interest to dramatically raise ewe numbers, ‘unoccupied and undeveloped Maori land’ would have to be ‘both occupied and developed’ by the state. Collective ownership and management were seen as both anachronistic in terms of ‘evolution’ and wrong in terms of ethical/ideological values. The two came together in Hunn’s words: ‘Everybody’s land is nobody’s land’. Solutions to the combined problems of land tenure and development involved,page 104 in short, the state deciding on the best course of action to take based on pakeha assumptions about appropriate ownership modes and economic uses for the land.24
While land was of central concern to Maori, for cultural as well as productive reasons, it was just one domain in which the Crown’s assimilationist policies posed difficulties. Even where post-Hunn policies did bring improvement – such as in housing, health and education – and therefore Maori approval, this was generally seen to constitute ‘assistance’ from a top-down government. This minimised Maori involvement in policy formation, let alone allowing for ethnic duality in political or bureaucratic decision-making. Those in charge of the capitalist democracy of New Zealand operated with an individualistic vision with little tolerance for collective, plural or tribal involvement in social, economic or political matters. State development programmes and initiatives were aimed squarely at an assimilative ‘New Zealand’, one which excluded ‘Aotearoa’ except where the Crown was forced to do otherwise – and such cases were viewed, conceptually, as largely temporary or (at most) medium-term accommodations to Maoriness.
Such an analysis does not imply that finding ways of meeting Maori aspirations within the New Zealand state was (or is) easy. Maori often appreciated the difficulties, and expressed a multitude of views as to viable ways forward. Following the Hunn report, for example, consultation on the fate of the Maori schools confirmed that many Maori supported their proposed abolition. They were seen as out-dated impediments to acquiring the western education Maori needed if they were to hold their own, individually or collectively, in modern New Zealand. Such views lay behind 22 Maori schools abandoning their special status or closing down in the ten years after the mid-1950s. Many other Maori, however, viewed the ongoing disappearance of the schools as signifying the triumph of assimilation in education, and they fought the trend. They had come to see the Maori school institution, originally set up as a state device to fast-track assimilation among Maori, as ‘their own’. Maori schools were useful, both practically and symbolically, for the promotion of Maoritanga and in the general interests of Maoridom.
Even on the land issue, reactions could be mixed and complex. While many opposed the paternalist and potentially coercive recommendations in the Hunn report, not all opposed Crown purchase of small interests in land, especially those who needed the wherewithal to migrate to the cities in search of better economic opportunities. Some had already pointed out that the increasing propensity for the Maori Land Court to protect Maori collective rights in land could disadvantage individuals who wanted to sell their interests to acquire a ‘house site in town’. In the words of a 1965 official enquiry, there was ‘nothing in the Treaty which forced Maoris to retain their land’. Rangatiratanga could bepage 105 expressed, in some perspectives, through the freedom to sell – an attitude which went back to the previous century.25
24 Hunn, Report on Department of Maori Affairs, pp 46–78 (p 48 for ‘national interest’ quote, p 49 for ‘aptitude or experience’ and ‘In future’ quotes, p 52 for ‘Everybody’s land’ and ‘European invention’ quotes, p 55 for ‘treadmill effort’ quote, p 68 for ‘in trust’ quote); Presbyterian Church, A Maori View, p 26; Prichard and Waetford, Report of the Committee of Inquiry, Wellington, 1965, p 95 (for ‘unoccupied and undeveloped’ quote).
25 McLeay, Elizabeth (ed), New Zealand Politics, p 238; Simon, Judith and Smith, Linda Tuhiwai (eds), A Civilising Mission? Perceptions and Recommendations of the New Zealand Native Schools System, Auckland, 2001; Prichard and Waetford, Report of the Committee of Inquiry, pp 67–8, 77–84, 150 (p 77 for ‘house site in town’ quote, p 150 for ‘nothing in the Treaty’ quote); Bradly, ‘Education’s Impact’, p 67.