The Functions of Maori Wardens

The Crown, then, was much exercised to ensure that Maori observed appropriate forms of (essentially western) behaviour. The MWA confirmed Maori wardens, in particular, as ‘agents of social control and law enforcement’, to cite the words of Augie Fleras, an anthropologist who would conduct pioneering research into their work. Although nominated from within official associations, wardens were appointed by the Minister of Maori Affairs for a period of three years. They carried out their various tasks with minimal state assistance and provided their services for little or no remuneration (or even reimbursement for expenses). From an official point of view, wardens were of most value in exercising their interventionist powers in the monitoring, supervision and sometimes disciplining of ‘troublesome elements’. Although their formal constraining powers were severely restricted, they often undertook informal coercive actions to get their work done. As multi-purposed agents of the state (like regular police personnel but with far fewer formal coercive powers) wardens enjoyed a stronger interventionist presence in Maori communities under the MWA than before it. But their role was of considerable benefit to the communities they served. Sometimes, when the committees which technically deployed them went into operational abeyance, individual wardens would continue their services on behalf of the community, and with widespread support and assistance.

Broadly speaking, wardens were expected to help guide the adjustment to modernity and urban resettlement of Maori, and their tasks included providing ‘material and spiritual assistance for those unable to stand on their own feet’. By the end of the 1970s, on the basis of his fieldwork, Fleras would conclude that wardens had proved to be of considerable assistance ‘in facilitating a Maori adaptation to an urban milieu’. Since their work often reflected community wishes and priorities as much as or more than those of the Crown, they were often more responsive to people and leaders at local level than to those within officialdom – including those exercising official powers within the official system’s lines of command. In 1963, such trends were officially recognised to have boosted both social efficiency and general Maori morale, and the local Maori committees gained control of the more than 500 wardens. The NZMC declared in 1967 that the system of wardens represented ‘acceptance by Maoris of a form of self discipline based on pride in being Maori and on the ties of aroha that bind Maori to Maori’.

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Working with the local Maori leadership, wardens could apply disciplinary sanctions against members of their own people for matters such as ‘riotous, offensive, threatening, insulting or disorderly’ behaviour. They could retain the car keys of any Maori they considered unfit to drive, and order those who were ‘intoxicated, quarrelsome or violent’ to leave licensed premises. Along with other members of Maori committees, wardens could ‘take out a prohibition order against a Maori who has a problem with alcoholism or neglects his family by spending his wages on liquor’. They could expel people at Maori gatherings who were behaving in disorderly fashion, and confiscate liquor distributed without a permit from the local Maori committee. The wardens would clean up after acts of vandalism or neglect by Maori, accompany honorary welfare officers to problem homes, and have committees direct Maori offenders to come under their ‘close supervision and surveillance’. Obviously, such activities generally suited the Maori community and the state alike, and the warden system flourished in many areas.¹²

In particular, the wardens were seen as a crucial component of their communities’ fight against crime and disorder. By the later 1950s, Maori offending in the cities and large towns had increasingly come to public attention, and the Hunn report had confirmed, through collation and propagation of statistics, a significant upwards trend in Maori-generated crime and disorder. The Maori male offending rate had reached three and a half times that of pakeha men, for example. As the report’s recommendations were gradually implemented, the wardens forged closer bonds with the regular police in a joint effort to prevent or suppress social disorder. Their levels of cooperation were boosted from time to time, and an amendment to the MWA in 1963 made provision for formal cooperation by wardens with regular and traffic police. In the following year, the authority of wardens was further enhanced when they secured – after many years of submissions – permission to wear uniforms.

As crime rates among Maori continued to rise due to a combination of causes, including social dislocation, cultural alienation and absolute and relative poverty, a greater focus on ‘enforcement and sanction-type roles’ came into play. By 1968, Maori were over-represented in the summary convictions figures by a factor of three and in the prison population statistics by a factor of four. Two years later, Maori had a four to one arrest rate relative to pakeha, and a conviction rate of eight to one. Whatever the causes of such statistics (and ethnocentrism and racism among coercive authorities played their part), wardens had increasingly to take on the ‘connotations of a Maori police force’, as an official review of their role noted at the end of the century. This ongoing enhancement of the policing functions wardens had performed since their establishment in the 1940s hooked them increasingly into state social control imperatives. Individuals from lower socio-economic strata tended to volunteerpage 125 for the position of warden, especially in the cities, replicating the ancient policing practice of ‘like policing like’. At an urban meeting in 1969, the 15 wardens recorded as present had occupations such as railway worker, machine operator, driver, postal assistant, linesman, factory worker and housemaid. They represented communal self-discipline, a specialist complement to, and (especially in the cities and towns) a replacement for, the tribal-based discipline of the home marae.

In rural communities, the tribal mana of wardens afforded a considerable amount of the backing needed to cope with the demands of their role. The authority of wardens did not, however, always go without challenge, especially in the multi-tribal setting of the cities. Here an offender from a tribe other than that of the warden might well fail to respond to initial attempts at persuasion or mediation, possibly causing the police to be called in (especially if the offender had assaulted the warden, who might or might not have attempted informal physical coercion). Nor did the wardens’ uniform or official warrant necessarily accord them respect even of people from their own tribe.

Periodically, Maori youths in the cities and large towns resented and resisted their authority. Young men asked to leave pubs by uniformed semi-policemen of ‘their own race’ were not concerned about such niceties as whose ultimate interests the wardens were protecting. The quasi-police powers of wardens were regarded by many as yet another indignity to be borne as a result of their generally low status in society and/or as another attempt by a communal Maori control system to discipline them in a fashion that pakeha were not subjected to – despite their having opted for the attractions of individualised life in the urban spaces. In the final analysis, they were right to see things in such ways, for the raison d’etre of the committee system’s policing powers was that they were exercised exclusively for socio-racial control within Maoridom. In the eyes of a number of Maori, including some urban intellectuals, this differential exercise of coercion was a derogation from, rather than an endorsement of, rangatiratanga.

The New Zealand Police, too, were sometimes ambivalent about the wardens, whose semi-professional ‘assistance’ could prove to be more trouble than it was worth. At times, wardens might even provoke rather than contain disorder – when, say, they were resisted by youths resentful of the differential attention paid to them, because of their colour, in a mixed-race situation. But although not all police welcomed at all times the intervention of Maori whose badge and warrant came from the Minister of Maori Affairs, the holders of the office of constable generally appreciated their back-up presence and were sometimes very grateful indeed for their assistance. Wardens acted in conjunction with them, for example, to ensure public order at large gatherings involving Maori, especially in circumstances in which the regular policepage 126 (with few Maori members at that time) might well feel uncomfortable. Maori wardens not only complemented preventive or reactive official policing, they also served as social workers with at-risk youth in the justice and education systems, as private ancillaries on state-funded order tasks, and eventually (when the contracting out of public services gained strength) as state-sanctioned private security operators for local bodies, hospitals, businesses and the like.¹³