A TSUNAMI OF THEFT

After 1856 the Government was no longer able to get away with simply writing ‘Crown grant’ and ‘scrip’ lies on pieces of paper to steal Ngati Kahu lands for its favoured citizens.  Nor was it able to maintain the practice of merely declaring our lands to be ‘surplus’ in order to steal them for later disposal.  So it came up with a new theft mechanism euphemistically called ‘Crown purchases’.

In reality ‘Crown purchases’ were only a variation on the ‘scrip’ and ‘surplus land’ theft techniques in that, for the first time, the Government actually paid token amounts of money to try and disguise its crimes as ‘sales’.  As such, Ngati Kahu refer to this money as guilt money, even though often as not it was paid to the wrong people, or never paid at all.  Either way it confirmed the mana whenua of our hapu and recognised that we, and not the Crown, owned our lands. 

The sheer scale of ‘Crown purchase’ thefts from Ngati Kahu cannot be covered in one column, so we will consider only one such series which took place between 1862 to 1865 when the Government went after the fertile Mangataiore/Victoria Valley and adjacent area; lands that belong to Ngati Taranga, Te Paatu, Pikaahu and Matakairiri.

It began in 1862 with the Mangatete south block of 11,125 acres.  The guilt money was just £509. Only four reserves were set aside for Ngati Kahu: Ōtarapoko (206 acres), Whiwhero (178 acres), Hauturu (144 acres) and Te Rangirangina (176 acres). Apart from tiny remnants, all four had also been stolen by 1947.

Maungataniwha East, an area of 8,649 acres, was also stolen in 1862 with guilt money of £388. Four small blocks, Ahitahi, Ōtaharoa, Haumapu and Te Awapuku, were acknowledged as exclusively for the hapū but were not formally reserved, and all of them were later stolen between 1867 and 1885. 

Maungataniwha West No 1, an area of 12,940 acres, was stolen in 1863. The guilt money was £647. An area of 1,130 acres was cut out as the Pēria block, and 566 acres of that was also later stolen.

Maungataniwha West No 2, an area of 11,002 acres, was also stolen in 1863. The guilt money was £560. There were two reserves: Tāheke (79 acres), which was later stolen in 1877, and Mangataiore (381 acres), 191 acres of which were also later stolen.

Taunoke, an area of 44 acres, was stolen in 1864. The guilt money was £5.

Kaiaka, an area of 7,367 acres was stolen in 1865.  The guilt money was £1,114. The four reserves, Tāheke, Te Hororoa, Whakapapa and Waimamaku, were all stolen by 1941. 

By 1865, for guilt money totalling £7,204 2s 6d, the Government had used ‘Crown purchases’ to steal almost 230,000 additional acres from Ngati Kahu’s hapu. 

Indeed, what had begun after 1840 as a series of Crown-led crime waves had, by 1865, truly transformed into a tsunami of theft.

FURTHER FLASH TERMS FOR THEFT

In the early years after signing the 1840 Te Tiriti o Waitangi with our tupuna, the Crown and its Governments used three different but inter-related pieces of paper to steal Ngati Kahu lands. 

Last week we looked at ‘Crown grants’.  This week we look at ‘surplus land’ and ‘scrip’ which were two further flash terms for theft.  To understand what they were in reality we need to again consider the background and the work of the Government-appointed Old Land Claims Commissioners; Edward Godfrey in 1843, and Francis Dillon Bell in 1856. 

In reality, ‘scrip’ was a piece of paper that the Government gave to a European who had wrongly claimed Ngati Kahu land. It promised that he could have some of Ngāti Whātua’s lands in the new town of Auckland instead.   

There isn't space enough in this article to cover every instance of the Crown’s ‘scrip’ thefts in Ngati Kahu, so one representative case will have to do.

At Kaimaumau, land which belongs to Te Paatu and Patukoraha, the Government paid out the European claimant, William Macky, in ‘scrip’ that entitled him to 225 acres in Auckland.  It then took over the original false claim to more than 1000 acres in Kaimaumau, and that land was later included in the Government’s theft of the 13,555 acre Wharemaru block.

Now we turn to ‘surplus lands’.  In 1856, the Government’s Land Claims Settlement Act set up a further Commission under Francis Dillon Bell to survey the original tuku whenua.  The surveys identified how much land the European ‘grantees’ could keep, when in fact it still belonged to the hapū who had allocated it.

In reality, ‘surplus’ land was any additional land over and above what the European had wrongfully claimed.  But instead of returning or leaving it to the hapu owners, the Government instead called it ‘surplus’ and stole it.  

Again this article cannot cover every instance of ‘surplus land’ thefts in Ngati Kahu, so the following representative cases must do.  

At Kauhoehoe, which belongs to Te Whānau Moana and Te Rorohuri, the Government gave the European politician, Walter Brodie, a piece of paper which recorded 947.5 acres, and then Bell stole a further 378.5 acres as ‘surplus’. At Mangatete, land which belongs to Patukōraha, the Government gave the European missionary, James Davis, a piece of paper which recorded 466 acres, and Bell then stole a massive 4,880 acres as ‘surplus’.

All in all, between 1840 and 1865, the Government is known to have stolen 25,096 acres from Ngati Kahu using ‘Crown grants’, plus a further 47,534 acres using ‘scrip’ and ‘surplus lands’.  It then either fenced or gave away some of those stolen land to European immigrants, and kept the rest for later disposal.

Ironically, under its own Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009, thieves who are successfully prosecuted stand to be jailed and stripped of any assets they've gained as a result of their crimes and, arguably, under its own Crimes Act 1961 the Government’s use of ‘Crown grants’, ‘scrip’ and ‘surplus lands’ meets the definition of theft.  

However, as bad as they were, those crimes were just the first waves of what was to become a tsunami of further flash terms for theft by the Government.

TOOK YOUR WHENUA

‘Crown grants’ was one of the first flash terms applied by the Crown to its thefts of Ngati Kahu lands.  So what were Crown grants in reality?  To answer that we need to look at the background and the dealings of the Old Land Claims Commissions. 

Set up by the Government under the New Zealand Land Claims Ordinance 1841, the first Commission heard the claims of European immigrants to Ngati Kahu lands which various rangatira had granted for their use in pre-treaty tuku whenua. 

Tuku whenua were not ‘sales’.  Their nearest English equivalent in 1840 and since would be the transaction-based concept of a ‘lease’.  But even that does not fully describe the deeper, relationship-based concept of tuku whenua.

In any event, the main purpose of the New Zealand Land Claims Ordinance was not to protect Ngāti Kahu interests under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.  Instead it was to provide a legal beard to disguise the illegal theft of our lands and their distribution amongst Europeans.

The ordinance stemmed from the racist European presumption of superiority, and the wrong European assumption that pre-treaty tuku whenua were English custom land ‘sales’.    

Based on that flawed ordinance, which breached Te Tiriti, and on the lies told by many of the European claimants that the rangatira had ‘sold’ lands to them, Commissioner Edward Godfrey reported to Governor Robert Fitzroy who then wrote and gave those claimants pieces of paper of different kinds.  That included the mechanisms of theft called ‘scrip’ and ‘Crown grants’.

In reality ‘Crown grants’ were nothing more than pieces of paper on which the Governor of the day endorsed the lies told about certain Ngati Kahu lands and expressed his desire that the Crown had magically become the owner of those lands, so that he could give them to his favoured subjects.

Thus we see that many Europeans of that time were active parties to the initial thefts of our lands, and to the lies told since to make them look legal.

That includes the lie that all tuku whenua in Muriwhenua were fully investigated, first by Godfrey in 1843, and then by Bell in 1856. 

In fact, of the 62 European land claims lodged for pre-treaty tuku whenua in all Muriwhenua, only 14 were ever investigated, and in none of those cases were any Ngati Kahu rangatira present let alone examined. Te Rarawa’s Panakareao was visited by Godfrey, but neither Panakareao nor his Ngapuhi rival Pororua represented Ngati Kahu. 

Yet, even though an examination of the historical record (written and oral) proves them to be fictitious, many Europeans of that time and since have tried to pretend that ‘Crown grants’ were real and to convince Ngāti Kahu that means other people, rather than us, now own our lands.

Ngati Kahu have never believed the lies those thieves seem to like making up.  We know that our 'tuku whenua' generosity never meant the same as their 'took your whenua' greed.

THEFT BY ANY OTHER NAME

To support their theft of almost all of Ngāti Kahu’s lands before 1865, the British Crown and immigrants used sanitised terms like – “pre-Treaty transactions[1]” or “old land claims[2]”, “surplus lands[3]”, “Crown grants[4]”, “scrip[5]”, “waste lands[6]”, and “Crown purchases[7]”. 

But those were all just flash names for theft.  They would only not have been theft if our ancestors had discussed and signed something called the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. 

That document, written in English, stated that the rangatira had ceded their sovereignty to the Queen of England – a notion that is as inconceivable in human behavioural terms as it is wrong in factual terms. 

Our ancestors signed only one treaty, Te Tiriti o Waitangi written in the Māori language. They neither read nor signed an English language document.

Yet certain British immigrants and their successors from that day to this have used the fraudulent Treaty of Waitangi document to justify stealing Ngāti Kahu lands, resources and power.

They even inserted it into Government legislation via the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 where the Waitangi Tribunal is given the impossible task of trying to reconcile it with the authentic treaty.

Its most recent use is in many Deeds of Settlement drawn up by Government bureaucrats who have inserted the odd phrase “Te Tiriti o Waitangi/The Treaty of Waitangi”, as if the two documents were either similar or were translations of each other. They are neither.

Te Tiriti o Waitangi is a treaty of peace and friendship between two sovereign nations and a solemn agreement between our rangatira and the Queen of England. The Treaty of Waitangi reflects the desire of certain immigrants and their Governments to take control of a country that is not theirs.

Immigrants whom we welcomed into our territories and who then stole from us, also tried to drive us out and reduce us to perpetual servitude, slavery, poverty, deprivation and marginalisation in our own country.

As just one example of this, in 1843 their Godfrey Commission awarded 16,199 acres of our lands to just six Europeans, and a further 15,966 acres as “surplus lands” to the Crown.  That same Commission “gave” several hundred unnamed Maori title over just 446 acres.

 

More than 32,000 acres stolen in one move[8]; Whakaangi, Taemaro, Mangonui, Mangatete, Ohotu, Waiokai, Okiore, Kaitaia, Kerekere, Awanui, Pukepoto, Otararau (including Tangonge), Parapara, Tapuirau, Te Mata, Wharo, Matako, Kaimaumau, most of the Oruru Valley, and parts of the Karikari Peninsula.   

Further thefts followed and many of our whānau were forced to leave[9] their ancestral homes in order to survive.  But a number braved hostile conditions to keep a constant Ngāti Kahu presence[10] in our territories and to keep alive our tikanga and the kaupapa laid down by our ancestors.

Five generations of Ngāti Kahu have now sought to stop the lawlessness of those immigrants and their successors, drawing on both our legal system and theirs. 

My generation have already trained our successors.  They know that whatever the thieves call it, theft by any other name is still theft.

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[1] Beyond Biculturalism: The Politics of an Indigenous Minority, by Dominic O’Sullivan, p.63

[2] Invisible Sight, by Angela Wanhalla, ch. 5 pp. 94 – 106

[3] O’Sullivan, p. 63

[4] Ibid. ch1, pp. 23 – 24

[5] The Legacy of Guilt: A Life of Thomas Kendall, by Judith Binney and Thomas Kendall, Appendix 3, p. 190

[6] Buying the Land, Selling the Land: Governments and Maori Land in the North, by Richard Boast, ch 1, pp 25 – 26

[7] O’Sullivan, p.63

[8] Muriwhenua Land Report, 1997 by the Waitangi Tribunal, ch. 5, pp. 141 – 178.

[9] Muriwhenua Land Report, ch. 10, pp.327 – 383.

[10]The Muriwhenua Land Claims Post 1865, by Dame Evelyn Stokes.