ON THE GROUND

Given it had failed to militarily conquer our tupuna and that hardly any of its immigrant subjects were living on the ground during the period 1840 – 1865, how did the Government get away with stealing more than 302,000 acres from the hapu of Ngati Kahu before 1865?

The answer lies in the fact that during that period, and for some time after, our tupuna simply did not know their lands had been stolen.  Why would they have?  On the ground, nothing changed.  Their land was still being jointly used as per the law of tuku whenua; there was nothing to show that so-called ‘scrip’ or ‘surplus land’ existed; and there was no evidence that either those lands or the so-called ‘Crown grant’ and ‘Crown purchase’ lands had passed to anyone else. 

In fact it was not until decades later that the full scale of Government deceit and thievery was realised on the ground by Ngati Kahu, at which point the fight back began.  To illustrate, we will consider just one case this week.

Tangonge was part of the Ōtararau pre-treaty tuku whenua. Te Paatu whanau lived there as did whanau from Te Uri o Hina and Patu Koraha.  In 1857, Joseph Matthews, who had a Governor’s piece of paper for the Kaitaia tuku whenua, acknowledged that Tangonge was theirs exclusively and estimated the area to be a rather small 685 acres.

Regardless of Matthews’ support for the whanau living there, the Government stole Tangonge anyway, using the ‘surplus land’ technique.  But nothing happened on the ground to cause the whanau to think this land was no longer theirs.

It wasn’t until 1890 (after it was zoned as a Kauri gum reserve) that they found out the Government had stolen it when Timoti Te Ripi, believing it was still Māori land, demanded royalties for the gum extraction and was told the land belonged to the Government.

Te Ripi and 23 others immediately petitioned Parliament, but no hearing was granted.  However they did not give up.  Four more petitions followed and finally, in 1907, the Houston Commission investigated and reported that “otherwise landless” Maori were still living there, and urged the government to make the land available to them.

But the Government stalled and instead referred the matter to two further commissions (McCormack in 1925 and Sim in 1927), neither of which was privy to evidence that the Kaitāia tuku whenua had only been affirmed by the hapu on the condition that Tangonge remained theirs exclusively.

In any event neither of those Commissions resolved the matter and the Government declared it owned Tangonge.  Te Paatu resisted that theft longer than all others, and still does. 

It was not until the late 1960s, more than a century after its theft, that the Government physically forced the last seven Te Paatu families off Tangonge.  

The children of those families are still alive, and they have taught their uri how to fight back and to never give up until they are once again standing on the ground.