WHY LIE?

On 4^th June 1936, a pre-treaty transaction was purported to have taken place between a Pākehā called Thomas Ryan and a Māori called ‘Nukewa’ in which Ryan said he had traded £5 6s worth of goods for 320 acres at Whakaangi in the rohe of two Ngāti Kahu hapū, Ngāti Ruaiti and Ngāti Aukiwa. 

After Te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed, Thomas Ryan was amongst a number of Pākehā who made a claim in 1843 to the Godfrey Commission, the first in a series of Commissions that were set up by the Crown, after Te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed, to hear the ‘Old Land Claims’ of Pākehā immigrants that Māori had ‘sold’ lands to them pre-treaty.  

141 years later, the Crown’s own Waitangi Tribunal found these transactions were tuku whenua, not ‘sales’.  However, many Europeans of that time had actively lied to make those tuku whenua look like legal ‘sales’ in European terms.  That included the lie that all the Pākehā claims were fully investigated.

The Crown’s own records show that less than 10 per cent of those claims were ever investigated, and none of them fully.  Certainly, no Ngāti Kahu rangatira were ever present let alone examined. Te Rarawa’s Panakareao was visited in 1843, but neither he nor his Ngāpuhi rival, Pororua Wharekauri, represented the Ngāti Kahu hapū on the whenua.

Following each Old Pākehā Land Claim hearing, the Commissioner executed one of three options:

1.       Wrote a piece of paper called a ‘Crown grant’ giving ownership of some or all of the claimed land to the Pākehā claimant; anything not given was called ‘surplus’ and the Crown stole it for itself.

2.       Wrote a piece of paper called ‘scrip’ giving the Pākehā claimant the equivalent value of land in the rohe of Ngāti Whātua.  The knock-on impact on Ngāti Whātua of having their land stolen in this way was horrific.

3.       Rejected the Pākehā claim outright and instead stole the land for the Crown as ‘surplus’.

During the 1843 hearings, to avoid clashing with Pana Kareao,  Commissioner Godfrey declined to write Thomas Ryan a grant and offered him 438 acres of ‘scrip’ instead, but Ryan rejected it. 

In 1856, Ryan appeared before the Bell Commission to again press his claim to own Whakaangi.  Following in Godfrey’s footsteps, Commissioner Bell upped the offer of scrip to 1,146 acres, which Ryan again rejected.  So, Bell finally wrote him a Crown grant … for 3 acres!  The Crown kept the remaining 317 acres for itself as ‘surplus.’

The only good thing that came out of this particular lie is that Ngāti Whātua had one less ‘scrip’ holder turn up in their rohe claiming to own a piece of their whenua.  

While immoral and unethical, the motivation for the original lie is understandable.  However, the motivation of those few who still tout the lie is less so.  If they are not culpable for the skullduggery of their predecessors, why continue to uphold the lie?