Pressure built, skies darkened

Tanith Te Waitohioterangi

Opinion

God of nations at thy feet, in the bonds of “love” we meet, Hear our voices we entreat. God Defend New Zealand. God Save the Queen! All rise! The court is now in session.

Aotearoa was reformed into a colony of the British Empire through coercion, bribery, and statutory piracy whilst transferring Māori land into European hands through ideological racism, amalgamation, brutality, war, terrorism and crimes against humanity. The faces of governance change but the structure remains the same.

The 1862 Native Lands Act was introduced and granted the Governor the ability to establish in any district a Māori land court that would determine land ownership in accordance with Māori custom, but without any comprehensive checks and balances on the award of titles. The motive was an overt means of overcoming resistance to land sales and establishing European dominance of the land.

The Act voided private dealings for Māori land but did not make them illegal. Settlers with access to money could provide an advance to Māori with the understanding that their investment would be returned for land transfers when land titles were secured.

As Britain began to slowly sever its ties to New Zealand, the new premier saw little need to consult the colonial office, and the settler's government were more favourable to implement aggressive policies towards Māori, which were then reflected within the courts and institutions of power. A legal maze was created by the colonisers, justified by their own philosophies, as a tool to contain and subtly exclude Māori protest and dissatisfaction from mainstream discourse — in order to dishearten the great elders of the past whilst also priming the majority of non-Māori to justify their actions.

The Crown rights of pre-emption were waived in favour of a free market. Land sales from 1865-1869 were conducted under a 10-owner rule, where each grantee could deal with tribal lands as if they were an absolute owner — immediately creating additional pressure for iwi and hapu and forcing them to respond, only to be led to a dead end. It created an aristocracy designed to make it easier to alienate land.

When a purchaser had acquired enough signatures from trustees, they could apply for a partition and approval for land sales. Māori were immediately debt trapped into the costs for surveys, court costs, rates and legal fees which resulted in the loss of more land.

With rising landlessness came the awareness that Māori could be used as a convenient labour force for Europeans, as they had no choice but to exist on wages and proceeds from land sales to raise capital when they couldn't pay rates, court, or survey costs.

This was assimilation into a society many never asked for on terms that were never agreed to. From that time to this, there was inculcated a permanent class relationship for the majority of the Māori with Europeans.

The pressure was building. The skies were darkening, the blazing stars of navigation were becoming lost beyond sight. When Patara the Pai Marire emissary arrived in Turanga, tears shedding copiously from his eyes, his words were “Mo te iwi tu kiri kau, motu tu hawhe” (For the people have been stripped naked, and the lands split in half). It was this context, based on this premise of injustice, that created conditions and responses which led to the state-sanctioned war crimes committed at Ngatapa, on the darkest day in New Zealand history.