You are on page 1of 67

History Making a Difference : New

Approaches from Aotearoa 1st Edition


Katie Pickles
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/history-making-a-difference-new-approaches-from-ao
tearoa-1st-edition-katie-pickles/
History Making
a Difference
History Making
a Difference:

New Approaches from Aotearoa

Edited by

Katie Pickles, Lyndon Fraser,


Marguerite Hill, Sarah Murray
and Greg Ryan
History Making a Difference: New Approaches from Aotearoa

Edited by Katie Pickles, Lyndon Fraser, Marguerite Hill, Sarah Murray


and Greg Ryan

This book was first published 2017

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data


A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2017 by Katie Pickles, Lyndon Fraser, Marguerite Hill, Sarah


Murray, Greg Ryan and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-5199-X


ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5199-2
TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures........................................................................................... viii

Acknowledgements ..................................................................................... x

Introduction ................................................................................................ xi
History Making a Difference
Katie Pickles

List of Abbreviations ................................................................................. xv

Section I: Challenging Power and Privilege

Chapter One ................................................................................................. 2


Contending with the Weight of History: Power, Privilege
and the Predilection for Presumption
Ani Mikaere

Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 18


Fulfilling Kemp’s Deed: Tuahiwi and Land Title Reform
Te Maire Tau and Martin Fisher

Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 39


Making Identities: SƗmoa “On Show” at the New Zealand Centennial
Exhibition, 1939–40
Safua Akeli

Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 58


Niue: Bringing the History Home
Margaret Pointer

Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 73


Learning from History: An Exclusive Brethren Story
Peter Lineham
vi Table of Contents

Section II: The Co-production of Historical Knowledge

Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 94


Let’s Change History! Community Histories and the Co-production
of Historical Knowledge
Paul Ward and Elizabeth Pente

Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 113


Healthy Communities: History in Public
Mark Smith, Catharine Coleborne and John Armstrong

Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 131


Transforming Family Narrative: The Kalimpong Community
in New Zealand
Jane McCabe

Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 148


The Heritage Smorgasbord: Constructing Identity at the Charlotte
Museum Trust
Nadia Gush

Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 165


“But what are you going to do with it?”: From PhD to Public History
Rosemary Baird

Section III: Public and Material Histories

Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 182


Documenting National News: Histories, Images and Memories
Kate Darian-Smith

Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 203


A Straw in the Wind: Making History with a Bonnet
Fiona McKergow

Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 224


“More than books can tell”: Museums, Artefacts and the History
of the Great War
Kirstie Ross
History Making a Difference: New Approaches from Aotearoa vii

Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 249


The Intangible Natural Heritage of Ranunculus paucifolius,
the Castle Hill Buttercup
Joanna Cobley

Glossary ................................................................................................... 264

Contributors ............................................................................................. 266


LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 3-1: SƗmoan group at the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition.


Pictured are Fuala’au (far left), Leleaga Seumanutafa, Sao Taito,
Police Sergeant Fitisemanu Talavou and John Churchward, 1939.
Figure 3-2: A view of the SƗmoan fale at the New Zealand Centennial
Exhibition, 1939.
Figure 4-1: Indigenous people from Niue or Friendly Islands.
Figure 4-2: Opaahi, the site of Cook’s third landing on Savage Island in
1774.
Figure 4-3: New Zealand Parliamentary tour to Pacific 1903.
Figure 4-4: Peniamina and other native mission workers.
Figure 6-1: Sound System Culture at Greenhead Park, Huddersfield.
Figure 6-2: Sound System Culture at Manchester Carnival.
Figure 6-3: Sound System Culture at the University of Huddersfield.
Figure 6-4: Hardeep Sahota, Bhangra Renaissance, at the Imagine
conference, Brighton, 2013.
Figure 7-1: The 60-metre timeline on level 2 of the John Meade Centre of
the Waikato Hospital.
Figure 8-1: Map of northeast India showing tea districts and Kalimpong.
Figure 8-2: Screenshot of the Kalimpong Kids research website.
Figure 8-3: Sylvia Slater with Anne Beckett in Wellington, 2011.
Figure 8-4: The “school office” where the Home’s files are kept,
November 2012.
Figure 8-5: Descendants at the Kalimpong Reunion, Dunedin, 2014.
Figure 9-1: Vulva poppy prototype as used in publicity material for
Invulved.
Figure 9-2: Invulved as it was shown at the Charlotte Museum Trust.
Figure 10-1: Remembering Christchurch book cover.
Figure 10-2: Film Show at Kawarau Woolshed, Bannockburn, 2015.
Figure 10-3: Women’s Voices Research committee receiving the Mary
Fran Myers Award, awarded by the Gender and Disaster Network, 25
August 2014.
Figure 11-1: Model Jean Shrimpton in her mini dress at Flemington
racecourse on 1965 Derby Day in Melbourne, Victoria.
Figure 11-2: St. Kilda player Nicky Winmar points to his skin in response
to a racist taunt from the crowd. April 16, 1993.
History Making a Difference: New Approaches from Aotearoa ix

Figure 11-3: Mrs. Anna Buzueleac, 76, walks down the gangplank towards
her son, 1965.
Figure 12-1: Eliza Bennett’s wedding bonnet.
Figure 12-2: Detail of the inside of Eliza Bennett’s wedding bonnet.
Figure 12-3: George and Eliza Denton, c. 1902.
Figure 12-4: Page of family scrapbook with fragment of Eliza Bennett’s
wedding dress.
Figure 12-5: View of sitting room at Fern Hill.
Figure 13-1: A permanent building for a New Zealand war museum did
not progress beyond this undated sketch plan.
Figure13-2: A gun captured by New Zealand soldiers at Messines,
Belgium, being painted with the name of the regiment that captured it
on 7 June 1917.
Figure 13-3: Unidentified staff from the New Zealand War Records
Section photography department, 1919.
Figure 13-4: A view of the Dominion Museum’s main hall crowded with
natural history and ethnological displays, shortly before the war.
Figure 13-5: Dorothy Broad made these two hat pins from a shoulder pip
and a tunic button removed from her dead fiancé’s repatriated uniform.
Figure 14-1: Ranunculus paucifolius, a small yellow-flowered scree
buttercup with ashen-purple coloured leaves.
Figure 14-2: Enys’ Colonial Museum specimen entitled “Scree buttercup,
Ranunculus crithmifolius”.
Figure 14-3: Myosotis colensoi, the Castle Hill forget-met-not aka “mouse
ears”, one of the 14 endangered plant species at the Lance McCaskill
Nature Reserve.
Figure 14-4: Canterbury’s high country limestone tors and fence, first
erected in the 1948.
Figure 14-5: Humans engaging with little frog.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many thanks to the sponsors of the New Zealand Historical Association’s


biennial conference held at the University of Canterbury in December
2015, where the chapters in this volume originated. Keynote addresses by
Anne Salmond (the Beaglehole Lecture), Ani Mikaere (the Wiremu Maihi
Te RangikƗheke Memorial Lecture), Paul Ward and Kate Darian-Smith
contributed to the conference theme ‘history making a difference’, and a
chapter from three of these keynote addresses leads each section of this
volume. The NgƗi Tahu Research Centre and the College of Arts at the
University of Canterbury are thanked for their sponsorship, as are Te
Pouhere Kǀrero, the Royal Society of New Zealand, the Canterbury
Historical Foundation and the New Zealand Ministry for Culture and
Heritage.
We would like to thank Victoria Carruthers and the team at Cambridge
Scholars Publishing for commissioning this volume and for carefully
guiding it through to publication. Jane Parkin deftly copyedited the
manuscript.
An earlier version of Chapter 14 appeared in a blog called ‘Engagement’
published by the Anthropology and Environment Society of the American
Anthropological Association. A similar version of Chapter 1 appears in
Ani Mikaere, Like Moths to the Flame? Restoring the Integrity of NgƗti
Raukawa Thought to Ensure our Survival.
Our authors have been a joy to work with, sharing their expertise and
swiftly responding to our sometimes mundane demands. Colleagues at the
University of Canterbury, Canterbury Museum and Lincoln University and
family and friends have enthusiastically supported this co-production
through its many stages. We hope the publication of this volume results in
further conversation and collaboration.

Katie Pickles, Lyndon Fraser, Marguerite Hill,


Sarah Murray and Greg Ryan
Christchurch and Auckland, December 2016
INTRODUCTION

HISTORY MAKING A DIFFERENCE

KATIE PICKLES

Why care about the past? Why teach, research and write history? History
at the service of nation and empire is no longer necessarily the objective.
Instead, the answer to these questions often lies in the intention of
“making a difference”, of learning from the mistakes of the past and
enabling a better day. But a better day for whom? What are the dangers of
engaging with the past? Whose voices are included, who remains silenced,
and who has the authority to speak for whom? For historians, these
questions are all difficult to approach and even harder to answer. Which
theories and methodologies are the best ones to use? How do we learn
from the mistakes of some historical research and not repeat them? The
intention and ability of history to make a difference is complex and
contested. It is the constant struggle to get it right that makes working with
the past worth the effort.
How the pursuit of history involves making a difference is the theme
explored in this volume. Leading and emerging scholars, activists, and
those working in the public sector, archives and museums bring their
expertise, beliefs, passion and honesty to provide both useful direction and
informed debate. They offer up new approaches to history that traverse the
geographical regions of Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, the Pacific and
Britain. While a common theme unites the chapters, authors employ a wide
range of methodological approaches: social, cultural, MƗori, oral, race
relations, religious, public, political, economic, visual and material history
are all represented. Likewise, the authors use a diversity of styles to express
their perspectives and their work, and co-authorship and collaboration is a
common feature. Demonstrative of the state of historiography in
Aotearoa/New Zealand, grand narratives, parochialism, and writing with
unfettered confidence and authority have made way for dynamic,
internationally engaged, and locally situated work. Historians engage with
xii Introduction

interdisciplinary work, especially in postcolonial, intersectional and


cultural studies.
The chapters in this volume began as papers at the December 2015
biennial New Zealand Historical Association conference that was held at the
University of Canterbury in Christchurch. The theme for the conference
emerged out of the devastating 2010–11 Canterbury earthquakes in which
185 people lost their lives, many more were injured, and every day public
and private lives were forever altered. In the post-quake environment,
historians in Canterbury worked in new ways. There was more collaboration
and community awareness, and more co-production of historical knowledge.
Out of adversity came the need to think harder, to be more daring and to put
in extra effort. Working across previous boundaries—whether public,
academic, or along race, class or gender divisions—was necessitated by
challenging times. It was this climate that led to the conference theme of
History Making a Difference.
This volume is divided into three sections, each containing chapters
that critically address a specific aspect of the History Making a Difference
theme. Section I, “Challenging Power and Privilege”, explores history as a
colonizing tool that continues to frame the way MƗori and other Pacific
peoples understand themselves. Ani Mikaere’s chapter interrogates the
extent of PƗkehƗ historians’ complicity in the past. Who controls the telling
of history? she asks. Mikaere’s piercing chapter demands engagement. In a
similar vein, Te Maire Tau and Martin Fisher’s chapter on NgƗi Tahu and
land title reform argues for the importance of mana motuhake (sovereignty
or independence), asserting that while there has been some redress for the
injustices of the past, there is an ongoing struggle over the specific issues
concerning land and zoning that have their roots in the 1848 Kemp’s
Deed. Safua Akeli’s chapter explores power and privilege at the 1939–40
New Zealand Centennial Exhibition in Wellington. Focusing on the
display of the Pacific Islands, especially SƗmoa, she argues that New
Zealand government officials had the power to claim authenticity for the
Pacific traditions they invented.
Margaret Pointer further complicates the challenges of power and
privilege, reflecting on her work and position as a PƗlagi and outsider in
documenting the history of Niue. Questions of gaining trust and
endorsement underscore her involvement. Pointer considers it a privilege
to research and write history that she hopes will be beneficial to Niueans.
Peter Lineham’s chapter on the role of history-making in sectarian
communities serves as a warning for those who seek to make history
relevant. Extending the theme of the section, he demonstrates the
Exclusive Brethren’s deliberate use of historical knowledge to justify their
History Making a Difference: New Approaches from Aotearoa xiii

sectarianism. Lineham demonstrates how history can be deployed to


advance sectarian grand narratives. Together, the chapters in this first
section of the book offer insights into colonization, power, privilege, the
position of the researcher, and the need to be ever conscious of the
potential use and abuse of history.
Section II, “The Co-production of Historical Knowledge”, turns to the
co-production of historical knowledge. The contributors to this section are
interested in how they can truly share authority in new ways that include
but extend beyond oral history. They demand that perspectives outside of
the university be an active part of producing new knowledge, and explore
how public and community histories challenge and change the way
historical research projects are conceived, researched and written. It
follows that some of the chapters in this section are co-authored. Paul
Ward and Elizabeth Pente’s chapter offers British-focused insights into
understanding people’s lives, emotions and intellectual reasoning to
deepen understanding of people’s self and community identities. They
argue that blurring boundaries between academic historians and
communities enables multiple voices to be heard in the historiographical
record.
Researching at the intersections of health, medicine and public history,
Mark Smith, Catharine Coleborne and John Armstrong focus on history in
the local community. Academics, museum and medical professionals, and
volunteers worked together on the Waikato Health Memorabilia Trust. The
authors argue that these people’s work reaches out to medical
professionals and mental health service users, speaking to current concerns
about health and medicine. Jane McCabe writes auto-ethnographically
about the co-production of knowledge that occurred as a result of her PhD
thesis research into the history of 130 Anglo-Indian child migrants to New
Zealand. A second and related project was working with the descendants
in the transformative process of tracing family histories. Contemplating
heritage as a strategy for minority improvement, Nadia Gush, in her
chapter about the Charlotte Museum, asks if museums can offer positive
identity for minority groups, and at what cost. Gush writes as both an
employee at the museum and a historian, and brings these perspectives
together to critical effect. Likewise, Rosemary Baird is upfront about
working as a public historian and her relationship with academia. She
comments on oral history and heritage outreach, in particular from the
context of post-Canterbury earthquake learning legacy projects. Put
together, the chapters in Section II provide examples of the co-production
of knowledge, and raise the advantages and potential difficulties of
engaging with this new terrain.
xiv Introduction

Section III, “Public and Material Histories”, continues the focus on


public history, but turns specifically to material histories, which have held
an important place in new approaches in history during the past decade.
The chapters in this section are grounded in new methods in public, digital
and material object history. Kate Darian-Smith’s chapter is about the
history of press photography in post-1950s Australia. She explores how
photographs shape public understanding, and become history markers of
key events and social and cultural changes. Iconic photos may shape and
evoke public memories of past national and global events. Oral histories of
press photographers also play an active part in this history. Through the
study of a nineteenth-century bonnet preserved in the Te Manawa Museum
of Art, Science and History, Fiona McKergow seeks to bring material
culture and local history into closer dialogue; her intention is to
simultaneously materialize local history and localize material culture.
Through recovering the importance of gender and textiles, McKergow’s
chapter contributes to the intricacies of colonial culture in 1860s
Wellington. Kirsty Ross continues the engagement with museum objects,
turning to war-related artefacts and their part in telling First World War
stories. She reveals and interprets the vast and diverse number of items
that were collected after the war in New Zealand and internationally,
examining how focusing on objects of war changed over the years.
Completing the section, Joanna Cobley turns to a living object in the
environment—a rare and endangered buttercup at Castle Hill in the South
Island of Aotearoa/New Zealand. She considers an ever-evolving history
of biological heritage, and argues for collaboration between educators
working with museum collections and local communities, such as NgƗi
Tahu, all of whom share an interest in ecological biodiversity and
conservation management.
Taken together, the chapters in this volume reinvigorate historical
dialogue and debate. They engage with uncomfortable and difficult issues.
As well as questioning current and past practices, they dare to offer new
ways of thinking and working. Challenging power and privilege, the
historical co-production of knowledge and public and material histories
are important new approaches in the historiography. It is a sign of maturity
that multiple perspectives are represented through these pages. Proceeding
with care, it is time for dialogue and collaboration.
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AJHR Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives


ANZ Archives New Zealand
ATL Alexander Turnbull Library
BDM Births, Deaths and Marriages
DEA Department of External Affairs
NZPD New Zealand Parliamentary Debates
SECTION I:

CHALLENGING POWER AND PRIVILEGE


CHAPTER ONE

CONTENDING WITH THE WEIGHT OF HISTORY:


POWER, PRIVILEGE AND THE PREDILECTION
FOR PRESUMPTION

ANI MIKAERE

Colonialism is not satisfied with snaring the people in its net or of draining
the colonized brain of any form or substance. With a kind of perverted
logic, it turns its attention to the past of the colonized people and distorts it,
disfigures it, and destroys it.
—Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

Haunani-Kay Trask has described historians as “part of the colonizing


horde”, a breed of people who have played a crucial role in the
colonization of the indigenous mind and spirit. Citing Frantz Fanon’s
famous statement about the colonial strategy of distorting and destroying
the history of the colonized,1 Trask explains how the rich historical past of
her ancestors became “small and ignorant” in the hands of white scholars,
thereby justifying the inevitable demise of the Hawaiian people in the face
of Western dominance.2
Within the context of Aotearoa, examples can readily be found to
support this view of historians as intellectual colonizers whose work
rationalized PƗkehƗ ascendancy by degrading MƗori. Even historians who
saw themselves as championing MƗori rights blithely undermined the
worth of those on whose behalf they otherwise so energetically advocated.
Lindsay Buick, one of NgƗti Raukawa’s most vigorous supporters during
the appallingly unethical Crown campaign to acquire the Manawatnj for
settlement, concluded that MƗori “were not altogether devoid of those
higher ideals which make for the elevation of man”, being “imbued with a

1
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 2004), 149.
2
Haunani-Kay Trask, From a Native Daughter (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i
Press, 1999), 114.
Contending with the Weight of History 3

love of poetry, which enabled them to appreciate in a rude way the


beautiful in life and to preserve in quaint song and fantastic tradition the
story of their wanderings”. 3 Similarly, anthropologist Felix Keesing
professed his “admiration for the race”,4 but still described us as “retarded
by lack of stimulus and bound by conservative tendencies to remain in a
semi-childhood stage of mental development”.5
These examples typify the way that generations of PƗkehƗ scholars
have written about us. It may be tempting to argue that such work belongs
in the past. However, I am interested in considering its contemporary
significance: how have MƗori been influenced by the way these scholars
presumed to know us, writing about our tnjpuna in ways that undermined
our humanity, subtly or otherwise, while bolstering their own sense of
racial superiority? What has been the impact of their work on the way the
historians of today conduct research?
I should begin by noting that dredging up the commentaries of
historians from generations past typically provokes a number of fairly
predictable responses: they were men of their time and it is unfair to judge
them by current standards; they meant no harm and, in fact, many of them
were trying to help MƗori; whatever the shortcomings of their
interpretations, we owe them a debt of gratitude for the information that
they recorded … The list of justifications continues. I am not convinced by
the apologists’ procession of excuses for the attitudes revealed by these
early writers. In fact, I find attempts to assuage the culpability of scholars
past who were responsible for these damaging portrayals of our tnjpuna
decidedly irksome.
My irritation is bound up with Linda Smith’s observation that history
is inextricably linked to the issue of power:

History ... is the story of the powerful and how they became powerful, and
then how they use their power to keep them in positions in which they can

3
Thomas Lindsay Buick, An Old New Zealander: Te Rauparaha (Wellington:
Whitcombe & Tombs, 1911), 12. Buick also authored Old Manawatu (Palmerston
North: Buick & Young, 1903) in which he argued fervently in defence of NgƗti
Raukawa rights over the Manawatnj Block (see ch. 4).
4
Felix Keesing, The Changing Maori (New Plymouth: Thomas Avery & Sons,
1928), xii.
5
Keesing, The Changing Maori, 39. I should note that, as one historian has since
pointed out (somewhat gleefully, I might add), Felix Keesing was an
anthropologist, not a historian. However, I have little doubt that Trask would have
included anthropologists as part of “the colonising horde”: she describes historians,
anthropologists and archaeologists as “purveyors of intellectual colonialism”:
Trask, From a Native Daughter, 124.
4 Chapter One

continue to dominate others. It is because of this relationship with power


that we have been excluded, marginalized and ‘Othered’.6

It is this crucial question of power that renders irrelevant any musings


about the good intentions of these early scholars, or the incidental benefits
that their work may have produced. To paraphrase Edward Said, 7 they
were part of the corporate institution for dealing with the MƗori “other”:
making statements about us, authorizing views of us, describing us,
teaching us, settling us, ruling over us. In so doing, they actively facilitated
the colonial project of domination. Given the complicity of these men in
the colonial oppression of our tnjpuna, expecting MƗori to temper our
criticism of their work is not merely unrealistic but actually offensive.
Both of these relate directly to my own hapnj. My purpose for doing
this is not to gloat. It is to demonstrate the long-term implications of their
mistakes. It is to try and explain why the fact that they got things wrong in
their time continues to matter in ours.
Let us begin by returning to The Changing Maori, written by Felix
Keesing and published in 1928. It appears that some of his research was
conducted within the district of NgƗti Raukawa.8 One of the photographs
in the book is of NgƗtokowaru marae, belonging to NgƗti Pareraukawa9
and located on the banks of the Hǀkio stream, close to Lake Horowhenua
and within a few kilometres of the present-day township of Levin. Beneath
the photograph appears the following caption:

THE MODERN KAINGA (SETTLEMENT).


In districts long in contact with the Pakeha, such tiny hamlets as this may
be seen. In the foreground is the house of the head man, the meeting-house
is behind, and a garage and motor-car are significantly in the picture.

The house which Keesing describes as that of “the head man” is the
homestead that was built by my great-grandparents around the year 1900.
Building on this site was part of a whƗnau strategy to keep NgƗti
Pareraukawa’s fire alight on the whenua at a time when the few remaining

6
Linda Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples
(Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1999), 34.
7
Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 3.
8
For example, the photographs on pp.68 and 109 of Keesing’s book are of my own
marae, NgƗtokowaru; and references are made to the sale of the Manawatnj Block
(66) and to a significant hui that took place at Motuiti (at 173 & 178), which is
near Foxton. NgƗti Raukawa is named after our common ancestor, Raukawa.
9
NgƗti Pareraukawa, the hapnj of the author, is named after a common ancestress,
Pareraukawa.
Contending with the Weight of History 5

NgƗti Raukawa land holdings in the area were being persistently eroded by
the machinations of the Native Land Court. While everything I have heard
about my great- grandfather suggests that he was a lovely, special man,
adored by his children and grandchildren and well known throughout the
district, it is incorrect to refer to him as “the head man” of NgƗti
Pareraukawa. He was from NgƗti Parewahawaha and had no direct
relationship with the land at Hǀkio. The people who were most intimately
connected with it were his in-laws, my great-grandmother’s whƗnau.
What are the implications of this factual blunder? To begin with, it is
an indication of Keesing’s complete lack of respect for his research
“subjects”. The book credits him with taking the photograph, which tells
us that he was physically there. This means that he clearly had the
opportunity, to say nothing of the responsibility, to ensure accuracy in his
use of the image. Whether he actually bothered seeking permission to take
the photograph or talked with my whƗnau about his work seems doubtful.
He does not refer to any of them by name, in the same way that he does
not refer to our tupuna whare, our wharekai or our hapnj by name. This
calls to mind a phenomenon that Albert Memmi describes as “the mark of
the plural”, whereby colonizers condemn the colonized “to drown in an
anonymous collective”. The lives of the colonized, in a specific sense, are
of no interest to the colonizer; they are not entitled to their own identity.10
The Changing Maori is riddled with evidence of this approach. Quotes
from MƗori sources are unerringly attributed to “a Maori” or “the
Maori”,11 while PƗkehƗ sources are respectfully named and meticulously
referenced.
What Keesing chose to omit from the photograph is also significant.
The house in the picture was not the only dwelling at NgƗtokowaru at this
time. There were other members of my great-grandmother’s whƗnau,
siblings and first cousins, whose connection to the land was of equal
significance, whose determination that the land should not be lost was just
as great. Some of them also lived on this land, in other dwellings (all of
them smaller, some constructed from ponga) that are not visible in the
photograph. The fact that Keesing focused solely on the largest and, in his
opinion, grandest-looking house—and then assumed that it must house
somebody “important”—tells us rather more about him than it does about

10
Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (London: Earthscan, 2003),
129.
11
For example, “‘We thought it would be easy to vanquish and kill the Pakeha.
We looked on them as merely a large number of thistles easily cut down and
rooted up.’ So said the Maori.” (47); and “‘Rugby football was invented for the
Maori race’ said a Maori to the writer” (178).
6 Chapter One

the people whose home he gave himself free licence to photograph and to
describe.
The same can be said for his invention of a mythical “head man”. The
society from which the British colonists had come was intensely
hierarchical and underpinned by patriarchy: these concepts were considered
so normal that they twisted the colonists’ perception of all other societies
with whom they came into contact. Accordingly, Keesing would not have
felt the need to inquire whether NgƗti Pareraukawa had a “head man” or
where he lived; he would have regarded these things as so obvious as to
render any inquiry unnecessary. He would have assumed that it was in the
natural order of things that we should have a patriarch and that he should
live in the largest house.
The problem with this set of assumptions is that while they may have
applied to the notion of “family” as Keesing understood it, they made no
sense whatsoever in the context of my great-grandparents’ household. My
great-grandparents had fourteen children in all, a number of whom lived
with them or close by, along with numerous grandchildren. From the
numerous stories relayed to my generation by those grandchildren (our
parents, aunties and uncles), it is clear that our great-grandparents had
extremely busy lives. Raising their whƗnau, while establishing themselves
on the land and fulfilling numerous hapnj and iwi responsibilities, was a
team effort. Both were much loved by their grandchildren, but it is
apparent that while our great-grandfather was a gentle man who loved
nothing better than to indulge his mokopuna, our great-grandmother was a
rather more forceful character. I have heard it said on many occasions that
within their household her word was law. It also seems that she played a
significant role within NgƗti Pareraukawa and beyond, carrying
responsibilities that were largely assumed by my grandmother with the
passage of time. Both my great-grandfather and my grandfather appear to
have been sufficiently secure in their own masculinity, and in their own
unique roles within their whƗnau, hapnj and iwi, to have felt not remotely
threatened by the strength of their wives.
You may wonder why I am making such a fuss of a single expression
in the caption to a photograph: after all, my knowledge of my whƗnau
history is more than enough to debunk the suggestion that patriarchy is
part and parcel of what it means to belong to NgƗti Pareraukawa. Part of
my answer has to do with the way that opportunities to know ourselves
more intimately by talking to the generations before us inevitably diminish
with the passage of time. While I may have been lucky enough to have had
direct access to people who told vivid, first-hand stories about my great-
grandparents, not all of my Pareraukawa relatives will have been so
Contending with the Weight of History 7

fortunate. Nor, now, are they likely to be: there is nobody left within our
whƗnau who lived when my great-grandparents were alive.
However, there is more to my concern for accuracy than the acute
sense of loss that comes with the passing of the generation before mine.
My real objection to Keesing’s description of my great-grandparents’
house concerns the power of myth and the central role that it has played in
the colonial project. The fact is that his seemingly casual comment is but
one very small brick in a colossal wall of PƗkehƗ myth-making about the
nature of MƗori society prior to contact with PƗkehƗ ideas.
PƗkehƗ have told us over and over again, for example, that patriarchy
prevailed in MƗori society: that women were regarded as inherently noa,
born to perform menial tasks, while men, being inherently tapu, were the
leaders; that women were associated with misfortune and death while men
were associated with divinity and life; that taking multiple partners, in the
case of a man, was the mark of a rangatira, while multiple partners, in the
case of a woman, were proof of her promiscuity and depravity; that female
babies were put to death while male babies were celebrated. These and
countless other half-baked, vile assertions had absolutely nothing to do
with our reality but, importantly, enabled PƗkehƗ to feel good about
themselves.
This is a classic illustration of what Haunani-Kay Trask calls the
colonial habit of describing the West’s view of itself through the
degradation of the Indigenous past. 12 Her recollection of growing up,
caught between conflicting versions of “truth” about her people, captures
well the sense of confusion that is produced for the Indigenous person in
these circumstances:

From my ‘ohana (family), I learned about the life of the old ones: how they
fished and planted by the moon; shared all the fruits of their labors,
especially their children; danced in great numbers for long hours; and
honoured the unity of their world in intricate genealogical chants … At
school, I learned that the “pagan Hawaiians” did not read or write, were
lustful cannibals, traded in slaves, and could not sing. Captain Cook had
“discovered” Hawai’i, and the ungrateful Hawaiians had killed him. In
revenge, the Christian god had cursed the Hawaiians with disease and
death.13

Given the omnipresence of PƗkehƗ misinformation about who our tnjpuna


were, those of us who find ourselves caught between competing versions
of our history are probably the lucky ones; at least we still have access to

12
Trask, From a Native Daughter, 117.
13
Ibid., 113.
8 Chapter One

our own whƗnau-based counter-narratives, on which we are able to draw


in order to critique the colonized nonsense that has, for far too long,
passed for scholarship. I am more worried about those for whom our own
accounts have long since been drowned out by the din of PƗkehƗ
disbelief. 14 Everywhere they look they can expect to find suggestions,
subtle and overt, that patriarchy has always been at the heart of who we
are. Take, for example, the Otaki Mail’s obituary for my great-grandmother,
which incongruously described her as “one of the rapidly diminishing
number of the old rangitira [sic] who had imbibed the true patriarchal
spirit of chieftainship”. 15 When my great-grandfather died a few years
later, the Mail thought it entirely proper to name each of his eight sons but to
refer to my grandmother and her five sisters simply as “the daughters”.16
This is the wider context within which a seemingly minor inaccuracy,
such as that perpetrated by Felix Keesing in his description of my great-
grandparents’ house, must be seen if we are to understand fully the
implications of his mistake. For those of you who think that I am making
too much of this, you cannot comprehend how it feels to grow up trying to
navigate your way between what you know about the strength of your
nannies and aunties, on the one hand, and a relentless barrage of negative
messaging about the secondary status of women according to so-called
MƗori “tradition”, on the other.17 I may have survived the experience with
my sense of self-respect—with my respect for who we are as NgƗti
Pareraukawa—relatively intact; others may not have been so fortunate.
Many more will not be so fortunate.
A second example of PƗkehƗ historians getting it wrong concerns Te
Whatanui, who was responsible for leading a contingent of NgƗti Raukawa
from Waikato to the Kapiti coast during the 1820s. Te Whatanui came at
the urging of his close relative, Waitohi, and she gave him an extensive
area of land in the Manawatnj and Horowhenua upon which to settle. At
this time, hostilities between Waitohi’s brother, Te Rauparaha, and one of
the formerly resident iwi in the Horowhenua had escalated to the point
where Te Rauparaha had resolved to exterminate them if at all possible. Te

14
I have borrowed this phrase from Trask, From a Native Daughter, 120.
15
Otaki Mail, 8 October 1923, reprinted in Otaki Historical Society Journal, 5
(1982): 91.
16
Otaki Mail, 9 April 1929, reprinted in Otaki Historical Society Journal, 5 (1982):
91. The Mail also included information about the sons’ rugby achievements.
17
The way that such contradictions are reconciled is often to characterize women
such as my great-grandmother, and my grandmother, as exceptions to a rule of
male leadership—instead of realizing that there was never any such rule, other than
in the colonial imagination.
Contending with the Weight of History 9

Whatanui, upon his arrival in the area, pledged to shelter the earlier
residents from this fate so long as they remained within the territory that
had been allocated to him. When asked by one of those to whom he
offered protection whether he was able to make good on his promise,
effectively thwarting Te Rauparaha’s wishes, Te Whatanui replied
confidently: “Heoi anǀ te mea e pƗ ki a au ko te ua anake o te rangi.”
A number of historians have translated this statement as a promise that
“nothing but the rain from Heaven can touch you”.18 This has been rolled
up into a version of history that proclaims Te Whatanui as an almost
instant convert to Christianity, indeed as someone who practised Christian
charity over a decade before Christianity even appeared in the region at the
end of 1839. Writing in 1842, Jerningham Wakefield described Te Whatanui
as the perfect gentleman, observing Christian prayers and adopting PƗkehƗ
domestic habits in his household at Raumatangi, not far from where
NgƗtokowaru now stands.19
However, the correct translation of Te Whatanui’s statement, “nothing
but the rain from the heavens can touch me”, carries an entirely different
set of connotations. This was, in fact, an assertion of his mana over the
area he had brought his people to settle upon, in response to a direct
invitation to do so. Perhaps his decision to protect this group was a test of
Te Rauparaha’s resolve; if so, Te Whatanui seems to have felt confident
about the outcome. In later years, evidence was given before the
Horowhenua Commission20 that he had also stressed to Te Rauparaha that
“no one must climb up my backbone”, a statement that conveys a similar
sentiment.
While Te Whatanui was known as a peacemaker when he determined
such a course of action to be appropriate,21 generating the aphorism “te

18
For example, Buick, An Old New Zealander, 207; William Thomas Locke
Travers, Stirring Times of Te Rauparaha (Christchurch: Whitcombe & Tombs,
1906), 154; Patricia Burns, Te Rauparaha: A New Perspective (Auckland: A.H. &
A.W. Reed, 1980), 152; see also Elsdon Best, “Notes on the Art of War”, Journal
of the Polynesian Society, 12 (1903): 162.
19
Edward Jerningham Wakefield, Adventure in New Zealand Vol II (London: John
Murray, 1845), 240–41.
20
Evidence of Kipa Te Whatanui to the Horowhenua Commission, Appendices to
the Journals of the House of Representatives (AJHR), 1896, G-2/225.
21
For example, he is credited with securing peace between NgƗti Raukawa and
NgƗti Apa and RangitƗne in what is known as “the peacemaking at Karikari”
around 1830, during which his calm display of personal courage earned the
admiration of NgƗti Apa and RangitƗne who greeted him with the exclamation:
“Manawaroa” (stout-hearted or brave hearted). As a result of Te Whatanui’s
actions, Te Awe Awe (a Rangitane rangatira) is said to have broken his tokotoko
10 Chapter One

manawaroatanga o NgƗti Raukawa” (the stout-heartedness of NgƗti


Raukawa), this does not mean that he was averse to conflict under any
circumstances. On the contrary, he was a skilled military leader with a
lengthy record of successful campaigns to his credit.22 Many years after Te
Whatanui’s death, Octavius Hadfield recounted a story that he had been
told of NgƗti Raukawa’s retreat during a battle in 1839. Conscious that
they were being hotly pursued, one of Te Whatanui’s companions
suggested that the two of them would be better off hiding in the bushes, to
which Te Whatanui responded that he would rather “die standing”.23 This
particular incident occurred many years after the expressions of peaceful
intent and generosity, for which he has become most famed, had taken
place.
As to whether he was really an enthusiastic convert to Christianity,
there must remain a healthy degree of scepticism. Rangatira of Te
Whatanui’s generation did not convert readily. Media reports of the day
suggest that his Te Arawa friend and ally, Te Heuheu, remained staunchly
opposed to Christianity.24 Other contemporaries, such as Te Rangihaeata
and Te Rauparaha, never converted, and missionaries expressed doubt at
the veracity of Taratoa’s claimed conversion.25 Rangi Topeora remained
openly scornful of PƗkehƗ ways throughout her life. Interestingly, she was
baptized, but her insistence on receiving the name “Kuini Wikitoria”

across his knee, casting it at the feet of Te Whatanui. Other chiefs followed his
example and “the peace of Te Whatanui” was secured: “Te Whatanui”,
http://horowhenua.kete.net.nz/en/site/topics/75-te-whatanui.html (accessed 11 July
2016).
22
See, e.g., the waiata “Takoto rawa iho ki te pǀ”, composed by Matangi Hauroa
and directed specifically at Te Whatanui, urging him to exact utu for the defeat of a
group of his relatives under the leadership of Te MƗhunga. Te Whatanui
subsequently did as he had been asked: Charles Royal, KƗti Au I Konei: He
Kohikohinga I NgƗ Waiata a NgƗti Toa Rangatira, a NgƗti Raukawa (Wellington:
Huia, 1994), 68–72; see also Neil Grove, “Te Whatanui: Traditional Maori
Leader”, MA thesis (Victoria University of Wellington, 1985), 40–53.
23
Octavius Hadfield, Maoris of By-Gone Days: Matenga Te Matia (London: J.B.
Shears & Sons, 1929), 7.
24
See, e.g., the report of him blaming Christianity for NgƗti Raukawa’s failure to
join with Te Rangihaeata in attacking government forces after Te Rauparaha’s
capture by Governor Grey: A Correspondent, “Manawatu”, New Zealand
Spectator and Cook’s Strait Guardian, 14 October 1846, 2.
25
Taratoa was christened by Richard Taylor in 1853 but James Duncan is said to
have been unhappy about the baptism, believing Taratoa’s commitment to be
lacking: “Nepia Taratoa”, http://horowhenua.kete.net.nz/en/site/topics/322-nepia-
taratoa.html (accessed 11 July 2016).
Contending with the Weight of History 11

(Queen Victoria)—and that one of her husbands be baptized “Arapeta”


(Albert)—suggests that her decision was about mana rather than religious
conversion. She was subsequently known as “Queen of the South”.26
It is also interesting to note the interaction between Te Whatanui and
the Church Missionary Society stalwart Henry Williams when the latter
arrived in ƿtaki in November 1839, bringing with him the region’s first
resident missionary, Octavius Hadfield. A significant military encounter
had only just occurred between NgƗti Raukawa and Te Ɩti Awa. Williams
spent nearly two weeks in the area, during which time he visited Te
Whatanui on a number of occasions, talking about Christianity and doing
what he could to encourage a peaceful resolution of the differences
between the two iwi. He noted the “gracious welcome” extended to him by
Te Whatanui, and recorded “much conversation” taking place with him
and with others. Eventually, satisfied that both iwi had agreed to peace, he
took his leave from Hadfield and began his return journey to Paihia.27
As the first part of Williams’s trip was to take him through Taupǀ, Te
Whatanui asked him to convey a letter to Te Heuheu. Upon arrival there,
the missionary found to his dismay that the letter urged Te Heuheu not to
believe a word that Williams had to say and asked his old friend to come
and assist in a renewal of hostilities with Te Ɩti Awa.28 In the face of the
courteous way in which he had been received by Te Whatanui, Williams
took this as evidence of duplicity, a quality for which the missionaries
were constantly on the alert amidst their prospective converts.
I suggest that Te Whatanui’s actions were driven by a set of cultural
imperatives that were wholly unfamiliar to the missionary. For Te
Whatanui, the quality of manaakitanga extended to manuhiri, including the
likes of Williams (or even Wakefield), would have been a question of
mana. That he would feed them, entertain them, indulge them in their
choice of topics of conversation or even permit the incorporation of
Christian prayers into the occasion in order to make them feel welcome is
not unusual.29 Indeed, it is an entirely predictable way for a rangatira such
as Te Whatanui to have behaved. It does not mean that he believed

26
NgƗ TƗngata Taumata Rau 1769–1869, ed. W.H Oliver (Wellington: Allen &
Unwin, Te Tari Taiwhenua, 1990), 362.
27
Williams describes his journey to the Kapiti coast in Caroline Fitzgerald, ed., Te
Wiremu: Henry Williams—Early Years in the North (Wellington: Huia, 2011),
289–307.
28
Fitzgerald, Te Wiremu, 306.
29
Many of us continue to behave in this manner, e.g. allowing Christian prayer
into our otherwise non-Christian homes if we feel it will make our guests feel more
comfortable.
12 Chapter One

everything —or indeed anything—that they said. It did not equate to a


promise that he would completely change the way that he lived, based on a
few brief encounters with these rather odd new people.
The PƗkehƗ participants in these meetings, however, interpreted them
differently. Imbued with a colonizing arrogance that regarded the
superiority of their ways as self-evident, they could not fail to interpret the
extension of manaakitanga as a sign that the Natives had seen the error of
their ways and succumbed to the inevitable, gratefully adopting the newly
introduced ideas and abandoning their own former practices. Any
deviation from this expected pattern of “progress” (such as Te Whatanui’s
message) was to be deplored as regression and as proof of Native
“unreliability”.
Despite Te Whatanui’s fall from grace in Williams’s estimation, the
overwhelming majority of historians have participated in the construction
of his image as the great humanitarian: benevolent, hospitable, religious,
gracious, and quick to adopt PƗkehƗ ways within his domestic
arrangements. You may wonder what possible fault I could find with this
charitable depiction of the tupuna to whom NgƗti Pareraukawa owes the
fact of our being based at Hǀkio in the present day.
It is partly a simple dislike of inaccuracy: there was so much more to
Te Whatanui than the way he has been typically portrayed in historical
accounts. But there is more to it than that. A perusal of the early texts
reveals that MƗori were almost always depicted in simplistic and
predictable ways, reduced to a series of caricatures that denied the fact of
their humanity. The human complexity of my tnjpuna was expunged from
the record; they were unerringly assigned to one of a series of categories
within the overarching class, “savage”. Te Whatanui was a noble savage;
Te Rauparaha a ruthless and wily savage; Te Rangihaeata a brooding,
recalcitrant savage, and so on.
As for the women, they were erased almost completely: only remnants
of them remain within the PƗkehƗ-authored texts that recount my iwi
history. That so few PƗkehƗ have heard of Waitohi while her younger
brother, Te Rauparaha, is so widely known is but one illustration of this
phenomenon. This despite the fact that many of Te Rauparaha’s successes
were attributable to what has been described as his sister’s “genius”: few
of his major undertakings were entered into without her advice and
counsel. 30

30
Her brother Te Rauparaha, for instance, has had at least four books written about
him; there are no corresponding works about Waitohi. Yet, when asked about
NgƗti Raukawa’s decision to leave Maungatautari in order to come and help Te
Rauparaha hold the southern lands which he had recently secured, Manahi of NgƗti
Contending with the Weight of History 13

Denying the humanity of Indigenous peoples has been a defining


feature of the colonizing endeavour. As a consequence, instances of my
tnjpuna being characterized in a simplistic or misleading way are not the
exception, but rather the rule. Collectively these portrayals form an all-
pervasive, colonizing narrative that presumes to tell us who our tnjpuna
were. In doing this, it presumes to tell us who we are. Moreover, because
the writing of history has been, until comparatively recently, almost
completely monopolized by PƗkehƗ, competing narratives have been all
but drowned out. Our own versions of history are either buried beneath
layers of PƗkehƗ interpretations of events, or they are dramatically skewed
in an attempt to ensure consistency with these “authoritative” accounts.
Consequently, in the same way that I have struggled to reconcile what
I know about the women in my whakapapa with the work of white male
writers who insisted upon grafting their own patriarchal notions of
normality onto their historical accounts of my hapnj and iwi, it is extremely
difficult to construct a portrait of Te Whatanui that is not tainted by the
preconceptions of colonial writers about the stereotypical “noble savage”:
dignified, respected, respectable and (most important of all) respectful.
It is hard to admit that, even as a child, I had an uneasy suspicion that
perhaps Te Whatanui and others of his generation had succumbed rather
too readily to PƗkehƗ influence. I always wondered why they had not
resisted the power of the PƗkehƗ religion more stoutly. For instance, could
it be that what we had beforehand really was inferior, deemed by them not
to have been worth fighting for? The stomach-churning sense of betrayal
engendered in me by the accounts of Te Whatanui, the “perfect Christian
gentleman”, seemed matched only by the smug superiority of the PƗkehƗ
who had written the stories and by the resigned look of my own relatives
who repeated them.
These are painful issues to deal with. I have been assisted in doing so
by Jeremy Waldron’s discussion of historic injustice. Pointing out that
remembrance is a crucial part of human identity, he argues that to neglect
or forget history (to which I would add, to distort it) is to do violence to
the identity of communities, undermining and insulting the individuals
who belong to them. He summarizes the harmful effects of a failure to

Huia famously replied: “We came at the desire of Waitohi. Had Te Rauparaha
called, the people would not have assented. It was at the word of Waitohi”:
Wakahuia Carkeek, The Kapiti Coast (Wellington: A.H. & A.W. Reed, 1966), 23.
Waitohi was also responsible for allocating the land to those who answered her call
and went south. It is Carkeek who recounts that “many of [Te Rauparaha’s]
strategic plans and successful conquests could be attributed to the genius of his
eldest sister”.
14 Chapter One

remember in a way that resonates with the feeling of disquiet that I


experienced growing up in the shadow of Te Whatanui’s legacy. In place
of truth, he says, we end up with plausible tales of self-satisfaction on the
one side and self-deprecation on the other. Those who have benefited from
their ancestors’ injustice soon persuade themselves that their good fortune
is due to the virtue of their race, while the descendants of their victims
often accept the story that they and their kin were always good for
nothing.31
During the past few years, I have been doing an increasing amount of
work on the history of my own hapnj and iwi. Waldron’s analysis has
helped me to articulate the extraordinary misgivings I had when I first
decided to re-centre my work in this way. It helped me to understand and,
more importantly, to overcome the fact that I was quite literally afraid of
what I might find. Discovering that my tnjpuna were, in fact, fully human
has been exhilarating. Unearthing layers of crucial subtext within stories
that have been trotted out for so long without much thought, layers that are
still able to be clearly discerned by those of us who have the competence
to see and understand them, has been hugely uplifting.
So, to the MƗori historians amongst us, you will not need me to remind
you how important your work is. I am sure that, unlike me, you will not
waste precious time grappling with your personal doubts or wondering
how best to confront the self-deprecation that may have been drummed
into your iwi over successive generations. You will be well aware of how
severely historians of past generations distorted your stories and of the
extent to which your own whanaunga may have internalized those
distortions. You will, of course, be brave enough to investigate and to
challenge the “received truths” of your iwi when your instinct tells you
that they are suspect. Perhaps the most important piece of advice that I can
offer is to trust your instinct. I have found that if something does not sit
well with me, further investigation usually reveals that there is good
reason for my discomfort. I particularly like Native American writer Paula
Gunn-Allen’s frank admission that, when all else fails, she has learned to
trust her inner self:

Whatever I read about Indians I check out with my inner self. Most of what
I have read ... is upside-down and backward. But my inner self, the self
who knows what is true of American Indians because it is one, always
warns me when something deceptive is going on. And with that warning, I

31
Jeremy Waldron, “Historic Injustice: Its Remembrance and Supersession”, in
Justice Ethics & New Zealand Society, eds Graham Oddie and Roy Perrett
(Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1992), 142.
Contending with the Weight of History 15

am moved to do a great deal of reflecting, some more reading, and a lot of


questioning and observing of real live human beings who are Indian in
order to discover the source of my unease.32

As an indigenous methodology for conducting historical research, I find it


hard to go past the logic of her approach.
To the PƗkehƗ historians who continue to work in the area of MƗori
history, let me start by urging you not to be disingenuous about the fact of
your power and your privilege. People often take offence at the suggestion
that they are privileged in relation to someone else, a response that I find
rather silly. I am not claiming any kind of moral high ground here: we are
all privileged relative to somebody. The point I am trying to make is that
occupying a position of privilege demands that we take special care in the
way we conduct ourselves; a moment’s carelessness on the part of the
powerful can do unexpected damage. Noble intentions count for little. In
the work that you do, it is all too easy to slide from a position of good
intent to the colonial default-setting of writing about us as research
subjects, casually glossing over vital layers of meaning in the material that
you are dealing with, imposing your own preconceptions, and producing
work that operates to drown out our understandings of ourselves.
Trask argues that the history of Indigenous peoples cannot be written
from within Western culture, perceptively observing that the resulting
story is merely the West’s story of itself. She asks:

Which history do Western historians desire to know? Is it to be a tale of


writings by their own countrymen, individuals convinced of their “unique”
capacity for analysis, looking at us with Western eyes, thinking about us
within Western philosophical contexts, categorizing us by Western indices,
judging us by Judeo-Christian morals, exhorting us to capitalist
achievements, and finally, leaving us an authoritative-because-Western
record of their complete misunderstanding?33

I encourage you to reconsider your choice to do this work. Like it or not,


you walk in the footsteps of your predecessors. With the implacable
presumption of the colonizer, they claimed to “know” us, treating any new
information gleaned from their work as filling minor gaps in their learning,
rather than as material with the potential to transform the way they thought
about the world and their place within it. That they found their work
deeply rewarding is beyond doubt. Their approach calls to mind Les

32
Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American
Indian Traditions (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), 6–7.
33
Trask, From a Native Daughter, 120.
16 Chapter One

Back’s critique of anthropologists, whom he describes as turning fieldwork


into personal folklore, inflating their own sense of self by possessing the
“other” about whom they gather knowledge. 34 Perversely, these
individuals have even expected gratitude, imagining that the distorted,
fragmented and superficial representations of our tnjpuna that they
produced adequately compensated for the denial of our humanity that
underpinned their work.
Can you be certain that you are not doomed to repeat their mistakes?
Are you doing this work simply because you find it interesting? If so,
given the potential for doing damage, is that reason enough for you to do
it? Are you doing this work because you think there is nobody else capable
of doing it? What makes you so sure about that? Have you fostered good
relationships with the MƗori about whom you are writing? If so, well and
good, but where does the ultimate authority for the work lie? Do they have
the final say over what you produce—or whether you should produce
anything at all at the end of the day? Do they have the power to terminate
the project if they deem it necessary to do so?
In the final analysis, the question of who should rightfully do this work
comes back to the issue of power. So long as you are part of the group
with power, and so long as we are the group without it, how can you
expect us to trust you with material that goes to the very heart of who we
are? Indeed, how can you trust yourselves?
You should know that I have agonized over whether I should share
even this small amount of information about my tnjpuna today. How can I
be sure that you will not now presume to “know” them or to inject them
into your next academic paper, as historians of past generations may have
done? Must I be explicit with you about the fact that I do not want you to
take such liberties with my tnjpuna? Do you understand that if you do so,
you will be taking liberties with me, with my children, with my
mokopuna? This is not an academic exercise for us. Is it realistic for me to
expect you to understand, or to care?
I wish I could express optimism about the ability of today’s PƗkehƗ
historians to do better than those of the past. But the colonizing
momentum gathered by the work of successive generations of historians
will not be easy to disrupt. As the saying goes, old habits die hard.
By way of example, NgƗti Raukawa is presently engaged in a
programme of historical research to support its claims before the Waitangi
Tribunal. We have found the Crown Forestry Rental Trust’s approach to

34
Les Back, “Gendered Participation: Masculinity and Fieldwork in a South
London Adolescent Community”, in Gendered Fields, eds Diane Bell, Pat Caplan
and Wazir Jahan Karim (London: Routledge, 1993), 215.
Contending with the Weight of History 17

its task of assisting MƗori to prepare, present and negotiate claims


problematic. We have been surprised to learn, for instance, that in ranking
prospective researchers for the various claim-related projects, the
whakapapa of the applicants is deemed irrelevant. Our argument that
whakapapa should not only be included within the Trust’s criteria, but
should be the most important of them, has fallen on deaf ears. The
practical implications of this approach have become painfully clear with
respect to one of the key projects within the programme: one of our own, a
person with extensive research experience and with every conceivable
relevant qualification, has been outranked (according to Trust criteria) by a
PƗkehƗ researcher. How such an outcome can possibly be justified is
beyond me. Linda Smith once famously remarked that “research” is one of
the dirtiest words in the indigenous vocabulary.35 Within NgƗti Raukawa,
we have recently added another word to the list: “historians”.
I would like to end with the words of Te Whatanui, taken from one of
his compositions. The waiata provides a host of clues about the kind of
person he was: well versed in Tainui history, poetic, visionary, principled
and courageous. The final words, “He raru tǀku ki te nohanga pahƯ”—I
dread to be looked upon as a stranger—reach out to us across the
generations: a plea not to be reduced by history to a mere shadow of the
multi-faceted, fully human person that he was; an appeal not to be
rendered unrecognizable to his own people. For me, his words challenge
NgƗti Raukawa to reassert control over the telling of history, including his-
story—which is our-story—so that we may, once again, fully know
ourselves.

35
Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 1.
CHAPTER TWO

FULFILLING KEMP’S DEED:


TUAHIWI AND LAND TITLE REFORM

TE MAIRE TAU AND MARTIN FISHER

In 1848 government land purchaser Walter Mantell, with the express


support of his superiors Governor George Grey and Lieutenant-Governor
Edward Eyre, infamously boasted of carrying matters with a “high hand”
when he finalized the largest purchase of land in New Zealand’s history—
Kemp’s Deed. In exchange for £2,000 the government purchased
approximately 20 million acres of land in the central South Island. While
substantial reserves were meant to be defined before the purchase was
completed, Mantell limited NgƗi Tahu to meagre land holdings, and
promises of “schools and hospitals” never materialized.1 One reserve at
Tuahiwi, near modern-day Kaiapoi (today, about a thirty-minute drive
north of central Christchurch), was eventually set aside from the purchase
for NgƗi Tahu. Although the 1997 NgƗi Tahu settlement (and 1991
Waitangi Tribunal report) addressed Kemp’s Deed, as it did the other
seven land purchases in the NgƗi Tahu rohe, Treaty settlements have rarely
been known to tackle specific issues.2 Fast forward to the present day, and
the NgƗi TnjƗhuriri hapnj community based at Tuahiwi is still fighting to
have some of the promises made in Kemp’s Deed fulfilled—specifically
NgƗi TnjƗhuriri’s right to build as many as houses as it desires on its lands,
and its ability to express a form of mana motuhake (sovereignty or
independence). This chapter will discuss the historical and legislative
background to the Crown Grants Act (No.2) 1862 which was intended to

1
Harry Evison, The Treaty of Waitangi and the NgƗi Tahu Claim: A Summary
(Christchurch: NgƗi Tahu MƗori Trust Board, 1987); Waitangi Tribunal, The NgƗi
Tahu Report (Wellington: Brooker & Friend, 1991); Harry Evison, The Long
Dispute (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 1997); Vincent O’Malley,
“Treaty-Making in Early Colonial New Zealand”, New Zealand Journal of History,
33: 2 (1999): 137–54.
2
NgƗi Tahu Deed of Settlement, 1997.
Fulfilling Kemp’s Deed: Tuahiwi and Land Title Reform 19

provide individual titles to the NgƗi Tahu owners of Tuahiwi, and the
recent drive to fulfil an aspect of Kemp’s deed through land title reform in
Tuahiwi.3

Tribal knowledge in Tuahiwi


Nearly twenty years after settlement with the Crown, tribal leaders within
Tuahiwi have come to understand that while the NgƗi Tahu Claims
Settlement Act 1998 resolves the past, it does not remove the rights and
obligations our people have with the Crown.4 This is an important point, as
significant efforts were targeted towards settlement, and this became the
goal, rather than a stepping stone towards mana motuhake itself. Once iwi
have settled with the Crown, tribal leadership naturally changes because
the iwi corporations and their directors and iwi representatives are
constrained by the driving philosophy of all corporations—to make a
profit. This is not a negative. The village at Tuahiwi would not have had a
leading role within NgƗi Tahu if it was just a fishing camp on a river.
Tuahiwi’s economic roots were and still are Kaiapoi PƗ which became
famous because food and taonga, including pounamu from the West Coast
and NgƗi Tahu knowledge from around the rohe in the south, north and
west of the South Island, were brought into our village.
The issue of tribal knowledge is something that the Dakota Nation (and
Native American) leader and scholar Vine Deloria Jr, made in the preface
to his masterpiece, Custer Died for Your Sins. Deloria wrote:

The Indian political scene in the 1960s was a fine blend of the first large
generation of college-trained Indians and the entrenched veterans of the
New Deal who had served most of their lives in tribal government. With
the passing of the old guard and the subsequent delivery of tribal councils
to the new generation, Indian tribes lost a good deal of their historical
perspective. Long-standing Indian leaders … had read Felix S. Cohen’s
Handbook of Federal Indian Law by kerosene light in log cabins and were
as competent in the niceties of legal fictions as most attorneys then
representing the tribes. Today, unfortunately, few people in tribal
government know their legal rights; they simply assume their duties and

3
This article mixes the personal, the political and the academic in its overall
structure. Unusually it employs the first person for parts of the article as one of its
authors, Te Maire Tau, reflects on his own personal experiences in the history of
land title issues at Tuahiwi. Whenever the pronouns “I”, “my” or “our” are used,
they refer to Te Maire Tau and not his co-author, Martin Fisher.
4
NgƗi Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998.
20 Chapter Two

responsibilities, and it makes the situation worse that there are few models
from whom they can take their cues.5

Deloria’s warning is important. Much of the settlement from within our


tribe came from a generation of leaders who came through our pƗ in the
1950s and 1960s. Nearly all tribal leaders were well versed in a
publication of important tribal documents gathered as a compendium by a
Crown commissioner, Alexander Mackay, for South Island MƗori.
Mackay had gathered these documents together because they simply
outlined the negotiations and positions that NgƗi Tahu took with the
Crown over much of the nineteenth century. When my father, Rakiihia
Tau Snr, replaced an elder, Mafeking Denny, as the tribal leader on the
default tribal council, the NgƗi Tahu MƗori Trust Board, he gave to my
father his copy of Mackay’s compendium and an outline of his life’s story
within the tribal leadership. My father had already inherited Mackay’s
compendium from his uncle, and I too had inherited my mother’s father’s
publication. Just as Deloria’s generation were versed in Felix Cohen’s
Handbook of Federal Indian Law, NgƗi Tahu leaders knew Alexander
MacKay’s A Compendium of Official Documents Relative to Native
Affairs in the South Island. 6 There now exists a generation of tribal
representatives who know their duties and responsibilities as directors but
have little historical perspective of what drove NgƗi Tahu leaders to
settlement and what they saw in the future.
Perhaps the best statement we can find on what NgƗi Tahu elders
understood of their world was from the first upoko rnjnanga (head of the
local council) for our pƗ at Tuahiwi and Kaiapoi, Pita Te Hori. Te Hori
was elected as upoko in 1859 when our village gathered in-council to
establish their authority over their lands. Te Hori had been concerned
about the KƯngitanga (a Tainui-led organisation among many iwi and hapu
in the North Island to appoint a MƗori king to settle inter-tribal disputes
and advocate for the retention of MƗori land) and the impact their actions
would have on the rnjnanga system that had been introduced in his village
and about the fallout that war in the North Island would have on his

5
Vine Deloria, Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (Oklahoma City:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), preface.
6
Alexander Mackay, A Compendium of Official Documents Relative to Native
Affairs in the South Island (Nelson: The Government of New Zealand, 1872).
Fulfilling Kemp’s Deed: Tuahiwi and Land Title Reform 21

people.7 As a result, Te Hori wrote a letter for both MƗori and PƗkehƗ to
read. The letter was a classic statement of mana motuhake:

E hoa mƗ, e ǀku hoa aroha, e ngƗ tƗngata e noho ana ki tƝnei motu,
whakarongomai, e tƝtahi pito o te motu nei, e tƝtahi pito, e waenganui, e
ngƗ iwi PƗkehƗ, e noho ana ki Te Wai Poenemu (Pounamu), me ngƗ
tƗngata hoki e noho ana ki tƝrƗ moutere i te ahi Ɨ Mahuika. E ka Maori, ki
a rongomai koutou.
Ko Raukawa, te rohe. Kia kaua te tangata o tƝrƗ motu, e whiti mai, ki
tenei motu, takatakahi ture ai, me ngƗ tƗngata hoki ǀ tƝnei motu, kia kaua
e whakatakotoria. He takiwƗ nui, ki waenganui ǀ koutou, ǀ mƗtou, pƝra
hoki me tƗ Hakopa, rƗua ko Rapana, kua waiho tenei hei kawenata mau
tonu, mǀ koutou, mǀ mƗtou. Kua rohea atu tƝnƗ motu mǀ to koutou KƯngi.
He KƯngi anǀ ǀ tenei motu, ko TnjƗhuriri, ahakoa kua mate ia, kei te mau
anǀ tǀna mana, i runga i a mƗtou, Ɨ, Ɲ mǀhio nei anǀ ǀna uri. He maunga
nunui ana ǀ tƝnei motu, ko Tapuaenuku, ko Kaitaurau ko Maungatere, ko
Te Ahupatiki, ko Turahaua, ko Mihiwaka, ko Rakiura.
E hoa mƗ, kƗti te tangata o tƝna motu te haere mai ki konei, timanga
ai.8
Friends, my dearest friends, to the people who live in this island, listen
here. Those of you from one point of this land, to the other point, to those
that dwell in between, to all white people, to those who live in Te
Waipounamu, and all who inhabit the Island where the fire of Mahuika
burns. To the Maori, you must all listen.
Raukawa is the boundary. Let not the people of the Northern Island,
come across to this island and treat the law with contempt; neither the
people of this island lay down and allow it. There is a large dividing space
between them and us, like unto that between Jacob and Laban, which
leaves this to continue as a perpetual testament for us. That island has been
divided for your King. There is another King of this island, he is TnjƗhuriri.
Although he is dead his authority remains with us his descendants. We
have great mountains on this island, Tapuae-o-Uenuku, Kai-taurau,
Maunga-tere, Ahu-patiki, Tarahoua, Mihi-waka and Rakiura.
Friends, let not the people of that Island no longer come over to this
and work deceit fully.9

At the most basic level, Te Hori is simply saying that the authority of Te
Waipounamu rests with TnjƗhuriri (NgƗi Tahu) and their descendants.
Likewise, Te Hori confirms the mana of NgƗi Tahu to Te Waipounamu by

7
James Belich, The New Zealand Wars (Auckland: Penguin, 1998); Danny
Keenan, Wars Without End: The Land Wars in Nineteenth Century New Zealand
(Auckland: Penguin, 2009).
8
Pita Te Hori letter, 7 December 1863, personal collection of Te Maire Tau.
9
Translated by Te Maire Tau.
22 Chapter Two

citing the mountains who are all in effect ancestors, starting with the
northernmost ancestor/mountain Te Tapuae-o-Uenuku along the Kaikoura
Range. Te Hori then moves southwards, citing the other mountains that
NgƗi Tahu acknowledge as theirs, such as Maunga-tere of North Canterbury,
Te Ahu Patiki of Banks Peninsula, Kai-tarau of North Canterbury,
Tarahoua of Te Muka, Mihi-waka of Otakou, and finally Rakiura (Stewart
Island). However, Te Hori has also assimilated the Old Testament story of
Jacob and Laban who built two pillars, Jegar Sahadtha and Galeed, to
witness the agreement to keep the peace between each other. The text from
Genesis makes it easier to see how Te Hori aligns what in some ways are
two disparate traditions.10
For Te Hori, the mountains are the equivalent of the pillars built by
Jacob and Laban. He is letting his people know that the mountains are
similar in that they represent the covenant among the iwi, and that each iwi
possesses its own mana to its lands and boundaries. But Te Hori is also
speaking to the settlers and his own people, because the underlying
message is that agreements are made to be kept, and foremost are the laws
of our ancestors. The great message Te Hori left to his people is the
proverb: “Ko toku ture i ahu mai i toku tupuna ko TnjƗhuriri”—My laws
come from my ancestor, TnjƗhuriri. This is the cultural milieu of Tuahiwi
and NgƗi Tahu. This is close to what Deloria meant when he was speaking
about a “historical perspective”. Te Hori’s declaration of separateness, or
his mana motuhake, is the type of internal message that our pƗ has
maintained over its generations. These are the internal histories and
messages we pass on.
Much like Deloria’s American experience, NgƗi Tahu elders were also
well read on the legal fiction or “legal niceties” of how the settlers
justified themselves, and on the basic positions and responses his people
grounded themselves in. Leaders were also grounded in the basic truths
and agreements their elders had made with the settlers—because to forget
these details is to forget the larger purpose of being a tribe. Without these
truths, and without a continual renewing of these truths over generations, a
people can become convinced that being a director with duties and
responsibilities to corporate fictions is the end point.
To this end, for NgƗi Tahu and Tuahiwi, the Treaty of Waitangi was
always something that we understood as a founding document of
nationhood.11 But far more important to our people was our knowledge of

10
Genesis 31: 44–52.
11
Ruth Ross, “Te Tiriti o Waitangi: Texts and Translations”, New Zealand Journal
of History, 6: 2 (1972); Alan Ward, An Unsettled History: Treaty Claims in New
Zealand Today (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 1998), 13–18; Claudia
Fulfilling Kemp’s Deed: Tuahiwi and Land Title Reform 23

the 1848 Canterbury Purchase, or Kemp’s Deed as it became known.


Tribal elders had an intimate knowledge of all the correspondence between
themselves and the Crown since the 1840s and of the details of the way the
purchases affected their lands, fishing grounds and reserves.

Kemp’s Deed and the individualization of title at Tuahiwi


When the Crown purchased land from NgƗi Tahu in 1848, lands were set
aside as reserves. The distinction is important. “Reserve” did not mean the
land had been reserved by the Crown for NgƗi Tahu. It meant the land had
been reserved from the purchase—and that the Crown had no clear
authority over the land. Within a decade of the 1848 purchase, the people
of Tuahiwi were facing a problem of land tenure, because a number of
hapnj around the NgƗi Tahu rohe had been relocated to this reserved land
when their lands had been sold as a part of larger land purchases like
Kemp’s Deed. Into this mix came Walter Buller, Native Commissioner for
the Southern Provinces in late 1850s. Buller quickly met with the people
of Tuahiwi and it was agreed to subdivide the land into individual titles.12
However, the subdivision was to be affected by a larger issue. Buller and
the Kaiapoi people agreed to the land’s subdivision as long as it fell into
the wider issue of being regulated by the rnjnanga which Buller helped
establish.
Governor Grey called the rnjnanga that had been developed by his
predecessor, Governor Browne, the “New Institutions”.13 What Grey was
trying to do was to establish basic civil institutions within MƗori
communities, because he understood that all societies needed formal
institutions to carry out basic civil functions such as the regulation of land,
resources, property rights, and law and order. To this end, Grey and the
political leaders of the time really saw the rnjnanga as being similar to local
councils in that they would regulate their reserve lands in the same manner
that the provincial governments would regulate Crown land within their
provinces. To formalize the powers of these rnjnanga, the Native Districts

Orange, The Illustrated History of the Treaty of Waitangi (Wellington: Bridget


Williams Books, 2004), 39–41.
12
Ross Galbreath, Walter Buller: The Reluctant Conservationist (Wellington: GP
Books, 1989).
13
Vincent O’Malley, “English Law and the MƗori Response—A Case Study from
Grey’s New Institutions in Northland”, in Beyond the Imperial Frontier: The
Contest for Colonial New Zealand (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2014),
71–93.
24 Chapter Two

Regulations Act and the Native Circuits Courts Act were passed in 1858.14
While in theory the “New Institutions” were an example of the devolution
of state authority to MƗori tribal communities, in most cases they were
used by the government to impose PƗkehƗ laws upon its MƗori subjects.
The development of the rnjnanga at Kaiapoi under the “New Institutions”
took place parallel to the issuing of land titles, both of which were
undertaken by the Native Commissioner for the Southern Provinces,
Walter Buller.
In his letters Buller stated that he “urged the partition and
individualization of the land and the issue of Crown Grants to the Natives,
in severalty, as the only effectual remedy for the evils complained of”.
While Buller overstated his position, he was the fundamental agent for a
change in how the land was to be managed. He wrote:
At a public meeting of the Kaiapoi Natives, when this subject was under
discussion, I elicited their sentiments by putting forward the following
suggestions; all of which met their approval. Six resolutions were passed.

1. That the primary subdivision and apportionment of the land should


be arranged by them in Runanga.
2. That as a fundamental condition of the proposed grants, the estate
and interests created thereby should be entailed, so as to make
them inalienable to persons of other than the Maori race.
3. That the power of leasing, if allowed should be modified by certain
conditions or limitations.
4. That the whole of the attendant expenses should be borne by the
Natives themselves—a sufficient portion of the land being set apart
for that purpose.
5. That suitable endowments should be made for the several objects
of Churches, Schools, and Hospitals.
6. That the arrangements contemplated in the two foregoing clauses
should be carried out prior to the apportionment of the land (whilst
it is common property).15

It has been suggested that Buller imposed his views of individual title
upon the community. This portrayal reveals the functioning of the narrative,

14
Native District Regulations Act 1858; Native Circuits Act 1858.
15
Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (AJHR), 1911, G-5,
12. The points where the elders were critical of Buller were when they found that
the North Island husbands had been allocated the land, instead of the wives who
were NgƗi Tahu. There was also the expectation that the people retained their right
to “ohaki” their land— that is, to will their land to either their descendants or to
others those chose fit.
Fulfilling Kemp’s Deed: Tuahiwi and Land Title Reform 25

obscuring the fact that individual property rights were the norm and
disregarding the point that the Kaiapoi people asked for their lands to be
individualized through subdivision. The true nature of MƗori property
rights is lost and any “progress” towards individual rights is ascribed to the
colonizer.16 Interestingly, Mantell said that in Kaiapoi the “proprietorship is
more minutely divided than in any other place which came within the
sphere of my operations”, and so reveals the type of cognitive dissonance
required for the narrative to remain salient.17
Soon after this proposal was made in December 1859, Canterbury NgƗi
Tahu gathered at Lyttelton to meet Governor Gore Browne to ask that he
approve their idea of individual title. Their petition read:

The voice of all the people is that our land reserves be subdivided, so that
each may have his own portion. We ask you to give to each man a title in
writing to his own allotment. But we leave the matter in your hands
Governor. Our reason for urging the subdivision of our land is that our
difficulties may cease, that we may live peaceably.18

Governor Browne gave his personal assurance in this matter when meeting
with “the assembled Kaiapoi Natives” at Lyttelton: “I shall then
recommend to the Queen that titles similar to those of Europeans should
be issued to such individuals.” 19 This is likely to be the origin of the
Crown Grants Act (No.2) 1862. For the Crown, the problem was not that
MƗori property rights were “communist”, but rather that they were more
complex and nuanced than European rights, and this made land acquisition
more difficult. Across New Zealand, the external imposition of individual
title during this period gave the Crown greater power, facilitating land
purchases as well as fulfilling the “civilizing mission”, and while the
Crown had already acquired NgƗi Tahu land, the wider influence of the
narrative as well as the pragmatic need to settle the issues in Kaiapoi are
seen to be at play here.

16
Raymond Firth, Primitive Economies of the New Zealand Maori (New York:
Routledge Revivals, 2011), 351–57.
17
“Report Relative to the Land Purchases and the Condition of the Natives in the
Middle Island”, AJHR, 1858, I C-03, 4. Yet we also know that the hapnj worked
together as a collective, particularly for the kƗuru which was a labour-intensive
activity. But this does not mean that the produce was shared collectively. KƗuru is
the sugar contained within the cabbage tree.
18
The Maori Messenger—Te Karere Maori, 7: 20 (1860): 4.
19
Ibid.
26 Chapter Two

The Crown Grants Act (No.2) 1862


The Crown Grants Bill (No.2) 1862 was designed to fulfil promises made
by the Crown in the sales it had negotiated with MƗori as the sole legal
purchaser of land since the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840 under
its Crown pre-emption purchasing policy. 20 The previous year’s Crown
Grants Bill (No.1) was a seminal act which vested lands in non-MƗori
settlers.21 From 1840 to 1862, the Crown had purchased extensive lands in
the NgƗi Tahu rohe, as well as large sections of the Wellington region, the
Wairarapa, Hawke’s Bay and Auckland. Smaller sales had also been
negotiated in Te Tau Ihu, the Waikato and Taranaki.22 The Crown Grants
Bill (No.2) was introduced by Francis Dillon Bell just after he resumed his
position as Minister of Native Affairs when Alfred Domett became
Premier in August 1862. In all of these land sale negotiations, promises
were made to provide Crown grants for the (nearly always minimal)
reserves that were to be excluded from the sale of land. These included the
reserve at Tuahiwi which had been promised in Kemp’s Deed in 1848.
The Crown Grants Bill (No.2) was not designed specifically for Tuahiwi,
but it was carried out in a unique manner with the distribution of
individual sections of land.23
In 1860, Governor Gore Browne told the Colonial Secretary, the Duke
of Newcastle, that promises made to MƗori for Crown grants had not been
fulfilled by the government.24 The Colonial Secretary instructed the Governor
to pass an Act that would fulfil those promises, and this eventually led to

20
There were two waivers issued from 1844 to 1846. Michael Belgrave, “Pre-
emption, the Treaty of Waitangi and the Politics of Crown Purchase”, New
Zealand Journal of History, 37: 1: 5 (1997): 23–37; Rose Daamen, The Crown’s
Right of Pre-emption and Fitzroy’s Waiver Purchases, Waitangi Tribunal
Rangahaua Whanui Series, 1998.
21
Crown Grants Act (No.1) 1862.
22
Waitangi Tribunal, Taranaki Report: Kaupapa Tuatahi (Wellington: Legislation
Direct, 1996); Waitangi Tribunal, Te Whanganui a Tara me Ona Takiwa: Report
on the Wellington District (Wellington: Legislation Direct, 2003); Waitangi
Tribunal, The Mohaka ki Ahuriri Report (Wellington: Legislation Direct, 2004);
Waitangi Tribunal, Te Tau Ihu o te Waka a Maui: Report on Northern South Island
Claims (Wellington: Legislation Direct, 2008);Waitangi Tribunal, The Wairarapa
ki Tararua Report (Wellington: Legislation Direct, 2010); Kesaia Walker, “History
of Pre-1865 Crown Purchase Reserves in Te Rohe Potae”, Report Commissioned
by the Waitangi Tribunal for the WAI 898 Te Rohe Potae Inquiry, A142, 2013.
23
AJHR, E-5, 1862.
24
Grant Phillipson, The Northern South Island: Part II, Rangahaua Whanui Series,
1996, 9.
Fulfilling Kemp’s Deed: Tuahiwi and Land Title Reform 27

the passage of the Crown Grants Act No.2 1862 or, as its long title put it,
“An Act to authorise the issue of Crown Grants in certain cases”. The Act
empowered the Governor in Council to fulfil any promises made even if
there was only oral evidence to support them, so long as the government
had investigated the claims and satisfied itself that the promises had been
made.25
The issue of Crown grants for MƗori reserves around the country had
been repeatedly delayed during the 1850s. Perhaps it did not seem of much
importance to colonial administrators and politicians when land sales
seemed to be continuing and the decade was relatively peaceful. But
matters took on a more urgent note when war began in the North Island.
MƗori allies were being sought at every turn. In 1861, on the motion of the
MP for Timaru, Francis Jollie, “it was ordered that there be laid on the
table a return of all Crown grants issued, or in course of preparation, to
Native subjects of Her Majesty”. 26 When the information was collated,
those returns were printed for the use of the members of the House.27
On 3 July 1862, a “Return of Native Reserves Made in the Cession of
Native Territory to the Crown, also of Crown Grants to be issued to Natives,
and of Crown Grants already issued” was published by Parliament.28 This
return included the Kaiapoi Reserve at Tuahiwi, and the return noted the
separate report published by Buller on the “Partition and Individualization
of the Kaiapoi Reserve”.29 The Crown Grants Bill (No.2) was not debated
during its actual readings in the House but it was discussed prior to its
introduction on 18 July 1862. The upstart Opposition politician from
Taranaki, James Crowe (J.C.) Richmond, moved for the government to
provide more detailed information regarding Crown grants for MƗori
reserves than Jollie had the previous year. Richmond wanted information
on “all promises of Crown grants made to persons of the Native race,
showing the date of every such promise, the position of the land to be
granted, the person by whom and authority by which such were promises
were made; whether they have been fulfilled or not; and, if not, why not;
with any other information bearing on the matter.” The parliamentary
record noted that the matter had caused him great annoyance, presumably
because he felt it should have been dealt with earlier.30

25
Crown Grants Act (No.2) 1862.
26
New Zealand Parliamentary Debates (NZPD), 1861, 77.
27
NZPD, 1861, 180; AJHR, E-3a, 1861.
28
AJHR, E-10, 1862.
29
AJHR, E-5, 1862.
30
NZPD, 1862, 409.
28 Chapter Two

Richmond quoted from a memorandum from Francis Dillon Bell dated


11 November 1861 which set out the importance of issuing Crown grants.
Richmond expressed his anxiety that the promises be fulfilled. He
characterized the inability to follow through on Crown assurances as an
“evil” that needed to be cured. The Duke of Newcastle had previously
attempted to push the government to distribute the Crown grants in 1860,
and Richmond also pointed to a January 1862 dispatch from the Duke
“requesting to have an Act of Parliament passed without delay enabling
the Government to give grants in fulfilment of such promises”.31 The Duke
wrote another dispatch in May 1862 to Governor Grey, confirming that the
action should be led by Parliament in New Zealand rather than through the
imperial government.32
Premier William Fox, a strong supporter of the “New Institutions”,
supported Native Minister Bell, and laid the blame for the delay in
providing grants to the public officials in the Native Department rather
than the ministers and Parliament. He provided the requested information
“as far as it could be given this session”, listing the person by whom the
promises were made, “and the reasons, if not fulfilled, why not.” He stated
bluntly that the reason the promises were not fulfilled was because “the
duty of fulfilling them rested on the irresponsible Native Department …
[and] neither the House nor any Minister could be blamed for the neglect”.
Fox was consistently undermined by Governor Grey, who held the real
power in the colony. Fox criticized Grey for his role in the delay in issuing
the Crown grants. Commenting on Grey’s support for the Crown Grants
Bill, he stated that “it was not unnatural he should take that step on finding
after an eight years’ absence that promises made by him just before
leaving remained still unfulfilled, and to preserve his character with the
Natives he thought not an hour should be lost in obtaining the necessary
legislation for fulfilling them”. He duly noted that “[t]he assent given by
Ministers in the minute referred to would be a very qualified one.”33
Edward Stafford, who had been Premier from 1856 to 1861, defended
the officials of the Native Department and insisted that ministerial
responsibility was a matter to be taken seriously in this government, as it
had in the precious one.34 Stafford had concerns about seeking the Duke of
Newcastle’s permission for such a legislative action. He felt it would be

31
Ibid.
32
“Native Affairs, Despatch from the Duke of Newcastle respecting Grants of
Crown Titles to Natives under certain circumstances”, AEBE 18507 LE1 34
1862/131, Archives New Zealand (ANZ).
33
NZPD, 1862, 409.
34
NZPD, 1862, 410.
Fulfilling Kemp’s Deed: Tuahiwi and Land Title Reform 29

just as effective for the Parliament to achieve this purpose on its own.35 A
key question might be why, despite “the subject having more than once”
been brought before the Stafford ministry, no action was taken. In fact, the
MP for Dunedin Country, Thomas Bannatyne Gillies, stated during the
parliamentary debate that the Stafford ministry had taken care “that as few
grants” were issued as possible.36
Francis Dillon Bell, who only two months later upon the introduction
of the Crown Grants Bill (No.2) was serving as Native Minister under the
Domett Ministry, commented that the question of exactly what promises
were made was complicated. He originally “thought it would be an easy
and desirable thing to collect together the cases where grants had been
promised; but when he set about it he was staggered with the immense
difficulty of ascertaining the extent of the question.” He found that there
were a number of different scenarios under which promises were made: 1)
the Crown had entered into engagements to issue Crown grants as part of
the consideration for the cession of territory; 2) in other cases, MƗori were
to buy land at the usual price and receive Crown grants; 3) the Crown had
promised reserves for individuals. Bell stated that in most cases the
promises had been completely forgotten, “the whole had gone into
oblivion—the residents even in the places where the promises were made
being in many cases totally ignorant of their existence”.37 He noted that in
Taranaki there were more than 100 cases of MƗori having paid 10 shillings
per acre yet still not received their Crown grants. He concluded by
supporting in theory the notion that the Governor be entrusted to provide
the Crown grants so that they could be issued without any delay, although
he also supported the General Assembly’s power to do so. He noted that
“the failure in the performance of these promises had produced
dissatisfaction in the minds of a great number of Natives, and only that day
two chiefs had been to him asking whether they would get a fair hearing at
the bar of the House, and so be enabled to get their grants; upon which he
told them to write a letter to the House, which would give it every
consideration, and do them all the justice in their power.”38 That power
was clearly far below any reasonable expectation.
MP J.C. Richmond finished the debate in Parliament by opposing the
power of the Governor to issue the grants. He believed the General
Assembly should lead the way, but agreed with Bell that the Crown grants
should be issued as soon as possible. “The Natives referred to at Taranaki,

35
Ibid.
36
Ibid.
37
Ibid.
38
NZPD, 1862, 411.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Cambridge
natural history, Vol. 03 (of 10)
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: The Cambridge natural history, Vol. 03 (of 10)

Author: A. H. Cooke
F. R. C. Reed

Editor: S. F. Harmer
Sir A. E. Shipley

Release date: September 20, 2023 [eBook #71693]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: MacMillan and Co, 1895

Credits: Peter Becker,Karin Spence and the Online Distributed


Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file
was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE


CAMBRIDGE NATURAL HISTORY, VOL. 03 (OF 10) ***
Transcriber’s Note:
This work features some large and wide tables. These are best viewed with a
wide screen.

THE
CAMBRIDGE NATURAL HISTORY
EDITED BY

S. F. HARMER, M.A., Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge;


Superintendent
of the University Museum of Zoology

AND

A. E. SHIPLEY, M.A., Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge;


University Lecturer on the Morphology of Invertebrates

VOLUME III
Map to illustrate
THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
of the
LAND OPERCULATE MOLLUSCA
The figures indicate the number of known species.

MOLLUSCS
By the Rev. A. H. Cooke, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of King’s College,
Cambridge

BRACHIOPODS (RECENT)
By A. E. Shipley, M.A., Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge

BRACHIOPODS (FOSSIL)
By F. R. C. Reed, M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge

New York
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND LONDON

1895
All rights reserved

“Why, you might take to some light study: conchology, now; I


always think that must be a light study.”
George Eliot, Middlemarch.

Copyright, 1895,
By MACMILLAN AND CO.

Norwood Press:
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
PREFACE TO THE MOLLUSCA

The general plan of classification adopted in this work is not that


of any single authority. It has been thought better to adopt the views
of recognised leading specialists in the various groups, and thus
place before the reader the combined results of recent investigation.
This method may, perhaps, occasion a certain number of small
discrepancies, but it is believed that the ultimate effect will be to the
advantage of the student.
The classification adopted for the recent Cephalopoda is that of
Hoyle (‘Challenger’ Reports, Zoology, vol. xvi.), for the fossil
Cephalopoda (Nautiloidea) that of Foord (Catalogue of the Fossil
Cephalopoda in the British Museum, 1888–91), and (Ammonoidea)
P. Fischer (Manuel de Conchyliologie, 1887). In the Gasteropoda the
outlines are those adopted by Pelseneer (Mém. Soc. Malacol. Belg.
xxvii. 1894), while the details are derived, in the main, from P.
Fischer. The Amphineura, however, have not been regarded as a
separate class. The grouping of the Nudibranchiata is that of Bergh
(Semper, Reisen im Archipel der Philippinen, ii. 3). The Pelecypoda
are classified according to Pelseneer’s most recent grouping.
Acknowledgment of the principal sources of information has been
made in footnotes, and a short list of leading authorities has been
appended to the chapters on anatomy, for the use of students
desirous to pursue the subject further. In the case of geographical
distribution the authorities are too numerous and scattered to admit
of a list being given.
A special word of thanks is due to Mr. Edwin Wilson for his patient
care in preparing the illustrations, the majority of which are taken
from specimens in the University Museum of Zoology. Mr. Edgar
Smith, besides affording the kind help which visitors to the British
Museum always experience at his hands, has permitted me to use
many specimens for the purposes of illustration.
A. H. COOKE.
King’s College, Cambridge,
20th December 1894.
CONTENTS

Scheme of the Classification adopted in this Book.

MOLLUSCA
CHAPTER I
Introduction—Position of Mollusca in the Animal Kingdom—
Classification—Origin of Land and Fresh-water Mollusca 1
CHAPTER II
Land and Fresh-water Mollusca, their Habits and General
Economy 23
CHAPTER III
Enemies of the Mollusca—Means of Defence—Mimicry and
Protective Coloration—Parasitic Mollusca—Commensalism—
Variation 56
CHAPTER IV
Uses of Shells for Money, Ornament, and Food—Cultivation of the
Oyster, Mussel, and Snail—Snails as Medicine—Prices Given for
Shells 96
CHAPTER V
Reproduction—Deposition of Eggs—Development of the
Fertilised Ovum—Differences of Sex—Dioecious and
Hermaphrodite Mollusca—Development of Fresh-water Bivalves 123
CHAPTER VI
Respiration and Circulation—The Mantle 150
CHAPTER VII
Organs of Sense: Touch, Sight, Smell, Hearing—The Foot—The
Nervous System 177
CHAPTER VIII
The Digestive Organs, Jaw, and Radula: Excretory Organs 209
CHAPTER IX
The Shell, its Form, Composition, and Growth—Designation of its
Various Parts 244
CHAPTER X
Geographical Distribution of Land and Fresh-water Mollusca— 277
The Palaearctic, Oriental, and Australasian Regions
CHAPTER XI
Geographical Distribution of Land Mollusca (continued)—The
Ethiopian, Nearctic, and Neotropical Regions 328
CHAPTER XII
Distribution of Marine Mollusca—Deep-sea Mollusca and their
Characteristics 360
CHAPTER XIII
Class Cephalopoda 378
CHAPTER XIV
Class Gasteropoda—Amphineura and Prosobranchiata 400
CHAPTER XV
Class Gasteropoda (continued): Opisthobranchiata and Pulmonata 427
CHAPTER XVI
Classes Scaphopoda and Pelecypoda 444

BRACHIOPODA (RECENT)
CHAPTER XVII
Introduction—Shell—Body—Digestive System—Body Cavity—
Circulatory System—Excretory Organs—Muscles—Nervous
System—Reproductive System—Embryology—Habits—
Distribution—Classification 463

BRACHIOPODA (FOSSIL)
CHAPTER XVIII
Introduction—Division I. Ecardines—External Characters—
Internal Characters—Division II. Testicardines—External
Characters—Internal Characters—Synopsis of Families—
Stratigraphical Distribution—Phylogeny and Ontogeny 491
SCHEME OF THE CLASSIFICATION ADOPTED IN THIS BOOK

MOLLUSCA
Class Order Sub-order Section
CEPHALOPODA Dibranchiata Octopoda (p. 382). Phragmophora (p.
386).
Sepiophora (p. 388).
Decapoda Chondrophora Myopsidae (p.
389).
Oigopsidae (p.
390).
Tetrabranchiata Nautiloidea Retrosiphonata (p.
393).
Prosiphonata (p.
395).
Ammonoidea Retrosiphonata (p.
397).
Prosiphonata (p.
397).
GASTEROPODA Amphineura Polyplacophora
(p. 400).
Aplacophora (p.
404).
Prosobranchiata Diotocardia Docoglossa (p. 405).
Rhipidoglossa Zygobranchiata
(p. 406).
Azygobranchiata
(p. 407).
Monotocardia Ptenoglossa (p.
411).
Taenioglossa Platypoda (p.
411).
Heteropoda (p.
420).
Taenioglossa
Gymnoglossa (p.
422).
Toxoglossa (p. 426).
Tectibranchiata Bulloidea (p. 429).
Aplysioidea (p. 430).
Pleurobranchoidea
(p. 431).
Siphonarioidea (p.
431).
Opisthobranchiata Ascoglossa (p.
431).
Nudibranchiata Cladohepatica (p.
432).
Holohepatica (p.
433).
Pteropoda Thecosomata (p.
435).
Gymnosomata (p.
437).
Pulmonata Basommatophora
(p. 438).
Stylommatophora
(p. 439).

Class Order Suborder


SCAPHOPODA (p. 444).
PELECYPODA Protobranchiata (p. 447).
Filibranchiata Anomiacea (p. 448).
Arcacea (p. 448).
Mytilacea (p. 448).
Pseudolamellibranchiata (p. 449).
Eulamellibranchiata Submytilacea (p. 451).
Tellinacea (p. 453).
Veneracea (p. 454).
Cardiacea (p. 454).
Myacea (p. 456).
Pholadacea (p. 457).
Anatinacea (p. 458).
Septibranchiata (p. 459).

BRACHIOPODA
Order Family
Brachiopoda Ecardines Lingulidae (pp. 487 and 503).
Obolidae (p. 504).
Discinidae (pp. 487 and 504).
Craniidae (pp. 487 and 504).
Trimerellidae (p. 504).
Testicardines Productidae (p. 504).
Strophomenidae (p. 505).
Koninckinidae (p. 505).
Spiriferidae (p. 505).
Atrypidae (p. 505).
Rhynchonellidae (pp. 487 and 505).
Terebratulidae (pp. 487 and 506).
Argiopidae (p. 506).
Stringocephalidae (p. 506).
Thecidiidae (pp. 487 and 506).
LIST OF MAPS
The Geographical Distribution of the Land Operculate
Mollusca Frontispiece
The Geographical Distribution of the Land Mollusca Between pp. 308
of the East Indian Archipelago and 309
The Relations of the Land Mollusca of New Guinea
with those of North Australia To face p. 322
The Geographical Distribution of the Land Mollusca Between pp. 344
of the West Indies and 345
MOLLUSCS

BY

REV. A. H. COOKE, M.A.


Fellow and Tutor of King’s College, Cambridge

You might also like