The History of the East Coast Maori Trust

Abstract

On the 6th page of the Gisborne Herald of 8th December, 1951, there appears the following paragraph, "By authority of New Zealand's Parliament, embodied in the Maori Purposes Bill, presented in the House of Representatives this week, an unique experiment in trusteeship affecting in particular the Gisborne and East Coast Districts, is to be wound up by the return of well over 100,000 acres of land to Maori beneficiaries". "By the authority of Parliament----," "------an unique experiment in trusteeship----", "------over 100,000 acres of land to Maori beneficiaries". There is food for thought in these phrases, especially to a Gisborne man and especially to one acquainted with the debate as to the merits and demerits of the development of Maori farming. Moreover the history of the East Coast Trust goes even beyond the story of Maori farming and the development of the Gisborne district. For the Gisborne Herald extract goes on to add that the winding up of the Trust "the successful outcome of a struggle for solvency dating back 70 years, illustrates visibly the guardianship principle written into the Treaty of Waitangi." Such a high-toned utterance from a Gisborne Journalist surely stirs the spirit of the New Zealand historian. Clearly it would be worthwhile to look closely at the activities of a trust which, in its time, handled over 300,000 acres of land on the East Coast and vastly affected the people and prosperity of that district. The economics and mechanics of such a large farming enterprise is a study in itself. But the trust was a statutory trust for native land and it is even more fruitful to examine it in relation to the parliament which erected it and to which it was for 49 years responsible. It is thus viewed against a background of national history and national policy through successive decades. In this light it is possible to examine such questions as the extent to which the "guardianship principle of the Treaty of Waitangi", did in fact govern the creation and development of the big trust for Maori land.