The Native Lands Acts and Hawke's Bay: Some Considerations on the Alienation of Maori Land in the Provincial Period of Hawke's Bay Government

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to examine the working of the Native Lands Acts in Hawke's Bay and the effect this legislation had on the Maori people. Some of the questions that I shall attempt to answer are : Was the discontent amongst the Hawke's Bay Maoris in the early 1870's caused by the Native Lands Acts? If it was, were the recommendations of the Hawke's Bay Native Lands Alienation Commission, 1873, made the basis of the Native Lands Act passed by the General Assembly in that same year? If the latter were the case, did the legislation have the desired effect by alleviating the distress and resentment that the Maoris felt so acutely? On the other hand, was this ill-feeling on the part of the Maoris fomented by, if not caused by, the scheming of the Hon. H.R. Russell and his adherents, who either saw in the repudiation movement a means to satisfy their land hunger, or who used the movement as a political stick with which to heat their enemies, J.D. Ormond and the Government party in the Provincial Council? Were the Maori leaders of the movement only too conscious of the social disintegration of the tribe and with it the authority of the chief, and were they attempting through repudiation of the land sales to the Europeans to recover their lands and the power that went with them? Perhaps this is crediting the chiefs with an insight that they, being so close to the changes that were taking place around them, could never have possessed Possibly the discontent was caused simply by the natural desire of frail humanity "to have one's cake and eat it too”? Did the Maori people realize in the late 1860's and early 1870's that the almost fabulous prosperity that the sale of their lands had brought them was rapidly coming to its inevitable conclusion, and that the only way to continue this very pleasant state of affairs was to repudiate the sales that had already taken place, and thus be able to repeat the process all over again?