The politics of adaptation: the career of Sir Apirana Ngata, 1874-1928

Abstract

At Ngata's tangi one old man came forward and addressing the dead, according to Maori custom,said: "Api, now you are in Heaven. We want you to go to God and ask him to send us another leader jus like you." Quoted by Sutherland, I.L.G. in an unpublished paper on Ngata. Sutherland Correspondence. This would be a remarkable tribute for any leader. Yet such eulogies to Ngata are commonplace. Even so matter of fact a document as the Hunn Report paid this tribute, "Maori Land Settlement is an evergreen and growing memorial to the late Sir Apirana Ngata. After 90 years of established Government in New Zealand it still remained for a Maori of vision to originate State-aided Maori Land Development, as he did in 1929." Hunn, J.K., Report on Department of Maori Affairs, Wellington, 1961, p. 46. Yet with the passing of time Ngata's true dimensions as a Maori leader have tended to become blurred. The very praise heaped upon him has tended to obscure rather than illuminate his achievements and personality. Certainly he was an impressive personality, all accounts are agreed on that, strong without being hard or cold. One Maori recalled his eyes as an old man as being "brown, with a curious lightness to them, from his pakeha ancestry no doubt, yet bright and at the same time moist with a hint of tears".Rev. Apirana Mahuika. 12 september, 1967. Pakeha associates remember his impatience, his abruptness and at times rudeness to them. One even thought he was anti-Pakeha. Interview with Mrs. J. Massey, 12 October, 1964. Mrs. Massey was Coates's secretary from 1928 to 1943. Certainly when he was asked by the Polynesian Society to write a history of New Zealand from the Maori point of view he refused - on the grounds that he was too bitter about the injustices Maoris had suffered to be truly objective. Interview with Mr. W. Parker. 10 November, 1965.