Part 3: Waitangi Treaty

(This is the 3rd part of a 7 part series on my final term paper for Ethnics. Click here to start at part one)

Treaty of Waitangi

The Treaty of Waitangi continues to this day to be the most important documents in New Zealand law concerning the Maori directly. The Treaty established three main tenets: 1) Land title would only have legitimacy if given through the Crown, 2) the establishment of Preemption by the Crown through an appointed committee, and 3) the Maori received the same rights and protections as citizens of England. Over 500 Maori chiefs signed the document, ceding sovereignty to the British, yet the document has been debated and deliberated over ever since its execution. Arguments over the meanings of particular words and how the document was translated have major impact on current claims against the Crown and will be discussed later in the section about the Waitangi Tribunal. The British were (and still are) suspected that their main intentions for the treaty for the Crown to have control over all the land sales so they could sell it cheaply to themselves than sell it to future settlers at much higher prices (Bourassa and Strong 232). Since they gave the right of Preemption to the British in the treaty, the Maori were given little choice but to basically hand their land over for little to nothing to the British controlled land committees. As David Ausubel states,

In acceding to colonization and British sovereignty, and in placing their trust in treaty guarantees the Maori failed to reckon realistically with the predatory designs of the colonists who were determined by any means, fair or foul, to obtain the most desirable land in New Zealand and to establish the supremacy of their own economic and political system. (219)

The more settlers that began to arrive to the island put more and more pressure on demand for land and the Crown set out to acquire vast amounts of land. From 1844 to 1864, the Crown bought 34.5 million acres of land from the Ngai Tahu at a price less than what 30,000 acres sold for in Canterbury (Bourassa and Strong 233).

At the same time the New Zealand Government began to support the mission schools, implementing policies to control and pacify the Maori. The government aimed to replace the Maori language with English so as to assimilate Maori into what they considered to an acceptable British colony. The Maoris wished to learn English so as to effectively deal with the new settlers and government. Such motivations were seen as Maori willingness to give up on their culture and as threats to the integrity of their social and economic institutions (Ausubel 219). The Pakeha wished to rule the colony completely, “aware that Maori resistance to land sales limited the extension of British sovereignty while preserving Maori autonomy” (Alves 25). The British colonists, refusing to be denied the land that they desired, took up arms against the Maori who they felt blocked their ambitions. The Maori resisted such attacks, considering the white settlers arrogant and greedy, and the events culminated into a series of deadly Land Wars.