Colonial Rule and Local Response: Maori Responses too European Domination in New Zealand since 1960

Sorrenson, M.P.K. “Colonial Rule and Local Response: Maori Responses too European Domination in New Zealand since 1960.” Ko Te Whenua Te Utu/Land is the Price, edited by M.P.K Sorrenson, Auckland University Press, 2014, pp. 145 – 157

• “New Zealand became self-governing within twenty years of its foundation as a British colony; thereafter the fate of Maori, already a minority in their own land, rested largely in the hands of the European colonists.” 145

• “a colonial situation continued to exist long after self-government had been conceded; that New Zealand’s ‘colonial’ rulers were resident white settlers, not expatriate colonial servants. In this respect New Zealand is not unique. The ‘colonial’ rule of white settlers in southern Africa will spring readily to mind, though the different racial ratios prevents one from pressing the comparison with New Zealand too far; in southern Africa it was white minorities who inhibited the nationalist aspirations of Africans.” 145

• “At one extreme there was the possibility of assimilation, implicit in the Treaty of Waitangi of 1840, with its promise to grant Maori the rights and privileges of British subjects, and consistently pursued thereafter by imperial governors and colonial governments. At the opposite pole was the prospect, growing ever more slim, that somehow the Maori could separate themselves and preserve their identity as a people.” 147

• “The wars and demographic changes of the 1860s made it evident that New Zealand would remain one nation, under European domination, but by no means certain whether that nation would have one or two peoples. Could the Maori retain an identity, perhaps even a national identity, when they were but a dispersed and subordinate minority?” 147

• “Under the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863, some three million acres of land belonging to the Maori ‘rebels’ were confiscated (later about half of this was returned or purchased).” 148

• “it is sufficient to say that Maori land passed inexorably into European hands often without any real benefit to Maori since much land was taken to pay the costs of litigation” 149

• “So far the discussion of Maori responses to European domination has been confined to resistance movements.” 152

• “What they needed above all was skilled, educated leaders, firmly based in the Maori community, yet able to stand on their own in the European world and manipulate the European system to Maori advantage.” 154

• “Above all, it would seem that there has been no prospect of a successful Maorinnationalism, thanks to an unrelenting European domination.’ 155

• “Even today, with a rapidly rising Maori population, there would appear to be little scope for Maori nationalism.” 156