How much land have Māori lost?

Over several decades, Maori were stripped of their land, their economy and many of their cultural touchstones. Data journalist Andy Fyers quantifies the scale of the loss for Stuff’s NZ Made project.

LAND

When the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840, Ma¯ ori land holdings encompassed most of New Zealand. Within a century, that had diminished to a few pockets, mostly in the middle of the North Island.

The land was lost through a combination of private and government purchases (many of questionable legitimacy), outright confiscation, and later Native Land Court practices that made it difficult for Ma¯ ori to maintain their land under traditional ownership structures.

EARLY PURCHASES

There were some purchases of Ma¯ ori land before the Treaty was signed. The most significant were by the New Zealand Company, whose business was buying land in New Zealand and then on-selling parcels of it to prospective settlers in Britain.

In 1839, the Company went on a buying spree in the lower North Island and upper South Island. The towns of Wellington, Nelson, Whanganui and New Plymouth were all eventually established on this land.

In Wellington, there were conflicting claims to the land and some chiefs believed that by selling land they were legitimising their claim, rather than extinguishing it.

After the Treaty was signed, a land commissioner, William Spain, was tasked with investigating the legitimacy of all pre-Treaty land purchases by Europeans. By this time, settlers who had bought land in the New Zealand Company settlements were beginning to arrive.

Despite his reservations about most of the purchases, Spain ultimately found that at least part of each of the purchases was legitimate, except for a purchase at Porirua.

The commission he led investigated other pre-Treaty land purchases and when purchases were seen to be legitimate, a maximum of 2560 acres could be awarded to the buyer. But instead of the remainder being returned to Ma¯ ori, it went to the Crown.

CROWN PURCHASES

The Treaty gave the Crown exclusive rights to buy Ma¯ ori land. This was known as preemption.

It was occasionally waived to allow private parties to buy land – one such period resulted in large areas of land being bought by settlers in and around Auckland.

For the most part, land was sold exclusively to the Crown in the decades immediately after the signing of the Treaty.

The Crown used pre-emption to buy two-thirds of the entire land area of New Zealand from Ma¯ ori – including most of the South Island. It paid £21,150 in total – the equivalent of $2.4 million in today’s money, which would buy about three homes in Auckland. The money raised from selling the land to settlers helped fund the newly formed government.

Treaty breaches have been identified by the Crown in the process of these purchases, but these vary from purchase to purchase. In some cases, iwi were made promises that helped to persuade them to sell, but the promises were often broken or simply ignored.

Between 1848 and 1864, the Nga¯ i Tahu iwi sold most of the South Island to the Crown for £15,000, a sum that equated to a fraction of a penny per acre.

In return, the Crown promised to build schools and hospitals for the iwi and to set aside 10 per cent of the land for their occupation. The schools and hospitals never materialised and Nga¯ i Tahu received only 37,000 acres of the purchased land – one-thousandth as opposed to one-tenth.

In the years that followed, the iwi fell into subsistence poverty and by the turn of the century there were just 2000 Nga¯ i Tahu left in their traditional lands.

CONFISCATIONS

In the 1860s, the Government passed legislation to allow confiscation of Ma¯ ori land from

For the most part, land was sold exclusively to the Crown in the decades immediately after the signing of the Treaty.

those who had ‘‘rebelled’’ against the Crown during the New Zealand Wars. The lands of progovernment and neutral iwi were also taken.

The main confiscations were in Waikato, Taranaki, Hawke’s Bay and Bay of Plenty regions.

Some land was returned later, although not always to the original owners, and it was often then bought by the Crown.

NATIVE LAND COURT

The Native Land Acts of 1862 and 1865 allowed Ma¯ ori to convert customary lands (generally in group ownership) to individual title which could then be on-sold to private buyers. By 1872, over five million acres had been converted from customary to individual title.

The process of gaining title was often expensive in terms of survey costs and the long journeys many Ma¯ ori had to make to attend court hearings.

Putting the unfairness or fairness of the court’s practices to one side, the outcome of the late-19th and early-20th century period in which this court operated in this way was wholesale alienation of Ma¯ ori from their land.

In 1865, 19 million acres was considered to be in Ma¯ ori customary title. By 1909, more than 18m acres of this land had been surveyed and was in individual ownership. Almost none of it had been settled by Ma¯ ori.

TOTAL LAND LOSS

In the 20th century there was further loss of Ma¯ ori land through private and government purchases and under the Public Works Act, that sometimes breached the Treaty.

The cumulative effect of all the purchases, confiscations and acquisitions is that collectively-owned Ma¯ ori land now accounts for 4.8 per cent of New Zealand’s total land area.

ECONOMY

With loss of land comes the loss of the means of production – especially in an agricultural economy.

Before the Treaty many Ma¯ ori had developed lucrative trading relationships with Europeans. This is cited as one of the reasons many Ma¯ ori were initially keen to sell land: they wanted the economic benefits that came from trading with Europeans.

It is difficult to quantify the full extent of the economic losses that resulted from the extensive land alienation.

But there are many historical accounts of the success of the Ma¯ ori economy in the years before and immediately after the signing of the Treaty.

The first export crop Ma¯ ori grew was potatoes, which they traded with whalers in the early 19th century. The scale of the cultivation enabled whaling ships to buy potatoes by the tonne.

In the 1820s and 1830s, the flax trade with Australia took off, while sealskins and spars for ships were exported to China and India.

In 1830, it was reported that 28 ships carrying an average of 100 tons of potatoes and milled grain made 56 journeys between New Zealand and Sydney. The following year 1200 tons of flax was exported to Australia.

As the settler population grew after the signing of the Treaty, Ma¯ ori were well placed to supply them with the goods they needed. Towns like Nelson initially depended entirely on Ma¯ ori for food and other supplies.

In 1857, Attorney-General William Swainson estimated the Tu¯ wharetoa and Ma¯ taatua iwi, numbering about 8000 people, owned 9000 acres of wheat, potatoes, maize and kumara, 2000 horses, 200 cattle, 5000 pigs, four water-mills, 96 ploughs, 43 coasting vessels and 900 canoes.

Ma¯ ori owned flour mills throughout the country. Fifty were built in Waikato alone in 1840s and 1850s.

However, in the late-1850s the price for potatoes and wheat crashed in Australia, and in the 1860s the land wars began, which diverted resources towards fighting and resulted in the confiscation of some of the most productive land in New Zealand.

POPULATION

In 1769, Captain James Cook estimated the Ma¯ ori population at 100,000, while life expectancy was about 30 – similar to Western Europe at the time. By 1840, the Ma¯ ori population was estimated between 70,000 and 90,000.

After the signing of the Treaty, diseases brought by the influx of European settlers – to which Ma¯ ori had no immunity – had a devastating impact on the population and life expectancy.

Poverty and overcrowding as a result of land alienation made it easier for diseases to spread and, by the end of the century, the Ma¯ ori population was estimated at 42,000. In 1891, Ma¯ ori life expectancy was 25 for men and 23 for women. In 1886, 51 per cent of Ma¯ ori who died were younger than 15, compared with 14 per cent of non-Ma¯ ori.

In the 20th century the trend began to reverse as Ma¯ ori developed better resistance to European diseases and received better healthcare. But life expectancy remained well below that of Pa¯ keha¯ .

After World War II, the population boomed again, thanks to lower mortality rates while fertility rates remained high. At the 2013 census, Ma¯ ori numbered 600,000. Life expectancy was 73 for men and 77 for women – still below the figures for Pa¯ keha¯ .

CULTURAL LOSS

Loss of land often meant Ma¯ ori lost access to culturally significant sites such as burial grounds and pa. It often also meant losing access to forests, waterways, food resources, wa¯ hi tapu and other taonga.

In the 1980s, a claim was made to the Waitangi Tribunal that te reo Ma¯ ori was a taonga and that the Crown had a responsibility under the Treaty to nurture it.

The claimants further argued that Crown actions in suppressing use of the language in schools had contributed to its decline. The tribunal asked whether the promises of the Treaty could be met if ‘‘there is not a recognised place for the language of one of the partners to the Treaty’’.

In 2013, 21 per cent of the Ma¯ ori population spoke te reo, down from 25 per cent in 2001. More than 40 per cent of Ma¯ ori over 70 can speak the language, compared with less than 20 per cent of those under 30.

In 1769, Captain Cook estimated the Ma¯ori population at 100,000. By the end of the 19th century it was estimated at 42,000.