Raupatu: The Punitive Confiscation of Maori Land in the 1860s

tags

LAW 343 Dispossession

Notes

greater harm was probably done to Maori in New Zealand by the confiscation of their land in the 1860s than by the wars that preceded it.

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high treason as crimes against the monarch, which led to justification of confiscation as the concept of all land being deemed to be held from the Crown developed

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The example of Ireland may satisfy us how little is to be effected towards the quieting of a country by the confiscation of private land

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deeply felt need to punish Maori who were in armed opposition to the government and thus the British Crown

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Compensation would, though, be allowed only to those who could prove that they were not rebels before a specially constituted Compensation Court

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the punishment should be such as to inflict present humiliation and inconvenience rather than a recurring sense of injury

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emergency conditions threatening the existence of the State

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ethnic conflict continued through that year, so in October 1865 the New Zealand Settlements Amendment and Continuance Act was passed to make its operation ‘perpetual’

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Having laid down in the NZSA a few basic principles for the confiscation process – meagrely protective as they were -the colonial government then proceeded to break all of them

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governor could not have been satisfied in 1865 that any tribes affected were actually in rebellion, and that the confiscation bore no relation to either tribal boundaries or current threats to peace

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‘If war is the absence of peace, the war has never ended in Taranaki, because that essential prerequisite for peace amongst peoples, that each should be able to live with dignity ontheir own lands, is still absent and the protest over land rights continues to be made’

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The Natives were treated as rebels and war declared against them before they had engaged in rebellion of any kind, and in the circumstances they had no alternative but to fight in their own self-defence

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Confiscation in this region resulted from two killings, that of missionary Rev. Carl Volkner at Opotiki in March 1865 and of government official James Fulloon at Whakatane in July.

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Large troop numbers might have been necessary to be effective, but indiscriminate naval bombardment, pitched battles and cavalry charges, all without attempts to parley and explain their purpose, argue against a simple Government focus on some dozen ‘criminals’.

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