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Maori and the State: Crown-Māori relations in New Zealand/Aotearoa, 1950-2000

Establishing the Maori Women’s Welfare League

Establishing the Maori Women’s Welfare League

One remarkable development in rangatiratanga which was in essence voluntarist, but which had strong official encouragement before, during and after its inception, was the establishment of a pan-tribal movement of Maori women. Maori Women’s Institutes had been established in rural areas from 1929, and health committees among Maori women from the mid-1930s (these later coalesced into branches of the Women’s Health League, or WHL, often called the Maori Women’s Health League in reflection of the great bulk of its membership). Such groupings had done much to improve daily living in tribal areas, but tended initially to operate in close association with pakeha individuals and organisations and to work in conjunction with male-dominated groups. The voluntarist efforts of Maori women during the Second World War paralleled and supplemented the essentially male thrust of the Maori War Effort Organisation. In particular, women stepped in to take over many tasks from men who were serving abroad or assigned to essential industries, and some of their groups were officially recognised and assisted.

After the war, the tribal committees operating under the MSEA Act remained mostly male-dominated, although some wartime women’s committees/komiti wahine continued, either within the official structure or outside it. These, together with WHL branches, were often powerful embodiments of Maori women’s conceptions of rangatiratanga – in ways which at times complemented the male-dominated institutions of traditional Maoridom but challenged them at others. While there were increasing numbers of women welfare officers in the MWO, they sometimes had difficulty liaising with thepage 70 tribal committees because of the official structure’s focus on ‘men’s work’, with the tribal committees and executives tending at first to orientate their activities around such concerns as retention and use of land or the rehabilitation of returned servicemen. In the late 1940s, the welfare officers undertook a stocktake of the work of the women’s committees and concluded that they were contributing proactively to many post-war developments of benefit to Maoridom. Noting that they often operated in separate spheres from (and sometimes performed better than) the tribal committees and executives, the MWO encouraged their continuance and the creation of new ones. Seeking to systematise their operations throughout the country, Rangi Royal’s staff began to assist Maori women in forming a nationwide network of komiti wahine, by then called Women’s Welfare Committees (WWCs). These would focus on issues on which activist women had been concentrating, such as family, health and housing. The Crown ideal was that eventually they would merge with the branches of the Women’s Health League, and come under greater state guidance and direction.

Some of the WWCs modelled themselves on WHL local branches or other ‘approved’ models, encouraged to do so by Royal and his welfare officers. The fact that a number of them had emerged from within the Maori War Effort Organisation, or various komiti wahine working alongside it, helped good relationships between the MWO organisations and the women’s committees to develop. The MWO’s aim was that there would be a kind of division of labour, with the WWCs focussing on ‘aspects of welfare which are the prerogative of women’ and the tribal committees on the rest. But the women’s committees would also draw strength from liaising and cooperating with other groups, such as the Maori women’s committees of the Country Women’s Institute.

Maori women who had gone to the cities and subsequently felt a degree of freedom from the male orientation of rural-based tribes formed, joined or developed relationships with WWCs. Despite their official franchising, these committees were often able to operate quite autonomously. The broad-ranging nature of their ‘welfare’ brief generally allowed them to work under the auspices of the 1945 Act without compromising their independence. They could concentrate on their own agendas, rather than on those of the Crown’s agents, to a degree that the more deeply entrenched official committees of the MWO could not. As a consequence, the number of WWCs grew quickly.

However, a feeling soon arose among the WWCs that they would be more effective if they acquired a united voice. Their aim was, in effect, a national body of the type denied to Maoridom in general, and key elements of the Crown were not averse to such a development. In fact as early as 1948, the Controller of Welfare had suggested that the WHL and the various komiti wahine should, under departmental guidance, form a national committee. Its aims would bepage 71 so specific that it would not constitute a danger to the sovereign unity of the state – a perception which no doubt in part reflected prevailing mores about the place of women in society. Bureaucrats and politicians, moreover, could see that not only would a national women’s organisation better help to improve the socio-economic lot of Maori and help migrants adjust to city life, it could also serve as a useful conduit for information flow both upwards and downwards. Some circles within the machinery of state were already regretting the action of the legislators in 1945 in denying Maori a national voice. A unified voice for Maori women might be some kind of substitute, and even if it were not, it held much promise of benefiting the Crown as well as Maori. While a national organisation would lead to better networking among women and an improved capacity to pressure the government, then, it would also assist the state in its various aims – including, in the final analysis, fully assimilationist ones.

There were, however, tensions between the fiercely independent Women’s Health League and the MWO. The WHL was acknowledged as ‘a significant force in the delivery of Maori health’, but its range of work tended to be relatively restricted, despite a broad definition of ‘health’. The DMA’s women welfare officers and others within the official system did not want the WHL’s focus and stance to interfere with the emergence of flaxroots expressions of the voice of Maori women – which, they believed, would at the same time assist official goals. The WHL’s leaders reportedly attempted to secure agreement that their organisation would dominate the central secretariat of a united body. When this failed they withdrew from discussions, without much regret from the WWCs. The women’s committees forged ahead with what they saw, in essence, as ways of expressing their own rangatiratanga, whatever the degree of assistance and encouragement they received from the welfare officers and the rest of the MWO machinery. Few in the WWCs were worried about the fact that, after many discussions on unification at official and non-official levels, the draft constitution for a nationwide body that was adopted at a conference in Rotorua in 1950 had largely emanated from official sources. Nor that it was based on that of the Returned Services’ Association, a model chosen because it provided for district and central representation as well as local branches.4

With such strong backing from Maori women, the MWO’s women welfare and other officers went about setting the groundwork for the yet-to-be-established national organisation, and WWCs in effect transformed into branches. The officers encouraged the formation of new branches and helped set up district councils at regional level. By March 1951, there were 160 committees/branches and 14 district councils coordinating their activities. In September 1951, a general conference of the WWCs was convened in Wellington by Maori Affairs Minister Corbett to discuss ‘the formation of a national organisation to unite Maori women in the common objective of homecraft and mothercraftpage 72 and the general welfare of the Maori mother and child’. There had been a last effort to persuade the WHL to attend, but that organisation remained sceptical that it could retain its independence and decentralised structure in the face of governmental/MWO overview. The conference was well organised (and, some suggested, orchestrated) by Royal’s staff. The draft constitution was endorsed and the Maori Women’s Welfare League (MWWL; or Te Ropu Wahine Maori Toko i Te Ora) thereby founded with a three-tiered organisation of local branches, district councils and a Dominion Council. The Crown agreed to pay for a central secretariat. This was accepted by the delegates as a practical matter of administration rather than one involving state interference in policy, although it did heighten the suspicions of groups like the WHL.

At this inaugural conference, there were delegates from 187 branches (reporting to 22 district councils) and 27 ‘isolated branches’ (which were independent, but would in future report directly to the central executive), with a total membership of 2503. Committees on housing, child welfare, health, employment and other matters were set up. The activist Whina Cooper became the MWWL’s first president and Kingitanga’s Princess Te Puea its founding ‘patroness’. The appointment of both indicated that this would be an organisation intending to make its voice heard fully. Indeed, these two became the first Maori women to have truly national profiles. Cooper had ‘begun her public career in the manner of a traditional rural and tribal rangatira’ and moved to the city in 1949. She came to epitomise the new ‘urban and national Maori figure whose position was based to some extent on the consent of Maori electors, to some extent on acceptance by Pakeha leaders and institutions, as well as on her own capacity and mana’. As MWWL president, she travelled the country with departmental welfare officers, setting up or consolidating branches and working for ‘the general uplift of our people’.

4 Hill, State Authority, p 247ff (p 249 for ‘prerogative’ quote); ‘Women’s Health League’, Opotiki News, 6 July, 1951, contained in MA, W2490, Box 131, Part 1, 36/26, Maori Women’s Welfare League, 1950– 56; Rei, Tania, McDonald, Geraldine and Te Awakōtuku, Ngāhuia, ‘Ngā Rōpū Wāhine Māori: Māori Women’s Organisations’, in Else, Anne (ed), Women Together: A History of Women’s Organisations in New Zealand: Ngā Rōpū Wāhine o te Motu, Wellington, 1993, pp 8–9; King, Michael, Whina: A Biography of Whina Cooper, Auckland, 1983, pp 167–8; Tautari, Marie, ‘Māori Women’s Institutes 1929–1950s’, in Else, Anne (ed), Women Together, pp 25–7; Meha, Raina, ‘Te Rōpū o te Ora: Women’s Health League 1937–’, in Else, Anne (ed), Women Together, pp 30–33; Department of Maori Affairs, ‘Annual Report’, 1950, p 11; Szaszy, Mira, Te Timatanga a Tātau Tātau: Early Stories from Founding Members of the Māori Women’s Welfare League, Te Rōpū Wāhine Māori Toko i te Ora, Wellington, 1993, pp xiv, xvi; Durie, Mason, Whaiora: Maori Health Development, Melbourne, 1994 (2nd ed, 1998), pp 47–8 (p 47 for ‘a significant force’ quote); Walker, Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou, p 202; Winiata, The Changing Role, p 166; Byron, Isolde, Nga Perehitini: The Presidents of the Maori Women’s Welfare League 1951–2001, Auckland, 2002, p 9; Harris, ‘Dancing with the State’, pp 88–92.