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

Regional Organising

Regional Organising

The tribal committees and tribal executives served as vehicles for communication for both the Crown and Maori. They were used by officials for sending messages and instructions into the heartland of Maoridom. And as conduits for Maori concerns in a way that ‘fully official’ bodies could not match, they could provide early warnings for officials and politicians of problems ahead. This often led, however, to the Crown sidestepping rather than addressing Maori concerns. If their aspirations to run their own affairs were to be even partly met, many Maori believed, devolved authority to a higher level than that embodied in the 1945 legislation was needed. There was increasing appreciation within the Crown, too, that such a development might prove to be of national benefit. Politicians and bureaucrats debated how, and how far, to further place authority in the hands of Maori institutions. In 1945, the government had refused not just national but also regional representation for the MWO’s committee system, wary of the power this might give Maoridom to pursue separatist designs. But before long, officials were noting that, however independently they operated, the tribal committees and executives did not pose any real threat to state authority. With Maori aspirations being expressed mainly within Crown sovereigntist parameters, the official committee system’s usefulness to the state outweighed its disadvantages. Thus, when tribal executives began liaising and engaging in informal, regional-level organising activities, there was little alarm within official circles.

Spearheaded by Waiariki tribal executives, Maori leaders took steps to institutionalise such initiatives in the early 1950s. Some began first to plan and then to form unofficial ‘district councils’ of tribal executives on a regional basis. The new levels of representation were established, reportedly, ‘with an enthusiasm that brought new life’ to the committee system. Once more the Crown accepted the logic of and the uses for this development. Before long, the new regional bodies were suggesting that the Crown should authorise a national Maori organisation comprised of district council representatives. This idea of a national body which could provide a central channel of communication with the minister was strongly mooted at a conference of tribal executives in 1952.

Initially, the Department of Maori Affairs ‘wholeheartedly’ endorsed these various developments, partly because of the model provided by the Maori Women’s Welfare League, which operated successfully at regional and national as well as flaxroots levels. Whatever his preconceptions before taking up the Maori Affairs portfolio, Ernest Corbett had to address the realities of the issues in front of him. He was persuaded by his officials that a national Maori body, given that it would be constrained by its relationship with the DMA and the functions established in the 1945 statute, could assist him in his tasks. In 1953,page 56 the minister gave executive approval not only for officials to cooperate with the district councils but also for a national-level organisation to be established to operate in liaison with the Welfare Division.

Almost at once, however, the inherent struggle between Crown authority and indigenous autonomy threatened the viability of such promising developments for Maoridom. The district councils quickly joined forces to oppose new items on the government’s flourishing assimilationist agenda. They protested at aspects of planned new legislation, and deplored the exclusion of Maori representation from key public events. District councils were especially critical of proposals for further land alienation which Corbett had circulated through the Welfare Division’s systems for comment. The minister had not expected responses that were fundamentally opposed to governmental plans, an indication of the Crown’s inability to fully understand the strength of rangatiratanga within the committee structure it had nurtured.

Some of the critical feedback came in letters signed by departmental officers acting as secretaries for the newly recognised district councils, a development which caused politicians to fear that some of their Maori Affairs officials had been ‘captured’. Corbett told departmental head Tipi Ropiha that ‘the terminology in some of the correspondence is of such a nature as to be inappropriate as between a departmental officer and his Minister’. He suggested that should things ‘develop further, it may be necessary to issue prohibitions’. Prohibitions indeed came quickly when Maori assertion of rangatiratanga continued. A planned national conference to be hosted by the Crown was postponed and then abandoned, and the district councils were now essentially without channels of formal communication to government. Although it had been approved in principle by government, there seemed little point in setting up a national body that would be ignored, and none eventuated. District councils, while mostly continuing on and retaining a certain degree of official recognition, lacked Crown empathy or support.7

7 Secretary of Maori Affairs to the Minister of Maori Affairs, 16 Feb 1960, MA 1, 35/2, Part 1, Box 646, NZ Council of Tribal Executives, 1952–1962 (for ‘with an enthusiasm’ and ‘wholeheartedly’ quotes); Hunn, Affairs of State, pp 152–3; Fleras, ‘Descriptive Analysis’, p 200; Minister of to Secretary of Maori Affairs, 13 Aug 1953, MA 1, 35/2, Part 1, Box 646, NZ Council of Tribal Executives, 1952–1962 (for ‘the terminology’ and ‘develop further’ quotes).