Anxious to take control of their
own destiny, Maori leaders opened the first Maori Parliament at Waipatu June
1892. It was the nineteenth
century culmination of resistance, accommodation, and assimilation with British
colonial powers in New Zealand.
After two years in Waipatu, the annual meetings of the Maori Parliament
rotated among Maori villages, most of which were located near European
settlements[i]. Unlike the governing council of the
King movement, which based its claim to authority on the Maori’s traditional
autonomy, the new parliament based its authority on the Waitangi Treaty and the
Constitution Act. Both documents
defined the relative positions of Maoris and Europeans, providing a legal
framework for the Parliament’s activities.[ii]
To
minimize the inevitable conflict with the Crown, the Maori Parliament attempted
to convince the colonial administration to grant it the power to govern Maori
internal affairs. The first effort, drafted in 1893 and presented to Native
Minister A.J. Cadman, formally asked to establish a council with the power to
govern the Maori. The council,
called the Federated Maori Assembly of New Zealand, was effectively identical
to the Maori Parliament. It
contained two houses, with the upper composed of hereditary Maori chiefs, and
the lower elected by the voters of the various tribes. In this form, the Parliament would have
the power to create local governments and be theoretically equal to the New
Zealand Parliament, answering only to the Governor and the Crown.[iii]
Predictably,
the only response the Maori received was an acknowledgment of their
petition. The New Zealand
Parliament neither passed, nor debated their bill. Lacking any response, the Maori Parliament tried again in
1894 with the Native Rights Bill, which simply asked for constitutional
guarantees for Maori and a future Maori Parliament, with details of structure
and authority at the discretion of the New Zealand Parliament. The primary goal of the Native Rights Bill
was to place Maori and Pakeha as social, political, and civil equals
responsible only to the Queen.
This Bill was introduced for debate by Hone Heke, one of the New Zealand
Parliament’s four Maori members, in 1894.
During the debate, European members slowly trickled out of the
Parliament chambers, and when the number of members remaining dropped below the
number required for a quorum, debate ended. New Zealand’s Parliament finally gave the Maori an answer in
1896 – rejecting the Native Rights Bill.[iv] The defeat forced Maori leaders to look
for other options.
In
addition to its obvious historical importance, this episode in the long Maori
struggle for autonomy clearly illustrates Homi Bhabha’s theory of hybridity in
colonial and imperial settings. Bhabha
defined hybridity as the process in which colonial authorities attempt to alter
the culture and political organizations of the colonized to fit within its own
framework. The colonizer’s attempt
to redirect its new subjects’ culture fails. However, it produces something new
that the colonizer neither fully understands or controls. Indeed, the colonial power may not even
understand that the objects of its domination are using its own tools against
it.[v] As a result, Bhabha argues that the
clash between colonizer and colonized creates a new identity for the subject
peoples in colonial settings, creating challenges and opportunities for both
sides of the colonial equation.
Ultimately the conflict creates new identities and destroys the
“essentialist” aspects of the previous identities of both colonizer and
colonized.
Perhaps more than any other culture, the
Maori response to European contact and colonization illustrates a conscious
effort to adapt new technology, institutions, and religions to manage a
changing world. While muskets
radically altered warfare among the Maori, other technologies introduced
radical economic, political and religious changes which stand as the most
important results of contact with Europeans. That these changes occurred at all show the Maori’s
remarkable willingness to adapt in the face of challenges, but also their
determination to remain Maori, not merely become Europeans. These religious and political changes
are evident in Maori political efforts spanning from the King Movement to the
Young Maori Party of the early twentieth century and the Maori response to
Christianity and Judaism. These
changes exemplify Homi Bhabha’s theory of hybridity in colonial situations
The
earliest example of Maori response to Europeans was in the adoption of the
label “Maori” to distinguish “normal” brown-skinned islanders from the
pale-skinned “Pakeha” who arrived in New Zealand starting in the seventeenth
century.[vi] Adoption of these biracial labels
created the first pan-tribal Maori identity in reaction to the arrival of the
Pakeha “Other”. Maori identity as
we understand it today, is therefore a constructed hybrid identity. In modern New Zealand, as in the past,
this created Maori identity provides political and social identity in the face
of potentially overwhelming outside influences.
Some
of the earliest observable changes in Maori culture resulting from European
contact are military and economic in nature. Adopting muskets both as highly efficient weapons and
symbols of mana, the Maori suffered through two decades of vicious warfare that
leapt far beyond the highly structured confines of previous tribal
conflicts. The depopulation
resulting from the destruction of entire tribes and increasing levels of
slavery forced social and economic change on the Maori.[vii]
Beyond
warfare, the economics of Maori life changed drastically in response to
increasing desire for finished goods from Europe that included not only
muskets, but blankets, clothing, and iron tools. In order to more efficiently harvest flax, timber, and kauri
gum for export, entire villages moved from secure locations on hill tops and
along rivers to the gum fields and marshes that their agricultural products
came from. Increased European
settlement after the completion of the Waitangi Treaty in 1840 brought even
larger changes as the Maori began to participate in a market economy aimed at
providing goods and services to Europeans. By the 1850s, multiple tribes were practicing commercial
agriculture, and some owned their own blue-water sailing vessels – 111 by 1867
– and others built flour mills and manufactured their own gunpowder.[viii]
Changes
among Maori during this age of economic expansion included union organization
among sheep shearers, providing higher rates of pay than those available to
Pakeha shearers. However,
production of all goods fell into distinctly Maori patterns. Once Maori demand for European goods,
such as muskets or horses decreased, so did Maori production. Economic activity was a means to an
end, as were land sales and leases.
While some land transactions were driven by desire for cash on the
barrel, Maori also frequently sold or leased land in order to draw settlers to
the area in an effort to increase economic activity.[ix] Towns were also sometimes welcomed as
tools to reduce the likelihood of attack by other tribes since it might involve
harming Pakeha anywhere.[x]
Unfortunately
for the Maori, increasing numbers of European settlers led to conflict over
land. Disputes between the
colonial government and the tribes over land sales and European settlement led
to a series of disastrous wars, which both reduced the tribal population, and
further reduced Maori autonomy.
Self-government, beginning with the Constitution Act of 1852, gave the
settlers control over the colony, including the Maori minority. As theoretically equal subjects of the
Queen, Maori could, and did, participate in Parliamentary politics, but with
only four seats in Parliament, all Maori MPs could do was protest anti-Maori
policies.[xi] Indeed, the main effect of Maori
representation in Parliament was to remove the guarantees to self-government
found in the Treaty of Waitangi and the Constitution Act, and to allow settlers
to argue that no oppression of Maori existed in New Zealand.
The
1850s witnessed the development of the first significant pan-tribal movements
beyond the simple development of the Maori-Pakeha dichotomy. One of these early movements, Kai
Ngarara was religious, but the others were secular in nature. The earliest of the secular pan-tribal
movements was simply a loose grouping of tribes opposed to selling land to
settlers – any land, to any settlers.
This early opposition to land sales provided a basis for a larger and
more important pan-tribal reaction to European settlement – the King Movement[xii]. After electing Potatau Te Wherowhero
King of the Maori in 1858 in an effort to place the Maori leadership at
political level equal to the Crown, open warfare between the King’s supporters
and the British erupted in 1863.[xiii] Pan-tribalism during this period was
not monolithic, however; only 15 of the 24 tribes sent troops to support the
King, while some Maori sided with the Queen. Others claimed they didn’t want to eject the Queen from New
Zealand, but merely to bolster Maori autonomy. This cleavage leads some historians to argue that the King
movement was local to Waikato, rather than truly national in scope.[xiv]
Potatau
Te Wherowhero, provides a vivid illustration of this hybrid Maori response to
European colonialism. When New Zealand
Governor Gore Browne refused to participate in meetings related to the conflict
between the Taranaki Land League, settlers, and Pakeha Maori, Te Wherowhero
argued that the Governor was responsible for the conflict, and was turning to
the old Maori Gods, while the Maori accepted Christianity. Indeed, in a speech at Hawke’s Bay, Te
Wherowhero accused Browne of worshiping the old Maori deity Uenuku, the
man-eater, and using Uenuku’s war-like nature and blood-lust against the Maori,
who had adopted the peaceful path of Christianity. Referring to the Old
Testament, Te Wherowhero claimed to worship Jehovah, which Christian
missionaries urged upon his people, hoping to find that this would gain him a
measure of respect and equality with the Europeans. To his sadness, Europeans ignored the unity of their shared
religion for their own selfish purposes, and went to war over land in Taranaki.[xv] This led Te Wherowhero to accuse
Governor Browne of adopting the path of the violent Uenuku.
This
illustrates two modes of hybrid adaptation by the Maori: political and
religious. The political aspects
of the Maori response to colonization are perhaps easier to identify and
engage. Although the Musket Wars
of the 1820’s and 1830’s created deep divisions among the Maori, by the 1850’s
many Maori recognized the need for unity in the face of European economic and
political expansion in New Zealand.
The first pan-tribal effort to create political unity came with the
election of Potatau Te Wherowhero as the first Maori King in 1858. Creating a Maori monarchy represented
not only reaction to the European threat to Maori land, which was disappearing
due to land confiscations and unscrupulous sales of tribal land, but was a
European institution adopted for the Maori purpose of protecting traditional
Maori rights and usages.[xvi]
Those
Maori that accepted the creation of a Maori King did not see the move as part
of a struggle for independence from the British Empire. Kingites viewed their new monarchy as
the elevation of one of their own to a spiritual plane equal with that of Queen
Victoria. Maori argued that in
this way, the King would have mana over the Maori, while the Queen maintained
her mana over the Pakeha.[xvii] The idea was to gain autonomy and
protection for the Maori in their own land, while still bowing to the overall
suzerainty of the British Crown.
When crowning Te Wherowhero, Iwikau Te Heuheu proclaimed, “…this day I
create you King of the Maori people. You and Queen Victoria shall be bound
together as one.”[xviii] Te Wherowhero’s successor as King, his
son Tawhiao, went so far as to argue that his crown was not intended to
separate the Maori from the British, but accepted it “…in order that the
natives might be united under one race, ever acknowledging the supremacy of the
Queen, and claiming her protection.”[xix]
Maori
sought autonomy not only to preserve their lands from the greed of unscrupulous
Maori and land-hungry settlers.
The authority of the colonial government did not extend deep into the
interior, although colonial laws did.
The lack of local constables and courts led Maori such as William
Thompson Tarapipipi to argue that the Maori needed a king because they wanted
law and order, which, “A King could give these better than the Governor. The Governor never does anything except
when a Pakeha is killed. We are
allowed to fight and kill each other as we please, a King would end these
evils.”[xx] The Maori conception of the benefits of
monarchy, are clearly not merely those a European would have articulated. Instead of mere independence from the
British Crown, the Maori desired local law enforcement, peace, and the
preservation of their lands according to the Treaty of Waitangi.
The
massive dislocations caused by armed conflict brought cultural revitalization
movements such as the Pai Marire.
These movements represent another form of hybridity – one that combined
traditional Maori cultural practices with Christian ideology.[xxi] Pai Marire, sometimes known as
Hauhauism, combined Christian and Maori ideas to create a positive and
non-violent response to European domination in New Zealand. Promoting the idea of a New Jerusalem,
Pai Marire was strongly opposed to land confiscation or sales and dedicated to
revitalization of Maori identity.[xxii] When the King movement and supporters
among the Hau Hau refused to submit to British rule even after military defeat,
Governor Sir George Grey condemned both movements and confiscated 3 million
acres of Maori land.[xxiii]
By
1891, Maori constituted only 7 percent of New Zealand’s population, and were
reduced to subsistence farming and day labor, suffering from disease and dire
poverty. Despite these conditions,
perhaps even due to them, Maori continued to resist the British policy of
amalgamation using both separatist movements and Western political
structures. A good example of
these efforts is the continued efforts of a much reduced King movement under
Tawhiao, which petitioned Queen Victoria for self-government in 1884. Failing again to gain any measure of
autonomy, the Kingites setup an independent Great Council with a constitution,
cabinet, and minister of Pakeha affairs.
The constitution directly dealt with issues of land reform. Under the constitution land disputes of
all types were the province of the king, who would determine title to papatupu
land held by the tribes and might rehear cases already decided by the Native
Land Court established by the British.
Individuals were not allowed to sell off their shares of communal land,
rather the people would collectively make such decisions, which then went to
the King for final approval.
Finally, the Great Council’s constitution reduced European governments
to consultation only at the approval of the King.[xxiv] This shadow Maori government claimed
the right to collect taxes, to levy fines, to deputize justices of the peace,
and prohibit liquor and rabbit poison from Maori settlements. The Great Council even posted notices
that Pakeha were liable to its laws and subject arrest by Maori constables.[xxv] While this effort did not secure a
large amount of support even among Maori, it persisted in limited form for a
decade, and inspired the creation of the Maori Parliament in 1892. The Maori Parliament garnered more
support among Maori, including those normally allied to the New Zealand
Parliament and British government, and attempted to work primarily within the
structure of New Zealand and British government, rather than in opposition to
it.[xxvi]
Maori
also turned to other extra-legal organizations, usually committees, to handle
necessary tasks. As with earlier
efforts, the committees Maori created were European-style institutions turned
to their own purposes. In some
cases, the committees were land tribunals that offered advice on rulings to the
Native Land Court, but in others they provided other vital social and
governmental functions. Many Maori
villages turned to committees to fulfill the roles of local government or
magistrates. The committees, which
were composed of village chiefs or local clergy, levied fines from offenses
like drinking liquor, or more serious crimes such as assault, rape, or
adultery. The committees’ power
was largely customary, but sometimes backed with legal force when committees
petitioned for the right to hear cases involving values of more than 20 pounds
sterling, to try crimes under the Magistrates Act, or even for government seals
so that their verdicts would have official weight.[xxvii] In effect, the Maori were attempting to
make up for a lack of officialdom in their local areas using Western-style
mechanisms and petitioning the colonial authorities for the right to govern
themselves at the most local levels.
A
final example of a politically hybrid attempt to revitalize Maori culture was
the Young Maori Party, which attempted to work within the Pakeha system in
order to turn it to their people’s benefit. YMP leader, Apirana Ngata argued that Maori needed to
develop technical skills and the ability to move in Pakeha circles of power
while still maintaining their cultural heritage. His understanding and use of traditional modes of respect in
dealing with Maori elders combined with his focus on future development rather
than old grievances made him acceptable to both Maori and Pakeha. The acceptance of majorities of both
groups allowed him to work for Maori rights from within the government when he
served as Minister of Native Affairs from 1928-1934.[xxviii]
If
hybridity is obvious in Maori political efforts, it is also apparent in their
religious responses to European contact.
Te Wherowhero’s comments at Waiuku about land confiscations were almost
exclusively religious in nature, referring both to the Maori Uenuku, but also
the Judeo-Christian Jehovah. As
early as the 1846, Christian missionaries recorded that some Maori identified with
the lost tribe of Israel, viewing themselves as a lost and persecuted group,
identifying the warfare of the 1860s with the desolation described in the Old
Testament Book of Daniel, and in some cases strictly following Mosaic law.[xxix] Some of the Maori identification with
Judaism may be due to contact with missionaries and amateur linguists who
believed that Maori and Hebrew were related languages, or even to contact with
Jewish traders and merchants working in New Zealand. However, other reasons for the Maori affinity to Judaism in
its ancient form also exist.
Because
there were no Maori versions of the Old Testament until the 1860s, it
represented esoteric or secret knowledge that Europeans must be keeping to
themselves, either because they did not want the Maori to learn of their
supposed connection to the lost tribe of Israel, or because Europeans believed
themselves to be superior in their capability to understand the Bible.[xxx] Bronwyn Elsmore also argues that the
content of the Old Testament appealed more to Maori than that of the New
Testament – the depiction of lineages, polygamy, and the ability to seek
redress from a powerful, even vengeful, deity more closely aligned with
traditional Maori culture.
Contrasting this to the passive, peaceful figure of Christ, many Maori
concluded that Jesus had not yet gained sufficient mana to help worshipers.[xxxi]
In
addition to these features of the Old Testament, which drew Maori in, many
turned away from the Christianity of the Missionaries. By adopting a uniquely Maori
interpretation of Judaism, adherents were able to accept the Bible, but also
preserve their own culture.
Elsmore argues that this was a reaction to Christian attacks on the core
of Maori culture, to land confiscations, and the other activities of
missionaries and settlers. The
Maori also did not adopt nineteenth century Judaism, but identified with the
Israelites of the Old Testament for their own purposes – they gained the power
of the Old Testament Jehovah and European religion without having to give up
their own culture.[xxxii]
This
background of hybrid reaction to the Judeo-Christian tradition is evident in
Maori justification for their own monarchy. Arguing in favor of a Maori King, Paora Te Potangaroa relied
on a semi-Biblical justification that, “God is good. Israel were his people, they had a king. I see no reason why any nation should
not have king if it likes. The Gospel does not say we are not to
have a king.”[xxxiii] Wiremu Tamehana made a more explicitly
Biblical argument in 1863 after Governor Grey threatened to dig out the
Kingites root and branch.
Despite accepting
the Queen’s sovereignty over New Zealand, Tamehana nevertheless argued for
Maori autonomy by quoting Deuteronomy, in which the Israelites were instructed
that, “one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee: thou mayest
not set a stranger over thee.”[xxxiv] Tamehana then moved beyond the text of
Deuteronomy to justify the elevation of Te Wherowhero, arguing that the Books
of Proverbs and Samuel also provided justification. Since a primary goal was to stop conflict among Maori over
land sales to Europeans, the Israelites plea in Samuel for God to “Give us a
king to judge us” was particularly important.[xxxv] In earlier arguments supporting Maori
autonomy, Tamehana had also appealed for Maori control of their lands under the
rule of a coterie of benevolent Christian chiefs working for the best interests
of the people.[xxxvi] Kingship, then, was something that sets
aside a people of the Bible as belonging to Jehovah, and allowed them to
function in the world.
The
process of the Te Wherowhero’s coronation was also explicitly religious in form
and function. In one account, when
proclaiming Te Wherowhero King Potatau, Iwaikau pronounced that, “The religion
of Christ shall be the mantle of your protection.”[xxxvii] In accepting his crown after first
refusing the burden, Te Wherowhero reportedly did so referencing Christ’s
parable of the camel and the rich man, stating that, “There is but one eye of
the needle, through which the white, the black, and the [sic[ read threads must
pass.”[xxxviii]
Finally, to complete the ceremony,
Wiremu Tamehana anointed the new monarch with oil in the method prescribed in
the Old Testament for the coronation of new kings of Israel.
While
Te Wherowhero was not speaking explicitly in favor of creating a Maori King when
addressing the attendees at Waiuku, his topic addressing land sales and Maori
organization to protect their interests speaks to the same concern – of Maori
unity in the face of colonial challenges.
That some Maori were banding together beyond their tribal organizations
itself is a hybrid response to British colonization. His use of both Maori and Pakeha religious terms in
addressing Governor Browne over the issue is explicitly hybrid in nature. By identifying the British Governor
with the Maori deity Uenuku and himself with the Judeo-Christian Jehovah, Te
Wherowhero further adapts European religion to his own purposes. In this way he shows the Maori as
peaceful, while Europeans and their Pakeha Maori allies are violent and
dangerous aggressors.
Maori
attempts to develop hybrid solutions to the problem of living in a bi-cultural
society dominated by Europeans continued beyond the 1930s. Efforts to come to a successful
accommodation between Maori and Europeans continue today. Similarly, hybrid efforts at creating
Maori institutions during the nineteenth century were not limited to the civil
and political examples presented here, but include a wide array of religious
figures and movements that combined Maori tradition with European institutions
and language.
[i]
John A. Williams, Politics of the New Zealand Maori: Protest and
Cooperation, 1891-1909 (Seattle: University
of Washington Press, 1969), 53.
[ii]
Williams, 55.
[iii]
Williams, 55.
[iv]
Williams, 56.
[v]
Paul Meredith, “Hybridity in the Third Space: Rethinking Bi-cultural Politics
in Aotearoa/New Zealand,” presented to Te Oru Rangahau Maori Research and Development
Conference, Massey University, 7-9 July, 1998, 2.
[vii]
Williams, 11.
[viii]
Williams, 11. James Belich. Making Peoples: A History of the New Zealanders
from Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Penguin Books), 215.
[ix]
Bellich, 216.
[x]
Bellich, 197.
[xi]
Williams, 13.
[xii]
James O. Gump. “A Spirit of Resistance: Sioux, Xhosa, and Maori Responses to
Western Dominance, 1840-1920,” The Pacific Historical Review 66, No. 1 (1997), 27.
[xiii]
Bellich, 232.
[xiv]
Bellich, 242.
[xv]
Octavius Hadfield, The Second Year of One of England’s Little Wars (Hocken: Hocken Library, 1861), 80.
[xvi]
John A. Williams, Politics of the New Zealand Maori: Protest and
Cooperation, 1891-1909 (Seattle: University
of Washington Press, 1969), 37.
[xvii]
John Eldon Gorst, The Maori King; or, The Story of our Quarrel with the
Natives of New Zealand (New York:
Macmillan, 1864), 71.
[xviii]
James Cowan, The New Zealand Wars: A History of the Maori Campaigns an the
Pioneering Period: Volume 1: 1845-1864
(Wellington: R.E. Owen, 1955), 466.
[xix]
Richard S. Hill, State Authority, Indigenous Autonomy; Crown-Maori Relations
in New Zealand/Aotearoa 1900-1950
(Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2004), 34.
[xx]
Thomas Buddle, The Maori King Movement in New Zealand (Wellington: The New Zealander Office, 1860), 9.
[xxi]
Gump, 30.
[xxii]
Gump, 33.
[xxiii]
Gump 37.
[xxiv]
Williams, 44.
[xxv]
Williams, 45.
[xxvi]
Gump, 45.
[xxvii]
Williams, 84.
[xxviii]
Gump, 46.
[xxix]
Bronwyn Elsmore, Like Them That Dream: The Maori and the Old Testament (Auckland: Reed Books, 2000), Chapter 5, 2.
[xxxiv]
Angela Ballara, Te Kingitanga: The People of the Maori King Movement (Auckland, Auckland University Press, 1996), 11.
[xxxviii]
Idem.
