Post by Kiwi Frontline on Sept 15, 2022 9:56:12 GMT 12
P H writes > “STOLEN” LAND
In 1840, there was no such thing as a collective "Maori."
New Zealand was populated by a bunch of tribes all in a Hobbesian state of nature with one another, in which “every man’s hand was against every other man’s,” "no man was secure in his life or in his property" and "life was nasty, brutish and short."
In the absence of a universally acknowledged civil government and laws to provide for land ownership, in 1840, the various tribes owned NOTHING. They simply used or occupied it until a stronger bunch of bullyboys came along and took it off them. The only universally acknowledged system of land ownership was "te rau o te patu" [the law of the club].
That’s NOT ownership. It's temporary and ephemeral usage based on current occupation. Here today, gone tomorrow.
The TOW purported at Article II to convert this "might makes right" situation into a formal system of ownership. Since nobody actually owned anything, this presented a considerable difficulty for those who had to make the call.
Morally, a tribe could be said to "own" land that it occupied and cultivated. At a most generous assessment, this "ownership" could be extended to include a reasonable hunting and gathering range around a tribe's settlement(s). Perhaps one day's travel on foot, since nobody would expend more effort in a search for food than the energy they'd obtain from it.
The large tracts of "waste land" between the various tribes actually belonged in a moral sense -- acts of "ownership" performed upon it to take it out of its wild state -- to nobody.
With the signing of the Treaty, the "waste lands" should have become Crown Lands of the British Crown, to be sold and developed for the benefit of New Zealanders of all races.
The problems were created by mischief-making missionaries, who told Maori the TOW gave the various tribes "ownership" of the entire land area of NZ, meaning if the Crown wanted the waste lands it would have to buy them. Their agenda was to limit the spread of worldly, secular Pakeha into the all-Maori hinterlands they wanted to Christianise.
Naturally, this created a welter of competing "ownership" claims as each of several tribes abutting a tract of waste land claimed to "own" it. Lacking the troops to enforce the correct position, the Crown made a mistaken virtue of necessity, and accepted the missionary-fabricated fiction of universal tribal ownership.
The Native Land Court system was set up, not to rip anyone off, but to determine nominal "ownership" of tracts of waste land so the Crown could pay someone for them, thus ensuring incoming settlers remained unmolested by their Maori neighbours.
For the chiefs, this was "money for jam." They queued up to sell land they didn't own in any meaningful sense. Only about 4 percent of NZ's land area was – quite rightly – confiscated from tribes who'd challenged the Queen's sovereignty. These tribes were warned in advance this would happen if they didn’t pull their heads in.
Here’s Sir Apirana Ngata on this matter:
“Some have said that these confiscations were wrong and that they contravened the articles of the Treaty of Waitangi. The Government placed in the hands of the Queen of England, the sovereignty and the authority to make laws. Some sections of the Maori people violated that authority. War arose from this and blood was spilled. The law came into operation and land was taken in payment. This itself is a Maori custom—revenge, plunder to avenge a wrong. It was their own chiefs who ceded that right to the Queen. The confiscations cannot therefore be objected to in the light of the Treaty.”
The balance 96 percent of New Zealand’s land area was voluntarily "sold" by the chiefs in hundreds of transactions.
So the land was not “stolen” but sold. And the sales recorded in writing. Those records as compiled by Special Commissioner, Henry Hanson Turton are readily available on the Victoria University of Wellington website for anyone to see.
Here are links to Turton's Deeds, held electronically by Victoria University of Wellington, and in hard copy at the Hocken Library and others.
Index to Deeds, Receipts, Gifts > nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Tur01Nort.html
It should be noted that these sales also included: “… trees minerals waters rivers lakes streams and all appertaining to the said Land or beneath the surface of the said Land,” which knocks Treaty claims for water right out of the park.
Since these sales involved the sale of all appurtenant rights, if the land abutted the coast, once it was surveyed and passed into the Torrens Title system, all “seabed and foreshore” rights were thus extinguished.
‘Mana whenua’ is self-serving cultural twaddle, and should not be entertained.
Once something is sold in such a specific manner it’s gone for good, and the seller has no further claim over it or ongoing rights to say what happens with it.
Claims that some kind of residual jurisdictional rights still subsist in the part-descendants of the original ‘sellers’ can be likened to selling someone a house, then demanding a perpetual say in how it is renovated, decorated and landscaped.
Arrant nonsense in other words.
In 1840, there was no such thing as a collective "Maori."
New Zealand was populated by a bunch of tribes all in a Hobbesian state of nature with one another, in which “every man’s hand was against every other man’s,” "no man was secure in his life or in his property" and "life was nasty, brutish and short."
In the absence of a universally acknowledged civil government and laws to provide for land ownership, in 1840, the various tribes owned NOTHING. They simply used or occupied it until a stronger bunch of bullyboys came along and took it off them. The only universally acknowledged system of land ownership was "te rau o te patu" [the law of the club].
That’s NOT ownership. It's temporary and ephemeral usage based on current occupation. Here today, gone tomorrow.
The TOW purported at Article II to convert this "might makes right" situation into a formal system of ownership. Since nobody actually owned anything, this presented a considerable difficulty for those who had to make the call.
Morally, a tribe could be said to "own" land that it occupied and cultivated. At a most generous assessment, this "ownership" could be extended to include a reasonable hunting and gathering range around a tribe's settlement(s). Perhaps one day's travel on foot, since nobody would expend more effort in a search for food than the energy they'd obtain from it.
The large tracts of "waste land" between the various tribes actually belonged in a moral sense -- acts of "ownership" performed upon it to take it out of its wild state -- to nobody.
With the signing of the Treaty, the "waste lands" should have become Crown Lands of the British Crown, to be sold and developed for the benefit of New Zealanders of all races.
The problems were created by mischief-making missionaries, who told Maori the TOW gave the various tribes "ownership" of the entire land area of NZ, meaning if the Crown wanted the waste lands it would have to buy them. Their agenda was to limit the spread of worldly, secular Pakeha into the all-Maori hinterlands they wanted to Christianise.
Naturally, this created a welter of competing "ownership" claims as each of several tribes abutting a tract of waste land claimed to "own" it. Lacking the troops to enforce the correct position, the Crown made a mistaken virtue of necessity, and accepted the missionary-fabricated fiction of universal tribal ownership.
The Native Land Court system was set up, not to rip anyone off, but to determine nominal "ownership" of tracts of waste land so the Crown could pay someone for them, thus ensuring incoming settlers remained unmolested by their Maori neighbours.
For the chiefs, this was "money for jam." They queued up to sell land they didn't own in any meaningful sense. Only about 4 percent of NZ's land area was – quite rightly – confiscated from tribes who'd challenged the Queen's sovereignty. These tribes were warned in advance this would happen if they didn’t pull their heads in.
Here’s Sir Apirana Ngata on this matter:
“Some have said that these confiscations were wrong and that they contravened the articles of the Treaty of Waitangi. The Government placed in the hands of the Queen of England, the sovereignty and the authority to make laws. Some sections of the Maori people violated that authority. War arose from this and blood was spilled. The law came into operation and land was taken in payment. This itself is a Maori custom—revenge, plunder to avenge a wrong. It was their own chiefs who ceded that right to the Queen. The confiscations cannot therefore be objected to in the light of the Treaty.”
The balance 96 percent of New Zealand’s land area was voluntarily "sold" by the chiefs in hundreds of transactions.
So the land was not “stolen” but sold. And the sales recorded in writing. Those records as compiled by Special Commissioner, Henry Hanson Turton are readily available on the Victoria University of Wellington website for anyone to see.
Here are links to Turton's Deeds, held electronically by Victoria University of Wellington, and in hard copy at the Hocken Library and others.
Index to Deeds, Receipts, Gifts > nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Tur01Nort.html
It should be noted that these sales also included: “… trees minerals waters rivers lakes streams and all appertaining to the said Land or beneath the surface of the said Land,” which knocks Treaty claims for water right out of the park.
Since these sales involved the sale of all appurtenant rights, if the land abutted the coast, once it was surveyed and passed into the Torrens Title system, all “seabed and foreshore” rights were thus extinguished.
‘Mana whenua’ is self-serving cultural twaddle, and should not be entertained.
Once something is sold in such a specific manner it’s gone for good, and the seller has no further claim over it or ongoing rights to say what happens with it.
Claims that some kind of residual jurisdictional rights still subsist in the part-descendants of the original ‘sellers’ can be likened to selling someone a house, then demanding a perpetual say in how it is renovated, decorated and landscaped.
Arrant nonsense in other words.