Tauranga Maori Land Alienation

1 OFFICIAL Wai 215 #T16(a) TAURANGA MOANA DISTRICT INQUIRY TAURANGA MAORI LAND ALIENATION A QUANTITATIVE OVERVIEW, 1886-2006 FINAL REPORT Associate Professor Michael Belgrave Dr Grant Young Adam Heinz David Belgrave A Report for the Waitangi Tribunal November 2006 2 THE AUTHORS Associate-Professor Belgrave has an extensive background in research for the Waitangi Tribunal process beginning in 1987, when he was appointed to the newly formed research staff of the Tribunal. He has a PhD from Victoria University of Wellington. He was research manager for the Waitangi Tribunal from 1990 to 1993. Since 1993, when he took up a position at Massey University’s new Albany campus, he has published widely on the Waitangi Tribunal’s work and particularly on its use of historical research. He was a consultant for Rangahaua Whanui supervising research and for the New Zealand Law Commission’s Maori customary law study. He has recently edited, with Merata Kawharu and David Williams, Waitangi Revisited: Perspectives on the Treaty of Waitangi, Oxford University Press, Melbourne. Another book focusing on Maori claims and history, Historical Frictions, was published by Auckland University Press in 2005. Research for claimants has included projects in the Gisborne, Hauraki, Urewera, Wairoa and Central North Island Inquiry districts. Dr Young has a PhD from Massey University in History, completed in 2003. His thesis involved a study of the Native Land Court and its treatment of Maori custom from 1862 to the 1920s. Recent publications have included, ‘Judge Norman Smith: A Tale of Four ‘Take’’, New Zealand Universities Law Review (vol. 21, no. 2, December 2004) and ‘A Short History of Post-Treaty Maori Customary Rights to Land’, in Belgrave et al, Waitangi Revisited. He has undertaken a wide range of research for the Waitangi Tribunal and for claimants in the Tauranga, Hauraki, Urewera, Wairoa and Central North Island Inquiry Districts. Adam Heinz is a Research Analyst and Inquiry Facilitator at the Ministry of Justice Waitangi Tribunal Unit. He has a Master of Arts with distinction and a Bachelor of Arts with first class honours in Political Science from the University of Canterbury. He has previously co-authored a report on Maori land trusts and incorporations for the Central North Island regional inquiry (Wai 1200 #G1). David Belgrave has a BA (Honours) from the University of Auckland and a Masters of Arts in Social Policy from Massey University. He has provided research assistance for the Wairoa District Inquiry. 3 CONTENTS A OVERVIEW 5 I Introduction 5 ii Method 6 iii Patterns of Land Alienation 7 iv Coverage and Reliability 9 v Public Works Takings 10 vi Conclusion 12 B RESULTS 15 i Returned land 15 ii Land retained as Maori freehold land in 2006 17 iii Maori land alienation 28 C LIST OF MAORI LAND BLOCKS 40 D BIBLIOGRAPHY 114 LIST OF TABLES Figure 1: Area of returned and reserved land blocks...................................................17 Figure 2: Maori land remaining ...................................................................................24 Figure 3: Maori land blocks over 100 hectares............................................................25 Figure 4: Land remaining by current block .................................................................25 Figure 5: Final dispositions of returned and reserved land..........................................29 Figure 6: Land alienation by decade............................................................................30 Figure 7: Alienation of land by decade and type of alienation in hectares..................31 Figure 8: Area of Part I Europeanised land by block by year processed.....................34 Figure 9: Area of Part I Europeanised land by block...................................................35 Figure 10: Number and area of public works takings by decade.................................37 Figure 11: Number and area of public works takings by purpose ...............................37 Figure 12: Number and area of public works takings by block...................................38 4 5 A OVERVIEW i INTRODUCTION 1. This report provides a statistical overview of the alienation of Maori land within the Tauranga Moana inquiry district after 1886. The tribunal’s stage one report covered most, though not all, of the alienation of lands returned after the Tauranga confiscations and lands reserved from the Katikati and Te Puna purchase up to 1886. In the Tauranga Moana inquiry district there are a number of features which make an attempt to get a comprehensive picture of the nature of Maori land alienation particularly valuable. The first is perhaps the unique experience of claimants, whose land grievances for this stage two inquiry are heavily concentrated in the period after 1950. As the majority of the research reports show, the major issues of concern are linked to the urban and industrial expansion of Tauranga and Mount Maunganui with its subsequent impact on Maori land ownership. 2. The causes of declining Maori land ownership included the increased pressure of rates, the rising value of land which made rural use less economic and a substantial number of public works takings for the development of urban infrastructure. This emphasis on mid to late twentieth century activities creates particular research problems. Unlike the nineteenth century, where it is possible to trace the history of substantially large pieces of land as a series of manageable but discreet narratives, the alienation of Maori land in Tauranga involves thousands of parcels of land. For all Waitangi Tribunal inquiries attempting to deal with the alienation and administration of Maori land in the twentieth century, some form of statistical approach is essential. For Tauranga this is particularly so. 3. This report was able to quantify the broad pattern of post-1886 Maori land alienation within the inquiry district, including modes and patterns of land loss. The report identifies the extent of Maori land retention and Maori land loss to the present, and quantifies the extent of alienation by private sale, Crown purchase, public works taking and through status declarations made under section 6 of Part I of the Maori Affairs Amendment Act 1967. As a result this land ceased to have the status of Maori land. Because of technical difficulties or limitations in time it was not possible to 6 collect data on alienations where rates were in arrears. This would have required an examination of a substantial number of additional files. The impact of rating and the related issue of increasing value of Maori land is well covered in existing research and particularly in Marinus La Rooij’s ‘The Most Difficult and Thorny Question: The Rating of Maori Land in Tauranga County’ (P14). This report, alongside many others undertaken for this inquiry, illustrates how significant the impact of changing land use and land values were on Maori land ownership. This impact went well beyond simply sale as a result of rate arrears as Maori owners adopted strategies of subsivision and changing land use in response to the rapidly changing economic status of land around Tauranga and Mount Maunganui in the post-war decades. Anticipating the impact of future rate increases may be as important, or even more important, than rate arrears in the subdivision and alienation of Maori land, making a statistic assessment of the importance of rates impossible. While information was collected on incorporations, consolidation and amalgamation, these issues have been covered in existing research at a greater depth than could be provided here. Technical problems, explained below, made it impossible to provide all the information on public works in the commission undertaken by tribunal staff. ii METHOD 4. The research on which the report is based is experimental. In the central North Island inquiry district, encompassing the Rotorua, Taupo and Kaingaroa districts, the Crown Forestry Rental Trust commissioned the Land History and Alienation Database (LHAD), which was a GIS database encompassing all Maori land blocks within the district. It provided both textual and mapping data on Maori land and its alienation. Despite the value of such an exercise, the costs involved in producing this data and the extended time required to complete the exercise made it impracticable in this as in other inquiries. This report follows one already undertaken for the Wairoa inquiry district, though that report is yet to be filed with the tribunal. 5. There are, however, many problems associated with such a research exercise. The only way to ensure a high level of accuracy, and even then with reservations, involves reconstructing the title history of every parcel of land. Such an approach is extremely labour and time intensive. The approach used for this report is designed to show 7 patterns for the alienation of Maori land, but one, which is neither exhaustive nor based on the actual records of land transfer. This approach involves collecting land information records that provide summaries of title information and are readily accessible. This data is then entered into a specially developed database and used to provide an overview of the title history of all of the blocks within the Tauranga Moana district. The sources that have been used for this report include the following: Maori Land Court, Hamilton: • Title binders (since retired); • Alienation files (17/- series not transferred to Archives New Zealand); • Maori Land Information System; Archives New Zealand Auckland:

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