1926, Apirana Ngata and Maui Pomare: Grievances in paradise

Apirana Ngata. (Alexander Turnbull Library)

Apirana Ngata (Ngati Porou) and Maui Pomare (Ngati Mutunga and Ngati Toa) are our New Zealanders of the Year specifically for their efforts in pushing the Government to hold a Royal Commission of inquiry into Maori land grievances.

Chaired by Supreme Court judge William Sim, the inquiry found that confiscations in Taranaki were unjustified because the Government had been wrong in making war there in the 1860s. It also found that the confiscations in Waikato had been excessive but that those in the Bay of Plenty were generally fair.

It recommended annual payments of 5000 to Taranaki Maori and 3000 to the Waikato people should be made. The Taranaki, Tainui and Whakatohea trust boards were set up to administer these awards.

Although these settlements can be seen as important official recognition of Maori grievances, they could not be full and final because the commission was restricted by its terms of reference. As the Waitangi Tribunal would later point out, the Sim commission was prevented from measuring the grievances against the Crown's obligations under the Treaty.

"The Sim commission was instructed 'not [to] have regard to any contention that Natives who denied the sovereignty of Her then Majesty and repudiated Her authority could claim the benefit of the provisions of the Treaty of Waitangi'," it noted in the 2004 report on the Tauranga raupatu claim.

"In his discussion of the Treaty, [Prime Minister Gordon] Coates was expressing the conventional wisdom of his time, when all authorities, including scholars such as Ngata, were content to rely on the English text of the Treaty.

"All assumed that the sovereignty Maori ceded to the Queen in article 1 was absolute and indivisible, and not qualified by their retention of chieftainship in article 2.

"The commission's instruction was also based on an assumption that Maori had been in rebellion and had therefore been in violation of the English version of article 1 - an assumption that had already been challenged by the petitioners."

Despite these limitations on their achievement, Pomare and Ngata are our New Zealanders of the Year for their role in making the state publicly recognise that, from a Maori perspective, all was not well in paradise and something needed to be done about it.

Further reading:
'1927 key events: Royal commission on Maori land confiscations', New Zealand History Online

Waitangi Tribunal on the Sim Commission, Waitangi Tribunal online

Further viewing:
Pounamu - Apirana Turupa Ngata, NZ On Screen, 1990

?pirana Ngata farewells soldiers, Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand