1928, Apirana Ngata: Land and community

Sir Apirana Ngata fostered Maori agriculture through land development schemes. (NZ Herald Archive)

Apirana Ngata was appointed Native Minister in the newly elected United Government and embarked on a programme of encouraging Maori to develop their land.

Such was the ambition and success of his policies that he is our New Zealander of the Year for 1928.

"Ngata pressed ahead with his land development schemes, using state funds, shifting his consolidators straight on to development work, and initiating schemes all over the country - wherever he could find underdeveloped Maori land and local communities willing to work it," writes M.P.K Sorrenson in the DNZB.

"There was seldom any lack of enthusiasm, since the new schemes provided work for unemployed or under-employed men, women and children, who worked as communal groups as of old.

"The land was cleared of bush or scrub, ploughed, grassed, fenced and stocked - on the assumption that it could be sub-divided into individual farms at a later date."

Although Ngata resigned in 1934 after being criticised by a Royal Commission, hindsight does not dim his achievements.

When he died in 1950 the Herald made much of his political acumen - he acted as Prime Minister for a time in 1933 - and his renown as a scholar, especially his efforts to preserve and renew Maori culture through poems, songs and dances and the arts of wood carving and weaving. But it reserved a special place for his pragmatic success in agriculture.

"Perhaps his greatest work for the Maoris was in the reform of the Maori system of land tenure for he evolved new methods which made effective farming possible," said the paper.

Indeed, many of his schemes persisted into the 1970s and 80s.

A tractor is used to haul out stumps on the Ra-kautatahi block in southern Hawke's Bay. Large development schemes such as this were carried out on remaining areas of Maori land from the 1920s.

Further reading:
Biography of Apirana Ngata, Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand