Māori Land Rights Movement

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The Māori Land Rights Movement (1975-1984) ( German : Maori Land Rights Movement ) was the first social movement of the Māori New Zealand . It arose out of the frustration and anger over the expropriation and land acquisition of Māori land by the Pākehā , the New Zealanders of European descent , and was compounded by the daily discrimination that the Pākehā faced them . The Māori Land March of 1975 is generally regarded as the starting point for the movement . The roots of the movement reached back to the 1950s, when new laws made further land grabbing possible.

background

Situation until 1950

In the pre-European times of New Zealand, based on the traditions of the Māori , the country was owned by the various Iwi (tribes), Hapū (sub-tribes) and was organized locally. After the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, which used British crown two methods of Māori place of birth to come through legal purchase and confiscation ( Māori : Raupatu ). The latter method was used extensively when Māori were misbehaving in the Crown's view.

In 1862, the year the Native Lands Act was passed, 2/3 of the entire country was no longer in the hands of the Māori . As a result, 22 years after the Treaty of Waitangi had been signed, the majority of them were no longer in possession of their land as indigenous people of the island state. The Native Lands Act established the Native Land Court , which was renamed Māori Land Court in 1947 . The task of the court was to determine property rights and to change general property rights into individual titles. This made the further sale to Māori land easier, because individual owners were easier to persuade to sell than tribes or their subdivisions. Eventually, with the New Zealand Settlements Act , which went into effect in 1863, the government was able to confiscate land without compensation. Parts of the regions of Taranaki , Waikato , Hawke's Bay and the southern part of Auckland came into the possession of the crown.

Situation from 1950

Early 1950 gave the then New Zealand government before, Māori place of birth to want better protection, and decided with the two laws, the Maori Affairs Act 1953 and the Māori Trustee Act 1953 , a land reform that would ensure protection against land grabbing supposedly better. But with these laws, the government under Prime Minister Sidney Holland of the National Party in 1953 a. a. the possibility of using so-called unproductive Māori land. Anyone could now report economically unused land to the Māori Land Court , apply and lease the land through an appointed trustee .

In 1967, the Māori Affairs Amendment Act 1967 was another decisive measure for indigenous landowners. The law provided that free Māori land owned by fewer than five people should be rededicated to general land. It further promoted the power and influence of Māori trustees who could forcibly acquire Māori land and sell so-called uneconomical land. This was another building block in the series of laws that forced expropriation and land grabbing. The law was passed by the government of the National Party , Prime Minister Keith Holyoake , and sparked violent protests and demonstrations.

Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975

The Labor governments (1972–1975) under Norman Kirk and Bill Rowling tried to restore the Treaty of Waitangi to its importance and to give it respect, for the first time in its 135-year existence. With the New Zealand Day Act 1973 they made Waitangi Day , the anniversary of the signing of the treaty, a national holiday in 1973 , and with the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 they established the Waitangi Tribunal in 1975 . The tribunal should on the one hand investigate violations of the Treaty of Waitangi and on the other hand support the government with recommendations in order to be able to make amends by law for injustices such as expropriation and illegal land grabbing.

Roots of movement

Around the time of the Second World War , but no later than the 1950s, Māori increasingly moved away from their traditional rural areas to the steadily growing cities, in which they only made up 10% of the population before 1945. The closer coexistence between Māori and Pākehā led to tension, prejudice and discrimination against the Maori minorities. Bad living conditions, unemployment , alcoholism , violence and crime on the part of the Māori marked the development. Various groups and organizations were formed to counteract the development. The best-known among them was the Māori Women’s Welfare League , founded in 1951 with the participation of Whina Cooper , it was the first nationally organized group to deal intensively with the social concerns of the Māori and to bring protest and political demands into politics.

In 1962 the Māori Council was formed as an advisory body for the government. With the council and also with the Māori Women's Welfare League , it was believed that the problems of the Māori could be brought into parliament and solved together. As in the previous generation, in which negotiations with Pākehā were always conducted by chiefs , soothsayers, charismatic leaders and an educated elite, both institutions were characterized by elitist leadership that the younger generation could no longer reach. In 1968 two groups called Te Hokioi and Māori Organization on Human Rights (MOOHR) formed in Wellington . The former, radical and committed to the fight against oppression and the class struggle, the latter humanistically oriented and also campaigning against injustice and oppression with a focus on the defense of human rights , both movements made the Pākehā dominance responsible for all problems of the Māori . In a newsletter in August 1971, MOOHR made it clear that "the movements for the rights of the Māori will go on as long as Māori feel oppressed by the Pākehā- dominated governments". The group, which was founded in 1970 at a conference of young Māori leaders at the University of Auckland under the name Nga Tamatoa (German: The Young Warriors ), complemented the spectrum of the movement.

Beginning and course of movement

In 1975, after 135 years of British colonization that had Māori by 66 Mill. Acre Country New Zealand just another 2.5 million. Acre . The fear of becoming landless in their own country was great and therefore many felt that the time to act was ripe.

Māori land march

→ see main article: Māori land march of 1975 In February 1975 a political group was formed in Auckland with the aim of fighting primarily for the land rights of the Māori and to oppose the progressive expropriation. Te Roopu Ote Matakite (German: The people with vision ) consisted mostly of young, more radical people who wanted to see action. They won Whina Cooper , who was valued for her mana o barelyatua (German: charisma, spiritual power and authority of an elder ), to lead a protest march to Wellington .

The protest march, led with the slogan “ Not One More Acre of Māori Land ” (German: No more acre Maori land ), began on Sunday, September 14th, 1975 in Te Hapua , in the northernmost tip of New Zealand, and ended after 29 days and over 1,000 km of walking on the steps of the Parliament building to hand over the Memorial of Right including 60,000 signatures to then Prime Minister Bill Rowling . This march, which gained national importance and a large public, is generally considered to be the beginning of the Māori Land Rights Movement .

Bastion Point

Another significant milestone in the protest movement for land rights was the 1977 occupation of Bastion Point in Auckland . 280  hectares of land, originally owned by Iwi Ngāti Whātua and declared non-transferable by the Native Land Court in 1873 , had been completely withdrawn from the tribe in 1959 and declared public land. The Ngāti Whātua were now tenants on their former property. All efforts between 1912 and 1951 to legally get their land back had failed. But when in 1976 the plan was announced to build houses and a park for the wealthy on their former property, the newly formed Orakei Action Committee decided in January 1977 to occupy the land.

The occupation took place on January 5, 1977 with 150 demonstrators, supported by Ngati Whatua , trade unionists and the Matakite movement and ended after 506 days with an evacuation on May 25, 1988 by police with the support of the military. On that day, the New Zealand government under Prime Minister Robert Muldoon of the National Party demonstrated its state power, the approach of which a television commentator commented with the words: " ... a mass of series of convoys looked more like a scene from the World War Two movies .. . " (German: " ... a massive series of convoys looked more like a scene from World War II films ... " ).

Other events

Another protest ignited in 1978 in Reglan . The land, which was used as a military airport during World War II, was not to be returned to the Tainui Awhiro after it was dismantled in 1969 . Instead, the site was redesigned into a golf course. Inspired by the protest around Bastion Point , the strategy of the direct route was pursued through the occupation of the country.

Among the many groups that formed in the early 1980s, the Waitangi Action Committee (WAC) (1981), the Māori People's Liberation Movement of Aotearoa (MPLMA) and Black Women , the dominant groups in Māori political activity . In addition to the fight against racism , sexism , capitalism and oppression, they called the Treaty of Waitangi a fraud and scolded it " cheaty of Waitangi " (German: Beschiss von Waitangi ). The WAC publicly called for a boycott of the Waitangi Day celebrations and organized annual protest marches to various marae . They brought the representatives of the Kīngitanga (German: Māori-König-Movement ) and the Kotahitanga (German: Movement for Autonomy / Self-Administration ) together and organized a protest march to Waitangi in 1984 .

End of movement

In the mid-1980s, the search for the cultural identity of their people took hold in the social movements of the Māori . The cultural supremacy of the Pākehā seemed to be successful with its oppressive mechanisms. It was now a matter of defending himself. But the search for identity in Māoritanga (German: Māori culture, practices and belief ) led to cultural nationalism as an ideology and away from political action and design.

literature

  • Maori Land Administration: Client Service Performance of the Maori Land Court Unit and the Maori Trustee . Report of the Controller and Auditor-General - Tumuaki o te Mana Arotake . The Audit Office , Wellington 2004, ISBN 0-478-18116-7 (English).
  • Michael King : Whina  - A Biography of Whina Cooper . Hodder and Stoughton , Auckland 1983, ISBN 0-340-33873-3 , Chapter  11 - Maori Land March (English).
  • Ingrid Huygens : Process of Pakeha Change in Response to the Treaty of Waitangi . Ed .: University of Waikato . Hamilton 2007 (English, doctoral thesis).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Māori Land - What Is It and How Is It Administered? . Controller and Auditor-General , accessed July 11, 2010 .
  2. ^ New Zealand Settlements Act of 1863 . In: Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand . Ministry for Culture & Heritage , March 4, 2009, accessed July 11, 2010 .
  3. ^ 1953 Māori Affairs Act - Treaty events since 1950 - Treaty timeline . In: New Zealand History . Ministry for Culture & Heritage , accessed July 2, 2010 .
  4. ↑ 1967 Māori Affairs Amendment Act - Treaty events since 1950 - Treaty timeline . In: New Zealand History . Ministry for Culture & Heritage , accessed July 2, 2010 .
  5. ^ King : Whina  - A Biography of Whina Cooper . 1983, p.  166-187 .
  6. ^ RJ Walker : The genesis of Maori activism . In: The Journal of the Polynesian Society . Volume 93 , No.  3 . The Polynesian Society , Auckland 1984, pp. 267–282 ( online [accessed July 2, 2010]).
  7. ^ King : Whina  - A Biography of Whina Cooper . 1983, p.  207 .
  8. ↑ 1975 Land march - Treaty events since 1950 - Treaty timeline . In: New Zealand History . Ministry for Culture & Heritage , accessed July 2, 2010 .
  9. ↑ Maori Plea Signed by 60,000 . In: New Zealand Herald . Auckland October 14, 1975 (English).
  10. ↑ Maori land march - 40 years on . In: New Zealand Herald (Ed.): The Northern Advocate . Auckland September 14, 2015 ( online [accessed September 14, 2018]).
  11. ^ The Orakei Claim . Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa , accessed July 13, 2010 .
  12. ^ The Bastion Point Protest . Waitangi Tribunal , archived from the original on October 17, 2008 ; accessed on May 3, 2019 (English, original website no longer available).
  13. ^ Police cordon, Bastion Point . In: Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand . Ministry for Culture & Heritage , accessed July 13, 2010 .
  14. ^ Television film of Bastion Point eviction . In: Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand . Ministry for Culture & Heritage , accessed July 13, 2010 .
  15. ^ Treaty events since 1950 - Treaty timeline . In: New Zealand History . Ministry for Culture & Heritage , accessed July 13, 2010 .
  16. ↑ a b c Te Ahu : The Evolution of Contemporary Maori Protest . RN Himona , archived from the original on May 26, 2009 ; accessed on May 3, 2019 (English, original website no longer available).
  17. ^ The New Committees . Waitangi Tribunal, archived from the original on November 4, 2011 ; accessed on May 3, 2019 (English, original website no longer available).