TOOK YOUR WHENUA

‘Crown grants’ was one of the first flash terms applied by the Crown to its thefts of Ngati Kahu lands.  So what were Crown grants in reality?  To answer that we need to look at the background and the dealings of the Old Land Claims Commissions. 

Set up by the Government under the New Zealand Land Claims Ordinance 1841, the first Commission heard the claims of European immigrants to Ngati Kahu lands which various rangatira had granted for their use in pre-treaty tuku whenua. 

Tuku whenua were not ‘sales’.  Their nearest English equivalent in 1840 and since would be the transaction-based concept of a ‘lease’.  But even that does not fully describe the deeper, relationship-based concept of tuku whenua.

In any event, the main purpose of the New Zealand Land Claims Ordinance was not to protect Ngāti Kahu interests under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.  Instead it was to provide a legal beard to disguise the illegal theft of our lands and their distribution amongst Europeans.

The ordinance stemmed from the racist European presumption of superiority, and the wrong European assumption that pre-treaty tuku whenua were English custom land ‘sales’.    

Based on that flawed ordinance, which breached Te Tiriti, and on the lies told by many of the European claimants that the rangatira had ‘sold’ lands to them, Commissioner Edward Godfrey reported to Governor Robert Fitzroy who then wrote and gave those claimants pieces of paper of different kinds.  That included the mechanisms of theft called ‘scrip’ and ‘Crown grants’.

In reality ‘Crown grants’ were nothing more than pieces of paper on which the Governor of the day endorsed the lies told about certain Ngati Kahu lands and expressed his desire that the Crown had magically become the owner of those lands, so that he could give them to his favoured subjects.

Thus we see that many Europeans of that time were active parties to the initial thefts of our lands, and to the lies told since to make them look legal.

That includes the lie that all tuku whenua in Muriwhenua were fully investigated, first by Godfrey in 1843, and then by Bell in 1856. 

In fact, of the 62 European land claims lodged for pre-treaty tuku whenua in all Muriwhenua, only 14 were ever investigated, and in none of those cases were any Ngati Kahu rangatira present let alone examined. Te Rarawa’s Panakareao was visited by Godfrey, but neither Panakareao nor his Ngapuhi rival Pororua represented Ngati Kahu. 

Yet, even though an examination of the historical record (written and oral) proves them to be fictitious, many Europeans of that time and since have tried to pretend that ‘Crown grants’ were real and to convince Ngāti Kahu that means other people, rather than us, now own our lands.

Ngati Kahu have never believed the lies those thieves seem to like making up.  We know that our 'tuku whenua' generosity never meant the same as their 'took your whenua' greed.