Historical Frictions by Michael Belgrave

Author:Michael Belgrave [Belgrave, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Law, Land Use, Social Science, Minority Studies
ISBN: 9781869403201
Google: 3b0YAgAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 1790161
Publisher: Auckland University Press
Published: 2006-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Claimants’ Historical Narratives

Despite Ngai Tahu’s extensive preparation in examining the Kemp purchase, with not only Harry Evison’s historical work but also a series of tribal hui that had worked through the issue before the hearing, it took some time for an explicit claimant narrative to emerge. Tribal imperatives had clearly influenced the way the claimants approached their past, and this was reflected in the work of their professional historians. Ngai Tahu wanted to vindicate the claims of their tupuna, and to justify the stories that had been handed down generation after generation or recently rediscovered in the archives. The initial research indicated that the historical narratives on the marae were un-specific and lacked the detail necessary for this formal inquiry. The archival record, in contrast, was rich in the statements of Ngai Tahu rangatira as they had presented their claims in previous decades.

The Smith–Nairn evidence, discovered in National Archives, was a treasure trove. In page after page, in te reo with English translations, the eye-witness accounts of key tribal leaders brought to life the Ngai Tahu claim of the 1870s. Here was an opportunity to show how a convincing Maori narrative of the events had been suppressed. Paul Temm even went so far as to suggest at the opening hearing that the files themselves had been hidden away by the Crown.90 What is more, the evidence appeared strongly to support claims that existed in tribal memory and indicated that Ngai Tahu had never willingly alienated their rights to a good proportion of the South Island: the ‘hole in the middle’ and all of Fiordland. These ancestral voices brought the legal reasoning of a century earlier directly into the legal and historical debates of the post-1975 treaty era. They also provided an explanation, based on government iniquity, for Ngai Tahu’s economic and cultural deprivation.

At the beginning of the hearing, with new documents and evidence pouring in, it was difficult for the claimants, especially Harry Evison, to develop a coherent historical narrative for even the Kemp purchase, let alone for the other purchases surrounding it. All the evidence was presented either at the hearings or a matter of days beforehand. The tribunal, and often even claimant counsel, were introduced to the arguments as the witnesses read the evidence before them. The core resource was the Compendium,91 a collection of documents put together by Alexander Mackay in 1872. New material coming out of National Archives, and in particular the Smith–Nairn papers, had to be incorporated into the narratives. The claimants focused on Kemp. Basing his argument on the evidence of witnesses before the 1879 commission, Evison built up a case against the hapless commissioner.

Kemp had threatened Ngai Tahu with military invasion if they had not agreed to sell. He had fraudulently made out a deed and a deed map, and the latter was never presented to the tribe. The deed and deed map he prepared purported to show the sale as going across the entire island to the West Coast, when Ngai

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