Michael Belgrave - Historical Frictions: Maori Claims and Reinvented Histories

As a younger historian and one of the first appointments to the Waitangi Tribunal research staff, I went to Wellington reluctantly in early 1987. Professionally, this disinclination came from a belief that the Waitangi Tribunals new jurisdiction would make for uninteresting history. Land deeds and court decisions appeared a dull window into New Zealands past. I could not have been more wrong. The issues uncovered by the tribunals inquiries are among the most complex and challenging for any historian. Understanding what happened and why in this troubled but creative relationship between the government and Maori is not straightforward. What made these arguments about the past even more interesting was the legal and political context in which they were presented. At one level it was necessary to understand just how history could be made and remade before judges and tribunals, but at another level it was an introduction to an applied history, where the issues were often part of the public debate and the consequences meaningful not just for contemporary race relations, but for the material well-being of the claimant groups who were taking their grievances to the tribunal.

The Waitangi Tribunal was and remains one of the most controversial of New Zealands government institutions, whose work is as much misunderstood as it is championed or demonised. As many of the historians, counsel, claimants and tribunal members themselves worked through these claims, we were privileged to look back on our history in a way that seemed fundamental to key issues about the way New Zealand should deal with its past and, more important, the place of Maori in our society. The history was extraordinarily interesting, but it was not the central focus. The history assisted the tribunal to understand the claims before it and to make recommendations, according to its jurisdiction, on how Maori grievances in the late twentieth century should be resolved. For me as an historian, however, the question of how we understand the past, and, more important, how we regularly transform that understanding, became more and more absorbing. Many of the issues discussed in this book have remained puzzling questions long after the tribunal issued its report, and in many cases long after a settlement was reached. The tribunal had one way of interpreting the arguments presented before it, and often its decisions made sense according to its jurisdiction, but some of the historical questions were not so easily resolved. This book attempts to provide answers to some of these historical puzzles not to convince anyone that the tribunal was wrong, but primarily to resolve my own curiosity about how things happened and why they were remembered so differently at later times.

The cover illustrates some of these questions. Walter Mantell drew this sketch of an empty landscape looking north from Otaki beach to the mountains of Taranaki, Ruapehu and Tongariro on 3 July 1844. Turned upside down, the sketch also shows historical, classical, mythological and contemporary figures, most European, some Maori. Mantell was a land purchase officer, government official, minister of the Crown and advocate for the Ngai Tahu claims. This early doodling and his long career illustrate many of the themes explored in this book; the impact and importance of the past in the present, peopling the New Zealand landscape with an imported culture and history and the dangers of reducing New Zealands past to simple dichotomies Maori and Pakeha, colonial and post-colonial, past and present.

There are many who need thanking, and in particular I should like to acknowledge the School of Social and Cultural Studies at Massey University, in which I work, and my colleagues and students who have engaged with or suffered from so many of these issues being debated over a long time. I am especially grateful to the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge and Wolfson College, both of whom provided fellowships in 2003. Most of the book was completed during that time with the generous encouragement and support of John Morrill, Ludmilla Jordanova, David Feldman, William OReilly and the staff of CRASSH. Alan Ward, Deborah Montgomerie, Aroha Harris, Paul McHugh, David Williams, Keith Sorrenson, Gordon Orr, Tom Bennion, Buddy Mikaere, Grant Young and Anna Deason have considered and debated many of these questions for some time. The Waitangi Tribunal staff went out of their way to give me access to the research produced for claims, and Jessica Haddock did an excellent job of copying and collating the thousands of pieces of paper involved. Tracy Sanderson and Margaret Millard provided invaluable assistance in producing the text. I am grateful for the patience and support of Elizabeth Caffin, Anna Hodge and Katrina Duncan of Auckland University Press, and to Diane Lowther who prepared the index. Andrew Mason has been the very best of editors, engaging with the material, helping to strengthen the argument in so many places and encouraging necessary revision. His help has been essential.

Being an historian working for the Waitangi Tribunal also brought me into contact with some extraordinary New Zealanders, people who had been appointed to the tribunal and who brought an enduring commitment to this society and to its future. This book is dedicated to members of the Ngai Tahu Tribunal who are no longer with us: Judge Ashley McHugh, Sir Monita Delamere, Bishop Manuhuia Bennett and Sir Desmond Sullivan, as well as Lena Manuel, who, although a tribal member, was not part of the tribunal but acted as interpreter.