The Crown and Auckland Council’s genuflecting to Ngati Whatua and its various hapu based on their claim to mana whenua over the Tamaki Isthmus is arrant nonsense.

It is often asserted that Ngati Whatua “gifted” the land on which Auckland City now stands to the Crown, thus entitling them to be involved on an ongoing basis in running the city.

THE LAND WAS NOT “GIFTED” at all, but sold to the Crown for cash and goods. Once something is sold, it’s gone for good, and the seller has no further claim over it or ongoing rights to say what happens with it.

Claims to the contrary can be likened to selling someone a house, then demanding a perpetual say in how it is renovated, decorated and landscaped.

In any event, like so many early New Zealand land sales, Ngati Whatua’s claims to ownership at the time of sale are tenuous at best.

Ngati Whatua were not the first occupants of the Auckland area. Originally based further north, they colonised the locality around 1750 by exterminating its former occupants, Te Waiohua.

What goes around comes around. In the 1820s, the Tamaki Isthmus was repeatedly invaded by musket-toting Ngapuhi. The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand records that as a result: “much of the isthmus was abandoned as tribes sought shelter in the Tainui region.”

Historian, RCJ Stone, notes: “fear of Ngapuhi prevented them [Ngati Whatua] from occupying their old home for many years afterwards, indeed, not until Auckland was founded [in 1840] did they feel safe.”

Ngati Whatua thus “sold” to the Crown land they’d cravenly vacated more than a decade before. Land they no longer occupied or controlled in any meaningful sense. This placed the Governor and his troops between Ngati Whatua returnees and renewed hostilities from Ngapuhi.

Payment from the Crown also underscored to neighbouring tribes that the mana of the land remained with Ngati Whatua, though if you run away and stayed away for more than 10 years rather than standing up for yourself, you are actually cowards with no mana.

While a clever stroke of business from both a practical and a Maori perspective, this historical action hardly supports demands from Aucklanders of Anglo-Ngati Whatua descent for special treatment based on having some Maori ancestry.

By Jack Leslie

http://www.kiwifrontline.com/