THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC SITUATION OF HAURAKI MAORI AFTER COLONISATION

more than mere subsistence. The loss of land had been accompanied by additional changes—notably an involvement in an exploitative economy which offered short-term gains—which would have diminished the incentive to acquire new skills for a new economy. As a result, the short-term gains turned into long-term impoverishment. The consequence, by the end of the century, was the loss of most of the resources together with a lack of the skills to utilise what was left of the land. The overall picture is one of decline from a situation in which, only a little more than a half-century before, they had dealt efficiently with an earlier form of the same capitalist economy.

3.4 The New Zealand state bears some responsibility both for bringing about this situation and for doing little to rectify it. It played a pre-eminent role in the extensive land alienation underlying economic decline and it actively fostered, through its land purchasing activities, a debilitating dependence upon delusory short-term financial gains. Further, successive governments paid little attention to Maori needs in a new environment. This contrasts with the attention paid by the same governments to the needs of Pakeha. Though not as active as they were to become in the second quarter of the loth century, governments were not at all inactive in promoting Pakeha land settlement and farm efficiency. Schemes for closer land settlement proliferate from the 188os. From the 189os onwards the Department of Agriculture encouraged settlers to improve production levels, especially in the case of refrigerated dairy exports. Maori were not included in land settlement schemes and few (with the possible exception of Ngati Porou on the East Coast) were in a position to take advantage of the export market.

3.5 During the second half of the 19th century Hauraki Maori had been drawn into a cash economy; within it they were seriously disadvantaged participants. The returns from gold cessions, timber licences and land sales had been in good measure retained by a small number of individuals; insofar as there was an element of trickle-down the gains proved temporary as well as meagre. Most had to rely upon traditional food gathering and their remaining land for small-scale cropping, and, for an irregular cash income, upon whatever work they could find on the roads and other public works, the farms and the gumfields. The question then arises: what supplementary sources of income were available to help them deal with the new economy and its demands? What other opportunities were there?

3.6 Evidence is not plentiful. Though policy makers and administrators were interested in employment, they did not set about assembling detailed information as a basis for policy, least of all for Maori. Though the Department of Labour was set up in 1893, charged to assist the unemployed to find work, its reports on the numbers of people assisted in finding work do not identify recipients according to ethnicity. It is unlikely that many Maori were affected; the overwhelming concern of the Department was with the urban unemployed at a time when few Maori lived in towns. Just as land settlement policies were aimed at Pakeha settlers, employment policies were aimed at Pakeha workers.

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