The Hauraki Treaty Claims project has examined the nature and extent of the interaction of Maori with the Crown in the Hauraki tribal territory during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The claims, together with the research and supporting evidence, are set out in II volumes. These are presented to the Waitangi Tribunal to support the Hauraki case.
The history of colonisation in Hauraki—the social and economic deprivation endured by those who have gone before us and their years of responsible protest—has not been told before. These volumes, the foundation of the Hauraki case, will forever rewrite our nation's history books, contributing, only now, a Maori perspective to the history of this region.
We began this project four years ago with a multi–disciplinary team approach. Dr Anderson was part of this team. As a historian she examined the political relationship between Maori and the Crown. Her overview spans two reports. The first dealt with the period up to the 1880s. This second report commences in the 1880s and concludes in modern times. It draws on the themes emerging from the detailed block history analysis in Volume 8.
Dr Anderson's The Crown, The Treaty, and the Hauraki Tribes, 1880–1980 examines the
Crown's systematic dismantling of the original agreements it made with Maori and the laws it contrived to alienate Maori land. The relentless pace of land loss continued during this period. By 1912 only 13% of the Hauraki tribal territory remained Maori land—today that proportion has reduced to 2.6%. This report documents one of the worst cases of Maori landlessness in New Zealand.
Dr Anderson's report describes how Maori interests were sacrificed to make way for the development of natural resources—minerals, timber, wetlands, rivers, land and foreshore—and the infrastructure supporting growing Hauraki settlements. Land was taken for drainage schemes, river improvements, settlement schemes, railways, roads, and town development. The promise of partnership, with social and economic betterment for Maori, did not materialise.
Also documented is the struggle to gain redress: the petitions of the 1880s to the 1950s; the MacCormick Inquiry in the 1930; and High Court action and negotiations over the resident site licences on ceded lands in the 1980.
This report includes initiatives people today remember such as the delegations sent to Wellington and the representations made to the Governments of Fraser, Nash, Holyoake, Marshall, Kirk, Rowling and Muldoon. The 1987 (WAI 100) treaty claim follows these actions in the long sequence of attempts to gain justice, to deal with nga hara, the grievances, and to put this sadness behind us.
