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60 YEARS OF AMALGAMATION ORDERS

On 11 June 1963, an Amalgamation Order declared all West Coast settlement reserves were to be held in common ownership under one title, signalling the beginning of the shareholding system Parininihi ki Waitōtara Incorporation is responsible for administrating today.

The legislation also compounded the disconnection by settler law of Taranaki Māori from their land, and the complete loss of control by individuals over their ancestral whenua.

Now, 60 years on, a series of Whenua articles will look at how the West Coast Amalgamation Order came into being, the legacy it created, how the records it produced are now being used to help Māori families rediscover their whakapapa, and what challenges still need to be faced.

“How do you put a price on birthright?”

In 1881, The West Coast Settlement Reserves Act laid down the way confiscated whenua was to be ‘returned’ to its owners – surveyed, divided, and leased to new settlers with the view of securing a reasonable financial return for Māori.

Around 201,395 acres were awarded to 5,289 individual people in this way, accounting for approximately one fifth of the total amount of land confiscated.

Over the next 10 years, the legislation was ameanded so much that a second Act, in 1892, was needed to clarify the arrangement, legally validate certain leases and end owner litigation against the Public Trustee.

The 1892 Act gave the Public Trustee complete control over the land. The Trust collected the rent, set at 5% of the unimproved value of the land, and paid it to the registered owners.

The rent values were to be reviewed every 21 years, the leases could be renewed in perpetuity, and lessees were given the right to compensation for improvements. The Public Trustee remained in control until 1920, when the responsibility for the rent system was passed to the Native Trustee, which later became the Māori Trustee.

“But administering the interests of thousands of individual Māori owners over multiple blocks of land, proved to be an administrative problem for the Māori Trustee,” says Dion Tuuta, chair of the PKW Committee of Management. “The Trustee wanted to find an easier way to administer the lease rentals. The process seemed to be about making it easier for the Māori Trustee – not what was best for the owners.”

(b) Specifying that such amalgamation order shall take effect on the first day of July 1963;

(c) Incorporating the effect of the vesting order applied for under paragraph 2 hereof;

And so, in 1963, an amalgamation order was made which brought all the West Coast Settlement Reserves together under one title, to be held in common ownership – the Parininihi ki Waitōtara Mega Reserve.

Shares in this Mega Reserve were allocated proportionally depending on how much land owners had under Māori Trustee control – those who had larger interests received more shares than those who held less land. And so the legal connection between individuals and their specific land blocks was lost – now every West Coast Settlement Reserve owner from every iwi, hapū and whānau held an interest in every reserve across the rohe. Rental from all the properties was collected and paid out in terms of the number of shares held, not in relation to the land block your originally owned.

For some, the disconnection was compounded even further with the decision that any shares worth less than ten pounds would be given to the Taranaki Māori Trust Board and used for ‘educational purposes’ because ‘All parents want their children better than themselves –Māori and Pākehā’ (minutes of Taranaki Māori Trust Board meeting held 12 November 1962).

“This meant that for some 1600 Taranaki Māori - including my grandfather - their ownership interest of their whenua tupuna granted in 1881 was extinguished. As a result of this, they would be excluded from becoming shareholders when PKW was established in 1976.” says Dion.

(d) Assigning in the amalgamation order to the lands affected by it the description Parininihi-kiWaitotara Reserve;

“But how do you put a price on birthright? Whakapapa can’t be defined in economic terms.”

The loss of direct legal ownership of their original land blocks was another blow for those who had already lost the right to choose what to do with their land, and how it would be managed and cared for.

And while the creation of Māori Incorporations in 1967, and eventual establishment of PKW in 1976 gave owners a collective legal entity, this process only transferred the responsibility of administering the very system that had taken that right to choose from them.

Dion notes that gaining administrative control of the West Coast Settlement Reserve leasing process from the Māori Trustee was a significant victory for the generation of leaders who established PKW. “It was the first step to unlocking the potential that sits within the whenua.” Dion says. “While challenges remain, the opportunities are huge.”

“We are working with the cards that history has dealt us. And we are trying and find a way to turn them into a winning hand for the good of all our shareholders and whānau. But I am always grateful to those who did the hard work of establishing PKW and getting us into the game.

NEXT ISSUE - Reconnecting with the whenua – how the information contained in the West Coast Settlement Reserves amalgamation order is helping to give back what was lost.