(Re)defining 'tangata whenua'

Over at indymedia Justin Taua has posted his statement against Franklin E Local's wacky claims about an ancient white civilisation in New Zealand, and received the following comment from 'bluntmanz':

"Tangata Whenua" means "The People of this Land". Maori are the Tangata Whenua of Aotearoa, they were here first. There was no pre-Maori colonisation, by 'Ancient Celts' or anyone else. Ko Ngati Pakeha Ahau.

It should come as no surprise that I agree with bluntmanz that Maori are tangata whenua of Aoteaora, and that I think that arguments that a lost tribe of Celts set up shop here thousands of years ago are no more credible than Thierry Henry's claim that his handball against Ireland was accidential. [For those who have come to this page for looking for them, some of my criticisms of the pseudo-historians' arguments about an ancient white civilisation can be found by clicking here.]

I'm not sure if I completely agree, though, with bluntmanz's suggestion that Maori are tangata whenua simply because they were the first people to settle in Aotearoa. The belief that tangata whenua status derives automatically from first arrival is certainly popular across much of the political spectrum, from the liberal left to the raving racist fringes of the right.

Both the old myth of the Moriori as the pre-Maori inhabitants of Aotearoa and the newer myth of a prehistoric white civilisation have appealed to many of their proponents because, by 'proving' that Maori were not the first inhabitants of this country, they seem to deprive Maori of their tangata whenua status and scupper the work of the Waitangi Tribunal and other institutions based on the assumption of this status.

Pseudo-historians like Martin Doutre and Kerry Bolton gleefully append their strange writings about 'ancient Celtic' rock formations and canals with boasts about the momentous political implications of their work. The total failure of the pseudo-historians to convince trained scholars of their 'findings' is explained as the result of a conspiracy intended to prevent the political earthquake that acknowledgement of an ancient white civilisation would cause.

But if they are labouring to drag New Zealand to the right by sinking the Treaty of Waitangi, then the pseudo-historians are labouring in vain. All the evidence we have suggests that the ancestors of the Maori were indeed the first settlers of Aotearoa, but even if lost Celtic cities were at last discovered in the forests of Northland, then this fact wouldn't stop Maori from being considered tangata whenua.

In a very fine essay published in the February 2008 issue of the Aussie academic journal Thesis Eleven, Kai Tahu scholar Te Maire Tau showed that traditionally Maori have understood indigenity as something which derives not from first occupation of a piece of land, but rather from a series of activities, like giving names to places and phenomena, burying the dead, and burying placenta (it's no coincidence that whenua means 'afterbirth' as well as 'land' in Maori). Tau's description of the process of indigenising territory is both precise and poetic:

The act of consecrating the land was carried out by renaming the land, winds, mountains, streams and stars with the spirit (mauri) of their gods and ancestors...the early Waitaha transformed the South Island into an ancestral church that subsequent tribes were absorbed into in a dual osmosis: the conquering tribes married into the Waitaha and were themselves absorbed into the genealogy of the Waitaha.

Tau's point about indigenity might surprise some leftists, as well as the pseudo-historians of the far right, but the fact is that there have already been many Treaty settlements where a group of Maori have been recognised as tangata whenua, and offered certain resources, despite the acknowledged fact that they were not the first occupants of their rohe.

Kai Tahu, for instance, was recognised as the tangata whenua of most of the South Island and given a range of resources in one of the first major Treaty settlements in the early ’90s, yet no Kai Tahu leader has ever claimed that the iwi was the first to take possession of the southern part of the South Island. As Tau's essay points out, the Waitaha and Ngati Mamoe peoples lived in the area before Kai Tahu arrived sometime in the seventeenth century. These prior peoples were either conquered or assimilated, or both, and Kai Tahu became the tangata whenua of Murihiku.

The pseudo-historians might, of course, consider it a deplorable state of affairs that Maori and the Waitangi Tribunal define indigenity by criteria other than initial occupation, but the fact that they do shows that the discovery of the remains of a pre-Maori civilisation would not derail the Treaty process and stop Maori claiming indigenity. There would be no need for an elaborately sinister conspiracy to disguise signs of a pre-Maori people.

It is relatively easy for scholars to show that Kai Tahu are the tangata whenua of most of the South Island, because the tribe absorbed Waitaha and Kati Mamoe centuries ago. Matters are more complicated, though, when more than one group claims to be tangata whenua of a particular piece of soil.

When they studied the history of the Chatham Islands, the scholars of the Waitangi Tribunal had to contend with the claims of both the Ngati Mutunga iwi and the Moriori people to tangata whenua (or, in the Moriori language, tchakat henu) status. Ngati Mutunga acknowledged that Moriori had been the first occupants of the Chathams, but insisted that they had become the new tangata whenua when they had conquered the islands in 1835. For their part, Moriori argued that mere conquest was not enough to confer indigenity. Moriori mana and culture had not been extinguished by their subjugation at the hands of the 1835 invaders, and deserved to be recognised.

In the typically thorough report it issued in 2001, the Waitangi Tribunal decided that the Moriori should be considered the 'first indigenous people' of the islands, while Ngati Mutunga should be considered the 'second indigenous people'. The Tribunal's decision resonated beyond the small world of the Chathams: historian and commentator Michael King seized upon the concept of a 'second indigenous people', and argued, in a series of widely-circulated statements, that it could be extended to cover all Pakeha Kiwis. King was worried about race relations in New Zealand, and he believed that Pakeha needed to be granted some form of indigenity if they were to be reassured of their place in our society, and reconciled to the 'Maori renaissance' which began in the '70s.

Despite or because of his untimely and spectacular death in 2004, King's notion of a 'second indigenous people' remains influential today. It can be argued, though, that King distorted the concept when he borrowed it from the Waitangi Tribunal's report on the Chathams. The Tribunal developed the concept in the knowledge that Moriori had been scattered and partially abosorbed into Ngati Mutunga society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

After decades of enslavement, a drastic drop in population, and the failure to win back their land after emancipation, Moriori found it impossible to hold on to important elements of their culture, like their language, their religion, and some of their oral traditions. Some Moriori left their homeland; many of those who remained intermarried with Ngati Mutunga, spoke Maori as their first language and attended Maori marae. Moriori only began to reassert themselves as a separate people in the '80s.

The fact that most Moriori no longer live in the Chathams and the fact of the partial absorption of those who remained in their homeland into Ngati Mutunga culture surely influenced the Waitangi Tribunal's decision to describe Ngati Mutunga as the 'second indigenous people' of the Chathams.

Is there a real analogy between the conditions on the Chathams and those in 'mainland' New Zealand? Most Maori have neither emigrated from New Zealand nor been absorbed into Pakeha culture: King's use of a concept developed for the special conditions of the Chathams therefore seems cavalier. Even if his conlusione were flawed, though, the late historian's willingness to think creatively about the notion of indigenity, rather than mehanically associate it with first occupation of a piece of territory, should be an example to us today.

Footnote: I apologise in advance to anyone who is offended by my use of the 'Chathams', rather than the Moriori name 'Rekohu' or the Maori 'Wharekauri'. I have used 'Rekohu' on occasions in the past, but I've found that it causes confusion, because very few people know what it means.