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Following on from Volume I on the formation of the Urewera District Native Reserve, this monograph examines the period from 1908 to 1926, during which time the Crown subverted Tuhoe control of the UDNR, established a mere decade earlier. While Volume I described how the Tuhoe were able to deploy kin-based power to manipulate Crown power as well as confront one another, this volume describes ways in which the same ancestral descent groups closed ranks to survive nearly two decades of predatory Crown policies determined to dismantle their sanctuary. A relentless Crown campaign to purchase individual Tuhoe land shares ultimately resulted in a misleading Crown scheme to consolidate and relocate Tuhoe land shares, thereby freeing up land for the settlement of non- Tuhoe farmers. By the 1950s, over 200 small Tuhoe blocks were scattered throughout one of the largest National Parks in New Zealand. Although greatly weakened by these policies in terms of kinship solidarity as well as land and other resources, Tuhoe resistance continued until the return of the entire park in 2014-with unreserved apologies and promises of future support.
In both volumes of A Separate Authority (He Mana Motuhake), Webster takes the stance of an ethnohistorian: he not only examines the various ways control over the Urewera District Native Reserve (UDNR) was negotiated, subverted or betrayed, and renegotiated during this time period, but also focuses on the role of Maori hapu, ancestral descent groups and their leaders, including the political economic influence of extensive marriage alliances between them. The ethnohistorical approach developed here may be useful to other studies of governance, indigenous resistance, and reform, whether in New Zealand or elsewhere.
About the author
The resistance of the T¿hoe M¿ori of New Zealand to colonisation began more than century before the final return of their sanctuary in the Urewera mountains by the Crown in 2014. In Volume I of A Separate Authority (He Mana Motuhake), Steven Webster provides an ethnohistorical reconstruction of the establishment in New Zealand of a rare case of Maori home-rule over their traditional domain, backed by a special statute and investigated by a Crown commission, the majority of whom were T¿hoe leaders. This relatively benevolent colonial policy enabled the T¿hoe to control the establishment of their vast Native Reserve in a way that entrenched their social organisation, particularly their traditional deployment of kin-based power, while at once manipulating the power of the Crown to their joint advantage from 1894 to 1908. In Volume II, Webster documents how this same form of resistance enabled the T¿hoe to withstand predatory Crown policies between 1908and 1926, thereby retaining remnants of their ancestral sanctuary-which later became the basis upon which they won statutory control of the territory.
In both volumes of A Separate Authority (He Mana Motuhake), Webster takes the stance of an ethnohistorian: he not only examines the various ways control over the Urewera District Native Reserve (UDNR) was negotiated, subverted or betrayed, and renegotiated during this time period, but also focuses on the role of M¿ori hap¿, ancestral descent groups and their leaders, including the political economic influence of extensive marriage alliances between them. The ethnohistorical approach developed here may be useful to other studies of governance, indigenous resistance, and reform, whether in New Zealand or elsewhere.
