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Why was Māori land so important to Europeans?

Updated: 8/16/2019
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7y ago

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When the Europeans colonised Aotearoa New Zealand, they had a long history of taking land and that is one of the reasons why so many people flocked to this country.

Land had been taken from the Scots during the Highland Clearances, Land was useless in Ireland because of repeated famine there. In England too, the poor were literally starving, even when working 20 hours a day. So when the New Zealand Company offered cheap passage and land at the end of it, thousands of desperately poor families, wanting a better deal for their children, accepted.

What they didn't know was that a great deal of that land was farmed, built on and absolutely essential to the Maori who were already here.

The British-run Government cheated Māori out of millions of acres of land, dispossessing whole communities (as they had in Scotland) and condemning Māori to be refugees in what they saw as their own country.

In fact there is no law which says the first people on the land have exclusive rights to that land, all countries have a history of sharing with other peoples (either forced or voluntary) but what the British saw as their right to take what they wanted, has led to a terrible legacy which is only now, 200+ years late, beginning to be repaired.

It will never be wholly repaired because much of the land can't be given back and Māori do not look upon land in the same ways the white man (Pakeha) does.

Papatuanuku is the Earth Mother, and precious in spirit to Māori (and many Pakeha) She cannot be owned, only honoured and the early British government had absolutely no idea what this meant. To them, land-grabbing was fair game (they'd done it in India and Africa and the Caribbean) and hard luck to the indigenous people.

Fortunately, things are changing and we no longer feel that theft is right just because we have power - but there are scars on the heart and spirit of Māori which may never heal.

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