Refuge New Zealand: A Nation's Response to Refugees and Asylum Seekers
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Refuge New Zealand: A Nation's Response to Refugees and Asylum Seekers
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| ISBN-13: | 9781927322802 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Otago University Press |
| Publication date: | 08/30/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 263 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
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Refuge New Zealand
A Nation's Response to Refugees and Asylum Seekers
By Ann Beaglehole, Anna Rogers
Otago University Press
Copyright © 2013 Ann BeagleholeAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-927322-80-2
CHAPTER 1
The first refugees
During the invasion of the Waikato, wrote John Gorst in 1864, 'the refugees from Pukaki, Mangere' and other Maori villages near Auckland, a number of them 'old, infirm people', were driven from their homes and their lands confiscated Gorst, who was the first resident magistrate in the Waikato from 1861 to 1863, went on to tell how the refugees –men and women who had refused to give up their weapons and take the oath of allegiance to the Queen – 'showed the most intense grief at leaving a place where they had so long lived in peace and happiness ... The scene, as described to me by an eye-witness, was most pitiable.'
The fugitives were, of course, unable to carry all their goods with them. What remained behind was looted by the colonial forces and the neighbouring settlers. Canoes were broken to pieces and burnt, cattle seized, houses ransacked, and horses brought into Auckland and sold by the spoilers in the public market. Such robbery was of course unsanctioned by the government, but the authorities were unable to check the greediness of the settlers.
The word 'refugee' was in fairly common use by the mid-nineteenth century to describe people escaping religious and political strife. Government records include numerous references to Maori as refugees. In 1867, for example, the Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives(AJHR), refers to 'Waikato refugees', expelled from one district and able, or at times not able, to settle in another. A 1910 AJHR report speaks of 'a refugee tribe' hospitably received by iwi, or turned away. Newspaper reports, too, contain many references to 'Waikato refugees' and to 'Maori refugees'.
Much more recently, various Waitangi Tribunal reports have described Maori as refugees. The report on the Orakei Claim, for example, states that dispossessed Ngati Whatua were 'made virtual refugees, a disillusioned, scattered and landless people'. The Te Urewera report refers on several occasions to Maori refugees, for example to 'refugees from Waikaremoana' at Ruatahuna placing 'an unbearable strain on the resources of the community'. In the second part of this report some Maori are described as fleeing, being pursued and fighting in response to events in Te Urewera. Among the main themes of the tribunal's three-volume Wairarapa ki Tararua Report –in which Maori are described as refugees on a number of occasions –are powerlessness and displacement.
'Refugee' is an apt word to describe the Maori experience under colonialism for several decades of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century. Maori were a sovereign people before colonisation, with title to the land; after colonial subjugation some did become refugees.
Applying the word to Maori does invite comparisons with contemporary international law and norms in relation to refugees under United Nations conventions. Because Maori do not fit these definitions of refugees, some may argue that 'internally displaced person' –someone forced to escape from his or her home but remaining within his or her country's borders –is a more appropriate term. However, it is possible to argue, as historian James Belich does, that two national zones existed in large parts of New Zealand in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with fugitive Maori crossing borders from one to the other. The zones were 'politically independent of each other', though social, cultural, legal and administrative interactions between them were common.
The period 1863–69 was the point where the tide of Maori independence began to turn, 'but that tide ran out very slowly'. Maori independence persisted long after the New Zealand Wars, in part because of remaining 'centres of resistance'. The largest of these was the King Movement, whose territory came to be known as the King Country. In 1884, this 'encompassed 7,000 square miles, nearly one-sixth of the North Island ... Thus, in the late nineteenth century, an independent Maori state nearly two-thirds the size of Belgium existed in the middle of the North Island.' At least until this time, the King Country was 'making and enforcing its own laws, conducting its own affairs, sheltering fugitives from Pakeha justice and killing Europeans who crossed its borders without permission'.
Maori experienced colonialism and European settlement in a variety of ways. Kupapa Maori, who were friendly to the Crown, and often prospered after the wars, viewed their situation differently from Maori badly affected by the wars and land confiscations. The impact of land losses was incalculable for a people who had regarded themselves as 'politically lords of the land as well as landlords'. The loss of land was associated with loss of mana and consequent demoralisation. There was no Maori word for 'refugee' in the nineteenth century, but the word 'whakarau', meaning 'exiles' or 'unhomed' was used. Te Kooti applied it to the prisoners from the East Coast who had been transported to the Chatham Islands in 1865–66.
The research of historians Judith Binney and Bronwyn Elsmore shows that some Maori identified strongly with the Israelites or Hebrews of the Old Testament. Like Maori, they had lost their land and become fugitives under foreign rule. Identification with the plight of dispossessed ancient Hebrews to some extent shaped religious movements like Pai Marire, Ringatu and Ratana. 'We are like wandering Israelites without a home; we are living on the branch of the tree,' Chief Reihana Te Aroha is reported to have said at a meeting at Orahiri in 1869. Asking that confiscated land in the Waikato be returned to iwi in exchange for peace, he said: 'Give back the soil, give back Waikato, give back Tamaki (i.e. Pukaki, Mangere, &c). Although I am living on the branch of the tree I still cling to the soil (I will not give up my right to it).'
In his 2011 novel, The Parihaka Woman, contemporary Maori writer Witi Ihimaera explores the connection between Old Testament Israelites and Maori. In the book, three sisters, described as 'refugees', have fled from Parihaka and take refuge with other Maori in Wellington, arriving at Kaiwharawhara marae just as night is falling:
Some people, recognising the feathers in Ripeka and Meri's hair, came to greet them. 'Aue, we are all refugees', they said. 'Even here in Wellington, ever since the Pakeha came in 1840 with his deed of purchase, we have been gradually forced out. His is the great white tribe who owns Whanganui-a-Tara now.'
One of the sisters voices her fears about what the future may hold for 'the iwi katoa of all Aotearoa':
To be herded onto and live the rest of their lives in reserves ... or at the edges of the land, the fringes of the sea, the tops of mountains, offshore islands ... or to scrabble with others for scraps and pieces of unwanted broken biscuit, in the great cities of the Pakeha ... If Maori continued to fight against the Pakeha ... would Maori be erased all together?
But how useful is it to apply the term 'refugee' to Maori? In Belich's words, 'Facing the facts' about our history contributes to our growing understanding of New Zealand's past, moving from the once generally held Pakeha view, that colonisation benefited indigenous people by bringing progress, civilisation and introducing modern systems of land ownership and government. Evidence suggests that while a minority benefited, many Maori became impoverished and landless.
Some former refugees from overseas embrace the term; others are indifferent or resent its application to their own situation. Some Maori, too, may disapprove of the word, perhaps because it appears to focus more on how Maori society was damaged by colonisation, than on how it survived. But refugees everywhere are survivors, not just victims. Some Pakeha may disapprove of calling Maori refugees. But the question has to be this: Despite effective resistance and resilience in dealing with negative Crown policies, did some Maori end up in a refugee-like situation? This chapter argues that they did.
Inter-tribal warfare
Before the arrival of Europeans, inter-tribal conflict among Maori created refugees. There were occupation disputes and battles between iwi over contested land. Some ended with the expulsion of hapu, who fled from traditional homelands, leaving the victors in possession. When one iwi displaced another, complex situations arose related to differing lines of descent from the ancestral iwi of a particular region and those derived from the replacement of the original iwi by more recent migrants. 'Some groups migrated as refugees, or as allies in war, and the nature of the ensuing relationship between the migrant group and the resident group varied accordingly.'
The Musket Wars of the 1810s, 1820s and 1830s changed the nature of intertribal warfare and inflicted significant casualties on Maori –precise estimates of the number of people killed vary –causing thousands to flee from their traditional lands. From 1921, for example, Ngapuhi leader Hongi Hika took revenge on Tamaki iwi by attacking two Ngati Paoa pa. Hundreds were killed and captured as slaves. He repeated his assaults on other iwi: Ngati Maru near Thames, and Ngati Whatua. The latter undertook several journeys of exile to escape attacks from Ngapuhi and other tribes. They eventually settled in Te Horo in 1831 but returned to Tamaki later in the decade.
The use of muskets resulted in unprecedented population movements and displacement, as the Wairarapa ki Tararua Report points out. The worst casualties resulted 'not from the battles themselves but from the redistribution and concentration of the population as people fled the fighting and became refugees'. And what followed was 'economic disruption, the loss of crops and access to food sites, starvation, and disease as a result of overcrowding and unsanitary conditions'.
The invasion of the Chatham Islands by Taranaki Maori in 1835, and the ensuing mass killing and enslavement of the Moriori population, including many women and children, is another example of inter-tribal conflict creating refugees. Those Moriori not killed or enslaved in 1835–36 are said to have died subsequently of 'despair'.
Refugees of the New Zealand Wars
From 1845 to 1872 the wars between the British and Maori tribes of the North Island, marked by fierce and brutal fighting, produced refugees. In 1928, the Sim Commission, set up to inquire into the justice of the confiscations of Maori land, concluded, in relation to the Taranaki war, that Wiremu Kingi and his people were 'driven from the land, their pas destroyed, their houses set fire to, and their cultivations laid waste'. The commission painted a devastating picture of the colonists' greed, 'impatience' and 'clamour' for land, leading to the 1860 Waitara purchase, 'the spark which set all ablaze'. Regarding 'the Parihaka expedition in 1881', the commission concluded that, though the prophet Te Whiti was 'pacific' and the villagers were unarmed, the government 'took the extreme step of pouring into his village of Parihaka an overwhelming armed force. Then, after reading the Riot Act to a passive and orderly crowd of men, women and children, they proceeded to make wholesale arrests, to evict the villagers, and to destroy houses and crops.'
Waitangi Tribunal reports, too, speak of the war refugees. The report on Central North Island claims, for example, discusses the fate of the Waikato refugees after their displacement – whether they were given refuge by other iwi, whether some iwi had an obligation to support Waikato refugees and whether the refugees sought reconciliation with Pakeha. 'After the end of the Waikato war, Tuwharetoa accepted refugees from Waikato, Pai Marire, and at the same time sought to enter into a relationship with the Crown.'
There are numerous contemporary newspaper references to 'Waikato refugees' attending, or not attending, large 'Native meetings'. Some accounts suggest that they were seen as causes of tension in the districts to which they had fled. Refugees were often seen as 'welcome guests' at first, but problems arose if they stayed for many years. Several newspapers reported tensions between Waikato refugees and Ngati Maniapoto. On 8 June 1869, for example, the Daily Southern Cross described a meeting between a group of Pakeha and the King Party:
They (Ngati Maniapoto) would ... gladly get rid of the Waikatos altogether if the latter could be induced to settle on portions of the Waikato. They are annoyed at the obstinacy of the Waikatos, and already a suspicion is gaining ground that these people whom the Ngatimaniapotos have received as guests and refugees desire to remain in permanent possession of the land on which they have been provided with an asylum on sufferance.
As the same paper noted the following January,
Long residence on the Ngatimaniapoto land would, according to native custom, confer a kind of proprietary right upon the refugees, and it may be presumed that the Ngatimaniapoto are anxious to see the refugees again located in Waikato before they have lived sufficiently long in the Ngatimaniapoto country to acquire a vestige of title. This supposition would account for a great deal of the jealousy that has been known to exist for some time past between these two great tribes.
As fighting in the Waikato was winding down, 'virtual civil war' between Maori on the East Coast created more refugees. Between 1864 and 1872 factions of Ngati Porou fought each other with government-supplied guns. One group supported Pai Marire, a messianic religious movement; the other tried to resist them. Ngati Porou's aim was to maintain its own sovereignty; the government's was to try to stop the spread of Pai Marire, which aimed to drive Pakeha from Maori land and supported the Kingitanga, the movement to create a Maori nation under a Maori King.
Maori in Turanga had remained neutral during the wars in Taranaki and Waikato, refusing to support either the Crown or the Maori King. In 1865 members of Pai Marire arrived in Turanga and the majority of Turanga Maori converted to the new faith, which promised to protect their lands and independence. The government 'decided to grasp the opportunity to use the Ngati Porou and colonial forces then in the district to destroy the Pai Marire influence along the East Coast and, in the process, break the independence of the Turanga tribes'. In November Crown forces attacked and besieged Pai Marire at Waerenga-a-Hika, just inland from modern-day Gisborne. Around 800 Maori, including 300 women and older children, were in the pa at the time: almost the entire population of Turanga. The pa fell after five days and inhabitants either escaped or surrendered. Seventy-one were killed.
After the surrender of the pa, the Crown imprisoned 113 men and transported them to the Chatham Islands, later sending 10 more. The prisoners were to be held for an indeterminate period and Turanga Maori land was confiscated as punishment. There was also pressure to give up more of their land to the Crown as 'reparations'. Conditions on the Chathams were harsh, particularly for people unused to a cold climate. The prisoners were required to build their own accommodation and grow their own food; around 22 men and some women and children died from illness. One of the prisoners was Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki, who began to build up the principles of a new faith –the Ringatu –and planned their escape back to the mainland in 1868. There they sought refuge in the Urewera. As the Evening Post of May 1870, for example, reported, Te Kooti and his supporters were 'still hiding in the Wai-o-eka gorge, with a few followers, and destitute of food, except fern-root, and what they can pick up. It seems that honey is much depended on by these refugees in the country they are now in.' When Te Kooti sought refuge with Tuhoe, who agreed to hide him, British troops 'unleashed their wrath', destroying Tuhoe crops and buildings and taking the only remaining arable land, including access way to their fishing grounds. Such scorched earth tactics were also used in Tauranga, with devastating effects on Ngati Ranginui.
Refugees were also created by violent retaliation to non-violent resistance by Maori to European occupation. The best-known instance of this was at Parihaka in 1881. Less well known is the earlier situation of a community driven off their land in the Waitaki Valley on the South Island in 1879. Under the leadership of Ngai Tahu prophet Hipa Te Maiharoa, in 1877 they had reoccupied 'old tribal grazing land', but two years later their 'peaceable community ... was dismantled and its inhabitants evicted forcibly by police'. In Buddy Mikaere's account, 'on a bitterly cold day', some 150 men, women and children 'marched slowly out into the snow. Turning their backs on the little village they had raised in the tussock, they began the long trek back to the coast.' The sad procession included 30 drays and wagons, 100 horses and a similar number of dogs. 'As the people marched, a column of smoke rose in the sky behind them: the police were burning their homes.' During the journey down the Waitaki Valley on bad roads in appalling winter weather, several old people and young children perished.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Refuge New Zealand by Ann Beaglehole, Anna Rogers. Copyright © 2013 Ann Beaglehole. Excerpted by permission of Otago University Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Front Cover,Title Page,
Copyright,
Acknowledgements,
Introduction,
CHAPTER ONE The first refugees,
CHAPTER TWO Escaping from Europe and Asia,
CHAPTER THREE Choosing the 'best' refugees,
CHAPTER FOUR A change of direction,
CHAPTER FIVE Refugees from South East Asia,
CHAPTER SIX From refugee to new settler,
CHAPTER SEVEN 'The children are a triumph',
CHAPTER EIGHT An inconvenient obligation?,
CHAPTER NINE 'Integration takes time',
CONCLUSION A fine record?,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,
Back Cover,