MARRIAGES BETWEEN MAORIS

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 219, 10 June 1921, Page 6

MARRIAGES BETWEEN MAORIS

POINTS INVOLVED IN DIVORCE SUIT RIGHTS OF PERSONS OF MIXED BLOOD A judgment of some importance to persons of mixed Maori and European blood was delivered in tho Supreme Court yesterday by His Honour Mr. Justice Salmond. It. related to a case in which Maggio Parker, a half-caste Al nori, asked for dissolution of her marriage with Stanley Hector Parker, also of mixed blood, on the ground of adultery. The petitioner is the daughter of a. European father and Maori mother; and the respondent the son of a. European mother and a father who was of Maori descent, being the son of a Maori woman, and of a father “who was probably a half-casta.” Tho parties were married in 1897 by a clergyman of the. Church of England without a certificate from the Registrar of Marriages.

In granting a, decree nisi, tho Judge stated:—“A question arises as to the validity of the marriage. The Marriage Act then in force was that of 1880, and section 2 thereof provides that nothing in the Act shall apply to any marriage which may be contracted otherwise than according to the provisions of the Act between two persons both of the aboriginal Native race. Marriages, therefore, between Maoris might in the year 1597. in pursuance of the Marriage Ordinance, 1842, be validly celebrated before a minister of any Christian denomination without a registrar’s certificate or other formal prerequisite. Limitations of Privilege.

“The question whether this privilege of informal marriage is limited to persons of pure Maori blood or extends to half-castes or other persons of mixed descent has been considered in more than onp case, but has never been decided. ... In the present case, however, 1 am constrained by the evidence to draw the inference that both parties were, well aware, that a certificate of the Registrar of Marriages had not been obtained. Their marriage, therefore, is null and void unless the exemption given to persons of the Native aboriginal race by section 2 of the Marriage Act, 1880. extends to persons of mixed blood. It is necessary accordingly to determine this question of law. “I am of opinion that tho privilege of informal marriage formerly conferred on parsons of the Native race by the Marriage Act, 1880, the Marriage Act, 1904. nnd the Marriage Act. .1908, extended to all persons of Maori descent, whether pure or mixed. All persons with any admixture of Maori blood at nil were entitled to this exemption from tho formalities of the marriage law. Bv virtue ofo that admixture they belonged to the Native aboriginal race within the meaning of tha Marriage Acts. A person .f mixed descent, partly Maori and partly English, belongs in truth and fact both to the Maori and the English race. He is entitled, therefore, in right of his Maori blood, to the statutory privileges conferred upon members of the Maori race. Doubtless there may be other Acts in which references to race must, in conformity with the context! or purpose of those Acts, be read strictly ns confined to persons of pure descent from that race. But there seems nothing in the Marriage Acts, or in the public policy on which they are based, which would necessitate or justify so strict a. construction. It seems improbable. indeed, that the Legislature intended to make the regularity or validity of Maori marriages dependent on the absence of anv admixture of European blood in the ancestry of the parties. Amendments to Law. “In 1909 the law in this respect was altered by the Native Land Act of that year” adiled His Honour. “Section 2 of the Marriage Act, 1908, exempting persons of the Native aboriginal race was repealed, and the law was placed on a new basis bv section 191 of the Native Land Act, 1909. By that section it is enacted that 'every marriage between two Natives mav at the option of the parties be celebrated either in the same manner as if each of the parties was a European, or in the presence of an offictatiiig minister under the Marriage Act, 1908, but without complying with the other requirements of that Act. By section 2 of. the Act it is provided that the term Native ’means a person belonging io the aboriginal race of New Zealand, and includes a half-caste and a person intermediate in blood between half-castes and persons of pure descent from that race.’ It is only a Native as so defined that now possesses the privilege of informal marriage. Ho must, be either of pure Maori blood, or a half-caste, or intermediate in blood between a halfcaste and a pure Maori. Persons who are of mixed descent, but whoso 'blood is predominantly European, are no longer Natives for the purpose of the Marriage Act.” . , , , In holding the marriage to have been valid, His Honour said it was celebrated “in facie ecclesiae. between persons both of whom ‘possessed an admixture of Maori blood. t > The petitioner was given the interim custodv of the infant children of the marrnige, and costs on the lower scale were ordered against the respondent.