Tu Tangata Business Wananga rekindles 19th century flame

Tu Tangata, Issue 1, 1 August 1981, Page 8

Tu Tangata Business Wananga rekindles 19th century flame

By Hazel Riseborough

In the past 18 months the Department of Maori Affairs promoted three Tu Tangata Business Wananga to train prospective Maori entrepreneurs. The courses were based on a syllabus developed by the Hawaii Entrepreneurship Training and Development Institute and were run by Dr George Kanahele of Hawaii and Dr Ngatata Love of Massey University.

Hailed as “one of the most significant things to happen in the business world in New Zealand in a long time” the course is seen by the pakeha as a training ground for a new type of Maori, the Maori of the ’Bos one who wants to succeed in business and make a lot of money. But as Dr Love points out, although entrepreneurship is an individual characteristic, it is not incompatible with the Maori idea of sharing, for the individual must first be successful before he can help his people.

A BORN ENTREPRENEUR

A glance at economic activity in New Zealand last century will show that Maori entrepreneurship is not a new thing either. The Maori is a born entrepreneur. Captain James Cook’s journals tell us that “at the Cavalles Islands several canoes came off to the ship and two or three of them sold us some fish” and at another village “we had no sooner come to anchor than between three and four hundred of the natives assembled in their canoes about the ship, some few were admitted on board and to one of the chiefs I gave a piece of broad cloth and distributed a few nails etc”. Later he reported “All this forenoon had abundance of the natives about the ship and some few on board, we trafficked with them for a few trifles in which they dealt very fair and friendly”.

In 1852 a Ngati Whanaunga chief told of his adventures when, as a small boy, he had gone aboard the Endeavour. His people were both afraid and interested. They liked the pakeha’s food and his cloth. Indeed for a while cloth appealed to them more than iron, but they soon got the hang

of things and a nail, which could be sharpened into a chisel, or hoop iron which could be put to a dozen uses, became the preferred means of payment. The Maori were avid bargainers and traders and the Europeans soon had to pay with more than “a few trifles” for their food.

In the first decade of the 19th century most coastal tribes had regular contact with Europeans. They helped cut and load spars. They sailed as crew to Norfolk Island, New South Wales and even the United States of America and England. They bartered with the potatoes and pigs Cook had introduced to the country and received in return fish hooks, axes, spades and other iron tools and eventually muskets. In the 1820 s there was a huge increase in the area of cultivations at the Bay of Islands, evidently to produce food for trade; the Maori had entered the musket economy. In 1820 Hongi Hika, the greatest entrepreneur of his time, went to England as the guest of the missionary Thomas Kendall. On his return to Sydney in 1821 he exchanged all the presents he had received in London for 300 muskets. With these he terrorized his ancient enemies, while every tribe in New Zealand joined in the armaments race.

TE RAUPARAHA

The next great entrepreneur, Te Rauparaha, the Ngati Toa chief from Kawhia, went raiding with Ngapuhi to Taranaki and points south on the “If you can’t beat them join them” principle. Kapiti took his eye as a likely headquarters for trading with the European and on his return to Kawhia he persuaded his whole tribe to forsake their ancestral lands where Tainui was drawn ashore after her long journey, and migrate southwards. His people took their few guns with them when they moved to Kapiti in 1821-22.

At first the main trade throughout the country was food for guns, but flax became increasingly important in the 1820 s. In 1825 there was a resident trader at Mahia exchanging guns for flax and he was followed in 1828 by one at

Ngamotu and in 1829 by one at each of Waikato Heads and Tauranga. By 1830 there were six traders operating at Kawhia and Tapsell had opened a trading centre at Maketu. All of them were buying flax and paying in guns.

In 1823 Te Rauparaha had begun developing his trading base on Kapiti. He traded flax for guns and built up an arsenal to go raiding for greenstone in the South Island. By 1825 Ngati Toa’s 340 fighting men had more guns per warrior than any tribe south of the Bay of Islands. The boom in flax trading was on. In 1830 ten traders took 102 tons of scraped flax from Kapiti one eighth of New Zealand’s supply to Sydney that year. It took some organising by Te Rauparaha and his agent to develop the trade to this extent. At first the Maori people might not have done very well out of their trading relationships, but mutual controls soon grew up, preventing exploitation of one race by the other. The Maori soon knew the types and models of guns and were examining them closely before closing a deal. Within a year or two Te Rauparaha’s people were demand’"" both quality and quantity in all the goods for which they traded, and in return did their utmost to supply the Europeans’ needs, for from them they obtained the means to fight their wars of conquest.

After 1840 when large numbers of European settlers arrived in New Zealand, the Maori began to turn his attention from purely material goods to Pakeha ways and customs. The coastal tribes took to the shipping business; in 1844 the Opotiki people owned two small vessels and the Whakatane people owned another. European methods of agriculture were adopted. Wheat and other crops were planted and the increasing cultivation demanded new implements and created new needs. In 1846 a fair acreage of wheat was grown in the Manawatu and in 1847 two flour mills were built in Taranaki and paid for in pigs. At Rangiaowhia a mill costing £2OO was erected in 1847 and the money was subscribed by the local Waikato people in £1 shares.

MAORI AGRICULTURE ENCOURAGED

Governor Grey encouraged Maori agriculture by making private and public loans to buy ploughs, mills or small vessels. During his governorship Maori in many parts of the country were enthusiastically adapting their lives to the new market economy. They had extensive areas in crops, they raised livestock and even won prizes at the local A and P Shows of the time. They also amassed large sums of money. According to the manager of the Wellington bank the local Maori had £150,000 in 1842. All over the country they bought ploughs and carts and in several areas built water

mills to grind their wheat. By 1853 in the Waikato alone there were 10 mills worth £2,700 and eight more were being erected. In the 1850 s Maoris owned and operated most of the coastal shipping in the North Island; by 1858 there were 53 Maori vessels of more than 14 tons registered at Auckland. They supplied the local market with most of its produce and exported considerable quantities of potatoes, wheat and other foodstuffs to Australia.

In 1857 the Bay of Plenty, Taupo and Rotorua tribes numbering about 8,000 people had about 9,000 acres in ’wheat, potatoes, maize and kumara. They owned nearly 1,000 horses, 200 head of cattle, 5,000 pigs, 4 waterpowered mills and 96 ploughs as well as 43 coastal vessels of around 20 tons each, and more than 900 canoes. In 1857 European traders on the East Coast paid the Ngati Porou

13,000 for 46,000 bushels of wheat. Auckland Maori supplied large quantities of fruit, pumpkins, maize, potatoes, kumara, pigs and most of the fish for the town. In a single year 1,792 canoes entered Auckland harbour loaded with produce, firewood and kauri gum.

This first period of prosperity for the new nation was followed only too soon by depression. As the gold boom petered out in Australia and their agricultural industry expanded there was a rapid fall in agricultural prices in both Australia and New Zealand. Auckland and Taranaki, two heavily populated Maori areas, were hard hit for the Maori people were the biggest producers of food in the North Island.

The prosperity of the colony had attracted increasing numbers of Europeans and at the height of the boom pressure on Maori to sell their land had intensified. This, and disillusionment at the slump, led to an immediate Maori reaction in the form of the King Movement. The Waikato and Taranaki Maori were some of the hardest working and most successful farmers and exporters. But in the late 1850 s farms and mills lay idle as the Maori met in great runangas to discuss the setting up of a King. Disillusionment led ultimately to war. The entrepreneurial spark was dampened for many years but never extinguished.

Today graduates from the Tu Tangata Business Wananga number nearly 60 and are the nucleus of a whanau scattered all over the country from north of Kaitaia to Invercargill. They carry the flame which flickered back into life in the 20th century and which today burns more brightly than ever.