Minute books reveal legal past

Tu Tangata, Issue 1, 1 August 1981, Page 25

Minute books reveal legal past

Valuable minute books of the Tai Tokerau district lay undisturbed for many years until a recent research programme of the Whangarei office of the Department of Maori Affairs showed their importance.

Jane Mcßae, an MA student from the University of Auckland, studied the papers which were minutes of the Tai Tokerau District of Committees of the Treaty of Waitangi, and of Native Committees and Patupatu Block Committees.

The committees were set up primarily to settle claims to land before they went to the Native Land Court which had the legal authority to award title to Maori land.

Judges had had difficulty in assimilating Maori land rights to European title, and from the 1870 s, petitions and letters to Parliament, to the different Governors, the Queen, and within their own tribal ruunanga (councils), asked that Maori Committees be formed to regulate Maori matters, including decisions on the allocation of title rights.

The Committees of the Treaty of Waitangi worked independently of European law, and were instituted during a meeting in 1881 at Waitangi when a monument was erected as a reminder of the Treaty’s guarantees.

From the minute book it appears that they were formed to represent and protect Maori opinion and rights, and to establish their own authorities, such as chiefs and policemen to keep the peace.

The committees also carried out the functions later given to Maori Committees to settle local disputes and investigate ownership of land.

In 1883 the Native Committees Act allowed Maoris to sit as a Court of Arbitration to settle disputes in matters not

over 20 pounds (£2O) in value, to determine the owners of any block of land to be passed through the Native Land Court; to ascertain the successors of deceased land owners, and to investigate disputes between Maori claimants as to land boundaries. The Committees’ findings were to be passed in writing in Maori to the court.

For many reasons, both political and administrative, the Native Committees met for only a few years. The Ngapuhi are recorded as being effective in settling some disputes, and defining ownership of land one minute book showed that they worked until 1889.

Throughout the 1890 s support continued for committees of this kind and the Maori Lands Administration Act of 1900 made a modified attempt to satisfy this demand.

Patupatu Block committees were elected to investigate claims to a block of patupatu land (i.e. customary land or land to which title had not been ascertained) according to Maori custom.

The first of the committees were at work in 1902 and in the Tai Tokerau ran until 1908 when again land legislation renovated the system.

Some 40 minute books are held at the Whangarei office, although considerably more committees were elected than these records account for.

The books are an important record and are hand written in Maori for meetings which were called and conducted by Maoris. The bulk of the contents are the discussion of land claims (similar to the Maori Land Court Minute Books), and as such are valuable descriptions of tribal history and tradition.