Abstract
When Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 which incorporated New Zealand into the British Empire, they and their people gained ‘all the Rights and Privileges of British Subjects’. Despite significant translation differences between the English-language treaty and the Māori-language tiriti around the actual cession of sovereignty and what specific native rights Māori retained, its third article establishing the principle of legal equality between indigenous Māori and Pākehā (British settlers) is reasonably consistent between the two versions. That Māori gained a status not conferred on many other indigenous peoples in the Empire, such as Australian Aborigines, can be put down to European ideas on racial hierarchies and to the ascendancy of the British humanitarian movement at that time, who insisted that the settlement of New Zealand should be less detrimental to the indigenous people than previous colonisations (Mutu 2010: 26–7, 34). Although the Māori experience ended up being not too dissimilar to that of other indigenous peoples in settler colonies, with economic marginalisation, demographic swamping, state violence and loss of land, it nevertheless occurred within an environment of nominal legal equality.
Citizenship of course entails both rights and duties. The ‘Crown’ in situ to which Māori were now subject underwent three phases during the period covered in this chapter. The London-appointed governor initially wielded full authority under crown colony status, but when a settler parliament was established from 1854, able to form ‘responsible’ ministries two years later, the governor retained responsibility over Native Affairs and defence (Ballantyne 2009: 105, 111–12). This system of dual government continued until 1865 when, facing costly wars against their Māori subjects, the British government passed on its last responsibilities to a now ‘self-reliant’ New Zealand state (Ward 1995: 177). Although, under their treaty rights, Māori men might vote or stand for parliament from 1854, almost all were effectively excluded as their communal native-title lands did not legally meet the required property qualifications. To enable their participation, the New Zealand parliament conferred on Māori men the right to vote for their own representatives in four special seats from 1867 (Ballantyne 2009: 115–17).