LAND UNDER MAORI MANAGEMENT Difficult country on Patemaru Station, farmed by the East Coast Commission, now to be transferred to Maori Committee of Management. (John Ashton Photograph) A country of narrow, high mountain ridges, covered with bush fern and scrub, deeply and irregularly cut by streams, the district from the Wairoa northwards was first settled by the Ngati Kahungunu and Ngati Porou. It was not country that attracted many pakeha settlers in the early nineteenth century. This was not only accounted for by the difficulties of the ground, but also by the frequency and vigour of the Maori land claims and disputes in the area, as well as the bands of Te Kooti and others. Even in 1868, so Lambert tells us, the area back of Wairoa properly cleared and laid down in English grasses was inconsiderable. Further north along the East Coast there was a certain amount of farming. After the Maori Wars, the state of the inhabitants was critical; great debts had accumulated and poverty and undernourishment were rife. The wheat and flax industry and the shipping industry started by Ngati Kahungunu and Ngati Porou had collapsed; the plantations were neglected. Worse still, reconstruction of these means of livelihood was retarded by the onset of a world-wide depression, during which the newly acquired pakeha skills could not avail the Maori people. Among the many schemes of land development that sprang up about this time was the East Coast (later: New Zealand) Native Land Settlement Company which was incorporated in 1881. This venture was an unusual and ingenious one. Promoted equally by European settlers and Maori leaders, chief of whom was Wiremu Pere, it was a genuine profit-sharing enterprise, with the Maori owners holding two-thirds of the shares of the company. These shares had been exchanged for 200,000 acres of tribal lands in the Wairoa, Gisborne and Tolaga Bay districts, so that in effect the Maoris contributed land to the company and the Europeans cash. Unfortunately, there was

much less of the latter commodity than the former. Even so, Wi Pere should have credit for working out a far-sighted arrangement for retaining the tribal lands which were in great danger of being lost outright through the difficulties of the times. Known also as William Halbert, Wiremu Pere was a chief of Rongo Whakaata and Te Aitanga-a-Mahaki. For long he was the Member of Parliament for Eastern Maori, and he also became a Member of the Legislative Council. He was known as a formidable leader and a very determined person, one of the ablest of Maori politicians. What was Wi Pere's ultimate aim in promoting this company? Guy Scholefield's National Biography gives some information supplied by the late Sir Apirana Ngata, and part of this is that Wi Pere wished to neutralize the free trade in native lands by developing and managing them in the interests of the native owners. Wi Pere undoubtedly wished to preserve these lands to the Maori owners, and under very difficult circumstances. At that time there was free trade in Maori land. The formation of the company seemed to afford a rare opportunity to provide the money necessary to develop the land without the Maori birthright being lost. As all relevant documents are lost, we can only guess at the details of the arrangement. The company intended to develop the land and then liquidate. The Europeans would take one-third of ultimate profits, and the Maori shareholders the rest. It also looks as if some understanding existed that the Maori owners could redeem their lands fully developed as long as the Europeans received their share of the proceeds. In other words, Wi Pere probably dreamed of buying out the European shareholders and then farming the land for his own people. However this may be, the Settlement Company went the way of so many development companies of the time; it fell a victim of the slump. We Pere went as far as London to seek finance to keep it alive, but in vain. In 1890, with some of the land already partly developed and stocked, the Bank of New Zealand, as mortgagee, foreclosed on its mortgage, which amounted to £135,000. Wiremu Pere as he is portrayed in the ‘Parliamentary Shield’ showing all Members of Parliament for the years 1903–1905. This shield may be seen at Parliament Buildings, Wellington. Mr Pere was M.P. for Eastern Maori from 1884–1886 and 1894–1905 and M.L.C. from 1907–1912. He died in 1915. In the following sixteen years, the sheep and cattle continued to graze the fertile slopes without being greatly added to. The land was fiercely fought over by lawyers, businessmen, financiers and politicians. Following the foreclosure, Wi Pere looked for some means of stopping the bank from selling all the land, and in this way disinheriting his people. After two years, during which some sales took place, he succeeded by a legal action, in preserving One of the original shares of the East Coat Native Land and Settlement Company, to be seen at the East Coast Commission building in Gisborne.

what was left. The remaining lands were transferred in 1892 to Wi Pere and Sir James Carroll as trustees for the owners, encumbered with the remaining debt of £53,000. This arrangement, again, was not a success. Between the trustees, the bank and a vast number of lawyers and hangers on, no effective development of the land occurred, but vast legal and interest charges accrued, and a few years later the debt had once again risen to £138,000. After more legal exchanges, August 1902, was made a final date for sale of the remaining 170,000 acres to the Bank of New Zealand. If this sale had gone through, all the land later farmed by the East Coast Commission would have been lost forever to the Maori people. It was at this stage that Sir James Carroll, then Native Minister, and Wi Pere, M.P. for Eastern Maori, succeeded in getting the Government to intervene. Bank and trustees at last came to an agreement, and two days before the date fixed for the auction, Parliament passed a Bill postponing the sales until August, 1904. During the parliamentary debate preceding the passing of the East Coast Maori Trust Lands Act, 1902, speakers from both sides of the House sympathised with its main purpose, which was to prevent the land passing away finally from the beneficiaries. Some opposition members expressed great regret that so much money had been frittered away by what some called “milking the cow” and others plainly “chicanery”. However this be, clearly the tide had turned and the colony had begun to see the importance of preserving to the Maoris the rest of their ancestral lands. Although formally the 1902 Act merely postponed liquidation for two years, in essence it did far more. The Government had expressed its firm resolve to prevent the land from being lost to the Maori owners. During the debate both parties acknowledged a duty to protect the land. Even though some people have found weaknesses in the Carroll and Wi Pere trusteeship, these leaders certainly served the Maori people well by showing the country, through this melancholy example, how Maori lands were being lost by their owners almost unknowingly and without real recompense. They thus paved the way for laws to be introduced, only a few years afterwards, to protect the land remaining to the Maori people. The Act of 1902 set up a board of control to raise finance to meet the mortgages. Through some concessions by the Bank of New Zealand, the sale of some further blocks and some successful farming, the bank's mortgage was finally paid off in 1905. A year later the Carroll and Wi Pere Trust was dissolved, and a commissioner substituted with full powers to farm, borrow and determine interests of beneficiaries. Successive East Coast Commissioners were: J. A. Harding, 1907. T. A. Coleman, 1907–1920. T. A. Coleman jun., 1920–1921. Chief Judge W. E. Rawson, 1921–1933. Chief Judge R. N. Jones, 1933–1934. J. S. Jessop, 1934–1951. F. N. Bull (Deputy Commissioner), 1951- During the early years of commmission control the blocks most suitable for farming were leased to Europeans. Then, in later years, as the term of leases expired, heavy costs for the purchase of stock and compensation for improvements had to be met. The policy was changed under the commissionership of Chief Judge Rawson. Instead of renewing the leases, the commissioner began to farm the land himself on an ever-increasing scale. The commission's executive officer at the time of the change-over was Mr (now Judge) J. Harvey. Hardest of all was the preservation of those lands which were in a really critical financial state when the commission took over. To prevent these from being lost to the Maori people altogether, a system was started by which the better-placed ‘creditor’ blocks lent money to the less fortunate ones. Mr J. S. Jessop, commissioner from 1934, built the Trust into a huge, tightly interwoven farming enterprise. During his administration, first emphasis was placed on the full development and bold and aggressive management of the stations. The fullest use was made of the advantages of bulk buying and selling, and stock transactions between the different stations became a highly organized business, highly profitable to the blocks. The system of mutual money-lending between the stations has saved considerable sums in interest charges. The East Coast Commission lands very soon became by far the most powerful farming combination on the East Coast, especially while the link with the Mangatu lands lasted. Together, the 24 trust estates contained 16 sheep and cattle stations, all fully stocked and equipped as going concerns in an advanced state of development. Last year these stations carried 100,000 sheep and 15,000 head of cattle. In spite of the rapid pace of development, Mr Jessop's administration saw the most decisive landmark in the history of the trust, when in 1939 the last of the old principal debt was paid off. In 1945 the more recent mortgages followed, leaving the trust as a whole debt-free except for occasional seasonal overdrafts.

During the early salvaging period no distribution to beneficiaries occurred on any scale. Moderate distributions started in 1924. Right through the twenties and thirties distribution continued to take second place to land development and debt repayment. Very useful educational grants were, however, paid out through an ‘education committee’ on which the blocks were represented. With the help of this committee the commissioner granted annual bursaries to children of beneficiaries attending secondary schools, training colleges and universities. He also made grants to churches and to needy beneficiaries. To those whose interests warranted this, he granted housing assistance. With the wool boom in the late forties very substantial sums were for the first time paid out to the owners. These were now very different from those who had first entered into a contract with the pakeha seventy years before. With the greater hope and prosperity brought by the present century their number had grown to no less than 8,000. In education, they were reaching equality with the European. Many had experience of running farms and stations on modern lines. In all aspects of life, they were anxious to run their own business and impatient of guardianship in any form. Nor did they regard a small interest in one of the East Coast trust blocks as a trivial matter; they had not lost their keen traditional sense of the great importance of the ownership of land. Naturally enough, many began to ask when their land, whose immense wealth had now become obvious, would be handed back to them. (to be continued in next issue) EAST COAST MAORI TRUST LANDS 30th JUNE 1953