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This thesis is a study of Maori land development schemes during the period 1945 to 1974, and contains two case studies from the Hokianga. Apirana Ngata introduced the schemes to New Zealand's legislature in 1929, giving the state direct legal and financial responsibility for assisting Maori people to develop and farm Maori land. The thesis briefly outlines the historical background to the schemes, and their social objectives. It details the development scheme legislation and policy, including its practical implementation and administrative structure. The two case studies reveal the complexities of the schemes at a local operational level, and shifts in the department's policies and approach since the 1930s. Title improvement policies have been integral to the operation of the schemes. The government has consistently viewed multiple ownership of Maori land as an impediment to bringing Maori land into full production, and the schemes relied on various devices for improving Maori land title to facilitate secure tenure arrangements for Maori farmers (including sole ownership) and to allow land development to occur. These various devices include consolidation, conversion and amalgamation. Ultimately though, the prolonged emphasis on title improvement was unwarranted. The legislation made ample provision for development to occur regardless of the number of owners or the state of the title. During their first twenty years, the schemes provided subsistence level farming. They, supported many Maori communities through depression and war, provided modern conveniences in modern homes, and reasonable incomes for families. Maori farmers and land owners responded variously to the schemes. Some were completely comfortable with the schemes, others struggled. But ultimately, the large-scale corporately run schemes would have the best chance of surviving as long term propositions. The smaller farms would eventually bow to the pressure of the demands of changing overseas markets. In the post-war years, the Department of Maori Affairs increasingly bureaucratised and formalised its land development programme, and pressed ahead with reforming Maori land titles. In the process, the department became responsible for ensuring the long term success of the schemes, and protecting the interests of the parties involved, including itself, the public, and the owners and occupiers of the schemes. The overall effect of the department's policies was to create a protected environment in which the department assisted Maori farmers into the modern farming industry, while protecting them from the cruelty of the modern economy. This thesis looks at how these things occurred by reconstructing the policy and legislation that created and maintained the schemes, discussing some of the key issues and difficulties that arose, and drawing on the experiences of the two schemes that are the subjects of the case studies in chapter five. A great shift in policy occurred as government struggled to balance its socio-economic responsibilities to Maori people and its economic responsibilities to the nation. Ultimately, schemes that began as a response to local development needs in Maori communities, emerged in the 1970s as primarily concerned with maximising the production potential of Maori land, for the benefit of the national economy.

Reconciliation, Representation, and Indigeneity begins with the claim that it ‘offers an up-to-date analysis of the reconciliation process between Māori and the Crown’ (7). The editors do not stop at up-to-date analysis. They push the edited collection of thirteen essays that were once conference papers into more complicated territory, inviting a range of ontologies, nestled in the links between ‘contemporary politics, the notion of activist research and historical and anthropological analysis’ (7). This introduction seemed a lot for me to take in, though I fully appreciated the intellectual care the editors took as they combed through the argument, organisation, themes, and academic approaches and positions of the book.

History of Lettty Brown, advocate and member of groups such as the Womens Welfare League during urbanisation 1950s-1906s

Hikoi is a photographic history of Maori protest - the public face, the rationale, the organisation and the toil behind the scenes. The images and accompanying text tell the story of protests that were turning points: Springbok Tour demonstrations and Raglan, Bastion Point and Waitangi, the Tent Embassy at Parliament in 1972, the Maori Land March 1975 and Hikoi 2004. Hikoi gives a glimpse of some of the hard-earned fruits of those protests: some traditional lands returned to Maori, the Waitangi Tribunal established, te reo Maori made an official language, Maori medium education and Maori media.

This thesis considers Maori-state relations in the post-war period up to 1967. It focuses on the complicated and congested nexus at which tribal committees, branches of the Maori Women's Welfare League and the Welfare Division of the Department of Maori Affairs met and negotiated the particulars of the Maori-state relationship. Underpinning that relationship were the tensions inherent in the Maori world's ongoing task of balancing the old and the new, the traditional and the modem, the rural and the urban during a time of unprecedented change. The thesis draws on a mix of oral histories and documentary sources, especially government archives, to examine the motivations of Maori and the department in their interactions. It presents the department's broad integrationist philosophy and examines Maori peoples' drives for both engaging with the state and undertaking a range of development projects that built on Maori tribal concepts to mark out Maori socio-cultural spaces in modem environments. Maori policy and legislation including the Maori Social and Economic Advancement Act 1945 and the Hunn Report of 1961, and the major demographic changes associated with urbanisation, presented enormous challenges for Maori. Implementation of the Hunn report in particular fractured tense but workable co-operation apparent in 1950s Maori-state relations. The thesis illustrates how Maori creatively negotiated those challenges and progressed their own projects undeterred by the onerous constraints of integration. It achieves that by restoring the Maori narrative and the Maori concepts at its base. It finds intelligent, critical, vibrant Maori leadership involved in highly nuanced and complex interactions with state.

Maori and government policies of integration in the 1950s and 60s by accessing two concurrent narratives are discussed. The two narratives are the narrative of the state embedded in a one-size-fits-all Maori policy, and the narratives of the Maori 'business of life'.

He Kōrero Whānau is a component of a wider whānau and hapū development project within Te Rarawa, an iwi located in the Far North of Aotearoa. It aimed to prepare and support whānau and hapū to record their own histories, and in doing so to develop research methods and strategies to suit Te Rarawa purposes and realities. The innovation of the approach is the inclusion of oral and life histories in any interview-based research Te Rarawa might undertake, and the training of community interviewers in the skills of research and oral history interviews. The approach is grounded in iwi and hapū development and responsive to needs and aspirations. It also works to demystify research and focuses on research making a difference in Te Rarawa communities. This paper discusses our experience of developing Te Rarawa research methods and applying them in ways that harmonise with the goals of Te Rarawa iwi development.