Maori Lost Their Land

No they sold they most of it.

We constantly hear the lie that maori lost their land, whereas the reality is that they sold most of it.

One of the reasons for Britain taking sovereignty over New Zealand was that many bad deals were being done over land sales. Large areas of land being sold to settlers, The New Zealand Company (Wakefield) and “land sharks” in New South Wales.

One of the first proclamations Hobson made when he landed in March (xx HW) 1840 was that all previous land deals would be investigated, and that from then onwards all land sold by Maori chiefs must be sold through a government agent (This was called Pre-Emption).

The Maori chiefs could not sell their “waste” land as they called land they were not using, fast enough to get such items as blankets, pots, muskets etc (before cash money became useful). Indeed there were many complaints that the crown was not buying enough land (the reason was, the crown did not have enough money)

Later in the 19th century and in the early 1900’s huge areas of land were sold through the Maori Land court.

Some land was confiscated by Governor Grey. This was a form of utu to punish the tribes that rebelled against the Crown in the mid 1800’s. This totalled only 100,000 (HW XX) acres, and much of it was soon given back as a sign of goodwill from Governor Grey.