Over the years I have spent a fair bit of time researching Māori institutions of self-government, particularly in the nineteenth century. My first book, way back in 1998, Agents of Autonomy: Māori Committees in the Nineteenth Century, looked at this history. As did my 2004 PhD on rūnanga and komiti. 

So having seen some recent social media posts talking about Governor George Grey’s ‘plan of native government’, I thought I would write something about this. 

But first a bit of wider context. Although some early European observers readily assumed that Māori society was hierarchical, ‘aristocratical, and hereditary’ (as John Savage wrote in his 1807 work, Some Account of New Zealand) it was not long before others came to realise that in reality rangatira had great influence over their communities but little ability to issue unilateral orders.

Frederick Maning, the author of the classic account of life as a ‘Pākehā-Māori’ prior to British annexation, Old New Zealand, declared, for example, that ‘the natives are so self-possessed, opinionated, and republican, that the chiefs have at ordinary times but little control over them’. Other commentators noted that it was not possible for chiefs to declare war or peace, or to do anything affecting the whole of their community, without the express sanction of the remainder of the group.

That sanction was given in tribal assemblies known as rūnanga, and from the 1830s through komiti, or committees. Far from being hierarchical, Māori decision-making bodies were far too democratic as far as some European observers were concerned, with entire communities of men, women and children involved in debating and deliberating on the issues of the day. F.D. Fenton, who would later go on to become the first Chief Judge of the Native Land Court, observed in 1857 that:

No system of government that the world ever saw can be more democratic than that of the Maoris. The chief alone has no power. The whole tribe deliberate on every subject, not only politically on such as are of public interest, but even judicially they hold their “komitis” on every private quarrel. In ordinary times the vox populi determines every matter, both internal and external. The system is a pure pantocracy, and no individual enjoys influence or exercises power, unless it originates with the mass and is expressly or tacitly conferred by them. In case of a war the old chief would be a paramount dictator: in times of peace he is an ordinary citizen. “Ma te runanga e whakatu i a au, ka tu ahau.” “If the assembly constitutes me, I shall be established,” is an expression I heard used by a chief of rank, and perfectly represents the public sentiment on the question.[1]    

The komiti referred to by Fenton represented a post-contact innovation, while the rūnanga, by contrast, was ‘an institution of very ancient date’.[2] But although rūnanga derived from purely Māori linguistic and cultural constructs, just as the transliterated term komiti and its concept were entirely European imports, the cultural influences on such bodies nevertheless became increasingly difficult to distinguish in the post-contact era, as Māori sought to experiment with new institutions and ideas, mixing these up with indigenous influences and institutions to create new and more powerful mechanisms of self-government. Even by the late 1850s, rūnanga, formerly involving little more than ad hoc village meetings of no fixed membership, had adopted and adapted to suit their own purposes several elements of European-inspired committee procedure. 

Many Europeans viewed state-sanctioned rūnanga or komiti as offering the chance to exercise indirect rule over Māori communities. As a parliamentary select committee on Waikato concluded in 1860, ‘[p]roperly organized, and placed under the control of Government...the Runanga would become a great instrument of civilization, a powerful means of securing order, and a machinery for facilitating the administration and disseminating the principles of law’. Left to their own devices, on the other hand, rūnanga could, in the words of the committee, be ‘turned to dangerous purposes’.^[3] 

Governor Thomas Gore Browne subsequently proposed a limited trial in the Far North, where the local Muriwhenua tribes were considered among the most ‘loyal’, but achieved nothing before his own replacement as governor by Sir George Grey in 1861. It was Grey who within weeks of his arrival back in New Zealand in September of that year devised a far more ambitious scheme of indirect rule via rūnanga, budgeted at over £49,000 per annum and intended to cover the entire North Island.

Grey’s new plan envisaged the ‘Native portions’ of the North Island being divided into about 20 districts, each of which would have its own District Runanga under the supervision of a European official known as Civil Commissioners. Each district would in turn be divided into about six ‘Hundreds’, within which government-salaried Māori officers, including wardens and constables, would be responsible for enforcing local by-laws under the direction of the Assessors.

Over the next few months more than a dozen districts were proclaimed under the Native Districts Regulation Act and Civil Commissioners appointed to implement the rūnanga system. Initial reconnaissance missions to explain the proposals and gauge Māori responses met with a mixed reception. Alan Ward wrote in A Show of Justice that many Kīngitanga supporters ‘regarded the belated display of salaries and offices as a thinly disguised attempt to deceive the Maori people and reduce them to subservience’.

John Gorst, appointed to the critical Upper Waikato position, was initially permitted to stay within the King’s domain as an emissary of the Pākehā state, but was kept under close watch and prevented from interfering in the internal affairs of local Māori communities. His colleague James Armitage found a greater willingness on the part of communities in the lower Waikato to accept salaried positions and pass laws on matters of local concern, but made little further headway. No District Runanga was appointed for the Waikato, and Gorst later wrote in his 1864 book The Maori King that the scheme had been ‘in every place a total failure’. 

In the Tūranga (Gisborne) region, where an unofficial district-wide rūnanga representing all of the different tribes had effectively governed for several years, the anticipated response was such in fact that officials made no attempt to even discuss the proposals with local Māori. Further north, on the East Coast, Resident Magistrate William Baker’s ill-judged appointment of hand-picked chiefs to salaried positions served only to polarise Ngāti Porou, while in Te Urewera Charles Hunter Brown encountered ‘great soreness and distrust’, which he attributed to ‘fear for their land, fear for their nationality, fear “lest they should be made slaves to the Queen”’.[4]

It was a similar story elsewhere in the Bay of Plenty, where despite some support for the proposals from the Rotorua tribes, intense suspicion of Crown motives on the part of Kīngitanga supporters was enough to ensure that no District Runanga was ever convened. 

In fact it was only in the faraway Rēkohu/Wharekauri (Chatham Islands) and Northland that District Runanga – originally envisaged as the cornerstone of the whole system – were ever established. In Northland two District Runanga sat for the first time at the Bay of Islands and further north at Mangonui in 1862. But neither proved to be the compliant creatures of state which officials may have hoped for, and judged against such an ambition Gorst was perhaps right in his overall assessment.

Inappropriate boundaries, the limited resources and authority granted to the ‘new institutions’, an inability to represent all customary interests on such bodies, and the failure of Crown officials to adequately reflect tikanga Māori within the framework of the new system, all undermined support for Grey’s ‘plan of native government’ over time, even within areas where there was some initial support for the proposals.

But with European officials sometimes obliged to deal with disputes involving infringements of tapu, ‘native curses’ and other matters not recognised under English law in order to gain any influence over the tribes, there was much to suggest that the Crown’s efforts to appropriate Māori rūnanga for its own ends had been at least partially subverted by Māori. That was one of the core arguments of my doctoral thesis. 

Meanwhile, the extent to which government officers were obliged to take some cognisance of Māori values in order to win any support from Māori communities, along with the general refusal of the Runanga to sanction renewed land alienation on a large scale, and a widespread concern that settlers in outlying districts might be made subject to ‘Māori law’, resulted in significant levels of opposition to the scheme among the European population.

With the failure of the rūnanga system to undermine support for the Kīngitanga, Grey and his ministers rapidly lost interest, and instead devoted their energies to the impending conflict with the Waikato tribes. At the end of 1865 the last vestiges of the scheme were accordingly dismantled. 

But there is a lot more to the story of Māori institutions of self-governance in the nineteenth century and their efforts to gain recognition from the Crown and I will write more on that in future posts for premium subscribers. 

[1] F.D. Fenton, Report as to Native Affairs in the Waikato District, March 1857, AJHR, 1860, E-1C, p.11.

[2] H.H. Turton, Report Respecting the Maori Runanga, 20 November 1861, AJHR, 1862, E-5A, p.3.

[3] Report of the Waikato Committee, 31 October 1860, AJHR, 1860, F-3, p.4.

[4] C. Hunter Brown, Report of an Official Visit to the Urewera Tribes, June 1862, AJHR, 1862, E-9, Sec.IV, p.28.