Apirana Turupa Ngata, 1874–1950

Abstract

James Belich in a recent revisionist reading of colonial history, Making Peoples, has argued that Māori did not in fact lose the fierce military engagements over land between Māori and Pākehā in the 1860s. In the sense that there was no final surrender and no utter vanquishing of the Māori forces this is arguably true. Yet Māori suffered a series of local defeats and the outcome of the wars was disastrous for them. From the 1870s until the First World War European society in New Zealand, allowing for economic recessions and set-backs, made continuous progress in settling the land, building infrastructure, attracting capital, exporting timber, wool and meat. By the turn of the century New Zealand was a more comprehensively ‘settled’ country than Australia and a mood of smug satisfaction at their achievements and prospects was widespread among Pākehā. In the same period, in a reverse mirror image of Pākehā success and growth in confidence, Māori lost much of their population, their land, their economic base, and the sense that theirs was the dominant culture in the land. This period has been characterized as one of ‘despair’ among Māori by demographer, Ian Pool, and it is the context in which Sir Apirana Ngata’s rise to prominence in the early decades of the twentieth century must be understood. Ngata was more important than any other individual in reversing the calamity that Māori had suffered. His efforts at reigniting Māori selfesteem and improving Māori farming, health and economic outcomes were central to what has been called a ‘Māori Renaissance’. In the early decades of the twentieth century. But equally important were his efforts to promote cultural revival. At a time when it was widely assumed that Māori were destined to melt into the dominant white race, Ngata – who shared that view himself – provided a tireless example of improving effort rather than passive decline. At a time when many Pākehā assumed that actual Māori would vanish while their culture was preserved as an antiquarian curiosity, Ngata insisted that modernity belonged to Māori as well as Pākehā. At a time when Māori cultural forms – carving, haka, poi, house- building, song – were languishing, Ngata demanded that the culture be practised with respect and precision.