Māori kinship and power: Ngāi Tūhoe 1894–1912

Abstract

The large Urewera National Park of New Zealand, recently returned to control of the Tuhoe (and other Urewera) Māori, was originally established (1896-1907) as the Urewera District Native Reserve under their virtual home-rule. Discovery of extensive marriage alliances between clusters of Tuhoe hapu 'ancestral descent groups' involved in the 1899-1903 investigation raises the relationship between kinship and political economic power in the context of New Zealand colonisation. Guided by Eric Wolf's exploration of the kin-ordered mode of mobilising social labour, a detailed ethnohistorical study of the establishment of the reserve is reviewed here in terms of Tuhoe leaders' exercise of power in relation to one another, as well as the colonial government. In order to consider Wolf's conclusion that especially in the context of colonisation such leaders are likely to break through the bounds of their kinship order, confrontations from 1900-1912 between several well-known Tuhoe leaders, an extensive marriage alliance, and three hapu are reviewed in some detail. It is hoped that an ethnohistory of this example of Tuhoe kinship and power at the turn of last century can complement the current resurgence of Tuhoe (and other Urewera) control over their original reserve.