I'm not denying that the humanitarian movement had some influence in treaties with the Native peoples, but there's two issues here. Firstly, this was by no means unique to New Zealand - check out King George's Proclamation from 1763 after Great Britain acquired French territories in North America. Part of that goes like this: "And whereas great frauds and abuses have been committed in purchasing lands of the Indians to the great prejudice of our interests and to the great dissatisfaction of the said Indians; in order therefore to prevent such irregularities for the future, and to the end that the Indians may be convinced of our Justice and determined resolution to remove all reasonable cause of discontent, We do, with the advice of our Privy Council, strictly enjoin and require that no private person do presume to make any purchase from the said Indians within those part of our colonies where we have thought proper to allow settlement (and goes on to describe other protective mechanisms to ensure Indians didn't get ripped off)" So some of these 'humanitarian' ideals are not just in evidence in New Zealand, but in North America as well (note also the Treaties made with various tribes in North America in the 1860s and 1870s). There's no doubt that some of the reasoning behind this was indeed humanitarian (as exemplified by most early missionaries in NZ), but there were also more pragmatic reasons designed to protect settlers who were in the early years significantly outnumbered by native peoples. It is interesting to note that 'humanitarian' notions start evaporating once this demographic situation changes - earlier NZ historians have stressed the humanitarian impact in the colonisation of NZ, but more recent historiography downplays this factor (rightly in myeyes), and points that the real colonising process in NZ began in the 1860s once the demographic situation changed in favour of the settlers, and it's really from this time that Maori start getting the rough end of the stick. But you're right, we can probably continue arguing about this for ages, so I'm sticking to football from now on....
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well king george's proclamations were forgotten pretty quickly 20 yars later�at the�peace of paris weren't they? they just signed all the land over with no regard to previous treaties they had with the native americans. like i said the dynamic was different, two settler groups were�fighting for control of the land so british cooperation with the native's could be classed as strategic as much as humanitarian. British didn't need to be friendly with the maori or sign treaties, they could have just pumped soldiers over here until the maori's gave up and let the british take over
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And regarding your demographic and treatment theory, well that's common sense. More people = more land needed. Maori land was bought and stolen to achieve this, but it was hardly as bad as�the native american removal and reservation treatment.�So now due to the treaty, maori get current value for developed land in an economy wholly developed and made possible by colonisation. What the hell are they complaining about.
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Another problem I have with the treaty process, presumably land was stole from tribe to tribe, so if one tribe has a successful claim relating to a parcel of land, does that mean the tribe who had the land before them should get compensation from the stealing tribe?
I would strongly disagree with the comment that the Crown could have just pumped in the troops to come to NZ rather than having the Treaty (all legal considerations due to the previous arrangments between the Crwon and Maori tribes aside). War is a costly exercise at any rate, especially war at the end of the world as far as Britain was concerned. NZ was always meant to be a self-funding colony, and that self-funding was designed to come from buying land from Maori cheaply and selling on to settlers at a significant profit. This did not really materialise initially, because for the first 10-15 years after the Treaty, Maori largely remained dominant in demographic and political terms so the Crown couldn't really enforce its will on them. But once the demographic situation started changing, the political power stared shifting towards the Crown, and that's when the strong-handed tactics from the Crown start becoming much clearly evident. The wars are just the most extreme example of this.
As for the comparison between Maori and Native American, I could argue that there are Native American groups today in a much better position than Maori - Navajo, for example, who have a fair degree of autonomy in the South West and even their own police if I remember correctly. There are also many who are in a worse position. Overall, I don't think that comparing outcomes is particularly useful - like I said in an earlier post, it's really irrelavant whether someone got a better or worse deal thn you, because that comaprison doesn't really make your deal any better or worse.
As for the Waitangi Tribunal process, I don't have much time to explain it all, but it deals with a much wider range of issues than just land. If you want to kno a it more about how it works, there are Tribunal reports that get published after a district inquiry is finished - I'd recommend the Gisborne one, as it's an interesting read. As far as determining Maori land ownership rights, this has been the task of the Maori Land Court (a most nefarious institution if there ever was one) since 1865, although I think there still maybe some papatipu lands (still in customary Maori ownership) around in places like East Coast and Urewera, maybe somewhere else too. If you want to know more about the Land Court, go for David Williams' 'Te ooti Tango Whenua: The Land Stealing Court', and Alan Ward's 'A show of justice' is also quite good, even though it's quite old now.
