The following news item is something I saved from a NZ newspaper in 1998. I don’t have an up to date web reference for the article, and I don’t have the name of the book that is the subject of the article. Anyone who does is welcome to leave the information in a comment. The thrust of the book, written by Jean Jackson a Ngai Tahu descendant, is that double dealing Maori chiefs conned the Crown and cheated early settlers.

Author Jean Jackson, granddaughter of 1800s Maori chief Tare Weteri (Charles Wesley) Te Kahu, has written a new book wherein she claims many Maori grievance cases are false and without legal standing.

Jackson believes the result of 20 years of intensive research are so sensitive that she keeps all her records at a safe house. She suggests the $ 170 million Ngai Tahu settlement was wrong. In the full and final settlement that has been accepted by Ngai Tahu the Crown apologises to the tribe for more than 100 years of “unconscionable” behaviour and trampling on their rights. But Jackson contradicts Maori claims that they were tricked into giving up land by lying, fraud and bad faith on the part of European settlers or the Crown.

Her radical claims include:

• Maori were themselves the tricksters who sold land sometimes TWO or THREE times – before and after the Treaty of Waitangi was signed.
• NGAI Tahu chiefs queued up to sell South Island lands.
• Waitangi Tribunal hearings did not use cross-examinations, a move criticised by London Privy Councillor Lord Robin Cooke for” making it impossible to test adequately some of the material.”
• Maori held power over their tribes by private courts which followed the law of the day.
• Maori often sold land to payoff debts run up by their desire to be “socially acceptable” and have European clothes and possessions, for themselves and their wives.
• In some cases, Maori owe the Crown compensation for killing many early European settlers.
• Maori chiefs who agreed to sign a private treaty not to unofficially sell land reneged on the deal and, alter selling quarter of the South island, sold a further half In February 1840.
• Maori have already been compensated by the Crown through the Land Commissioner’s Courts which ruled that settlers who had bought land must be register land claims with the Land Commission Court; and,
• The court was fastidious in checking the deals were fair and honest and if there was any doubt the land had to be returned to Maori, who got to keep the land AND the money.

Jackson admits her extremist views are likely to cause uproar, “Lots of people know of my findings but they’re keeping very quiet.”

“It distresses me to think what my grandfather, one of the chiefs who sold half the South Island in the 1840s, would think or all this carryon. He was a preacher in the Wesleyan Church and would be mortified to see land being given back and valid contracts he helped make being frustrated and overturned.”

Jackson also believes Ngai Tahu chiefs sometimes GAVE land to settlers. “Our chiefs were in debt to foreign banks and merchants and in 1844 Taiaroa sold millions of acres with other chiefs to quit his debts.” She says national archives show South Island chiefs were indebted to the National Bank of Australia for £ 2’400 and sold Otago land for the THIRD time to cover the dept.