Waitara, New Zealand

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Waitara is the name of a town and a river in the northern part of the Taranaki region of the North Island of New Zealand. Waitara is located just off State Highway 3, 15 km northeast of New Plymouth.

According to the 2001 census the usually-resident population of Waitara was 6250, a decrease of 4% since 1996.

The town was the site of the outbreak of the Taranaki Wars in 1860 following the attempted purchase of land for English settlers from its Māori owners. Disputes over land that was subsequently confiscated by the Government continue to this day.

The commonly accepted meaning of the name Waitara is "mountain stream". In 1867 the settlement was named Raleigh, after Sir Walter Raleigh. It reverted to its former name with the establishment of the borough of Waitara in 1904.

1 History and conflict
2 Land confiscations
3 Waitangi Tribunal
4 Economy
5 References
6 External links

[edit] History and conflict

In pre-colonisation times Waitara lay on the main overland route between the Waikato and Taranaki districts. Vestiges of numerous pas on all strategic heights in the district indicate that the area was closely settled and that its possession was from time to time contested.^[1]

Whalers and sealers had gained help from local Māori in the early 1800s, but the area was largely vacated in the 1820s and 1830s following warfare between the resident Te Atiawa iwi, or tribe, and those of iwi from north Auckland to Waikato. Some Te Atiawa were taken to Waikato as prisoners of war; the majority migrated to Cook Strait in pursuit of guns and goods from whalers and traders.

Pākehā settlers who came to New Plymouth in the 1840s and '50s viewed nearby Waitara as the most valuable of Taranaki’s coastal lands because of its fertile soil and superior harbour. Plans were drawn up by the New Zealand Company for settlement from New Plymouth to beyond Waitara and blocks were sold to immigrants despite a lack of proof that the company’s initial purchase of the land had been legitimate. The company claimed that Te Atiawa had either abandoned the land or lost possession of it, owing to conquest by Waikato Māori. (This view was later upheld by the Land Claims Commission, but subsequently rejected by Governor Robert FitzRoy).

Tensions between settlers and local Māori began as early as July 1842, when settlers who had taken up land north of the Waitara River were driven from their farms. A year later 100 men, women and children sat in a surveyors’ path to disrupt the surveying of land for sale.

In March 1848 Wiremu Kingi, a Te Atiawa chief who staunchly opposed the sale of land in the Waitara area, returned to the district from Waikanae with almost 600 men, women and children and some livestock to retake possession of the land. They established substantial cultivations of wheat, oats, maize and potatoes, selling it to settlers and also for export; his followers also laboured on settler farms. The Waitangi Tribunal noted that the group was said to eventually have owned 150 horses and up to 300 head of cattle.

Despite Kingi’s opposition however, payments were made secretly to Maori individuals for prospective sales of land in the Waitara area, prompting spates of violence between those supporting and opposing land sales.

In 1857 the issue came to a head with the offer for sale of land at Waitara and at Turangi, further to the north, by two individuals, Ihaia Te Kirikumara and a minor chief, Pokikake Te Teira. Teira’s Waitara block, known as the Pekapeka block, became the focal point of a dispute between the colonial government (chiefly representing settlers) and Māori over the right of individuals to sell land that was regarded under Māori custom as being owned by the community; this dispute ultimately led to the outbreak of war in Waitara on March 17, 1860, when 500 troops began a bombardment of Kingi’s Te Kohia Pa. The war, in which 2300 Imperial troops fought about 1400 Māori, ran for 12 months before a ceasefire was negotiated.

For further information see First Taranaki War

[edit] Land confiscations

In May 1863 war resumed in Taranaki after tensions again boiled over and a military escort was ambushed on Māori land at Oakura, southwest of New Plymouth. The government immediately renounced the earlier Waitara purchase, abandoning all claims to it, and instead created a more audacious plan: the confiscation of greater tracts of land under newly-passed laws, supposedly as a reprisal for the Oakura killings. In 1865 the Pekapeka block that had been at the heart of the initial dispute with Kingi thus found its way back into government control.

For further information see Second Taranaki War

The power to seize such lands was contained in legislation passed by Parliament in 1863 allowing unlimited confiscation of Māori land by the government, ostensibly as a means of suppressing "the present rebellion". Under the New Zealand Settlements Act, Māori who had been "in rebellion" could be stripped of their land, which would be divided and either given as 50-acre farms to military settlers as a means of establishing and maintaining peace, or sold to recover the costs of fighting Māori.

The Waitangi Tribunal explained the combined effect of land confiscation and war tactics: "In the second war, the settlers were to remain behind a protecting ring of redoubts, which the army gradually extended. As the line of fortresses expanded, military settlers were introduced to fill the land behind them. By this means, the frontier was pushed beyond the lands claimed by purchase, to effect a creeping confiscation of Māori land. It was a strategy of systematic military conquest and colonisation that had been used as early as Roman times in Britain. Under this new system, it was clear the objective was no longer to define the settler and Māori pieces but to take all the territory."

And the result: "Civilian activities never ceased to expand. As stockades were built, farms were settled, lands were surveyed, roads and (eventually) railways were built, courts sat, and provincial councils deliberated. The infrastructure of European settlement and officialdom was being established."

The tribunal said the government’s intention, manifest at an early stage of the war, was to confiscate the greater part of the land for European settlement. The government followed a strategic path of provoking Māori to respond to the deployment of troops or settlers on Māori land and then declaring them to be in rebellion. Confiscations within Taranaki in 1865 alone totalled some 479,848 hectares, with little distinction between the land of "rebels" and Māori loyal to the government. Included in the confiscated lands were areas so sparsely populated there could have been "no realistic threat to peace"; also within the boundaries of confiscated land were clearly uninhabitable areas such as the entire Taranaki mountain.

A 1927 royal commission into the confiscations concluded: "The Natives were treated as rebels and war declared against them before they had engaged in rebellion of any kind, and in the circumstances they had no alternative but to fight in their own self-defence. In their eyes the fight was not against the Queen's sovereignty, but a struggle for house and home ... The government was wrong in declaring war against the Natives for the purpose of establishing the supposed rights of the Crown under that purchase."

In 1884 the Government returned as "Native reserves" 103,000 hectares of the 526,000 hectares of Taranaki land it had confiscated, although the land remained in government control. By 1990 half of the "reserves" had been sold to Pakeha settlers by the Native Trustee without reference to Maori^[2]. The remainder was leased to settlers with Maori receiving only a "peppercorn" rental return.

The Pekapeka Block – which had been the catalyst of the Taranaki Wars and, by extension, the policy of land confiscation – was divided up and given as endowments, or gifts, to the Waitara Borough Council and Taranaki Harbours Board. In 1989 the land was transferred to the New Plymouth District Council, which in turn voted in March 2004 to sell it to the Government with the intention of it being passed to Te Atiawa as part of the Waitangi Treaty settlement.^[3] That process was blocked by the High Court in November 2005 after a challenge by the Waitara Leaseholders Association. Association members, each of whom owns a house but leases the (once confiscated) land on which it stands, want to own the land freehold.^[4]^[5]

[edit] Waitangi Tribunal

In September 1990 the Waitangi Tribunal began hearing 21 Treaty of Waitangi claims concerning the Taranaki district. Much of the tribunal's investigation focused on events around Waitara from 1840 to 1859.

The tribunal presented its report to the Government in June 1996, noting: "The Taranaki claims could be the largest in the country. There may be no others where as many Treaty breaches had equivalent force and effect over a comparable time. For the Taranaki hapu, conflict and struggle have been present since the first European settlement in 1841 ... Taranaki Maori were dispossessed of their land, leadership, means of livelihood, personal freedom, and social structure and values. As Maori, they were denied their rights of autonomy, and as British subjects, their civil rights were removed. For decades, they were subjected to sustained attacks on their property and persons."

Owae Marae, Waitara.

In its report, the tribunal observed that to the offence of local Maori, many street names in Waitara honoured the architects of the illegal land confiscation, including chief crown purchasing agent Donald McLean, Land Purchase Commissioner Robert Parris and Governor Thomas Gore Browne. It said: "It is our view that name changes are needed. It is when leaders like Kingi, who understood the prerequisites for peace, are similarly memorialised on the land and embedded in public consciousness that those names will cease to stand for conquest and the Waitara war will end."

In November 1999 the New Zealand Government signed a Heads of Agreement with Te Atiawa to settle its claims, a process that would provide financial compensation and an apology for the confiscation of land.[1]

[edit] Economy

The first port in Taranaki to engage in international trade was Waitara, in 1823, when the barque William Stoveld anchored in the river mouth and traded with the Maori. With the establishment of the freezing works in 1872 the river port became even more important to the Province.

Construction of a railway line between Waitara and New Plymouth began in August 1873. By the time the line opened on October 14, 1875, the town had a harbour board, two printing houses, a soap and candle factory, an iron foundry, a boat-building yard, two breweries, a wool-scouring plant and a tannery.

Waitara and the Waitara River.

Two large petrochemical plants form the largest part of Waitara's industrial activity. The Waitara Valley plant is dedicated to production of methanol from natural gas (about 1500 tonnes per day). The Motonui plant, originally designed to produce synthetic petrol from methanol was modified to produce chemical grade methanol for export. The high cost of synthetic petrol production and low market prices made the process uneconomical at the time. Motonui has the two largest wooden structures in the southern hemisphere and they are only exceeded in size, anywhere in the world, by a Japanese temple.

The Motonui plant closed permanently on 17 December 2004. A shore production facility for the new Pohokura oilfield is being built immediately adjacent to it.

A significant activity for local businesses is supporting the surrounding farming industry.

Farming in the Waitara catchment includes dairying, beef cattle for meat, sheep for both meat and wool, fruit—mainly Kiwifruit—other horticulture including tree and shrub nurseries, and poultry for meat and eggs.