Ngāti kahungunu sub-tribal affairs and British socio-political ideals in the settlement of the Heretaunga Plains : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand

Abstract

This thesis argues that prevailing interpretations of the Heretaunga land purchases are incomplete because they marginalise Ngāti Kahungunu sub-tribal politics and obscure the role of imported British socio-political ideals in shaping early settlement. Focusing on the period from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century, and centring hapū-level authority and governance, it demonstrates that colonial interactions in the region were negotiated through complex local power structures rather than through the unilateral imposition of colonial control. The thesis further contends that enduring colonial narratives— particularly those concerning cannibalism, racial theory, an absence of women in prevailing historical narratives, and an attempt to form a national narrative that isolates New Zealand from colonisation and empire—have distorted historical understandings of society in early Hawke’s Bay. Re-evaluating these narratives reveals a more nuanced account of Māori political life and colonial settlement in Heretaunga. This thesis makes three contributions to the existing historiography. First, it offers the most sustained hapū-level analysis of the Heretaunga purchases to date, demonstrating that sub-tribal political dynamics—rather than individual rangatira decisions or Crown policy alone—were the primary determinants of how land alienation unfolded. Second, it recovers the role of women, both Māori and Pākehā, whose authority and experiences have been systematically marginalised in both colonial sources and subsequent scholarship, including figures such as Hine-i-paketia and Mereana Hokomatā Cannon within Ngāti Kahungunu, and Elizabeth Colenso within the missionary and settler context. Third, it connects this historical analysis directly to the contemporary socio-political experiences of Ngāti Kahungunu ki Heretaunga, demonstrating that the patterns established during the colonial period continue to shape land ownership, governance participation, and economic outcomes in the region today.