Kia Hiwa Ra! (eBook)

Māori language newspapers

Early missionaries and settlers had to speak te reo to survive – they were minorities in a Māori land. From the early 1800s, missionaries spurred the development of a reo Māori orthography, translating the Bible into Māori and using it to teach their converts to read and write in te reo. The newly literate often returned to their homes to teach others.

There are no reliable indications of the numbers of Māori who were able to read and write te reo in the first half of the nineteenth century, but it is claimed that by the 1850s, about half the adult Māori population could read Māori and about one-third could both read and write in te reo.18 Indeed, Māori may even have been more literate in their native language than British settlers were in theirs.19 As a result, there was a ready market for newspapers, and from the 1840s to the early 1930s, more than forty reo Māori newspapers debated ideas, reported news, advertised goods and services and generally recorded Māori life, traditions, opinions and language use; they are a fascinating insight into the past.

These newspapers fall into two broad groups. One comprises newspapers produced by the new arrivals, and included the government, which dominated publishing from the 1840s to late 1870s; churches of various denominations, which aimed to Christianise Māori; and private businessmen, often driven by religious faith to do likewise. The other group contains papers produced by Māori primarily for Māori. These proliferated from the 1860s, as tensions between tangata whenua and the British rose, and the newspapers publicly recorded iwi opposition to government encroachment on Māori land. However, all the papers, regardless of whoever was in charge, were opinionated propaganda organs with various political, religious and cultural agendas; the news business didn’t start professionalising until much later in the nineteenth century.

Government newspapers

The colonial government was quick to exploit the power of print. The first Māori language newspaper was the monthly Ko te Karere o Nui Tireni (1842–46),20 produced at the command of the country’s first governor, William Hobson. The first paragraph in the new paper stated that it had been started “so Maori understand the laws and customs of the Pakeha and Pakeha also understand Maori ways”.

The following paragraphs made clear the government’s assimilationist agenda: The paper’s focus would be “first, the Governor’s decrees and secondly the Queen’s laws; the means of applying justice and the crimes for which people are tried, and a great deal concerning Pakeha customs”. see the original here This first paper, which ran to forty-nine issues, adopted a condescending tone that looks very jarring now, and became more strident as its publisher’s ideology against Māori hardened.

Other government papers included Te Waka Maori o Ahuriri, a fortnightly produced in Napier between 1863 and 1871. It was succeeded by Te Waka Maori o Niu Tireni, a monthly produced in Wellington 1871–7. These papers also promoted assimilation, but that didn’t mean Māori voices were silenced: Māori were keen correspondents to all the newspapers, and their contributions to the press are explored later in this chapter.

Church newspapers

Church-based newspapers urged readers to keep the faith and promoted temperance and the value of British ways. The first Māori language church newspaper was the Wesleyan Te Haeata, which ran to thirty-seven issues between 1859 and 1861. It was typical of its breed, wrote Jane McRae, an expert in these early papers:

Highly didactic – often using Māori proverbs and metaphors in support of its lessons – much of the paper was given over to exhorting Māori to keep the faith, abandon their customary beliefs, and live and be educated as the Pākehā. The reporting on local and overseas news and political matters – the King Movement, war in Taranaki and trouble in Waikato – is conservative, and contributions from Māori are primarily in support of the church and faith.21

The Māori clergy of the Church of England living on the East Coast established a noteworthy press, putting out He Kupu Whakamarama (1898–1902), Te Pipiwharauroa (1899–1913), Te Kopara (1913–21) and Te Toa Takitini (1921–32).

Private papers

Several wealthy Pākehā published newspapers in the late 1840s and 1850s, driven by their desire to inculcate Christian values in Māori society. One was Charles Davis, an interpreter with a “genuine liking for Māori”22 who had previously been involved with government papers. He published three short-lived papers, Te Waka o te Iwi, which ran to two or three issues from October 1857, Te Whetu o te Tau (June, July and September 1858) and the bilingual Ko Aotearoa or the Maori Recorder (January 1861 and January 1862). Later on, W.P. Snow, a “pious and benevolent American gentleman of means”23 launched a monthly newspaper, Te Korimako (1882–8), and appointed Davis as editor.

The lines between private, state and church papers blurred at times – unsurprisingly, given their common cause of ‘civilising’ Māori. As an example, a young Native Department official, Walter Buller, who had a background in government publishing, went on to establish Te Karere o Poneke (1857–8). Despite the government coat-of-arms in the masthead, it was a private enterprise that included Buller’s father, a Wesleyan missionary. The paper was particularly active in promoting the “ritenga pai” of Pākehā,24 a euphemism for the concepts of civilisation and progress – the law, religion and habits of the settlers – the Pākehā-run newspapers promoted to Māori.

It is tempting, when looking back at the collective power of the nineteenth-century newspapers through a post-colonial lens, to see collusion between the Pākehā-run papers and the Crown to promote Māori deculturation. There was certainly some sharing of information, particularly from the government to the church and private papers, but no evidence of an agenda; the publishers shared the belief that Māori would do better if they behaved more like Pākehā, and their newspapers echoed that conviction.

Māori-owned newspapers

Papers run by Māori, in Māori and for Māori flourished from the 1860s. Te Hokioi o Niu Tireni e Rere atu na (1861–3) was the first Māori-owned and Māori-run paper wholly in te reo; it was also the first and most radical example of Indigenous media activism in New Zealand.25 The paper was founded and controlled by the Kīngitanga, the Waikato-based confederation of North Island tribes that united under a figurehead to resist colonial encroachment. Its name and stance referred to the mythical and fearsome hōkioi, a bird
whose cry, heard only at night, was an omen of war.26 The bird is believed to have been the giant Haast’s eagle, now extinct.

But first, we need to ask a question: How did Māori get access to their first printing press? In 1859, two Waikato rangatira, Wiremu Toetoe Tumohe and Te Hemara Te Rerehau Paraone, went to Austria on the frigate Novara at the invitation of Austrian geologist, Dr F.R. von Hochstetter, who had met them while surveying Aotearoa. From the account of Tumohe, re-published in Te Ao Hou in 1958, the pair went to Vienna to learn how to print. The Emperor of Austria presented them with a press and type, which they brought back to Māngere where Pōtatau Te Wherowhero, the first Māori King, lived. This press, now in the Te Awamutu Museum, was used to print the King’s proclamations (read one of those here) and Te Hokioi.

The paper’s editor was Wiremu Pātara Te Tuhi, an advisor to the King whose “articles were full of native wit and ability”.27 A total of ten issues, typically around four pages long, would appear over an eleven-month period, with most content criticising the colonial government and reminding readers of the agreements in Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Here’s a translated example from the issue of 15 February 1863; the original is (here)

The Waikato River does not belong to the Queen but to the Māori only … The word of our mother, the Queen, to those chiefs is clear indeed, that is: if the people of New Zealand don’t wish to cede the mana of their lands, their rivers and their fisheries to me, that is fine; let them keep the mana: so this is one of our rivers we are keeping to ourselves.28

The messages published by Te Hokioi so enraged Governor Grey that he instructed a rival newspaper to be set up in nearby Te Awamutu, called Te Pihoihoi Mokemoke i Runga i te Tuanui (The Lone Sparrow on the Roof Top). Edited by local magistrate John Gorst, the new paper began publishing the government viewpoint in February 1863, but it would last only five issues. The paper quickly offended the Kīngitanga, leading to Māori calls for Gorst to be expelled and his newspaper shut down. The exchanges between the two publications became increasingly vitriolic in “a brief newspaper war”.29 The two birds sparred vigorously until Ngāti Maniapoto chief Rewi Maniapoto sent warriors to Te Pihoihoi to shut it down. Tensions were running high; on 12 July 1863, on a flimsy pretext, government troops invaded Waikato.

Tensions were rising elsewhere, with Māori concerned about dubious land sales to settlers. Several...