Abstract:
Prior to 1863 it cannot be said that the provision of discrete constitutional spaces for Māori was beyond the realms of possibility in the Colony of New Zealand. A focus of this paper is on the events of 1863 that saw the death knell of hopes or expectations entertained by many Māori since 1840 for the recognition of some form of divisible sovereignty, or a plurality of power sources in the colony’s constitution, and explicit constitutional space for Māori governance entities to retain elements of autonomy governed by Māori laws. A second aspect of the paper is that in unearthing New Zealand’s constitutional traditions it is important to draw attention to a range of Māori constitutional viewpoints. In particular the paper highlights the viewpoints of those Māori – the majority of all iwi/hapu in fact – who for various reasons chose to fight alongside imperial forces and colonial militia, or chose to remain neutral during the decade of wars after 1863. Ngāti Whātua is an example of an iwi that has maintained loyalist constitutional traditions to this day.