Do we want a just country? When someone has been wronged, I think they deserve justice.
The New Zealand Settlements Act 1863 authorised the confiscation of land from those in 'rebellion”. Put simply, the Crown wanted more land and Maori didn't want to sell it, so the Crown wrote the NZ Settlements Act and proceeded to take the land it wanted as punishment for not selling it! Of the 644,000 hectares finally confiscated, 19,900 hectares were from Tauranga. [Source, The Treaty of Waitangi, Claudia Orange]
Maori want their land back to live on and make money from it. That's what everyone else seems to do with land. Given that returning land could create another injustice, many tribes have graciously settled with monetary compensation that is a small fraction of what their confiscated land was worth. It's like someone takes your car and in compensation you're given a $50 Bike Barn voucher.
Some writers imply that Maori just need to get over the past but I wonder if those writers had their homes, lands and livelihoods taken, would they just get over it? I think they would tell their children, and then tell their grandchildren, and so on … until their family got justice. The issue is not race, the issue is justice. Stephen Tisch, Matua.