Māori Status in New Zealand Law · Deep Audit · Part 17 · 1858
What did the failed Native Territorial Rights measure try to do?
A 1858 measure proposed certificates of Native title for tribes, communities and individuals and excluded ordinary colonial courts from intra-Māori Native-title questions—but Britain refused assent, so it never became operative law.
The Native Territorial Rights measure is valuable evidence precisely because it did not become operative law.
Its text proposed that a tribe, community or individual could apply for a certificate identifying an exclusive right of use and occupancy according to Native custom. It also proposed that ordinary courts of law or equity should not have cognisance of Native-title questions among Māori, except through the specially authorised Native Circuit Court framework.
The same measure contemplated Crown grants to individuals after Native title had been ceded for that purpose. In other words, it simultaneously recognised collective customary title and supplied a pathway into Crown-granted estates.
Why it matters
It demonstrates that colonial legislators were actively considering a model in which tribes and communities held ascertainable territorial rights under Native custom and ordinary colonial courts did not determine those rights inter se.
Why its failure matters
Because it never came into force, we cannot use it to prove that this model actually governed Māori land. The enacted Native Lands legislation that followed took a different route.
The failed measure is therefore an important fork in the road: colonial lawmakers considered a more explicitly tribal/customary title framework before the later Native Land Court system became dominant.
Reserved measureNative Territorial Rights Act 1858 — reserved text.
Constitutional statusNew Zealand Parliament — refusal of assent history; 1908 historical table — “Not assented to”.