Williams history the first book to provide the bigger picture of the activities of the Native Land Court details the dramatically adverse impact it had on Maori landholdings.

Welcome to our story, this history. Wherever in the world the bones of your ancestors lie, wherever their ashes may have been dispersed, here you will find traces of them, and of yourself....It is, of course, a story of colonisation and resistance – and a history that has never stopped repeating. Arama Rata The New Zealand Wars of the mid-nineteenth century profoundly shaped the course and direction of our nation's history. This book takes us to the heart of these conflicts with a series of first-hand accounts from Māori and Pākehā who either fought in or witnessed the wars that ravaged New Zealand between 1845 and 1872. From Heni Te Kiri Karamu's narrative of her remarkable exploits as a wahine toa, through to accounts from the field by British soldiers and powerful reports by observers on both sides, we learn about the wars at a human level. The often fragmentary, sometimes hastily written accounts that make up Voices from the New Zealand Wars vividly evoke the extreme emotions – fear, horror, pity and courage – experienced during the most turbulent time in our country's history. Each account is expertly introduced and contextualised, so that the historical record speaks to us vividly through many voices.

Oral histories, legends, and accounts of contemporary life of a New Zealand Maori tribe are presented in this cultural that includes colonial histories of the Native Land Court and traditional histories from the Northern Hawke's Bay.

Exploring an issue of international significance, this collection of essays addresses the reconciliation of the pre-existing, inherent rights of indigenous peoples with those held and asserted by the state. Focusing upon the Maori tribes of New Zealand, topics include the historical origins of the Ngati Apa decision--one of the most controversial modern decisions on Maori rights--how the Foreshore and Seabed Act (FSA) compares with schemes created in other countries with indigenous inhabitants, how the FSA has led to major changes in the country's political landscape, and how it stacks up against international human rights and environmental laws. This detailed study also explores New Zealand's legislation and how it has undermined the rights of Maori tribes, tipping the reconciliation process too far in favor of the state.

The land claims presented before the Waitangi Tribunal, first established in 1975 as a permanent commision of inquiry to address claims by the Maori people, are discussed in this analysis of the role of legal courts and commissions in mediating disputes with indigenous peoples.

Aboriginal title represents one of the most remarkable and controversial legal developments in the common law world of the late-twentieth century. Overnight it changed the legal position of indigenous peoples. The common law doctrine gave sudden substance to the tribes' claims to justiciable property rights over their traditional lands, catapulting these up the national agenda and jolting them out of a previous culture of governmental inattention. In a series of breakthrough cases national courts adopted the argument developed first in western Canada, and then New Zealand and Australia by a handful of influential scholars. By the beginning of the millennium the doctrine had spread to Malaysia, Belize, southern Africa and had a profound impact upon the rapid development of international law of indigenous peoples' rights. This book is a history of this doctrine and the explosion of intellectual activity arising from this inrush of legalism into the tribes' relations with the Anglo settler state. The author is one of the key scholars involved from the doctrine's appearance in the early 1980s as an exhortation to the courts, and a figure who has both witnessed and contributed to its acceptance and subsequent pattern of development. He looks critically at the early conceptualisation of the doctrine, its doctrinal elaboration in Canada and Australia - the busiest jurisdictions - through a proprietary paradigm located primarily (and constrictively) inside adjudicative processes. He also considers the issues of inter-disciplinary thought and practice arising from national legal systems' recognition of aboriginal land rights, including the emergent and associated themes of self-determination that surfaced more overtly during the 1990s and after. The doctrine made modern legal history, and it is still making it.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, settlers poured into Aotearoa demanding land. Millions of acres were acquired by the government or directly by settlers; or confiscated after the Land Wars.By 1891, when the Liberal government came to power, Maori retained only a fraction of their lands. And still the losses continued. For rangatira such as James Carroll, Wiremu Pere, Paora Tuhaere, Te Keepa Te Rangihiwinui, and many others, the challenges were innumerable. To stop further land loss, some rangatira saw parliamentary process as the mechanism; others pursued political independence.For over two decades, Maori men and women of outstanding ability fought hard to protect their people and their land. How those rangatira fared, and how they should be remembered, is the story of Maori political struggle during the Liberal era.