Māori and Royal Visits, 1869-2015: From Rotorua to Waitangi

This article examines the ways in which Māori met royal visitors to New Zealand. The New Zealand Government wished to present Māori as a loyal people who provided the country with a unique culture, and to show that New Zealand had excellent race relations. Māori had different concerns. They believed that Māori had a special relationship to the Crown because Queen Victoria was the other signatory to the Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840. In honouring her descendants they would honour the Treaty. Some Māori also believed royalty might help challenge some of the actions of the settler government. After some difficulties on the three visits of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, in 1869-1871, these diverse aims were largely achieved on royal visits in 1901, 1920, 1927, 1934, and in the first visit of Elizabeth II in 1953 by one large gathering of the tribes at Rotorua. Not all Māori were happy about this policy, especially the Māori King, who wished to meet royalty on his own ground. From 1953 royal visitors did meet the Māori King at his home in the Waikato; and after that date the large Rotorua gathering ceased. Instead, gatherings of all the tribes began to occur at Waitangi, most notably when Elizabeth II visited for the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty in 1990.