Talk:Te Whakatōhea

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"The people of Te Whakatōhea were subsequently relocated and confined to the 20,000 acre Ōpape native reservation."

Confined how? Were they arrested if they left the reservation? Banned from owning or renting land anywhere else? I've been studying NZ history for nearly a decade and this is the first I've heard of 'native reservations' in NZ, let alone anyone being 'confined' to them. Could you please either provide a reference or reword this so it doesn't say anything you're not meaning to say. --Helenalex 05:57, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Helenalex. You are correct: the article sentence in question was a misinterpretation (and a sloppy one at that) of a sentence in the Te Ara reference during my initial research:

"Te Whakatōhea lost the coastline from Maraetōtara to the Waiaua River, and the sub-tribes were jammed into the Ōpape native reservation."

In hindsight, this could have meant that Te Whakatōhea lost control over much (or all) of their land, save for the 20,000 acre area at Ōpape. But I also came across the following passage from a press release on the Whakatohea Trust Board Website.

"But Mokomoko’s execution was only the beginning of Whakatohea’s punishment. The government then confiscated 490,000 acres from the iwi – and banished the so-called 'rebels' among them to the 20,000-acre Opape Native Reserve."
" 'That,' Te Riaki says, 'was like an Indian reservation. We put on the reservation (sic).' "

Prior to writing the article, I was also under the impression that Native American-style reservations did not exist in New Zealand. At the very least, the existence of such a reservation for Te Whakatōhea appears to be unverifiable outside of the references quoted in this article. The sentence in question doesn't add a lot of crucial information to the history of the iwi, and so I've deleted it entirely. I'll keep this in mind for future articles. Thanks for your query. --Liveste 08:52, 12 April 2007 (UTC)