The Project Ngā Pitihana (The Petitions) presents the results of research carried out for a BA (Hons) in History at Victoria University of Wellington, Te Herenga Waka in 2022. The focus of the research is petitions submitted to the House of Representatives and considered by the Native Affairs Committee, between 1890 and 1900. The key source for the research is the reports of the Native Affairs Committee, published in the Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives (the AJHR). These reports are available on the Papers Past Website. Original petition documents are stored at Archives New Zealand and may be viewed in the Wellington reading room.
The Database The OCR text of each AJHR report was formatted into columns to build a database that provides an entry for each petition considered by the committee. With a few exceptions, the majority of petitions considered by the Native Affairs Committee were submitted by Māori. Most petitions were submitted by one person, and many were submitted on behalf of a group of whānau, hapū or iwi.
The following chart uses the database to provide a summary of the number of petitions considered by the Native Affairs Committee each year from 1890 to 1900.
Petitions Considered by the Native Affairs Committee 1890-1900
Honours Thesis The outcome of this research is a thesis, "Mana Wāhine: Case Studies of Agency and Authority through Petitioning 1890-1900". The thesis examines what the petitions tell us about the lives of Wāhine Māori in the late nineteenth Century. Four petitions were the subject of detailed research.
Further Research The scope of the project was limited by the time and resource constraints of the Honours Programme. There is potential to use this project as a starting point for further research, for instance by expanding the timeframe of the project to examine a wider subset of the original petition documents, and to add further facets to the database.
Header image: Extract of Petition 318, 1897 submitted by Raiha Puaha and eleven others in response to the Kapiti Island Public Reserve Bill, Archives New Zealand R17687980 Native Affairs Committee Petition and Reports No. 265-872.