'The Greenstone Door' Summary

It is worth remembering that this book was published in 1914 and holds value as an artifact of the Pakeha(1) desire to justify their place in New Zealand and to mythologize the wars for New Zealand. In reality the conflict was ‘brutal, bloody and calculated’ (RNZ). The invasion of the Waikato between 1863 and 1864 is the biggest campaign of the New Zealand wars and marks a titanic struggle as to who will own and control New Zealand itself, conflict between Maori defending what was rightfully theirs and the imperial might of Great Britain. The outcome of the war was the confiscation of 12,000 square km2 of Waikato lands. The repercussions of this have reverberated throughout New Zealand history and “leaves the King Movement tribes with a legacy of poverty and bitterness that was partly assuaged in 1995 when the government conceded that the 1863 invasion and confiscation was wrongful and apologised for its actions”. The Waikato-Tainui tribe accepted compensation in the form of cash and some government-controlled lands totalling about $171 million – about 1 percent of the value of the lands confiscated in 1863. Queen Elizabeth II personally signed the Waikato Raupatu Claims Settlement Act 1995.