Te Kotahitanga — the Māori Parliament

Kotahitanga means unity, and Te Ara describes Kotahitanga movements as efforts to unify Māori on non-tribal grounds. Through the 1870s and 1880s Māori leaders held parliaments of their own: at Ōrākei in Auckland from 1879 to 1889 and at Waitangi between 1881 and 1890, where the meeting house Te Tiriti o Waitangi was opened in 1881 to host them. In 1889 Ngāpuhi formally began an attempt to forge a political union of the North and South Island tribes, and Hāmiora Mangakāhia of Ngāti Whanaunga was among the first to sign the movement's deeds of union. In May 1891 the Heretaunga chief Hēnare Tomoana told the Native Land Laws Commission that laws imposed on Māori by the European-dominated Parliament had caused great injustices, and asked that Māori be allowed to make their own laws.

In April 1892 delegates met for a preliminary session at Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Mangakāhia explained that the movement hoped to set up a Māori government to control Māori land. He argued that section 71 of the 1852 Constitution Act authorised such a body, and that the Treaty of Waitangi gave the Queen authority over the whole country but left Māori alone with authority over their lands. A structure was agreed, with national elections, a lower house (Whare o Raro) and an upper house (Whare Ariki). The first sitting was held at Waipatu in Hawke's Bay in June 1892, where Tomoana, as chairman of the marae committee, welcomed the members. On 17 June Mangakāhia was elected premier of the Great Council, the lower house. Tomoana was elected its speaker. Four days later Mangakāhia presented a bill asking that a petition be sent to the colonial Parliament requesting that all legislation on Māori land and people cease and that Māori be empowered to make their own laws. A committee had already called for the abolition of the Native Land Court, and by the mid-1890s, according to Te Ara's biography of James Carroll, the movement had organised an effective boycott of the court.

The second session was again held at Waipatu, in 1893. On 28 April the assembly adjourned to hear Hōne Heke Ngāpua, a young Ngāpuhi man who was elected to the House of Representatives for Northern Māori later that year. On 18 May Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia of Te Rarawa, Hāmiora's wife, addressed the parliament, the first woman recorded to have done so. She asked that women be given the right to vote for its members and to sit in it, pointing out that many Māori women owned and administered their own lands. Ākenehi Tomoana suggested the question wait until the men had 'achieved their goal', and the matter lapsed. NZHistory notes that Māori women did not win the vote in Kotahitanga elections until 1897 (see Women win the vote). In June 1893 Hēnare Tomoana gave the native minister a draft Federated Māori Assembly Empowering Bill, asking for power over Māori to be delegated to Te Kotahitanga, subject only to the governor. In 1894 Heke introduced a Native Rights Bill seeking a separate Māori parliament; it was reintroduced in 1895 and 1896 and defeated.

The movement split. Mangakāhia, re-elected premier at Rotorua in 1895, spoke for those who refused a moderate line acceptable to the government. Tomoana and the Wairarapa leader Hāmuera Tamahau Mahupuku led the moderates, and had the 1897 and 1898 sittings moved to Papawai, where Mahupuku built the Aotea–Te Waipounamu complex for the parliament; Premier Richard Seddon and the governor, Lord Ranfurly, attended its opening in 1897. In March 1898 Mangakāhia claimed that 37,000 Māori had signed the Kotahitanga deeds between 13 March 1889 and 6 October 1897. That year Seddon promoted a Native Lands Settlement and Administration Bill at Papawai, promising that if it passed the government would buy no more Māori land. Mahupuku's group drafted amendments to it, while Mangakāhia's party called it paternalistic and collected 9,775 signatures against it. In 1900 James Carroll, with the support of younger leaders such as Apirana Ngata, persuaded Kotahitanga and other Māori leaders to accept a compromise: the Māori Councils Act and the Māori Lands Administration Act. The Kotahitanga parliament held its final meeting at Waiōmatatini on the East Coast in 1902.

The Māori Councils Act empowered local Māori committees to deal with health, sanitation and liquor control, and the land Act set up Māori land councils with a majority Māori membership. Te Ara describes these councils, led by Ngata, as a new, state-sponsored form of kotahitanga, and from 1903 they held an annual meeting much in the mould of the Kotahitanga gatherings. The movement's women's committees, which organised young people and catering at its meetings and debated political issues, are described in Meri Mangakāhia's biography as early forerunners of the Māori Women's Welfare League. After Mahupuku died in 1904 Papawai's place as a meeting ground faded, and the Aotea–Te Waipounamu building blew down in a storm in 1934.