Tohunga Suppression Act

Tohunga were experts in fields that included the arts, agriculture, fishing, warfare and healing. They were trained in whare wānanga (houses of higher learning) and seen as the earthly medium of the gods. Their healing was part of rongoā (traditional Māori medicine), which could do little against the diseases Europeans brought, and that failure strongly affected Māori confidence in tohunga. As the whare wānanga closed, the tradition declined. While some traditional tohunga carried on, Te Ara describes another type appearing, 'second-class tohunga' who lacked education and authority and travelled from pā (villages) to pā claiming to cure all kinds of illness. By the early 20th century there were so many that both Pākehā and Māori authorities saw them as a threat. The Maori Councils Act 1900 had allowed the new Māori councils to license tohunga.

Māori leaders were among the critics. The Te Aute College Students' Association believed tohunga might harm patients and hinder Māori progress. Māui Pōmare, appointed Māori medical officer in 1901, and his deputy Te Rangi Hīroa (Peter Buck) campaigned to improve sanitation and health in Māori settlements. In his reports Pōmare wrote bitterly of deaths caused by some of the new tohunga, who bathed the sick in cold water and gave them alcohol. The bill was introduced in 1907 by the Native Minister, James Carroll, who, his biographer writes, was impatient with what he considered regressive Māori attitudes and aimed it at 'so called prophets' such as the Tūhoe leader Rua Kēnana. All four Māori MPs supported it. One of them, Apirana Ngata, pointed out that tohunga provided the only medical care in many districts and that the government could not suppress them unless it provided a substitute.

The Tohunga Suppression Act was assented to on 24 September 1907. Its preamble declared that 'designing persons, commonly known as tohungas' practised on 'the superstition and credulity of the Maori people' and induced them 'to neglect their proper occupations'. Anyone who gathered Māori around them in this way, or claimed supernatural powers to cure disease or foretell the future, faced a fine of up to £25 or six months' jail for a first offence and up to 12 months' jail for later offences. No prosecution could begin without the consent of the Native Minister, and the councils' power to license tohunga was repealed. Police had watched Rua Kēnana since May 1906 as 'suspected of acting as a Tohunga', and Te Ara says the Act was directed primarily at him, but he was never charged under it (see The raid on Maungapōhatu). There were few prosecutions and very few convictions. The Act's main effect, in Te Ara's words, was 'to drive tohunga underground'.

Many tohunga declined to pass on their oral traditions, and knowledge of karakia (prayers and incantations) was 'lost or hidden', according to Wikipedia, though Tainui retained theirs. The Act, consolidated in 1908, was repealed by the Maori Welfare Act 1962. It has since been viewed as a breach of the Treaty of Waitangi, because it challenged traditional Māori knowledge, which is considered one of the taonga (treasures) promised to Māori under the Treaty's second article. Māori interest in rongoā revived from the later 20th century, and in 1993 healers set up Ngā Ringa Whakahaere o te Iwi Māori, a national body that aims to uphold, promote, protect and sustain traditional Māori healing.