Peter Hemmingson - Genocide?

In the absence of a universally acknowledged civil government and laws to provide for land ownership, in 1840, the various tribes owned NOTHING. They simply used or occupied it until a stronger bunch of bullyboys came along and took it off them. The only universally acknowledged system of laws was "te rau o te patu" [the law of the club] aka "might makes right."
Throughout the 1830s, various Maori chiefs were begging the Crown to intervene in New Zealand.
It seems clear that in the lead-up to the signing of the Treaty, most chiefs had come to view British sovereignty and its associated rule of law as the only way to put a conclusive end to the Musket Wars that had ravaged the land for almost two decades prior to 1840.
With the coming of the musket, the various tribes possessed for the first time weapons of mass extermination with which to be revenged upon traditional enemies. The farsighted came to see that only outside intervention could arrest this ever-escalating cycle of inter-tribal violence.
Ngapuhi had been the first tribe to obtain muskets after Hongi Hika returned from England in 1821 with a large quantity of firearms, powder and shot. These weapons were used by Ngapuhi to overrun much of the North Island in the first of the Musket Wars.
A destructive arms race ensued. Thousands of Maori were killed as other tribes acquired European weapons of their own to wage war on immediate neighbours and further afield. The Lyttelton Times of 4 September 1861 retrospectively reported that as a result, “Whole districts were depopulated, and large and powerful tribes driven from their ancestral lands.”
Tribes fleeing from Ngapuhi began pressing upon their neighbours all the way down the North Island. “[W]ar spread from tribe to tribe, till the whole North Island became one scene of bloodshed and massacre.” In 1824, this carnage reached the South Island, after Te Rauparaha, having obtained a large supply of guns and ammunition, crossed Cook Straight to attack Ngai Tahu.
These inter-tribal conflicts also led to significant indirect loss of life. Thousands of Maori died of recently introduced respiratory ailments after moving down from their well-ventilated hilltop pas to low-lying, miasmic swampland to cut flax to trade for guns. But by far the greatest killer was mass-scale starvation.
For pre-European Maori, fighting was a ritualised pursuit traditionally taking place once the kumara crop had been harvested. After the onset of the Musket Wars, fighting became a year-round activity, because many tribes no longer bothered to cultivate, thinking instead to conquer their neighbours and take their food.
Since everyone else was operating on the same assumptions, thousands starved to death if they weren’t killed and eaten first by hungry war parties. As an indication of how scarce grown or gathered foodstuffs were at that time, the Lyttelton Times reported that: “Hongi [Hika] and his party, in returning home [to Northland] through the districts they had overrun, were compelled to live almost entirely on human flesh.”
The Maori population in 1840 is today believed to have numbered around 100, 000. By various estimates, the Musket Wars had led directly or indirectly to some 60, 000 – 100, 000 deaths over the period 1821 – 1838, after which the bloodshed tapered off because every tribe now had guns.
Maori culture’s ongoing requirement to extract utu (payback) from enemies meant this uneasy balance of power would always rest on a knife-edge, and a number of commentators have suggested that only by signing the Treaty did Maori avert their complete self-destruction as a race.
Calls for a “Land Wars Commemoration Day” are misplaced, to say the least.
According to a Government website, the total death toll in all the battles and skirmishes fought between Crown troops and loyal Maori on the one hand, and aggressive challengers to the Crown's sovereignty on the other, hardly suggests conflict that was [a] widespread; or [b] genocidal in nature or intent.
The numbers below aggregate data for individual battles fought between 1845 -1872, as provided by the historian James Cowan, “who sometimes overstated the casualties of Maori who opposed the settlers. “
Rebel Maori: 2, 154
Crown troops and loyal Maori: 745
Since there were an estimated 100, 000 natives in 1840, the total number who died opposing the Crown over the 27 years in question was just over 2% of that number.
To put these numbers into perspective, averaged out over 27 years,, that's around 80 rebel Maori casualties per annum, or 0.08 of the 1840 Maori population in any one year. Some 8/100ths of one percent.
If this was "genocide," the Crown was clearly either not very good at it, or wasn't trying too hard.
According to various estimates, some 60, 000 – 100, 000 natives died either directly (murdered) or indirectly (starved to death because their tribes neglected cultivating for fighting) as the result of the intertribal Musket Wars of the 1820s and 1830s.

These numbers make it clear the true genocide of New Zealand history was Maori-on-Maori.
Far more apt that instead of a “Land Wars Commemoration Day,” we have a “Kai Tangata Day” in remembrance of the Maori people killed, eaten, enslaved, raped, or dispossessed by other Maori prior to February 1840.
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/new-zealand-wars/end