Sunday 1 February 2015

Judge Gurr


On April 17, 1900 The Deed of Cession, drafted by Secretary of Native Affairs Edwin W. Gurr, was signed by the chiefs of Tutuila, American Samoa…granting the American government control.

27 years later, the same Edwin Gurr- Editor of the Samoa Guardian was one of 3 men deported from Western Samoa by the New Zealand Government.

Judge Edwin Gurr was Nana's grandfather (my great, great grandfather).

Born in 1863 in Westbury Tasmania, I don't know how Edwin Gurr came to be in Samoa- but he must have arrived when quite young. He served as a barrister for the Supreme Court of Samoa at Apia during the 1890s when a tripartite commission of Americans, Germans, and British ruled jointly over a combined Samoa

Gurr shifted to American Samoa, after the tripartite agreement ended and the German's took control of Western Samoa. His marriage to the daughter of a Samoan chief* had put the German administration offside, and so the Gurrs relocated to Pago Pago.

The wedding was a pretty flash affair by reports:
“On December 31, 1890, Edwin William Gurr Married Fanua Seumanutafa at the British consulate in Apia. In attendance were the bride's father, Seumanutafa Moepogai...Robert Louis Stevenson; American historian Henry Brooks Adams (great-grandson of President John Adams, grandson of President John Quincy Adams, and son of Ambassador Charles Francis Adams), 
and American artist John Lafarge.”

Gurr must have returned to Western Samoa with Fanua sometime after NZ took control (as occurred in 1914).

On Dec 21 1927, the NZ Governor-General, signed an order giving Western Samoa's Administrator the power to deport Mau “leaders” Olaf Frederick Nelson, Edwin William Gurr and Alfred Smyth.

The charges against Gurr related to active membership of the Mau* and seeking to deliver the NZ administration in to the “hatred and contempt of it's Samoan subjects.”

The poorly detailed charges were gross exaggerations of Gurr's involvement in a Citizen's Committee to discuss issues of unfair treatment...and his editorial right to question the confrontational governance of the time. The Guardian had printed in both Samoan language and English.

I like to think that it is a part of his editorial legacy- the national newspaper, now the Samoan Observer- remains very vocal in questioning government inadequacies (there are currently daily allegations of high level corruption).

The deportation charges also referred to Gurr's “...wide knowledge of language, customs, mentality, prejudice, party rivalries and history...” as tools of his influence. Apparently, having an understanding of Samoa was tantamount to sedition. (By contrast, in his earlier time in American Samoa, Gurr had been described as having an “understanding Samoan language, as well as fa‘a Samoa and therefore “being useful and familiar with land claims, clearing up ownership problems on the islands”.)

Judge Gurr would live in exile in New Zealand from 1927, until he was allowed to return to Samoa in 1933.

Sadly, he died within just a month of arriving back in Pago Pago at the age of 70.

*The Mau is the movement credited with a campaign of passive resistance under NZ administration, which ultimately led to Samoan Independence in 1962...some 45 years after the foundations were laid. The Mau is simply too big a story for me to tell- but I highly recommend “MAU- Samoa's Struggle for Freedom” by Michael J Field. It's a well written and very accessible read.

*Seumanutafa Moepogai (Gurr’s father-in-law) has been described as a 'Chief' of 
 Apia ('chief' as a translation is a problematic oversimplification). I'll write more about him one day.

A partial transcript of Gurr’s abysmal deportation trial can be found in “The Truth about Samoa”
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-NelTrut-t1-body-d1-d42.html

The Deed of Cessation for American Samoa can be seen here…

http://www.asbar.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1950&Itemid=184

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