The high country is land above 600 metres in altitude that runs the length of the South Island. High country farming is characterised by the extensive grazing of merino sheep on large properties, ranging from approximately 2500ha to 180 000ha, with wool as the major commodity. The high country is a vast area: 6 million of the 27 million hectares of New Zealand’s land mass is high country land. About 2.5 million hectares is farmed; the rest is part of the conservation estate (<http://www.highcountryaccord.co.nz/>). Pastoral land, then, constitutes almost 10 per cent of the land of New Zealand. Very little of this land is held under freehold title. Until the late 1990s, 2.37 million hectares were held in Crown ownership, let to 304 farmers as Crown Pastoral Lease. The Land Act 1948 created leases that were perpetually renewable for a term of 33 years, though there was no right to freehold. Rents were set at between 1.5 and 2 per cent of land value exclusive of improvements. The lessee had many of the same rights as freeholders: trespass rights, rights of exclusive occupation and the ownership of improvements. These leases were, however, pastoral leases only, meaning that leaseholders had only the right to graze the land and had to apply to the Crown agency responsible if they wished to undertake any other activities. This provision of the act thus ensured that the extensive grazing of sheep and cattle remained the dominant land use in the high country. The security of tenure granted by the 1948 act promoted the investment of money, time and self in high country properties and a strong sense of belonging to the high country developed in run-holders. From the perspective of high country farmers themselves, and for writers such as Dominy (2001), a unique high country ‘culture’ emerged, based on the practices of farming that land. As one high country farmwoman put it: ‘We’re only second generation, but we still have a firm cultural attachment to the land. We have cultural, spiritual and historical connections’ (Karen Simpson, The Christchurch Press, 22 November 2003).

The 1948 act made possible a particular mode of attachment to the high country. As the land remained in Crown ownership, a relationship of stewardship was available—the idea of the leaseholder as guardian and caretaker of the land. As one farmer said: ‘We’re custodians. Nobody ever owns it, we’re just passing through and trying to enhance it for the next generation’ (Andrew Simpson, The Christchurch Press, 22 November 2003). This imagining of the relationship between farmer and land differs from that of other farmers, because the land is leased. And it was, in part, through the 1948 act that the potential for stewardship subjectivity, rather than ownership subjectivity, was generated.

Expressions of belonging and attachment to place are mobilised by particular groups at particular times for particular reasons. At the Ngai Tahu Claim hearings before the Waitangi Tribunal in the late 1980s,^[1] anthropologist Michele Dominy (1990:13–14), presenting evidence of run-holder attachment to place, stated: ‘Material affinity is expressed in the value runholders place on their sense of ownership in the land they farm and inhabit. It is also expressed in the value placed on long term security of tenure.’ In this context, when control of the leases was at stake, a discourse of ownership rather than stewardship was deployed. Current assertions of attachment must, then, be viewed in the same light: as strategic deployments by interested actors.