Te Rūnanga-ā-Iwi o Ngāti KahuLand Claims Report for April 2016
1. Progress with publication of Deed of Partial Settlement
2. Hearing in the Paparahi o te Raki claim – Hokianga
3. Claim to Waitangi Tribunal against government’s Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA)
4. Upcoming National Iwi Chairs Forum hui 4-5 May
5. Call for the reform of the Treaty Claims Settlement process filed with the United Nations
6. Still awaiting Court of Appeal date for binding recommendations application
7. Still awaiting response from Minister of Treaty Negotiations
8. Repossession of Kaitāia Airport in the District Court
9. Ngāti Kahu Trust Board Litigation Against Ngāti Kahu Mortgage Services
Summary
· The publishers of our book Ngāti Kahu: Portrait of a Sovereign Nation, our Deed of Partial Settlement, have advised that no restructuring, deletions or rewriting are required, just copy editing. The photos are still being completed.
· Our lawyers cross examined witnesses in the Waitangi Tribunal’s Paparahi o te Raki hearing for the Hokianga in respect of evidence relating to Te Paatu’s territories and Maungataniwha.
· The deadline for Waitangi Tribunal to report on the TPPA has been reduced by three weeks.
· National Iwi Chairs’ Forum will meet at Te Puia (the New Zealand Māori Arts and Craft Institute) on Fenton St, Rotorua on 4 and 5 May. The first item on the agenda is Moana Jackson speaking about his constitutional transformation report.
· The Monitoring Mechanism of National Iwi Chairs Forum has filed a shadow report with the United Nations Human Rights Council that calls for about the government’s Treaty claims settlement process to be urgently reviewed and reformed.
· We continue to wait for a hearing date from the Court of Appeal in respect of the Waitangi Tribunal not making binding recommendations.
· We continue to wait for a response from the Minister of Treaty Negotiations to our response in November concerning
a) our formal complaint against staff of the Office of Treaty Settlements
b) the Minister’s on-going attempts to impose the settlement that Ngāti Kahu has rejected.
· The hearing date for the six Patukōraha, Ngāi Tohianga and Te Paatu people arrested for trespassing on their own ancestral lands at Rangiāniwaniwa will be discussed in a judicial teleconference on 26 May with a hearing likely in July.
· The Rūnanga appointed two interim trustees for Ngāti Kahu’s farm at Taipā two months ago but have not heard who the Ngāti Kahu Trust Board’s two appointees are.
1. Progress with publication of Deed of Partial Settlement
I reported at our last hui that Huia Publishers had sent the text of our book Ngāti Kahu: Portrait of a Sovereign Nation to an editor to assess what changes are needed to the structure and in particular if any of the very lengthy sections, including the hapū korero, should be cut back. I am very pleased to report that the editor came back very quickly to say the book is great, nothing should be changed or cut, and that the detail is very useful, especially for people who have done or are doing treaty claims. She said that while the book challenged people’s thinking, she enjoyed reading it.
So now it is being copy edited, that is, editors are going through it to make sure that it reads smoothly. There is one editor for the English language parts and two for the Māori language parts. Reremoana Rēnata is copy editing the Māori to make sure our dialect is properly expressed and the translations are accurate. A non-Ngāti Kahu speaker is editing it to note any expressions that are not well known outside Ngāti Kahu that we will need to provide explanations for.
The photos, however, still needed more work. A significant number of the ones we resubmitted needed reshooting. Some were still not good enough quality but it was mainly because the publishers will not include repeats of the same or similar shots of places that are shared by different hapū. So Anahera has spent several days reshooting a number of areas.
2. Hearing in the Paparahi o te Raki claim – Hokianga
The Waitangi Tribunal conducted the Hokianga hearing for Te Paparahi o Te Raki (Northland) enquiry in the week of 18 April. Our lawyer, Te Kani Williams, cross-examined a claimant who mistakenly thought Te Paatu’s claims could be included in with Hokianga’s claims. Te Paatu’s claims come within the Tribunal’s Muriwhenua district and several are registered for hearing there. The claimant also used information purportedly about Te Paatu provided by the loathed land shark turned resident magistrate, William Bertram White. The information is false and White used it in order to steal Te Paatu’s lands.
Another claimant asserted that only hapū of Ngāpuhi are mana whenua and hence own Maungataniwha. He did concede that while his hapū have their kōrero, Te Paatu and Ngāti Kahu have their own kōrero about the northern side.
Our lawyer also cross-examined Crown witnesses who confirmed that information for the boundaries of Ngāti Kahu’s rohe published in the government Gazette in 1946 was provided by Ngāti Kahu kaumātua rangatira of the day and were intended to recognize those areas administered under their rangatiratanga. It includes the huge areas that the Muriwhenua Tribunal hearing our remedies claim cut out of our area of interest including Hukatere, the southern parts of Te Oneroa-a-Tōhē and Te Aupōuri forest and the Sweetwater farm. We will be reminding the Tribunal once we get back into hearings that the Crown has now rectified its error in this respect.
3. Claim to Waitangi Tribunal against government’s Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA)
Last week the government announced that rather than introducing its legislation to ratify the TPPA at the end of May, it will now be doing it three weeks earlier. Once again the government is treating the Tribunal with disrespect and contempt. Two weeks ago they finally filed the last of the information the Tribunal asked for, leaving the Tribunal little time to write their report. Now that short time has been shortened by three weeks. The Tribunal is barred from having any say on proposed legislation once it is tabled in the House. Under the current constitutional arrangements in this country no-one has any power to stop the government doing whatever it likes, including disregarding the people and the Tribunal.
5. Complaint about the Treaty Claims Settlement process filed with the United Nations
This year the New Zealand government is undergoing its 6th periodic review for its performance under the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights before the United Nations Human Rights Committee. On the advice of experts on National Iwi Chairs Forum’s Monitoring Mechanism, a shadow report was filed with the committee calling for urgent review and reform of the Treaty Claims Settlement process. The report draws on previous advice given to the New Zealand government by various United Nations Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples bodies that they need to do this. It also draws on a number of Tribunal reports that are critical of the process and complaints of complainants, including Ngāti Kahu’s complaint about Rangiāniwaniwa.
For items 5) to 9) please see the summary above.
Professor Margaret Mutu
24 April 2016