Te Rūnanga-ā-Iwi o Ngāti Kahu
Land Claims Report for June 2010
- Preparing Our Ngāti Kahu Deed of Settlement – mapping place names and wāhi tapu 3-7 June; third draft of Deed 18 June
- Te Ana o Taite – injunction filed in High Court
- Foreshore and Seabed replacement legislation – National Iwi Chairs’ Forum hui 4 June, government announcement 14 June
- Attempts to bring Ngāti Kahu’s treaty negotiations back under the control of Crown officials
Summary
Your negotiations team has been putting in some long hours and hard work, with the help of many of our kuia and kaumātua, to get the Deed of Settlement drafted. An injunction to stop any further desecration of the wāhi tapu, Te Ana o Taite, has been filed in the High Court against Carrington Farms. We attended the National Iwi Chairs’ Forum hui called to take instructions on their meetings with the government over their proposed replacement for the Foreshore and Seabed Act, kept in touch with them and conducted a number of media interviews about the government’s announcement on 14 June. Members of our negotiations team and several of our kaumātua have reported being disappointed by approaches from some representatives of the other four iwi of Te Hiku o te Ika and the Crown on their behalf trying to interfere with Ngāti Kahu’s work on settling our claims.
1. Preparing Our Ngāti Kahu Deed of Settlement – mapping place names and wāhi tapu 3-7 June; third draft of Deed 18 June
There have been a number of working meetings this month which have resulted in the third draft of our Deed of Settlement. There are still several areas to complete, in particular,
· the pepeha and kōrero of each hapū, including place names, areas of special significance and photos of those who fought for these claims;
· photographic essays of these places – which includes our lands that the Crown is now relinquishing its claims to;
· the future relationship between Ngāti Kahu and central and local government (including the currently very inadequate “Social Accord”);
· the Ngāti Kahu settlement bill.
Huia Pacey, whom we contracted through the Crown Forestry Rental Trust, spent from the 3rd to the 7th June working with our kuia and kaumātua to identify, map and photograph places of special significance, including wāhi tapu, for Te Pātū, Matakairiri, Pikaahu, Te Whānau Moana and Te Rorohuri. She will produce maps, photographs and descriptions for us. Bardia is organizing coverage of the rohe of all hapū and we will probably have to hire a helicopter to cover our territories properly.
We’ve had two more intensive working sessions on drafting our Deed of Settlement. The third draft is 200 pages long and that’s without the photographs and maps and kōrero still to be entered from several hapū. We are focusing on writing this Deed of Settlement up so that it can be published as a book for the whānau and hapū of Ngāti Kahu (rather than it being a document primarily for the Crown) which
· describes who we as Ngāti Kahu are,
· where the territories of each of our hapū are,
· what our claims are, hapū by hapū,
· how our claims are to be fully and finally settled (our yellow book)
· what this partial settlement (as outlined in the Agreement in Principle) will deliver now
· what the Crown still has deliver in the years to come (please see my report of March 2010 for the list of contents).
We are therefore trying to avoid the legalistic and Crown-oriented language and approach that the Crown uses when it writes these documents. We are aiming to make the Deed of Settlement a taonga of Ngāti Kahu which records what we want the following generations to know and remember about the claims against the Crown which have been pursued by every generation of Ngāti Kahu since the 1840s.
Don’t forget, we still need those photos of those involved in the claims who have now passed on. Can whānau please email the photos of their mātua, tūpuna, and rohe they would like included in the Deed of Settlement to Bardia at the office (b.matiu@xtra.co.nz).
2. Te Ana o Taite – injunction filed in High Court
An injunction preventing Carrington Farms from carrying out any more work or further desecrating Te Ana o Taite was lodged in the High Court in Whāngarei at the beginning of June. Russell McVeagh, our lawyers for this case, are now following it up.
3. Foreshore and Seabed replacement legislation – National Iwi Chairs’ Forum hui 4 June, government announcement 14 June
Several of our delegates, kuia and kaumātua attended the National Iwi Chairs’ Forum hui called at very short notice at Ellerslie in Auckland, to give the Foreshore and Seabed Working Party instructions for their meetings with the government over their proposed replacement for the Foreshore and Seabed Act. All iwi representatives at the meeting were in agreement over the instructions. They were, in brief,
· our mana whenua and ownership has to be properly recognized throughout our entire foreshore and seabed (including those parts in supposed “private title”),
· that it is all inalienable (unable to be sold),
· that direct negotiations with the Crown should ensure this but the access to the courts to do so is a constitutional right .
The Working Group met with the government on 14 June and thought they had agreement on these matters. They reported very good and strong support from the Māori Party. However the Prime Minister’s press statement appeared to contradict both the Iwi Chairs Working Group’s understanding and the Māori Party press release. Subsequently Chris Finlayson issued a more detailed press release which appeared to patch up some but not all of the differences. Both he and Tuku Morgan appeared on TVNZ’s Q + A programme on 20 June to explain the agreement reached. The day before Te Kani Williams gave an extended interview on Māori TV’s Te Kaea programme. While it would appear from what Chris Finlayson said that the proposal still does not recognize our mana whenua throughout our entire takutai moana, it appears to do so for large parts of it. It also appears that we should be able to negotiate for such legal recognition as part of our Deed of Settlement. We are now waiting for the first draft of the bill to see what does actually get included and whether or not it is acceptable.
Following the government announcement on 14 June and a detailed briefing by the Iwi Chairs Foreshore and Seabed Working Party chair, Mark Solomon, I conducted a number of media interviews. Two days earlier I was asked to represent the National Iwi Chairs’ Forum on TVNZ’s Q + A programme to discuss both this matter and the constitutional transformation the Forum is working on. I emphasized Ngāti Kahu’s position and urged the government adhere to that. It does seem that we will make most progress by including our conditions for our foreshore and seabed in our Deed of Settlement and ensuring that the Crown agrees to that.
- Attempts to bring Ngāti Kahu’s treaty negotiations back under the control of Crown officials
Members of our negotiations team and several of our kaumātua have reported being disappointed by approaches from both the Crown and some representatives of the other four iwi of Te Hiku o te Ika trying to interfere with Ngāti Kahu’s work on settling our claims. In particular those approaching us have strongly advocated that Ngāti Kahu rejoin the other four iwi’s representatives immediately so that Te Hiku Forum can be reactivated. They appear to be particularly anxious that all five iwi work under the Crown’s agenda for settling our claims. At the moment it appears that the other four iwi are doing exactly that. The Crown (Pat Snedden) however, backed off very quickly when he was reminded the Crown cannot interfere in issues between the iwi in this manner.
Ngāti Kahu has withdrawn from Te Hiku Forum specifically to avoid being dictated to by the Crown and its servants. We did so in order to draw up our own Deed of Settlement. We indicated in March that we would complete our Deed of Settlement before talking with the other four iwi about the land interests we share with them. We continue to talk to the Crown, mainly through the Minister. He knows that we are drafting our Deed of Settlement and that we will give it to him once we have completed it.
The other four iwi have not started drafting their Deeds of Settlement. We understand that they are allowing the Crown to do that for them. That means that it is the Crown who will determine the shape, tone and content of their Deeds of Settlement and that those Deeds of Settlement will have the Crown’s interests uppermost, not the iwi’s. While the other four iwi may be happy to have their claims treated in this manner, Ngāti Kahu is not. Our kaumātua have been clear from the outset that we must retain control of our claims and settle them in accordance with the peoples’ instructions. Your negotiators will continue doing that and not succumb to Crown pressure to do otherwise.
We were nevertheless very pleased to hear that one of the iwi spokespersons has apologized for his grossly unacceptable behavior at the signing ceremony for the Agreement in Principle in January this year.
Professor Margaret Mutu
20 June 2010