Te Rūnanga-ā-Iwi o Ngāti Kahu
Land Claims Report for July 2010
- Preparing Our Ngāti Kahu Deed of Settlement – mapping and drafting continuing
- Visit of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples’ Rights
- Other Te Hiku Iwi reprimanded for including Ngāti Kahu lands in their settlement negotiations
Summary
Your negotiations team continues drafting the Ngāti Kahu Deed of Settlement. We attended three hui and discussed our Treaty claims and Te Ana o Taite with Professor James Anaya, the visiting United Nations Special Rapporteur. The Crown has been encouraging the other four iwi of Te Hiku o Te Hiku to include Ngāti Kahu lands in their negotiations. Representatives of those iwi complied and earned themselves a strongly worded rebuke from Ngāti Kahu for including Taipā Area School, the Ngāti Kahu station at Karikari, and Rangiputa and Kohumaru stations in discussion papers drawn up without consultation with Ngāti Kahu.
1. Preparing Our Ngāti Kahu Deed of Settlement – Mapping and Drafting Continuing
Members of our Deed of Settlement drafting team have each continued working on drafting their parts of the Deed. The legal section is on to its sixth draft. The Crown and settler history is being restructured to focus on what happened to the lands of each hapū, including the history of Te Pātū’s territories up to Houhora, along Te Oneroa-a-Tōhē and inland through Tangonge and Ngākohu. A new section on the future role of the Crown and its agencies, including local councils, is being drafted. Following on from our decision a couple of months ago, they will be offered a limited number (one or maybe two) of seats on a relevant sub-committee of our Rūnanga to represent Pākehā living in our rohe.
The photographic essay of Pākehā prosperity in Ngāti Kahu’s rohe has been completed and stands in stark comparison with the photographic essay of the marae and papa kāinga compiled by Vicky Thomas last year. Photographic records of lands being relinquished by the Crown are still being completed. We’re also still working on the pepeha and kōrero of each hapū, including place names, areas of special significance and photos of those who fought for these claims. Huia Pacey (CFRT) is currently working to complete her mapping and photographing contract.
The current draft of our Deed of Settlement is 260 pages long. As I reported last month, we are continuing to focus 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).
- Visit of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, Professor James Anaya
Professor Anaya, of Apache and other New Mexico nations descent and a professor of international law at the University of Arizona, spent the week from 18th to 24th July visiting Māori and iwi groups around the country and meeting with government Ministers and officials in Wellington. He was assessing what progress had been made following his predecessor’s report of 2006. He was invited by the Minister of Māori Affairs, Hon. Dr Pita Sharples, following the New Zealand government’s formal agreement to support the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples earlier this year.
Four of us attended his pōwhiri at Ōrākei marae in Auckland on Sunday 18th July, his meeting with the National Iwi Chairs’ Forum at Auckland Domestic Airport on Wednesday 21st July and his farewell dinner at Hoani Waititi marae on Friday 23rd July. Some also attended his meeting with Ngāpuhi at Waitangi on 21st July. The Special Rapporteur’s report of 2006 was scathing of the government’s treatment of Māori. Its recommendations included that:
· The Foreshore and Seabed Act “be repealed or amended by Parliament and the Crown should engage in treaty settlement negotiation with Māori that will recognise the inherent rights of Māori in the foreshore and seabed…”
· “A convention should be convened to design a constitutional reform in order to clearly regulate the relationship between Government and Māori people on the basis of the Treaty of Waitangi and the internationally recognised right of all people to self-determination.” He went on to further recommend “The Treaty of Waitangi should be entrenched constitutionally in a form that respects the pluralism of New Zealand society, creating positive recognition and meaningful provision for Māori as a distinct people, possessing an alternative system of knowledge, philosophy and law.”
· “The Waitangi Tribunal should be granted legally binding and enforceable powers to adjudicate Treaty matters with the force of the law.”
· “The Crown should engage in negotiations with Māori to reach agreement on a more fair and equitable Treaty of Waitangi settlement policy and process.”
· “Social delivery services, particularly health and housing, should continue to be specifically targeted and tailored to the needs of Māori, requiring more targeted research evaluation and statistical data bases.”
· “The Government of New Zealand should continue to support efforts to achieve a United Nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples by consensus, including the right to self-determination”.
· “Public media should be encouraged to provide a balanced, unbiased and non-racist picture of Māori in New Zealand society, and an independent commission should be established to monitor their performance and suggest remedial action.” Then, “Representatives and leaders of political parties and public organisations should refrain from using language that may incite racial or ethnic intolerance.”
Māori throughout the country reported this time round that the government had ignored these recommendations. For Ngāti Kahu I highlighted the on-going problems with our Treaty claims settlement, lack of effective legal protection for our wāhi tapu (citing Te Ana o Taite in particular), and the major problem of the deeply entrenched racism that permeates the public service, our universities and civil society.
In his press release before leaving the country Professor Anaya said
“I cannot help but note the extreme disadvantage in the social and economic conditions of Maori people, which are dramatically manifested in the continued and persistent high levels of incarceration of Maori individuals. These troubling conditions undoubtedly result from the historical and ongoing denial of the human rights of Maori, which must continue to be addressed as a matter of utmost priority.”
He spotlighted the process for settling Treaty of Waitangi claims. He said that during his visit to New Zealand, he heard complaints about the process similar to those reported by his predecessor, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, including the lack of Maori bargaining power in settlement negotiations and policies restricting transference of Maori lands back into their ownership or control.
On the 2004 Foreshore and Seabed Act, he took note of authorities’ efforts to repeal and reform the law, calling for adequate dialogue with the Maori and new legislation that “avoids any discriminatory effects and establishes measures to recognize and protect rights” of Maori over the foreshore and seabed.
He urged the Government to provide constitutional security to the principles enshrined in the Treaty of Waitangi and related to internationally-protected rights. “From what I have observed, the treaty’s principles appear to be vulnerable to political discretion, resulting in their perpetual insecurity and instability,” he said.
3. Other Te Hiku Iwi reprimanded for including Ngāti Kahu lands in their settlement negotiations
It came to our attention last week that the Crown has been providing the other four iwi of Te Hiku o Te Ika with information relating to Ngāti Kahu lands, in particular, Taipā Area School. Rather than passing it on for Ngāti Kahu’s attention, the other four iwi have placed the Taipā school lands on their agenda for discussion with the Crown.
A couple of days later we were advised that Te Rarawa, Te Aupōuri and Ngāi Takoto representatives have drawn up papers on the future of Māori owned farming operations and Kaitāia lands for discussion with the Crown. The farms named included the Ngāti Kahu 438 station at Karikari (not part of our claims and currently administered by its Māori owners), the Rangiputa station and the Kohumaru station. Then for the Kaitāia lands for which no-one other than Ngāi Tohianga and Te Pātū has been able to demonstrate mana whenua, the paper authored by Paul White recommends distributing those properties equally between Te Rarawa, Ngāi Takoto and Ngāti Kahu. None of this has been discussed with Ngāti Kahu.
After circulating the email to Ngāti Kahu delegates, I sent a strongly worded message to the representatives of the other four iwi instructing them to stop discussing Ngāti Kahu lands, and that we will talk to them once we have completed our Deed of Settlement. However we received a very dismissive reply from Paul White. It implied that the other four iwi would continue negotiating with the Crown in respect of Ngāti Kahu’s interests. The Crown, and in particular the Chief Crown Negotiator and OTS, appears to be supporting this interference in our claims and the trampling on the mana of Ngāti Kahu.
Please can all delegates take instructions from their marae about how Ngāti Kahu should deal with this. We will discuss it at our next hui at Ōturu marae on 31 July.
Professor Margaret Mutu
25 July 2010