HE IWI KOTAHI

For the past twelve months, while critics within and without Ngāti Kahu have been pressuring us to work towards settlement under the Crown’s processes and timetables, we have been writing the Ngāti Kahu Deed of Partial Settlement under the processes and timetables of our hapū. The first draft was delivered to the Crown on April 1st.

A written Deed is critical to any kind of settlement. In the past, and under the process that our critics wanted us to follow, the Crown has written the Deed with some input from the claimant. After that, it has become a take it or leave it proposition for the claimant, and they have had to choose to either settle under the terms and conditions of the Deed, or go to the back of the claimant line and wait.

Tired of waiting, with no substantial fallback plan, and with high hopes of finally being able to take their rightful place in their own land, almost every claimant has signed when presented with this choice. In fact I think the only claimant who has refused to sign such a Deed of Settlement to date has been Whakatōhea.

Most of us in this country have heard the words apparently spoken at Waitangi on 6th February 1840 by Captain William Hobson, the man the Crown sent to negotiate and conclude a Treaty with the Māori nation. As each of the rangatira appended his signature or mark to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Captain Hobson is reputed to have said: He iwi kotahi tatou. We are now one people.

But the very fact that the Treaty exists is testament to the reality that there are two nations in this country who are on sometimes parallel, other times divergent, courses. The Crown’s course is, by and large, known. Now for the first time ever the course of one small part of the Māori nation has been set down in a Deed of Partial Settlement.

In its Deed, Ngāti Kahu have laid out simply and clearly the central precept on which New Zealand was founded; i.e. two nations, one people. This is the very issue our respective tūpuna began to address with Te Hakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni (the Declaration of Independence) in 1835, and Te Tiriti o Waitangi / Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. The Crown recognised Te Hakaputanga and is a signatory to Te Tiriti. The fact that the Crown subsequently chose to try and simply override Māori with superior numbers has delayed the realization of the full potential of both nations for too long. The Ngāti Kahu Deed addresses this fully.

No-one who knows Ngāti Kahu should be surprised that it has ignored the choice of “sign now or wait until later”. We are now waiting for the Crown to respond to our Deed of Settlement by or before 1st June.

Whether or not the Crown agrees at this time to relinquish the lands it has stolen from Ngāti Kahu and to extinguish its claims over them, it has yet to sincerely address this important issue of two nations, one people. It needs to. Urgently.