NGĀTI KAHU BOXES ON

When it comes to land claims, noone would call Ngāti Kahu a Goliath, and most would say it’s boxing way above its weight. In fact Haami Piripi has said it is "on a hiding to nothing." However the little iwi has recently had another win against the Crown.

On 18th April, the Waitangi Tribunal issued a memorandum saying it will now hold hearings for both binding recommendations and ordinary recommendations for Ngāti Kahu’s claims. It is satisfied that the claims the Tribunal upheld did include two general claims for Ngāti Kahu, both lodged by McCully Matiu, and it will make recommendations based on those. However it has declined to include the three Te Paatu claims because they were not lodged in time to be heard in the 1990-4 hearings, and as such were not reported on in the 1997 Muriwhenua Land Report. It has also declined to include Te Paatu’s territories on Te Oneroa-a-Tōhē, up to Hukatere and across to Rangaunu for consideration. Te Paatu do not agree with this and have now asked Ngāti Kahu to seek urgent hearings to stop the Crown vesting those lands in other iwi. Ngāti Kahu will do that.

In preparation for hearings the Tribunal has asked that Ngāti Kahu advise what principles it should take into account in determining the recommendations it will make. Ngāti Kahu will take those principles from their Deed of Partial Settlement, which the Crown rejected last year. They will also be asking for the total package of recommendations to be what they have listed in their Deed.

Once the Crown and other parties have responded to Ngāti Kahu, another judicial conference will be held, probably in the week beginning June 4th.

This decision from the Tribunal is very historic. Ngāti Kahu and others had been denied hearings in the past. But thanks to the Mangatū Incorporation who had the resources to take the Tribunal through all the courts and get a decision from the Supreme Court saying the Tribunal had to hear their application for binding recommendations, Ngāti Kahu have now succeeded where many said they would not. Now they just have to get the binding recommendations over all State-owned Enterprise and Crown Forest lands in their rohe.

That will be an extremely bitter fight because the Tribunal has long been under threat from successive governments that if it used its powers of binding recommendations, they would be removed.

Ngāti Kahu should be under no illusion; the Crown will do whatever it takes to stop them succeeding, legal or otherwise. In addition it seems the leaders of at least two other iwi in Te Hiku will side with the Crown against them.

In the end though, neither the Crown nor its allies can ever change the facts. The lands concerned are not going anywhere, they still belong to the hapū of Ngāti Kahu, and Ngāti Kahu will box on.