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Friday, March 30, 2012

Mike Butler: $162.67m more paid under treaty

Five Treaty of Waitangi settlement bills with financial redress totalling $162.67-million were passed unanimously on Thursday for Ngati Manawa, Ngati Whare, Ngati Porou, Ngati Pahauwera and Ngati Maniapoto. Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson ushered these deals through. The eye-glazing detail means that little is reported in the mainstream media other than the fact they were passed plus acknowledgement of the ritual Crown apologies, and maybe some singing and wailing from the public gallery.

For those seeking an understanding of the financial redress paid, the cultural redress given, special deals, who the tribes are, how big, where located, and their activities in our short history, read on.

Ngati Manawa
Ngāti Manawa received financial redress of $12.2-million as part of the Central North Island Forest Lands, plus interest, $2.6-million for special projects, the right to buy four land bank properties, the right to buy five deferred selected properties, and a 50-year right of first refusal for one surplus Crown property in their area. Cultural redress included the transfer of five sites totalling 744ha, the vesting in fee simple of nine wāhi tapu sites, and the vesting of three schools in fee simple subject to a lease-back. Four sites were vested jointly in Ngāti Manawa and Ngāti Whare, statutory acknowledgements over five sites, four waterways, overlay classifications and transfer and gift back of Tāwhiuau (a mountain), and deeds of recognition regarding Pukehinau and Te Kōhua, and over four rivers. River redress includes a right of first refusal on five freshwater quota river fish, and a framework for agreement on a management system for the Rangitaiki River, and more.

Ngāti Manawa is a central North Island iwi of 3500 members based in Murupara that had little contact with the government until the 1860s. The tribe backed the government during the 1865 wars but their crops and dwellings sustained significant damage in the fighting and the government paid no compensation. Disputes arose over leases with the government, attendance at the Native Land Court caused financial hardship, and tribe members sold large areas of land.
See http://nz01.terabyte.co.nz/ots/LiveArticle.asp?ArtID=-285793581

Ngati Whare
Ngāti Whare received financial redress of $15.7-million already provided in the 2008 Central North Island Settlement, plus $1.976-million in cultural redress giftings, $1-million for the Project Whirinaki Regeneration Trust, and $200,000 to restore the Te Whaiti Court House. Other cultural redress includes the transfer of seven culturally significant sites totalling 36.2ha, the return of five wāhi tapu sites totalling 10.2952ha, the joint vesting of four sites totalling 13ha in Ngati Whare and Ngati Manawa, statutory acknowledgements over two sites and Whirinaki River, and a deed of recognition over areas of Urewera National Park and Whirinaki River

Ngāti Whare, a central North Island tribe of 3400 members that did not sign the treaty, supported Te Kooti against the government. The tribe’s grievances involve restrictions on land use and land alienation, the Urewera District Native Reserves Act 1896, Crown corporatisation, cessation of indigenous forest logging and the return of Minginui without providing sufficient resources.
See http://nz01.terabyte.co.nz/ots/LiveArticle.asp?ArtID=40847475

Ngati Porou
Financial redress includes $90-million plus interest. Six Crown properties will be vested in Ngāti Porou, which will buy Ruatoria and Tokomaru Licensed Crown Forest Land, receive a two-year deferred selection purchase and leaseback of 21 Crown properties, a 170-year right of first refusal to buy surplus Crown-owned and Housing New Zealand Corporation properties within the Ngāti Porou area, and the return of surplus Crown properties subject to Public Works Act offer-back requirements. Cultural redress includes a payment of $20-million plus interest, a strategic conservation partnership, 15 sites totalling 5898ha to be vested in Ngāti Porou with DOC to manage some sites, statutory acknowledgements over the Waiapu and Uawa Rivers and their tributaries, the Tūranganui River and the Waimata River. The tribe enters into relationship protocols with Conservation, Economic Development, and Culture and Heritage

Ngāti Porou, which is with 72,000 members one of the largest tribes in New Zealand, and which is based on the East Coast north of Gisborne, signed the treaty, retained control of their affairs until 1865, when some fought for the Maori king, some fought for Pai Marire (Hauhaus), and some for the government. Much land was sold after the Native Land Court awarded title. The tribe objected to government administration of development schemes and numerous land takings for public works.
See http://nz01.terabyte.co.nz/ots/LiveArticle.asp?ArtID=-130708183

Ngati Pahauwera
Financial redress includes $20-million plus interest, which includes the value of any Crown forest land purchased. Thirteen Crown properties will be vested in Ngäti Pähauwera, including Mohaka Crown Forest Land, Rawhiti Station, five surplus Wairoa District Council properties. The tribe has a 100-year right of first refusal on surplus Crown properties in the area. The Te Heru o Türeia Conservation Area will be vested in Ngäti Pahauwera as part of cultural redress. The tribe retains 160ha at the summit of Te Heru o Türeia and 52.9ha by the Mohaka River, most of which is to be gifted to people of NZ. Sixteen sites totalling 1087ha will be transferred to the tribe that receives a statutory acknowledgement over part of the Earthquake Slip Conservation Area. Ngäti Pähauwera will manage hangi stone removal from the Mohaka River.

Ngāti Pahauwera, a tribe claiming 6000 members, whose tribal area extends south of Wairoa on the East Coast, north of Napier, and inland to Lake Waikaremoana, signed the treaty and began to sell land to the government from 1851. Te Kooti led a force that attacked the two Pahawera fortified villages at Mohaka in April 1869, killing 56 Ngäti Pähauwera men, women, and children as well as a number of Pakeha settlers in the area. Tuhoe were the main killers, according to historian James Cowan. Pahauwera blame the government for not protecting them from the dreadful carnage visited upon them. Te Kooti was never tried for involvement in these killings and was later pardoned. His descendents are in line for compensation through the Rongowhakaata settlement awaiting legislation. No compensation is available for the Lavin family and Alfred Cooper murdered at Mohaka because non-Maori don’t qualify for the Waitangi Tribunal process, and, after all, no one survived.
See http://nz01.terabyte.co.nz/ots/DocumentLibrary/NgatiPahauweraSummary.pdf

Ngati Maniapoto
For Ngati Maniapoto the legislation includes setting up a co-governance and co-management arrangement of the Waipa River between the Government and the iwi. The tribe received a settlement in relation to the Waikato River in 2010, receiving $10-million co-management funding, and $1-million a year for 19 years.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

WHAT DID MAORI ACTUALLY OWN IN 1840 - PART I

what Maori actually owned in 1840 is today poorly understood, as is reasoning behind the creation of the Native [now Maori] Land Courts.

Treatyist propaganda holds the Courts were constitued as an underhanded mechanism by which Maori were to be divested of "their" land.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

As the well-known Maori proverb advises: “He wahine, he whenua e ngaro ai te tangata.” (“For women and land men die.”)

Property rights come about in one of two ways:

[1] The ability to exclude others by force (so-called “Customary Title”)

A temporary right of use or occupation, lasting only until extinguished by a superior force.

[2] Legal ownership

The ability to exclude others by force of law. The underlying requirement is a universally recognised, settled form of civil government that protects property owners against violent dispossession, and provides for ongoing security of tenure, i.e. “time without end in the land.”

In his book, Maori Land Law, Sir Hugh Kawharu blatantly sets out to fabricate a universally recognised body of Maori property rights pre-dating the Treaty of Waitangi. By implication, these were rudely subsumed by white-settler governments, who forcibly substituted their own Eurocentric notions of property ownership.

This now widely accepted thesis is arrant nonsense designed to fudge or remove the fact that “customary title” is in practical terms no title at all.

The functional social unit of pre-European Maori society was the hapu, or sub-tribe. Each hapu was in a Hobbesian state of nature (“War of every man against every man”) with every other hapu, thus rendering life “nasty, brutish and short.”

Within the hapu-controlled estate, whanau groups sometimes enjoyed exclusive rights of occupancy or usufruct as Kawharu has identified, but the only universally accepted concept of land ownership BETWEEN hapu was "Te rau o te patu" or "The Law of the Club."

In the absence of a settled form of civil government, hapu used or occupied land only until someone else took it off them. This position was somewhat modified by Article II of the Treaty of Waitangi, which purported to change this temporary “customary” Maori use and occupation of land into permanent legal ownership.

Anonymous said...

WHAT DID MAORI ACTUALLY OWN IN 1840 - PART II

The Treaty was never meant to convey to Maori ownership of the entire land area of New Zealand. It was intended to secure the various hapu in their “ownership” of land that they actually used or occupied as at February 1840.

In practice, this meant “ownership” of land identifiably occupied and cultivated. At a most generous assessment, such “ownership” might stretch to include a reasonable hunting and gathering range around a Maori settlement. At the time the Treaty was signed, even in the more populous North Island, such settlements were typically few and far between

In 1840, the North Island was home to an estimated 100, 000 Maori. Edward Dieffenbach, a German-born naturalist who travelled throughout the North Island in 1844, reported that "even in the areas of greatest Maori habitation, there are huge tracts of land, even up to hundreds of miles, between the various tribes [hapu]."

The South Island lay practically deserted. Edward Shortland's 1846 census found some 2, 500 Ngai Tahu, resident at several coastal locations. To suggest that 2, 500 people [a] lived on; [b] cultivated; or [c] hunted and gathered over 13 million hectares of the South Island is sheer casuistry.

Even in the North Island, aside from the immediate areas around a Maori settlement, the "waste lands" were uninhabited, unimproved, uncultivated, and untrod by human feet, other than those of an occasional war party or traveller. The exclusion by any one hapu of other groups was in practical terms impossible, meaning the “waste lands” had neither “customary” nor legal owners.

The mischievous notion that the property rights set out in Article II of the Treaty applied to the entire land area of New Zealand, including the “waste lands,” was implanted in the Maori mind by the missionaries over the decade following the signing of the Treaty. They were well aware the Crown had little money for land purchasing and a mere handful of troops to enforce its edicts.

The missionary agenda was to keep secular, worldly Pakeha confined to areas already settled, thus ensuring missionaries remained the only European influence in the all-Maori hinterlands they wanted to Christianise.

By the early 1840s, Maori had learned that the Crown would pay to acquire the “waste lands,” in order to avoid the trouble it had no military force to quell. Each hapu became an instant "owner" of huge tracts of "waste land" adjoining its settlement. This created multiple competing ownership claims.

Anonymous said...

WHAT DID MAORI ACTUALLY OWN IN 1840 - PART III
To convey a clear title to subsequent purchasers and ensure incoming settlers remained unmolested, the Crown was obliged to extinguish this Maori "ownership" by paying all potential claimants. In many early land purchases the Crown paid out anyone asserting a right to be paid.

Basically a protection racket: "You give us money for something we don't actually own, and we won't mess with your settlers."

The Native [now Maori] Land Court was originally set up to deal with these competing claims to the “waste lands.” "Ownership" was typically awarded to whoever could spin the most convincing whakapapa about how his remote ancestor had travelled over the land 500 years before naming natural features after parts of his body.

Had the missionaries not queered the pitch for the Crown, the "waste lands" and appurtenant rights would have simply been assumed by everyone to be vested in the Crown, to be held, managed, onsold, or otherwise used for the benefit of ALL New Zealanders, irrespective of race.