Napier treaty settlement after 170 years

Ikaroa-Rawhiti MP Meka Whaitiri represented as the last speaker before the enactment after two hours in the House. Photo NZME

A settlement of one of the most protracted claims before the Waitangi Tribunal has been met with a plea for mandated Napier governance entity Mana Ahuriri and opponents to work together to make it work.

The plea came in Parliament today from Labour-List MP Willie Jackson, one of 12 speakers the as Ahuriri Hapu Claims Settlement Bill was passed into law – 170 years after Crown agents and chiefs signed the Ahuriri Purchase from which grievances began developing almost immediately over Crown failures to meet its promises for a better future for Maori of the area.

Jackson said MPs had been "lobbied strongly" by those who did not want to settle in the form proposed in the bill, and it was one of the types of pressures faced by negotiators in the claims process.

"I say to those people to see if you can work with your whanaunga," he said. "That is the challenge."

The settlement was "hardly going to make them rich or billionaires," he said, but it could be managed to make a future for the rangatahi and generations of the future.

The settlement comes more than 33 years after the lodging of central claim Wai55 on behalf of seven shoreline hapu of once expansive inland waterway Te Whanganui a Orotu, now known as the Ahuriri Estuary and Napier inner harbour, in a process only enabled by the establishment of the Treaty of Waitangi claims process in 1975.

Tribunal hearings in the early 1990s led to a report reported on June 13, 1995, that claims Maori had been left landless and stripped of social and economic aspiration were just and there should be redress and apology.

But as processional changes and other factors intervened a deed of settlement was not signed until November 2, 2016, and it did not hit Parliament, for its first reading, in March last year.

Latter years have been troubled by concerns about the mandating of Mana Ahuriri, its governance and an apology as it relates to the Omarunui incident of 1866, which saw the Crown shooting of hapu members and despatchment of others to confinement in the Chatham Islands, in conflict with their compliant approach with the Crown.

Both the patience of Hinepare, Ngāti Māhu, Ngāti Paarau, Ngāti Tū, Ngai Te Ruruku, Ngai Tawhao and Ngāti Matepū over many generations and the graciousness of Ngati Paarau in not wishing to stand in the way of settlement were referred to in Parliament.

Labour MP Tamati Coffey ensured the reading of the full apology in a settlement which includes such things as ownership and access to land, airport shares, restoration of Mataruahau as the name of Bluff, Middle and Hospital hills, and establishment of unique statutory estuary management body Te Komiti Muriwai o Te Whanga.

Central to the claim was Te Whanganui a Orotu, and protestation that the Crown had not stuck to the agreement that the purchase was of that which was above the high-water mark, while that below, including the whanga, much-since reduced by reclamation and the impacts of the 1931 Hawke's Bay Earthquake, was retained by Maori.

With the reading moved by Minister of Treaty Settlements Andrew Little and backed by National Party MP Harete Hipango, hapu members who had travelled to Wellington were restricted by pandemic requirements and had to watch via audio-visual link.

Ikaroa Rawhiti MP Meka Whaitiri tended to represent them as the last speaker before the enactment after two hours in the House, signing of with the waiata Pania of the Reef.