A Bay of Islands hapu has formally lodged a Treaty of Waitangi claim over the Treaty Grounds at Waitangi.
David Rankin, a Unitec lecturer in Auckland who is spokesman for the Matarahurahu sub-tribe of Ngapuhi, said that the sale by his ancestors Hone Heke and Tuhirangi of the97ha on which the Treaty Grounds and Treaty House sit was invalid.
He cited the "Gipps Proclamations", in which he said the New South Wales governor George Gipps guaranteed a few weeks before the treaty was signed that Maori would keep possession of any land that had not been fairly sold to Europeans prior to 1840 and that had not been investigated by the Crown.
Mr Rankin said the 1832 sale to the British resident James Busby was never investigated, so the Crown could not claim to have paid a fair price for it.
"They broke their own instructions," Mr Rankin said in a statement last week.
Mr Rankin told NZPA that the land was sold for "a couple of muskets and a blanket", so it would be hard for the Crown to claim a fair price was paid for it.
The Gipps Proclamation formed the basis of the hapu's claim against the Crown to be presented to the Waitangi Tribunal, because most of its land was sold before it signed the Treaty.
But he acknowledged it would be hard to have the Treaty Grounds returned to the hapu because it was private land, having been bought by former governor-general Lord Bledisloe and then gifted to the people of New Zealand.
"That land does belong to us and to the nation. We don't necessarily want it back but require some form of compensation because of the bad deals in the past and some form of compensation to bring our hapu into the new millennium," Mr Rankin said.
