Tirikatene Rino: Waitaha Claims Settlement Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Tirikatene Rino: Waitaha Claims Settlement Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 19 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5455. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Speaker. E nga Minita tena koutou. Nga mema Paremata tena koutou. Waitaha iwi nau mai hara mai ki te Whare Paremata e takatu nei tena koutou. Apiti hono tatai hono ratou te hunga mate ki a ratou tatou te hunga ora ki a tatou. Tena koutou tena koutou tena tatou katoa. 
[ 
Thank you Mr Speaker. Greetings and acknowledgments to you the Ministers and members of Parliament. Welcome to you the people of Waitaha to the House of Parliament standing here ready welcome and salutations to you collectively. Let them the dead remain united there in the spiritual world and we the living remain here amongst ourselves. So salutations acknowledgments and greetings to us all. 
] 
I am very proud and very pleased to be standing and making my contribution at this first reading of the Waitaha Claims Settlement Bill. The Waitaha deed of settlement is the final settlement of all historical Treaty claims of Waitaha resulting from the acts and omissions of the Crown prior to 21 September 1992. It is made up of a package that includes an agreed historical account and Crown acknowledgments that form the basis of the apology to Waitaha—cultural redress financial redress and commercial redress. But throughout the package and the central part of the settlement is the recognition of telling the story of and the restoration of mana for the Waitaha tupuna Hakaraia Mahika. No private land was affected in the redress; it is Crown land only and the benefits will be available to all Waitaha descendants. 
Waitaha are an ancient iwi that descends from the  
Te Arawa  
waka. Their area of interest and influence is from Waimapu to Mauao along the coastland to Maketu and inland to Otanewainuku. By the 1840s Waitaha occupied land between Tauranga and Te Puke and in the 1840s and 1850s Waitaha chief Hakaraia preached peaceful engagement with Pakeha. When Crown forces invaded the Waikato in July of 1863 a number of Waitaha men fought for the Kingitanga while some fought for the Crown. Others remained neutral. These internal divisions created some acrimony and discord within Waitaha and also the neighbouring iwi.  
When war broke out in Tauranga in 1864 Hakaraia was a spiritual leader for the Maori forces that defeated the Crown troops at Pukehinahina in Gate Pa. When the Crown troops finally managed to win a fight at Te Ranga Waitaha men were among the casualties. In 1865 that led to the Crown actions of the Tauranga confiscations where 214 acres of land around Tauranga were confiscated. Hakaraia rose to prominence as a leader of the resistance to the survey of confiscated land. In 1867 Crown forces assaulted Waitaha settlements in Te Puke destroying houses and crops and livestock as a special punishment for Hakaraia. Using these scorched earth policies the Crown pursued Hakaraia to his ultimate death in 1870. 
The Crown opened negotiations with Waitaha for Te Puke in 1873 before the Native Land Court had determined the block’s ownership. Waitaha did not want to sell Te Puke. However in 1873 there were rival claims over the land which motivated Waitaha to sell part of the block. The Crown pressured Waitaha into selling more land and told Waitaha that the block would be mortgaged to the Government if they did not sell on account of a debt owed by another claimant in Te Puke. This was the classic modus operandi of the Crown back in those days and every time I read about an iwi or a hapu who lost land in this way I feel a real sense of shame and embarrassment in my mind that those things indeed happened. 
In just about every settlement claims bill that comes before this House I have read of Maori having to alienate land because of an accrued debt of survey lands. It seems that Crown theft and broken promises were the main weapons to alienate Maori from their land but if that did not work the Crown could rely on its old hoary trick of indebting Maori and then forcing them to sell to pay off the debt. By 1874 Waitaha was suffering extreme economic hardship and wanted the Crown to pay the balance of the purchase money without waiting for the title to be determined by the court. And when the Crown refused Waitaha tried to withdraw from the sale to sell to a private party but the Crown would not relinquish its purchase and barred private parties from attempting to acquire the land and so the Native Land Court finally awarded title to Waitaha and the Crown purchased the rest of Te Puke over the next 8 years. 
The people of Waitaha took part in many Native Land Court hearings in the 1880s and the 1890s where largely the land was sold during that period. By the end of the 19th century Waitaha had insufficient lands and resources to sustain the tribe. According to Waitaha this forced some tribal members to follow other iwi affiliations. Waitaha expressed this impact in the pepeha “Ko Waitaha te iwi he tangata ngakaurua”—Waitaha is the iwi; they are a people with divided hearts. 
Waitaha was once a powerful tribe but through the loss of land because of Crown actions they have been unable to unite again until now and we are seeing this through the passage of this bill and these Treaty settlements. 
I just want to turn to some particular aspects in this bill which have been touched on by the Minister as well. I am particularly impressed with the cultural revitalisation package and the recognition for Hakaraia that is contained in this bill. The funding of a $3 million education endowment fund in the name of Hakaraia and the funding of $300000 for an accurate historical account fully documenting the history of Waitaha and their great chief Hakaraia as well as the other contributions that are being made for the restoration of Hei Marae and the cultural revitalisation of its people—these are the aspects that are really I believe fundamentally important to all the iwi who come through with these Treaty settlements. It is that establishment of connection to their whenua the restoration of mana for their tupuna and correcting and putting the story straight in terms of the Crown’s acknowledgments and apologies and then all the other redress packages that accrue to the iwi as a result of these settlements. 
The theme of my recent korero on settlement readings—and we have been putting quite a few through this House which has been very very enjoyable actually being part of this—has been this: to understand Maori whakapapa is to understand Maori history and Hakaraia and Waitaha may never have been drawn into the wars of the 1860s had it not been for whakapapa. Some of the Waitaha were related through intermarriage to Waikato-Tainui families who had been drawn into the Kingitanga struggle against the Crown and that formidable General Cameron and some members of Waitaha were on the side of the Crown and so fought their relations in the field. Some Waitaha remained neutral. 
 This situation was not unique to just Waitaha. It was right across the Bay of Plenty and anywhere in New Zealand where the Crown forces were at war with Maori—Port Nicholson Whanganui Taranaki Waikato and in the north. In all these engagements Maori for one reason or another either fought on either side or remained neutral but Maori all across the land were being divided within their family units by the Pakeha duplicity. Once again it is whakapapa that links these stories of different iwi and that is why it is very historic that we are able to usher the passage of these settlement bills through the House at this time. 
In conclusion I would like to make a few acknowledgments to the negotiating team for Waitaha—in particular Papa Tame McCausland and his lovely dear wife Punohu and also the other members of the team who have made a long contribution over many years to come to this particular point. It is a historic day so I am very proud to be speaking at this first reading of this bill. I would also like to acknowledge the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations and all the Crown officials who have also been part of the process. I am looking forward to making my contribution as part of the Maori Affairs Committee under the great leadership of my whanaunga Tau Henare over there. I am looking forward to awhi and tautoko the passage of this bill through the House. I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora tatou.