Turei Metiria: Ngati Tuwharetoa (Bay of Plenty) Claims Settlement Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Turei Metiria: Ngati Tuwharetoa (Bay of Plenty) Claims Settlement Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:625;Page:20191] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 The preamble contains a description of the Compensation Court process that was established to deal with the return to Tuwharetoa of wrongly confiscated land. The preamble talks about how approximately 87000 acres of confiscated land was divided into blocks. The Compensation Court after hearing various evidence decided to return some of that land. It did so by returning a couple of blocks. One block was given to 10 people and one block was given to 13 people. Those awards were made on the basis that those people were the rightful owners and were not implicated in the so-called rebellion. At the time Tuwharetoa considered that the returned land was to be held in trust for the iwi as a whole. But because of the nature of the Compensation Court—the cultural milieu out of which it was developed—there was in fact never any mention of those people holding the land in trust and those blocks were granted to those 10 and 13 people respectively as individual owners. 
The preamble goes on to describe how difficult that was and what that meant for the iwi. In fact it meant the further loss of the land by placing the land effectively under individual ownership rather than collective ownership and enabling it to be on-sold. One of the signals that that shows for all of us is that when those processes by which restitution is made are developed in isolation from the tangata whenua for whom the restitution is designed or when the processes are developed in isolation from the tikanga and the values of the people affected huge mistakes are made. Part of making the mistake is identifying and picking winners and leaving losers. The Compensation Court process established in 1863 was a clear and classic case of the Crown establishing a process without tikanga and consultation then leaving Maori bereft when they were supposed to be restored. 
What I would like to see and be made clear in this Committee tonight is the fact that we are again seeing that exact same process. The process for restitution of wrongs done in the past through Crown settlements and via the Office of Treaty Settlements is again a process that has been established within the cultural milieu of the Government of the time. It does not involve and never has involved any real consultation with the tangata whenua. It is not based on tikanga; it is based primarily on the policy of Governments and the desires and needs of Governments. It is not based on the real justice that should be attributed to the tangata whenua or to the mana whenua who have been wronged whose land has been taken wrongly and who deserve to have justice restored to them. It is just one example of how the same process is again occurring here in the Tuwharetoa bill. 
I refer now to submitters who came to the Maori Affairs Committee such as the Ngati Rangitihi and their story about their attempts to do the best for their own people and to find a way to develop and progress their claims through the mechanisms available to them—established by Governments over time and supported by this Government—like the Waitangi Tribunal and the claims process. I refer to their efforts to ensure that the land within their rohe is protected from the settlements that are occurring around them particularly that of Ngati Awa and of Tuwharetoa as well. The Crown through its settlement process has picked Tuwharetoa as a winner in this regard over this area of land so that Ngati Rangitihi have been unable to secure funding even for their research. Ngati Rangitihi told the select committee that Ngati Awa had received $3 million and Tuwharetoa $1.5 million to help with the research of their claims yet they were entitled only to $200 per witness to help with witness costs and no money to help them with their research. 
If Ngati Rangitihi cannot get support even to research their claim then their losses and the injustice done to them as an iwi within that area cannot be properly dealt with through the Government’s own processes. Therefore they are being robbed of their capacity and of their access to the justice system through the settlement process and through the process of restitution and restoration of lands to the iwi from whom it was taken. We are again seeing Government process being used to pick winners and identify losers which leaves those who are not yet ready to claim those who cannot yet secure funding yet to prepare research in order to pursue their claims and those who are choosing alternative paths to settlement again to be without justice.