Delahunty Catherine: Port Nicholson Block (Taranaki Whanui ki Te Upoko o Te Ika) Claims Settlement Bill — In Committee 
Delahunty Catherine: Port Nicholson Block (Taranaki Whanui ki Te Upoko o Te Ika) Claims Settlement Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:655;Page:5050] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Chairman. He mihi nui ki a Taranaki Whanui ki Te Upoko o Te Ika. 
[ 
Greetings to you Mr Chairman and a huge one to Taranaki Whanui ki Te Upoko o Te Ika 
.] 
As I did yesterday in the second reading I take the opportunity to acknowledge the people who brought this process to its completion and the huge nature of the task. I would also like to speak about the need for Pakeha in particular to embrace our obligations to the healing of the damage of colonisation. One point that the Green Party makes today is that that process is not about just the settlements important and vital as they are. As the previous speaker said they are ongoing relationships supported by and built on the foundation that is Te Tiriti o Waitangi and I use the te reo version because that is the one our nation is based upon. I sometimes fear that Pakeha think that if we settle all the claims we have settled te Tiriti and we can go on pretending that the history has never happened and that we are a Pakeha nation. I think we are moving away from that understanding but there is still a great need for us to recognise the absolute foundation te Tiriti offers us and that the claims important as they are are a part of the process but will never be the process in itself. The relationship is for ever. From the moment that my ancestors came to this country the relationship they had legitimacy through was Te Tiriti o Waitangi and that is why te Tiriti lives for ever and should live for ever. 
I would also like to acknowledge the importance of the transformative process of the claims not only for the economic value to people rebuilding their communities but to the power of the story itself. I participated in and listened to some of the Turanga claim and I heard mostly from whanau in the areas where I have lived about the painful process of transformation that comes when we pass on to our young people the stories of what we have experienced in our ancestry. There is no point in trying to look at the future unless we understand the past. One of the things I have learnt from working with tangata whenua people is that the past is in front of us for a reason. It is not just about moving forward which is one of the greatest and most boring cliches we hear all the time; it is about acknowledging the past in order to understand how to create a future. That is why the stories of what has happened to people and what our relationships to each other have been in this country are so important. 
The first time I did a tour of this House I looked around the walls and saw acknowledgments of many battles. But the battle that is not on this wall is the battle of the Land Wars whereby Maori sought to maintain the right to live on their own land as well as to embrace the manuhiri. That battle is not on the walls but it should be because it is actually being resolved through the upholding and settlement of Treaty issues. So it is very very important that we do not focus just on the foreign battles. We must also acknowledge the battle that has formed our nation and if we work correctly through the process we can come to a good place. That is what the claim is part of; it is by no means the whole. 
I also think it is important to acknowledge the processes of looking at the damage. I talked a little bit yesterday about the pollution of the harbour here. The front page of the  
Dominion Post 
 today talks yet again about the pollution of the harbour—how yet again the tangata whenua’s resource and relationship is being sullied by the bad management of sewage pouring into the harbour through stormwater. In the 21st century although we pride ourselves on being a modern nation we still cannot keep our waste out of water and we still cannot hear the voices of those kaitiaki who have upheld that as an abuse year after year. 
On Sunday I went to see a kuia up north in Ngati Whanaunga Betty Williams and she said to me that the value of kaitiakitanga and the value of these issues is that we all have an obligation in this country—Maori tauiwi katoa—to manage the mana and mauri of our whakapapa in relation to the Earth. If we break those things and if we cannot sustain the vital fundamental relationship of ourselves to the natural resources of the world it does not matter how clever we are or how many economic projects we have. These concepts are not something I was brought up with; these concepts are embedded in the understanding of people like Betty Williams and they offer this country a vision that is so much more than just talking about the economic gain of the settlement. They are about the deep thing—about what it is to actually be alive and be an animal trying to live with other life forms on planet Earth. So if we cannot talk about the understanding that we are all connected throughout all of our whakapapa to those things we are never going to get it and we will end up as a sick population. 
I would like to briefly acknowledge the Treaty claim which has done something powerful in allowing us to have this conversation but also to acknowledge that te Tiriti is about more than this conversation or a claim. I wish all power to Taranaki Whanau ki Te Upoko o Te Ika and may Te Upoko o Te Ika truly be the brilliant head of the fish. The Green Party is happy to support the Committee stage of this bill. Kia ora.