Henare Tau: Rongowhakaata Claims Settlement Bill — First Reading 
Henare Tau: Rongowhakaata Claims Settlement Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:678;Page:1051] 
Hon TAU HENARE (National) 
: 
 Kai te mihi ki a koutou katoa e aku rangatira e aku tuakana i hara mai nei i tenei wa. No reira e patai au ki a koutou ko wai tenei Ngapuhi e tu ana i mua i a koutou? No reira he Rongowhakaata ahau. 
[ 
I acknowledge you all my leaders and elder siblings who have come here at this moment. So I ask you collectively: why is this Nga Puhi standing before you? It is because I am a Rongowhakaata. 
] 
So who am I? Briefly—sometimes I ask myself that: who am I? But this is who I am for all and sundry to know. I come out of Te Noke who was a sister of Hauora who was a sister of Raharuhi Rukupo. The artistic side of my lineage somehow has deserted me and it has jumped to my son who is a student at Toihoukura in Gisborne. So it all sort of fits.  
I am over the moon to be able to have a few minutes in the House tonight ostensibly because of what I consider to be the most heinous crimes perpetrated against a people. Not only were members of Rongowhakaata summarily executed—and that is what it was. They were killed. They were murdered. They were taken out the back and shot. Their house that Rukupo carved—and we are not talking about a nickel-and-dime artist; we are talking about a person who is the equivalent most probably of somebody like Picasso or somebody like Rembrandt. If we really knew our history and really wondered at our history Rukupo would be in that category. My brother over there Parekura mentioned that I got hitched last night—[ 
Interruption 
] I still had to make her a cup of coffee this morning so nothing has changed! But her connections: some will know that she is Ngati Porou on her mother’s side. But also she is out of Te Aitangi-a-Mahaki—Arapeta Te Taniwha whose daughter was taken to the Chathams and perished on the Chathams as part of the retribution that the Crown laid out to Te Kooti and his followers.  
Every time for the last 12 months that I have been in the Gisborne area I have jumped in a car and travelled around Ngatapa and little spots around Rongowhakaata wondering who I was and also getting a feel for like I said what were the most heinous of crimes perpetrated on a people in New Zealand. My reason for standing here tonight is not so much to talk about what is in the Rongowhakaata Claims Settlement Bill but to pass a message to New Zealand and that is to read the story—read New Zealand’s unique story. We do have a story to tell. I along with my colleagues cannot wait until the Maori Affairs Committee gets into Manutuke—[ 
Interruption 
]—yes you are welcome at my place—and hears some of the stories and why we should be making sure we pass this legislation.  
But you cannot call yourself a truly democratic society until all of your nation’s sores have been healed. We travel around the world and we talk about democracy and we talk about a truly democratic society but we have to heal those wounds first of all before we can truly go and lecture other people around the world. We have to hear the stories to be able to heal those wounds and I think this is one of the ways that we do tell the story not only by settling with a group of people but also by enshrining in legislation that story so that for generations to come young people can pick up a book a story and read about our history.  
If you go to Matawhero you will get some sense of just a little bit of what happened—the massacre at Matawhero. When I was at school—and I was a great scholar at Hillary College—we used to study this topic called social studies. And in it was always the story of how Te Kooti massacred those people up at Matawhero. But when you read behind the scenes and read the story of what actually happened it is no wonder he went on the rampage. Te Kooti was a mate of the Crown or so he thought until somebody stitched him up because of a business deal. He was a businessman. He most probably would be a member of the National Party.  
Grant Robertson 
: What about Mauri Pacific? 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Well maybe. But he was stitched up quite nicely by a number of people who now reside in the urupa just up in Makara.  
These are fantastic opportunities to pour out our soul as a nation and get on the road to making sure our young people have something. I cannot wait for the day whether I am here in the Chamber or not of the return of Te Hau ki Turanga. You can kill a people and they always pop up. They always have uri. But what the Crown did in stealing somebody’s house—and it was not just a house; it was the essence of Rongowhakaata. They stole that and they took it down here and that was not the end of it. Some of the carvings over the period that the Dominion Museum had it were cut were sawn were made smaller than they were just to be able to fit into the Dominion Museum. So the crime continues on. Not only did they take it; they tried to render it smaller so it could fit into a museum. I consider that to be—I was going to use the “h” word but I do not think I will. But I consider it to be a heinous crime that we are about to hopefully pay some recompense for.  
These bills are not done in the dead of night. They are not rushed through. How can anybody suggest to me or anybody else that they are rushed through when these people have been waiting for justice for hundreds of years? It is about time and I think I speak for all of the members of the House that we revel in this sort of legislation. We should pat ourselves on the back for a job well done and hopefully we will not take too long through the select committee process to get the bill back here for its third reading so that these people can get on with being who they are: Rongowhakaata hard. Kia ora. 
Bill read a first time.  
Bill referred to the Maori Affairs Committee. 
Waiata