Turei Metiria: Ngāruahine Claims Settlement Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: Ngāruahine Claims Settlement Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 11 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5674. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green):E te Māngai o te Whare tēnā koe tuarua ki ngā mema ō tō tātou Whare tēnā koutou katoa tuatoru ka mihi atu ki a Ngāruahine me ngā hapū katoa ka mihi aroha ki a koutou katoa.[Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker of the House; secondly acknowledgments to all members; and thirdly I welcome you Ngāruahine and all the subtribes.]Last year John Key responded to the Waitangi Tribunal claim on Te Paparahi o Te Raki by saying that New Zealand was settled “peacefully”—that was the word he used. And he went on to explain that Māori would have been grateful for the injection of capital that early Pākēha brought with them when they settled Aotearoa New Zealand—Māori would have been grateful for the capital! The history of Ngāruahine puts John Key back in his place—someone who is sadly ignorant of his own history of his own country and of the efforts of his own Government to respond to that history with some restitution.This morning I want to set out some of that history as John Key’s own Government has described it in its own legislation before us today and to suggest that perhaps he might want to reflect on both the inaccuracy and the offensiveness of his earlier comments. Before 1860 Ngāruahine were prosperous and economically successful and retained ownership of their lands and resources after consistently opposing the sale of land in their rohe to Europeans.In the late 1850s some Ngāruahine provided assistance to northern Taranaki iwi who were also resisting Crown efforts to acquire land. The Crown declared some Māori who were preventing the surveys elsewhere in Taranaki to be in rebellion and commenced hostilities against them. Some Ngāruahine entered the war on the side of the non-sellers. Following the occupation of the Tataraimaka Block by Crown troops conflict in Taranaki resumed in 1863 and Ngāruahine people again travelled north to engage with Crown forces.In 1865 the Crown proclaimed 1.2 million acres of Taranaki land confiscated including all of the Ngāruahine rohe. The confiscations were indiscriminate depriving both “loyal” and “rebel” Māori of their lands. The war continued and in early 1866 Crown forces entered the Ngāruahine rohe and used scorched earth tactics which devastated several Ngāruahine villages along with associated food stores livestock and crops. As a result of the Crown’s military campaigns Ngāruahine people were forced to abandon their former homes and food-gathering sites suffering severe hardship. Some Ngāruahine people were taken prisoner during the war and a number lost their lives.The process that was established to compensate “loyal” Māori for the confiscation of their land began in the 1860s before the fighting had come to an end in South Taranaki and this made it very difficult for Ngāruahine people to participate in the hearings for that compensation. By 1880 none of the compensation court awards to Ngāruahine had been implemented.So the settlement legislation says the Crown acknowledges that the cumulative effect of the Crown’s actions in purchasing land in Taranaki created tensions that led to the outbreak of war; that it conducted a bush scouring campaign and used scorched earth tactics in southern Taranaki to reduce the ability of Māori including Ngāruahine to fight; that these campaigns resulted in the devastation of a number of important Ngāruahine kāinga including Māwhitiwhiti and Ahipaipa and forced Ngāruahine to flee their settlements causing severe hardship for them; that Ngāruahine suffered loss of life during the Taranaki wars; and that the Taranaki wars constituted an injustice. It does not sound like peaceful settlement to me.The settlement bill goes on to describe that in the early 1870s many Ngāruahine returned to their lands on the Waimate plains. Through the 1870s the Crown attempted to secure nominally confiscated Ngāruahine land for European settlement by making formal and informal payments to Māori and by promising to provide reserves and protect significant Ngāruahine sites. These promises were not fulfilled. By the late 1870s many Ngāruahine people were uncertain about the status of their lands.By this time many Ngāruahine had relocated to Parihaka in central Taranaki and were supporting its leaders Te Whiti and Tohu Kākahi and their movement for Māori peace and independence.The Crown acknowledges that Ngāruahine provided material support to the Parihaka community and that large numbers of Ngāruahine people were residing at Parihaka when Crown forces invaded the settlement in 1881. It inflicted serious damage on the prosperous Māori village of Parihaka and the people residing there forcibly dispersing many of the inhabitants and assaulted the human rights of the people. These actions caused great distress and were a complete denial of the Māori right to develop and sustain autonomous communities in a peaceful manner and its treatment of Ngāruahine people at Parihaka was unconscionable and a breach of the Treaty of Waitangi.The Crown also goes on to acknowledge that it detained members of Ngāruahine and other Māori of Taranaki for their participation in the peaceful resistance campaigns initiated at Parihaka that legislation was enacted that suspended the ordinary course of law and that as a result most prisoners including many Ngāruahine people were detained without trial. The detention of those prisoners without trial for an unreasonably lengthy period assumed the character of indefinite detention and the imprisonment of Ngāruahine and other Māori of Taranaki in South Island gaols for political reasons inflicted unwarranted hardships on them and their whānau. The treatment the Crown acknowledges of these political prisoners was wrongful a breach of natural justice and deprived them of their basic human rights.There is much more of this history—this demonstrable proven history—in the settlement legislation. I would urge all New Zealanders to take the opportunity while this bill and other settlement bills are going through the House to look at those histories to learn what those histories are especially in their own areas and to understand what happened in their own country so that we may learn from those lessons understand where we come from and present a much brighter vision for how we might proceed in the future. The history set out in the Ngāruahine legislation shows just the first decade after Te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed and it is a history of violence racism and theft all of which characterise the colonisation process. It was not peaceful; it was not about fair exchange. It was about greed.Treaty settlements have many problems in the Green Party’s view but one of the things they get right is the setting out of our collective history. We need to make more of these accounts—to understand them to learn them and to learn lessons from them. I want to wish Ngāruahine all the very best for the future of their settlement. I look forward to talking with them more about this in the select committee. Tēnā koutou katoa.