Tirikatene Rino: Waitaha Claims Settlement Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: Waitaha Claims Settlement Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 05 June 2013. Volume:690;Page:10831. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Ā tēnā koutou e aku rangatira huri noa i te Whare. Ki a koutou Waitaha iwiTe Arawa waka ngā uri whakatipu o Hei me tana tama a Waitaha tēnā koutou tēnā koutou. Nau mai hara mai ki te Whare Pāremata e takatū nei. Nō koutou tēnei rā ko te rā whakahirahira. Kāti tēnā koutou tēna koutou ā tēnā tātou katoa.[Thank you Mr Speaker. Greetings to you my esteemed leaders throughout the House. To you the tribe of Waitaha the canoe ofTe Arawa and the descendants of Hei and his son Waitaha salutations and greetings to you collectively. Welcome welcome indeed to Parliament House standing in readiness here. This is your day and a significant one at that. Enough for now so salutations greetings and congratulations to us all.]It is a great privilege for me to speak at this final reading of the Waitaha Claims Settlement Bill. Every iwi has a story and every story is very significant. One of the great things about being a member on the Māori Affairs Committee is that we have been able to learn a lot about the history of iwi right around the country. For me especially coming from down south I have been enlightened quite a lot with the work that we have achieved with the Waitaha Claims Settlement Bill because Waitaha are in the South Island as well. I understand that the sons of Waitaha settled throughout Aotearoa. So I sort of think that there might be a connection there through the Waitaha that we have down in Murihiku puta noa i Te Wai Pounamu. For me it was nice to make the connection there with the people of Waitaha.Every iwi does have a story and regrettably the story for Waitaha is a very dark history. But it is wonderful to be here at this final reading to see the revitalisation and the re-emergence of the identity and the mana of this great iwi. Waitaha is an iwi that almost—almost—lost its identity along with its lands. We know that they are from theTe Arawa waka but their area of influence stretched from Mauao down to Maketū and inland past Te Teko. When the Crown invaded Waikato in 1863 and as caused by the pressures of those situations whānau had to side certain ways. So some sided with the Kīngitanga some fought with the Crown and some remained neutral but it caused great division between tribes and internal conflict as those situations must have done.Throughout that regrettably it was very unfortunate that the Crown punished Waitaha severely by confiscating 214000 acres as punishment. It said that it would retain a quarter of the land and return the rest but that never happened. I think it is important to never forget why Waitaha live in a place called Manoeka—and that is the beauty of the Māori language Manoeka which literally means 1000 acres—because that was the remnant pieces of land a few small areas of land that were the only pieces of land that were retained.As a result the iwi really struggled to retain its identity and to maintain its way of life because it had so much of its lands taken. But it had very prominent leaders and Hakaraia was one such leader who rose to prominence. He dared to challenge all of the terrible deeds that were going on or as Parekura used to say “the dastardly deeds of the Crown” in terms of the Crown’s surveys and the surveying of confiscated lands and all those other modus operandi as I call them of the Crown around those land confiscations. So Hakaraia the great rangatira rose up and as a result the Crown saw that as a threat and it harassed Hakaraia all the way to his death. At the time it was carrying out a scorched earth policy of the time. That really calls to mind the deed of signing that we had earlier this week with Ngāi Tūhoe. The same tactics were applied to Waitaha.That is a very dark and very blood-drenched history that is a reality for the people here of Waitaha and the same goes for many iwi around the country. So it is important that these stories can be told. I have spoken about them in my earlier speeches in greater detail but it is important that they are put into the statute book. It is great that there are Crown acknowledgments and apologies for those acts or omissions.There are many aspects to the settlement and I know the Minister of Māori Affairs has gone through them in greater detail than I have but I do like to focus on the future—as my colleague Katrina talked about—on our children and their children. That is definitely the tribal slogan I guess for Ngāi Tahu: that it is for us and our children after us. It is wonderful to see the activities that are happening throughout Waitaha through the renovations and revitalisations of their whare tūpuna Hei Marae. They have only one marae but I am really hopeful and I am pretty sure that there will be many more marae for Waitaha that will be re-established over the coming years and decades to come. There is also the new wharekai that is now gracing the marae there at Hei. Ithink it is wonderful to see what the benefits of a settlement can achieve for iwi. Likewise there is the recognition the documentation of the story of Hakaraia and also the creation of education endowments in Hakaraia’s name for his descendants and uri.So those are the aspects of settlement that I am really pleased to see—likewise to see all the happy faces that are here in the gallery today from Waitaha. It has been a long journey but we are almost there. Again I will not prolong my kōrero today only that I wish Waitaha all the very best. Feel free to come down to Te Wai Pounamu and make the hononga connections. I am sure our whānau down there would be delighted to make those connections. I wish you all the very best. I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora tātou.