Flavell Te UruroaHon TE URUROA FLAVELL (Co-Leader—Māori Party): E Te Mana Whakawā tēnā koe i tēnei ata ka mihi rā ki a koe Peeni mō te āhuatanga o tā tātau whakarite i tēnei rā ka mutu ki ngā kōrero kua puta i tēnei rā. Kai ngā huānga o Taranaki Maunga Te Maunga Tītōhea tēnā koutou tēnā koutou e rarau ki roto i Te Whare Pāremata. Hara mai ki Te Whare Pāremata ā hāunga āhua tūreiti tā koutou haramai waiho tērā take ki reira! Kia whaiwhai haere i te kōrero o taku tuahine kia tau te rangimārie ki waenganui i a tātau. Ko te kaupapa nui kua tae mai koutou i tēnei rangi ka pai ka pai ka pai. Ko tāku he whakapiri atu ki ngā kōrero kua kōrerohia e aku tuākana e aku tuāhine ki a koutou haere mai haere mai me ngā mate huhua kua pā mai ki a koutou o Taranaki a Taranaki Whānui tonu. I rongo nei i ngā kōrero o Te Minita i tēnei ata mō te hunga kua ngaro atu i te tirohanga kanohi ka tangi ake! I rongo i ngā ingoa i kitea i rangona e au i te wā i a au e noho ana i Taranaki. Ko John Almond mā ko tērā momo ko Mate Kaa Josie Bingham tērā hunga i kaha nei ki te hāpai i tēnei o ngā kaupapa. Ko ētahi kua ngaro ēngari anei koutou kua tae mai i tēnei rā Daisy koutou ko tō tiraWīremu haere mai! Whaiwhai haere i ngā tapuwae o rātau mā. Ko te kōrero tuatahi kua tīmata te tangi ā he oranga ngākau kua tae mai koutou i tēnei rangi ki te whakatutuki i tēnei kaupapa. Kua oti kē i a rātau te whakatakoto kōrero ko te wāhi ki a au i te whakaaro ake me pēhea e taea ai te whaiwhai haere i ērā kōrero i te mea i ruku hōhonu nei rātau ki te hōhonutanga o tēnei kaupapa. Nō reira ko tāku e pēnei ana kua huri ki Te Reo Pākehā he māmā ake taku kōrero.[Thank you this morning Mr Deputy Speaker and my appreciation to you Peeni Hēnare for opening our proceedings with a prayer today. To you the relatives of Taranaki Mountain Barren Mountain salutations and acknowledgments to you collectively captivated here in Parliament. Welcome to the Chamber despite your being somewhat late but we will leave that matter there! I will follow up on my sister colleague's statement that peace must prevail amongst us. The main thing is that you collectively have arrived here today—well done wonderful great stuff! Mine is merely to add to the contributions made by my elder and sister colleagues to you. Welcome come forth with the many deaths that have affected you collectively of Taranaki really broadly. I heard the Minister's references this morning to those whose faces are lost from view and no longer seen and so I mourn them. I heard the names I recognised and heard about them when I lived in Taranaki: John Almond and them of that ilk Mate Kaa Josie Bingham; those ones who worked hard to take up this one of the issues. Some have gone but you are here and have arrived today—Daisy you and your travelling party; Wīremu and their travelling party following in the footsteps your ancestors. Welcome. It is the first contribution and I begin to cry reassured that you have arrived today to complete this matter. Others have already set down their views and my part is to consider how I should follow up those statements because they have delved deeply into this matter. And so from my perspective I will turn to the English language to make my address less restrictive.]Mr Deputy Speaker as someone who lives sort of close to Taranaki maunga or at least can see it from Whanganui I am sure you will join with me in welcoming our visitors to Whare Pāremata. About 30 years ago maybe 40 years ago young as I look I went across to Taranaki having been chased by my wife to head across to Taranaki to try to contribute on my wife's side. I have got to say that when I arrived in Taranaki as someone who went from Rotorua I was taken aback by the few speakers of Māori whom they had amongst their people. I was taken aback by the understanding of history.I was taken aback by I suppose almost a depression that you sometimes felt when you went out to Parihaka on the 18th and 19th of every month. I never got to grips with it until I actually understood that when you have your land taken from you you are bound to be depressed you are bound to be angry and you are bound to be deeply sad. And would you put it out there? Probably not. These people are very understanding. These people are very understanding and they decided No no we won't go the war approach."—well yeah they did actually. But there is another way. There is another way.So I want to talk about three people not just because—well actually they are people whom I sort of know about. But I thought rather than duplicate some of the other information that has been around they for me sort of give me an idea about how Taranaki feel about certain issues. When I was there we tried to wake that sleeping giant. What we call "proactive initiators" others will call "protesters"; but for us we call them "proactive initiators". The idea was to try to give information to people and boy did we awake a bit of a giant. We will talk about that later on in the Taranaki and Te Atiawa bills.But there are three people I think who really gave it to me in terms of a real understanding about Taranaki history and about how they feel about confiscation and what happened to their people. The first person goes by the name of Tohe Pakanga Ngātai. I met that koroua—he gave me the willies. Why? Because he was a direct sort of fulla he just came straight—bang. And you would understand it because his name was Tohe Pakanga tohe meaning to fight and pakanga meaning a battle. His whole life was understanding the confiscation issues of Taranaki and his tūpuna before him obviously knew it was a big issue because they called him Tohe Pakanga. He did not let them down because he lived by "tohe pakanga". Everything he did was about tohe even how he talked. Actually at his heart he was a very humble man—but man talk about confiscation and you wake a sleeping giant. Why? Because he learnt from his elders about the effects of confiscation on Taranaki people across the board. So I pay tribute to Tohe Pakanga. Actually there are a couple of other people in this gallery whose names are called Tohe as well—even not officially some of them are still Tohe.The second person I want to pay tribute to is a person by the name of Hōri Manuirirangi. Hōri Manuirirangi—I do not know whether he is in the gallery today; probably not. Ha ha! Hōri Manuirirangi is probably not in the gallery because he does not necessarily agree with what is happening here. And you would understand that as well because when I was there 30 to 40 years ago Hōri Manuirirangi used to haul me up especially after we got these courses going and say: "Righto what are we going to do? Let's march. Let's do something. I want my land back. Give it back to Ngāti Tū." That is all he has ever been on about. Even 30 years on when I see him in Taranaki: "Te Ururoa let's have a talk. I want my land back. Get it off PKW." And you would understand that because Hōri Manuirirangi is of that generation like Mate Kaa who heard about and talked about confiscation on their marae at almost every opportunity. You would understand that because most of the waiata—this is from Te Arawa fulla—are all about confiscation. They are all about the effects of the Crown on Taranaki people—pretty much most of them.I think that when we hear the waiata from Te Atiawa it will be "E Rere Rā"—maybe not. But that is all about the arrival of the soldiers into Parihaka. When Taranaki come in we might hear about the piukara piukara meaning the trumpet the bugle—maybe not. They might sing another waiata but it does not matter because whatever waiata they choose—"I Te Rā o Māehe"—pretty much all of them are all about confiscation. Pretty much all of them and that is how deep-seated confiscation is in the hearts and minds of Taranaki people.For me as somebody who went and stayed there you cannot understand the issues of confiscation until you go to the people you sit with the people you actually live with the people and you understand their hurt. There must be something to it because for the last umpteenth hundred years—well maybe not a hundred years but certainly for a fair while—people have gone to Parihaka on the 18th and 19th of every month not broken. Why is that? Why because they have an opportunity to talk to their issues. What are their issues? Confiscation land disempowerment—the whole shooting match.So there is the second person I want to talk about Hōri Manuirirangi. I love him to death. I do not mind those ones—I do not mind those ones. It is important that they have a voice. It is important that they have a voice to keep us all rock solid. It is a bit of a hōhā at times but that is all right. Hōri Manuirirangi no one can question his commitment to his people—no one. He might have a different view about the world but that is all right. Koinā te āhuatanga o te tangata.[That is the trait of the individual.]The last person I want to talk to is somebody I never had the fortune to meet—well I wish I had done. His name was Tītokowaru. I say Tītokowaru because again Tītokowaru is somebody who is in the hearts and minds of certainly the people who are here today Ngāruahine. Why? Because you have got to ask yourself how a person can have their land lost from them get into scraps deal to the settlers have battles and against all of that confiscation flip to the absolute opposite of passive resistance. How is that possible? With all that pain you lose your land you are scrapping all the time year in year out. I have got a whole blimmin biography of Tītokowaru. Over years he had five conferences to try to pull everybody together he formed alliances up in Waikato and then for some reason he goes flip—over to the other side. Christianity a faith and hope for his people and again he called people together to in a sense stand with Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi in a whole new way of thinking about the engagement with Crown forces. Peace for goodness' sake! Peace after what happened to them and the loss of their land!I do not know that I will ever get a full understanding of the loss of what that feels like for somebody to just come in—actually I have seen the map. You see the confiscation line. Actually probably somebody in here at the time did some lines. They were lousy drawers because it went crooked now and again but that was the confiscation line that just went down the page on a map a few kinks here and there and said that everything to the left was now the Crown's. I mean can we really get any understanding of that happening in here. Somebody did it—put a line on a map said "Oh a bit hard that way; too much bush. Let's go a little bit left." straight down and said that everything to the left now belonged to the Crown. I mean there must have been something seriously wrong at that time. There must have been some—who knows? That somebody could do that and say: "Righto go make it happen."So I talk about names because some names in Taranaki history are celebrated on some of those street names in Hāwera Ōkaiawa—oh I do not know about Ōkaiawa; there are only a few streets there. I am just saying—Ngāraina Brooks there are only a few streets there. But names are important because despite the fact that we are doing a settlement today that will hopefully be the light into the future the names of those people who are involved in that issue are still in the hearts and minds—and the worst part is that they always will be. Why? Because they are the street names of a number of streets in Taranaki and Hāwera and New Plymouth and Ōpunake and possibly Ōkaiawa. That being the case let us think about history. I hope that the journals that come from the Taranaki settlement are available to every school in this country. In fact people should read them—in particular people associated with Hobson's choice—to understand what happened in this country's history.The final point I will make—talking about names and just to wrap it up—is that I want to name the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations the Hon Christopher Finlayson for the work that he has done to advance this kaupapa. We could have been coming back next year to do this. Ki a koe e Te Minita ka nui te mihi ki a koe i akiaki nei i tēnei kaupapa ki tōna taumata me mihi rā Te Ao Māori ki a koe. Ko te wāhi ki a au ā-Minita nei kia tū i tō taha ki te whaiwhai haere i ēnei kaupapa.[As far as you are concerned Minister I applaud you greatly for urging this matter on to its pinnacle. Māoridom must commend you for that. The part for me as a Minister is to stand beside you and to follow up these initiatives.]I want to acknowledge you and the work that you have done. E te iwi it is going to be a long morning. I have got other good things to say this morning but for now ko tāku ko te kī atu hara mai me te pare kawakawa o te hunga kua ngaro kia tangihia e tātau i tēnei rā ēngari waiho tērā ki reira. Āpōpō he rā anō kua whiti mai te rā kua kite mai ai te māramatanga o ngā kaupapa kōrero i kōkirihia i tēnei rā tonu nei. Kia kaha kia toa i roto i ngā tau kei mua i te aroaro! Kia kaua tātau e hoki whakamuri ēngari arā anō te paerangi tēnā koutou tēnā koutou kia ora tātau katoa.[I say to you welcome with the garland of grief of those who are gone for us to mourn on this day but leave that there. Tomorrow is another day when the sun shall rise and the significance of the initiatives discussed on this very day will be recognised. Be strong and brave in the years ahead. We must never go backwards but there indeed is the distant horizon ahead. Well done and congratulations to you collectively and to us all.]"