Turei Metiria: Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 24 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11228. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green):E Te Māngai o Te Whare tēnā koe. Ki a tātou huri noa i Te Whare tēnā tātou katoa. I te tuatahi me mihi au ki te hunga mate ki a rātou ngā kuia me ngā kaumātua i tautoko i te ara o tēnei whakataunga kua wehe me ngā mate katoa i waenganui i a tātou i tēnei ata haere haere haere oti atu rā! Ki a tātou te kanohi ora e tau nei; tēnā tātou katoa. Nōku te whiwhi ki te tū mō te Rōpū Kākāriki tēnei te pānuitanga tuatahi o te pire mō Te Awa Tupua. He uri ahau o Te Awa Tupua o Ātihaunui ā Pāpārangi. I whānau mai tōku kuia a Piupiu i Hiruhārama ā ka takoto ia i tona moenga roa kei te whenua o Pūtiki. Ka tū toku manawa nā te whakahirahiratanga o tēnei rā mō mātou ngā uri; nō reira tēnā tātou katoa.[Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker and to us all acknowledgments throughout. First of all I pay a tribute to the dead the elderly men and womenfolk who supported the passage of this settlement and who have passed away and all the dead amongst us this morning farewell depart travel on forever! I acknowledge us all seated here; salutations to us all. I am privileged to speak on behalf of the Green Party at this the first reading of the bill for Te Awa Tupua. I am a descendant of it—of Ātihaunui ā Pāpārangi. My grandmother Piupiu was born at Hiruhārama and her resting place is at Pūtiki. My heart came to a halt because of the significance of this day for us offspring; and so greetings to us all.]As a survivor of the people of Te Awa Tupua it really is an honour to have this opportunity to rise on behalf of the Greens to support the first reading of Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Bill.I rere kau mai te awa nui mai i te kāhui maunga ki Tangaroako au te awa ko te awa ko au—the great river flows from the mountains to the sea; I am the river and the river is me. This whakataukī speaks of Te Awa Tupua as an indivisible and living whole comprising the river from the mountains to the sea to its tributaries and all its physical and metaphysical elements. Kia ora Kelvin. Our identity as mana whenua of this rohe is intrinsically and inextricably connected to our awa and so in these lines of the whakataukī also lie the history and the spirit of our people. It is because of this rich history of whakapapa and connection to the land and to the water that the significance of this occasion is certainly not lost on me.This bill gives effect to the deed of settlement Ruruku Whakatupua which is the culmination of well over a century of efforts by our people to protect the awa and our kaitiakitanga relationship to it. The challenges for iwi and hapū to uphold this relationship have been ongoing and massive. In the 1870s and the 1880s they faced regulations that threatened fishing grounds and the economic base the destruction of pā tuna by colonists to make way for gold and coal prospectors the removal of gravel from the awa to build roads the clearing of rapids and the draining of swamps. The removal of gravel has continued over many decades.But throughout this history of pain and despite the confiscation and the violence that has been inflicted on the awa our people have been there at every step of the way doing everything we could to uphold the kaitiaki relationship and to protect the tupuna awa.As far back as 1888 iwi members were petitioning the Crown to stop the destruction of the pā tuna. In 1895 iwi took a claim to the Supreme Court over customary fishing rights. In response the Government established the Whanganui River Māori Trust Board a Crown agency that took control of the awa. From the 1930s to the 1980s iwi would continually fight for the recognition of ownership tikanga ownership of the river. And often those small victories that were won would lead to larger setbacks. After long and hard work during the 1980s and 1990s to get to a place of negotiation with the Crown even then the struggle has had to continue. Two proposals for hydroelectric dams which would have been massively destructive to the mauri of the awa were stopped because of mana whenua claims and campaigns—Pākaitore of the 1990s.In 2001 the same year the terms of negotiation with the Crown was signed the Environment Court approved a 35-year extension to the resource consent for the diversion of the Whanganui awa headwaters which had happened 40 years earlier and was to be continued for another 35 years. It has been a continuous battle for our iwi our people to protect the river against all of the incursions against it. Through it of course our people have endured and so has the river—not in the state that we want it but it is still there still thriving and now under this settlement hopefully with a great deal more control for our people over our place. That is something. That really is something.So I just want to before I finish—I do not want to speak for too long—acknowledge the importance of the legal status that is afforded the awa in this legislation. Yes I agree that it is absolutely about time the law caught up with our tikanga. It has been our tikanga for ever that our environment is entitled to its own integrity is entitled to be protected and restored from damage and injury for its own sake and that our environment however we want to describe it is our ancestor and from where we come and therefore we owe our environment everything—our life our existence our future. The law slowly is starting to find ways—clumsy and not perfect by any means but it is slowly trying to find ways—to understand that core concept.I guess that for those Pākehā who might find it difficult to understand how we could give legal status to an ecology to an environment I ask them to just consider why it is that we have in our law the right for corporations to have legal status as a person. We actually do havein Pākehā law something quite similar. A corporation is not a thing. It does not have a separate identity but it does actually have legal rights like a legal person. A corporation has rights under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act for goodness’ sake. It is just a construction in our own minds about how the law responds to an entity. It is so much more important—so much more important—that we give status for its own sake to the very thing that gives us life and in Whanganui that is our river. It is a small step forward but a step none the less.Finally I want to pay tribute to the negotiators the petitioners the claimants and the kaitiaki of the awa over so many so generations—to all of those who have contributed to getting us to this place in the journey and I wish us all the very best for the future of this settlement and for our awa. Kia ora koutou katoa.