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TUHOE & TE UREWERA NATIONAL PARK

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« on: May 19, 2010, 03:07:57 pm »


Te Urewera Settlement Policy from a Regional National Party Conference held at Masterton!



Key refuses to hand over park to Tuhoe

NZPA | 9:45AM - Monday, May 17, 2010

Tuhoe's chief negotiator, Tamati Kruger. — Photo: Greg Bowker.
Tuhoe's chief negotiator, Tamati Kruger.
 — Photo: Greg Bowker.


Tuhoe says the Government has caved in to unwarranted political unease in National Party ranks by its decision to rule out giving the tribe ownership of the Te Urewera National Park as part of its settlement.

Mr Key yesterday told Tuhoe negotiators that transferring ownership of the 212,672ha Te Urewera national park to the iwi was not acceptable to the Government.

He also broke from usual practice by announcing the decision publicly, saying the matter had to be cleared up following a series of media stories about the possibility of the transfer happening.

The decision has come as a blow to Tuhoe, which was expecting the ownership transfer in a second settlement offer from the Crown.

Tuhoe's chief negotiator, Tamati Kruger, voiced disgust at the decision, saying the "eleventh hour" decision to pull the proposal was prompted by "a failure of nerve and loss of resolve".

Last night the Maori Party co-leader, Tariana Turia, said: "As a Maori Party leader I'm tired of the politics of race being brought into the equation — this is an issue of leadership and justice.

"Tuhoe have behaved with honour right throughout the negotiation process. I question what we see happening here."

Tuhoe representatives had met several ministers, other politicians and local interest groups to reassure them about access to the park and the way Tuhoe would run it.

"Despite overwhelming public support, internal National Party political concerns have won out. We believe these concerns are based on superstition and not fact," they said.

Some ministers are understood to be concerned about the issue coming so close on the back of heightened sensitivities over mining on conservation land as well as proposals to allow customary title claims over the foreshore and seabed.

However, Mr Key denied it was because of unease about the potential public reaction to such a move. His main concern was about the precedent it would set.

It was a major departure from the usual practices in dealing with substantial lands in settlements and would have been the first time such a significant piece of the Conservation estate had been handed over to an iwi.

Mr Key acknowledged that it was a strong wish of Tuhoe's and that they were willing to guarantee public access and ensure it was managed in a way akin to a national park.

"We understand that. But it's also been a long-held view from the Government that that would be very challenging — and they were always aware it would be very challenging."

The decision will imperil the Government's chances of reaching a timely settlement with Tuhoe — ownership of that area was one of its "bottom lines" and one of the main reasons it rejected the Crown's first settlement offer.

The negotiators would seek an explanation from the Cabinet.


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10645529
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« Reply #1 on: May 19, 2010, 11:12:29 pm »


Turia rejects Key's Urewera line

By YVONNE TAHANA and AUDREY YOUNG - The New Zealand Herald | 4:00AM - Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Tariana Turia. — Photo: Mark Mitchell.
Tariana Turia. — Photo: Mark Mitchell.

Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia has questioned the honour of Prime Minister John Key's Cabinet over the decision to take ownership of the Urewera National Park off the negotiating table with Tuhoe.

In what appears to be a serious strain with the Government, she also disputed Mr Key's claim yesterday that she was "fine" when he talked to her about it on Sunday night.

Asked last night if her party could continue in coalition with National, she said "we began that discussion on Sunday night", but hadn't talked to Mr Key since.

When Mr Key was asked yesterday if the relationship with the Maori Party was in jeopardy he said "not in the slightest".

Mr Key announced after Cabinet on Monday that ownership of Te Urewera National Park was unacceptable to the Government in any settlement package.

Tuhoe had expected the final offer, including ownership, to be approved, and had pencilled in a hui for Friday for the signing of an agreement in principle. That hui has been cancelled.

Tuhoe leaders yesterday implied that Mr Key led them on when he told them at a Beehive meeting in March that vesting ownership of Te Urewera National Park was "workable".

Mrs Turia called the decision appalling and a national disgrace and questioned the honour of the Cabinet.

"Tuhoe negotiators have behaved honourably right throughout this process so to have the rug pulled and take them back to square one I don't think is very honourable actions."

Mr Key said yesterday in Wellington that he had telephoned Mrs Turia on Sunday night to discuss what he was planning.

"She was totally fine. Look, she understands the challenge, disappointed, but understands the challenges."

Mrs Turia appeared shocked yesterday when told of Mr Key's comments.

"I am making it very clear I am not fine with this decision," she told TV3.

Mrs Turia said the Government had to reconsider its decision.

But Mr Key said there would be no reconsideration.


Honeymoon Over!

Tuhoe board member Matt Te Pou told the Herald the decision was a u-turn by a "team of one" and it showed "a lack of courage".

Lead negotiator Tamati Kruger said he and others had attended a meeting in Mr Key's Beehive office in March where Mr Key had described the vesting of the park in Tuhoe as "complex but workable".

"At the end of the discussion he expressed that the biggest issue for the Government was the politics of it all, the politics of selling it, and we agreed."

Mr Kruger said the tribe had wanted to vest it in one or two ancestors "to safeguard inalienability" and Mr Key had been interested in the legal issues.

Mr Kruger also revealed that after the tribe had rejected an initial offer by the Crown for co-management last August Government officials had begun work on the ownership issue — officials from the Crown Law Office, Te Puni Kokiri, Department of Conservation and the Office of Treaty Settlements.

"We were all focused on it and who will do this work.

"We were all making progress and then at the 11th hour, boom."

The Weekend Herald reported that National was split over the issue of ownership, and named Murray McCully and East Coast MP Anne Tolley as some of those with concerns.

It also reported on the National Party regional conference in Masterton at the weekend where ministers defended the Government's record on policy advances on the Maori agenda, including Treaty of Waitangi settlements.

Labour leader Phil Goff said the Government had raised expectations and should have been straight with the tribe.


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/te-urewera-national-park/news/article.cfm?l_id=500533&objectid=10644347



Popularity fears cost Urewera settlement, says Tuhoe

NZPA | 12 NOON - Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Chief Tuhoe negotiator Tamati Kruger. — Photo: Rotorua Daily Post.
Chief Tuhoe negotiator Tamati Kruger.
 — Photo: Rotorua Daily Post.


Tuhoe representatives believe they had the numbers in Cabinet to secure ownership of Te Urewera National Park but say a nervous prime minister acting unilaterally stood in the way.

Prime Minister John Key announced on Monday that ownership of the park wasn't on the table in the treaty negotiations, despite the Maori Party and those in the Tuhoe camp believing the deal was virtually sealed, and having already planned a hui to celebrate.

Mr Key said such a deal was outside the scope of settlements and would be "a very unusual" step for the Government to take.

Chief Tuhoe negotiator Tamati Kruger said information gleaned from the corridors of Parliament before Mr Key's announcement indicated a majority of Cabinet supported returning the 212,000-hectare national park to Tuhoe.

He said it appeared Mr Key had "intervened" at the end of an 18-month negotiation process based on worries expressed at last weekend's National Party regional meeting in Masterton, where concerns were raised that the Government was making too many concessions to Maori.

Mr Kruger said Mr Key's action was "so disconnected" with what had been achieved in the 18 months of negotiations.

He had acted unilaterally to "preserve something else, and I'm guessing that's National Party popularity", Mr Kruger said. The move had "taken away the solution to the prejudice and injustice that Tuhoe continue to suffer".

Mr Kruger said many Tuhoe people had contacted him to voice disquiet over the development and their moods ranged from "disappointed to angry".

"It's taken 18 months for this Government to tell Tuhoe that Te Urewera should never have been talked about and that's not good faith bargaining."

The Government had lost its nerve in the quest to settle serious and long-standing grievances, and internal National Party political concerns based on "superstition, not fact" had won out.

Mr Kruger said hui planned to endorse the hoped-for agreement in principle over the next few days would continue as planned but would serve instead to gauge support for the strategies employed to achieve a settlement.

"And we're getting back information that Tuhoe don't want us to veer from our approach."

Tuhoe activist Tame Iti said while his hapu was disappointed, he believed a return of Te Urewera was still on the table.

Mr Iti likened this week's development to the theft of a vehicle.

"It's like a pinched car. The Government are prepared to return the car to us without the ownership papers, but we want the papers, too."

Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia criticised Mr Key's action. She said she was tired of the "politics of race being brought into the equation".

She said Tuhoe had acted honourably throughout the negotiation process.

Waiariki MP Te Ururoa Flavell said Te Urewera had been Tuhoe's homeland for hundreds of years before the concept of title ownership existed in New Zealand.

He said making an announcement about what was on or off the table while negotiations were in progress was unheard of and must not become the norm for future settlements. Doing so risked them being negotiated through the media "where the end result would be based on popularity, not what is right".

Mr Key yesterday said he disagreed that an agreement had been reached and said he had communicated clearly all along.

"The proposal falls outside the broad principles that have operated for other treaty negotiations," he said.

"I'm personally keen to see a settlement concluded, but it won't be a settlement that has the vesting of the Urewera National Park solely in the people Tuhoe."


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/te-urewera-national-park/news/article.cfm?l_id=500533&objectid=10644430
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« Reply #2 on: May 19, 2010, 11:15:50 pm »


Crown's tactics cost Tuhoe their Urewera heartland

When the iwi say the national park already belongs to them, history
is on their side, writes Maori Affairs reporter Yvonne Tahana.


By YVONNE TAHANA - The New Zealand Herald | 4:00AM - Saturday, May 15, 2010

Te Urewera National Park was designated as a reserve in 1896 for Tuhoe to govern themselves, say historians. — Photo: Alan Gibson.
Te Urewera National Park was designated as a reserve in 1896 for Tuhoe to govern
themselves, say historians. — Photo: Alan Gibson.


The land most New Zealanders know as Te Urewera National Park was once a massive reserve for the Tuhoe people to govern themselves.

But historians say the Government took the land through a series of cuts which pushed the Tuhoe off their own tribal area.

Iwi leaders hope that if the history of their claim is better understood, Prime Minister John Key might be persuaded to change his mind and put the park — a place the iwi knows as its homeland — back on the Treaty settlement negotiation table.

Historian Bruce Stirling told the Weekend Herald that the 1896 Urewera District Native Reserve Act created a 265,000ha reserve.

The Government pledged to leave what was left of Te Urewera as an "inviolate protectorate" within Tuhoe. A council, Te Whitu Tekau, would manage Tuhoe's affairs.

This was 30 years after the Crown's scorched-earth tactics, which left one in eight Tuhoe dead and devastated crops and homes.

Premier Richard Seddon invited a Tuhoe delegation to Wellington to forge a new contract where the iwi affirmed its acknowledgment of the Crown's authority while the Government agreed to respect the tribe's mana motuhake, or independent authority.

Mr Stirling said the act was meant to work like this: Tuhoe were to determine hapu ownership of land blocks and retain collective control through elected block committees who would manage it and protect it from sale.

"The Crown soon undermined the [legislation]. It wrongly told Tuhoe they were liable for the £7000 costs of ... title determination, and proposed land sales to clear this supposed debt.

"In 1910, still unable to secure committee assent to land sales, the Crown began buying shares in ... blocks from individual owners. Some wished to sell to clear the improper £7000 debt ... while many others were desperately impoverised" by floods and frosts which had led to famine.

The Crown, as the monopoly buyer, fixed low prices. Under the legislation this was illegal but the Government passed a law in 1916 to retrospectively validate its actions.

By 1921, the Crown had acquired 53 per cent of shares in the Urewera District Native Reserve. However, its shares were scattered — it didn't have complete title to any block.

Rather than follow due process in the Native Land Court to identify and locate its shares, the Crown "imposed" the Urewera Consolidation Scheme on Tuhoe, Mr Stirling said.

This enabled the Crown to consolidate its interests in the face of Tuhoe opposition. It also charged enormous survey costs and a special £20,000 fee towards building roads through Te Urewera.

"No other New Zealanders have ever been asked to make such a contribution for rural highways," Mr Stirling said. The roads were also never built.

Finally, the national park, now 212,673ha, was created in 1954.

A simple look at the overlay of the reserve versus the national park is the "smoking gun" that a massive injustice has occurred, Tuhoe chief negotiator Tamati Kruger says.

"Te Urewera National Park land is Tuhoe stolen land in disguise. For Tuhoe, when they see the national park they see the surviving proof of injustice and prejudice and oppression by the Crown."


______________________________________

THE IWI'S GRIEVANCES

  • Most of the tribe's best agricultural land was confiscated in the 1860s.

  • The Crown used scorched-earth tactics, which devastated crops and killed one in eight people between 1867 and 1871.

  • The tribe was supposed to keep what was left as a self-governing reserve created in 1896.

  • However, it lost the land through a series of unjust and often illegal Government tactics over the next few decades.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/te-urewera-national-park/news/article.cfm?l_id=500533&objectid=10644976
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« Reply #3 on: May 19, 2010, 11:16:30 pm »


Pens, speeches ready for Tuhoe park deal

By JOHN HARTEVELT - The Dominion Post | 5:00AM - Monday, 17 May 2010

TREEson

Commemorative pens were ready for Tuhoe leaders and Government ministers to sign an agreement in principle before the prime minister dropped a bombshell on the deal last week.

Tuhoe chief negotiator Tamati Kruger said somewhere between 20 and 50 of the pens were made by the Crown to mark what was expected to be a celebration last Friday.

Tuhoe had expected to sign an agreement in principle (AIP) over its Treaty of Waitangi settlement claim in a ceremony at Waimana, south of Whakatane.

However, last Monday, Prime Minister John Key said the Tuhoe bid for sole ownership of Te Urewera National Park was unacceptable. His announcement put Tuhoe into turmoil and prompted an angry response from the Government's support partner, the Maori Party.


Jonkey doing backflips!

Mr Kruger said the pens' existence was proof an AIP was imminent and that the Crown and Tuhoe had agreed on the national park's return to Tuhoe.

They were inscribed: "Tuhoe-Crown Agreement in Principle — Waimana 2010."

There was to be a limited number of the pens, which were to be used to sign the AIP before people took them away as a memento of the occasion.

"Both parties went ahead with the organisation of that [celebration] day," Mr Kruger said.

Officials from the Office of Treaty Settlements, the Crown Law Office, the Department of Conservation and Treasury had all booked motel rooms in the area in expectation of the AIP ceremony.

"Even the ministers had all of their speeches ready," Mr Kruger said.


http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/politics/3703775/Pens-speeches-ready-for-Tuhoe-park-deal
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« Reply #4 on: May 19, 2010, 11:19:13 pm »


Tuhoe were never promised Te Urewera — Key

NZPA | 9:45AM - Monday, May 17, 2010

Te Urewera National Park Ownership

Tuhoe were never promised ownership of Te Urewera National Park as part of a Treaty of Waitangi settlement, Prime Minister John Key said this morning.

Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples yesterday said Mr Key "cut off" the Treaty negotiation process the Crown was holding with Tuhoe.

Mr Key outraged Tuhoe leadership and other Maori when he said last week iwi would not get the park despite iwi understanding a settlement was ready to be signed off after 18 months of negotiations.

Dr Sharples on Friday told Radio New Zealand he also understood the agreement was a done deal and he and Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson had the rug pulled out from under them.

"We thought we had Cabinet support for this to happen and it didn't get to Cabinet."

Then yesterday on TVNZ's Question and Answer programme Dr Sharples said the PM's intervention had cut off the process.

"Well it's been difficult because the claim was moving in a certain way through due process, and the Prime Minister has felt a reason to cut it off, and I think that it's going to be very difficult to see how we're going to pick this up."

Today Mr Key told Newstalk ZB that the negotiations were very difficult and while the park had long been a bottom line for Tuhoe it had not been agreed to.

"They've never been promised the park. That's been their bottom line and in the end, because nothing else has been acceptable, it's been whittled down to that point."

Mr Key said the process was that negotiators went back and forth with a proposal eventually going to Cabinet to be signed off.

"That process never happened in Tuhoe's case."

Negotiators made it clear that no deal was made, he said: "Even on the Saturday before I made the announcement on the Monday there was a meeting of 260 people with our negotiators. Our negotiators got up and said ‘this is all very challenging and not necessarily easy’ and people in that meeting got up and said ‘why are you talking with such weasel words’ ... it's not quite as straightforward as you might think."

Chief Tuhoe negotiator Tamati Kruger said last week that the tribe was confident of securing the win until Mr Key intervened.

Last week, when asked about the decision made immediately after a National Party conference in which Mr Key gave assurances that Maori were not being treated over-generously, Mr Key said the timing was forced upon him.

"Tuhoe decided to hold a hui at the end of this week and I thought at that point it was very clear we made it clear to them as to actually what was possible and what wasn't."

He said the idea was considered but there were concerns that it would set a precedent for other iwi.

In another twist in the story Mr Key caused offence by joking that Tuhoe people wanted to eat him for dinner.


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10645529
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« Reply #5 on: May 19, 2010, 11:20:02 pm »


Tuhoe veto followed parks advice

By CLAIRE TREVETT - The New Zealand Herald | 4:00AM - Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Destiny's Choice for John Key

Prime Minister John Key says giving the Te Urewera National Park to Tuhoe could have opened the way for other iwi to put strong cases for ownership of national parks, including Whanganui, Egmont, Ngauruhoe and possibly Aoraki/Mount Cook.

Mr Key said yesterday his decision to veto Tuhoe's hopes of getting ownership of the Te Urewera National Park came after he received advice on how such a move would impact on other settlements.

"There are about three or four other iwi, not exactly in the same position as Tuhoe but in similar positions that I believe would have expected the same outcome in their Treaty settlements had we agreed to fully vest the park."

He listed the Egmont National Park around Mount Taranaki and the Whanganui National Park as cases where iwi could make such an argument. There was also an issue over Mount Ngauruhoe for Tuwharetoa. It was also possible Ngai Tahu could raise an issue over Aoraki/Mount Cook, despite its settlement being deemed full and final.

The Ngai Tahu settlement includes provision for Aoraki/Mount Cook to be gifted to the iwi and then re-gifted to the nation. However, that clause has not yet been acted upon and it is up to Ngai Tahu to decide when to trigger it.

Mr Key's justification for the decision was rejected by Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia.

"None of those cases is similar to Tuhoe so you can't compare those iwi to Tuhoe. This is an opportunity for the Crown to make good and doing what is right, not looking over the shoulder at other iwi and trying to make Tuhoe think that because of those other iwi they're not going to get their settlement."

Facing his seventh day of questioning on his Tuhoe decision, Mr Key maintained it was the correct move and continued to deny that Tuhoe were ever led to believe it was a done deal. He said ownership of the park was included as an option by negotiators after Tuhoe had rejected all other alternatives put to them.

"That one was an option, but not one that found favour with me. As Prime Minister I am responsible to the people of New Zealand to support [treaty] settlements which I believe represent the best interests of all New Zealanders. In my view, this is a step too far."

He had rejected it himself after discussions with several of his ministers.

Mr Key said he was confident his relationship with the Maori Party was "in good shape" despite the decision and his later claim its co-leader Tariana Turia was "fine" with it. The claim had angered Mrs Turia who had issued a statement criticising Mr Key's decision as showing a lack of integrity.

Yesterday he said he had spoken to Mrs Turia but would not say if he had apologised to her.

"I'm learning rapidly not to relay every conversation I have with her through [the media] but I'm satisfied the relationship is in good shape."

He said it was obvious the Maori Party was disappointed and that Mrs Turia personally felt very deeply about it.

"[She] believes they've been a iwi which has been terribly affected and she's quite right in terms of the historical position, but that doesn't mean we are going to vest a national park solely in their rights."

He said he remained hopeful of achieving the goal of settling all historic claims by 2014 "but I'm not prepared to do that at any cost".

After facing criticism from the Maori Party about going public with the decision, despite negotiations still being under way, Mr Key said the iwi had asked him to make the decision public so it was known before a hui Tuhoe had organised for last Friday. That hui was cancelled.


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/te-urewera-national-park/news/article.cfm?l_id=500533&objectid=10645708&pnum=0
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« Reply #6 on: May 19, 2010, 11:20:28 pm »


Plan reveals control option for Te Urewera Park

By CLAIRE TREVETT and YVONNE TAHANA - The New Zealand Herald | 4:00AM - Wednesday, May 19, 2010

A couple of horses enjoy a stroll down a country road with the Ureweras as a backdrop. — Photo: Alan Gibson.
A couple of horses enjoy a stroll down a country road with the Ureweras as a backdrop.
 — Photo: Alan Gibson.


The scuttled Tuhoe settlement included a $120 million offer in which the Crown retained an option to take full management control of Te Urewera National Park if ownership was vested in the tribe.

It also featured the formation of a joint Crown/iwi park board, based on past co-governance models.

Nearly every government ministry could have been invited to work with Tuhoe, so that it could deliver social services in the future, according to a confidential and well-developed settlement package considered by a Cabinet committee in March.

Prime Minister John Key last week ruled out iwi ownership, saying it was unacceptable to the Government.

Both groups have been working towards an agreement in principle for two years, and Cabinet ministers were told that under the package, management could revert solely to the Crown as it retained a reversionary interest to allow it to temporarily regain full management control of Te Urewera in defined circumstances.

In terms of the $120 million the Government was prepared to offer, $66 million would be taken as cash. The remaining $54 million had already been paid from the tribe's interest in the multi-iwi Central North Island Forests or Treelords deal in 2008.

The other major negotiation plank is the tribe's push for mana motuhake, a form of self-government under which it would be responsible for providing government services, the package committed the Government to exploring the devolution of social services over a 30-year period.

On Monday, Mr Key acknowledged vesting of ownership was included in the paper which went through the Cabinet committee. However, he said, it was simply an option and was included by the negotiating team because it was the only remaining way to deal with the national park after Tuhoe rejected all other proposals.

Any such proposal would not form part of the official offer until the Cabinet approved it, which had never happened because he had withdrawn it before that stage.

Yesterday, Maori Party MP Hone Harawira questioned Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson after Mr Key said his veto stemmed from advice that at least three other iwi could make similar claims to national parks if Tuhoe's transfer went through.

Mr Finlayson said some of those iwi, which included Tuwharetoa, Taranaki, Whanganui and Ngai Tahu, had raised the matter informally with him.

Asked by Labour MP Shane Jones whether misleading and mocking Tuhoe was part of good faith negotiating, Mr Finlayson said no Crown minister had done so.

Mr Key faced questioning from Labour leader Phil Goff. He denied the handover of ownership was the "preferred option" passed by the Treaty Negotiations Committee and said he had no recollection of telling Tuhoe negotiator Tamati Kruger that such a deal was "complex but workable".


______________________________________

THE SETTLEMENT

  • Cash: $66 million.

  • Plus: extra already given: $54 million.

  • Land: 200,000ha Te Urewera National Park.

  • Politics: 30-year plan for limited self government.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/te-urewera-national-park/news/article.cfm?l_id=500533&objectid=10645948



Incentives are there for talks to resume

By YVONNE TAHANA - The New Zealand Herald | 4:00AM - Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Te Urewera National Park. — Photo: Alan Gibson.
Te Urewera National Park. — Photo: Alan Gibson.

The state of negotiations between the Government and Ngai Tuhoe is messy but not yet at the point of no return.

Prime Minister John Key has said that tribal ownership is a no-go area, pitting him against the tribe which says the deed to Te Urewera National Park is a bottom line in any settlement.

Belligerence on both sides could leave it dead in the water. But in terms of Maori issues the Government has shown it can think on its feet, and the tribe isn't ready to terminate discussions just yet.

Attorney-General Christopher Finlayson's work on repeal of the foreshore and seabed law is a clear example of fresh thinking about a hugely divisive issue.

The Government's preferred option if repeal did occur was that no single body would own the wet area at the beach. Currently the Crown owns it.

That proposal is a significant departure from the previous Government's position and it moved the public debate forward in an unexpected direction.

At his post-Cabinet press conference on Monday Mr Key reiterated that a full vesting of Te Urewera National Park in Tuhoe wasn't possible unless there was "another leg to that transaction".

So the question should turn to ... what could both the Government and Tuhoe live with, in terms of exploring what a new form of ownership might look like?

If the Crown can rethink options in terms of the foreshore and seabed repeal there's no reason ownership can't be redefined in another way here.

The cost of not sorting this is high for Tuhoe.

Getting iwi members to mandate a deal is a fraught enough process — if this attempt fails they will have only to look down the road to Opotiki and their tribal neighbours for an example of where they don't want to be.

Whakatohea rejected a Crown offer in the mid-90s and since then has been able to gain no internal traction on a path to settlement.

While Tuhoe says it is willing to walk away from the settlement, to do so risks important gains around mana motuhake or self-government.

On the Government's ledger, the cost of Treaty negotiations can run into the millions — repeating the process with another Tuhoe group is wasteful and it isn't something the Crown Forestry Rental Trust, which foots the lion's share of the cost, is likely to be happy about.

When negotiators on both sides re-engage, they are likely to be much quieter about it.

If Mr Key and various Cabinet ministers were twitchy about this impasse then you can bet they'll be much more silent about future discussions.


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10645946&pnum=0
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« Reply #7 on: May 20, 2010, 05:43:48 am »


John Key lost in Te Urewera
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« Reply #8 on: May 20, 2010, 05:44:49 am »


sheesh, who's doing what down there?
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« Reply #9 on: May 21, 2010, 07:17:18 pm »


Tuhoe have established reputation for defiance, determination

By TAHU POTIKI - The Press | 10:54AM - Friday, 21 May 2010

Tuhoe Recipes

Many years ago I was travelling with a group of students to Ruatoki as part of a learning trip with Otago University.

Ruatoki is in the Urewera Valley and is a pretty strong bastion of the Tuhoe tribe.

I had been nominated to be the speaker whilst going onto the marae and I was nervous.

I had developed reasonable Maori language and, here at home, I was pretty confident when it came to formal speaking.

But this was going onto a marae in the North Island amongst an iwi who had a fierce, if not the fiercest, Maori-language reputation of them all.

Despite it being terribly nerve-racking the speech-making seemed to go fairly well and, not surprisingly, the home people were remarkably gracious and generous hosts.

But going into that community I had been quite unsettled by the reputation that Tuhoe have.

It would be fair to say that Tuhoe have had a similar effect upon many New Zealanders.

Not only are they are renowned for their Maori-language capacity they are also perceived as defiant and steadfast when it comes to matters of tribal mana.

One Tuhoe "celebrity" who has made his impact upon New Zealand culture is Tame Iti.

He was loved by the media and delivered what they expected to see from a modern Maori radical.

He was rebellious and unyielding in his tino rangatiratanga views, he spat on the marae, he shot the New Zealand flag with a shotgun, he is fully tattooed and more recently he has been associated with certain training activities in the Urewera bush.

Tame is very charismatic, with a pretty staunch reputation.

He quite audaciously showed up at the Ngai Tahu celebrations for the signing of their Deed of Settlement and painted artworks that he titled something like "Ngai Tahu's Big Sellout Day".

He is a likeable rogue who captures something of the Tuhoe legend.

Another well-known and respected Tuhoe leader is Timoti Karetu who, for many, is the very embodiment of not suffering fools gladly and the epitome of excellence in te reo Maori.

His uncompromising attitude has meant that he is often associated with certain controversies when it comes to questions of the use, quality, promotion and perpetuation of Maori language.

He is of the view that speaking a smattering of te reo or making do with a few basic sentences is not good enough.

It is not enough for Maori language to simply survive. Instead, it must be spoken correctly and be able to convey the passions and complexities that any language must for it to flourish.

Timoti has been of the view that he would much rather listen to someone speaking good English than bad Maori.

At the same time this seemingly unbending position has won him many admirers, friends and followers. Nearly every member of the new generation of Maori-language champions would place Timoti somewhere at the top of their list of major influences or mentors.

Many of them have been personally coached by Timoti as he has played Henry Higgins to their Eliza Doolittle.

This picture of Tuhoe as an uncompromising, culturally strong people has been around a long time and to know a little of their history is to understand why that is.

In the 1860s Tuhoe had much of their most important and fertile tribal estates unjustly confiscated because they were considered to have collaborated with rebels.

This was the land that enabled them to gather food and grow crops and the confiscation forced the tribe into a subsistence existence.

So when the famous warrior prophet, Te Kooti, arrived among them a few years later the people committed themselves and their remaining lands to him and his fight. The government responded viciously, trying to flush Te Kooti out of the Ureweras and punishing further the Tuhoe collaborators.

Thirty years later another spiritual leader emerged from within Tuhoe.

Rua Kenana established himself as Te Kooti's successor and he established New Jerusalem on Maunga Pohatu.

He too was quickly labelled subversive and rebellious and authorities eventually led an armed assault upon his community, killing his son and imprisoning Rua in 1916.

Even today the predominant faith in the Tuhoe district is Ringatu, the religion established by Te Kooti and practised by Rua.

During my brief stay at Ruatoki we visited the local area school where, every morning, the children would gather for assembly and collectively recite Ringatu prayers in Maori for about 10 minutes. They all knew them off by heart.

No doubt these children were also taught the stories of Te Kooti — to them a warrior hero but to others a murderous insurgent.

Perhaps it is these stories that feed the defiance that is ever present amongst the Tuhoe people, perhaps it is the isolation of their communities or perhaps it is simply present in their DNA.

Whatever the reason I am sure that the recent withdrawal of the Urewera National Park from Treaty negotiations will most certainly cause this rebellious spirit to rise again.


http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/opinion/columnists/tahu-potiki/3722514/Tuhoe-have-established-reputation-for-defiance-determination
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« Reply #10 on: May 23, 2010, 09:57:30 pm »


Historian throws the book at PM over Tuhoe claim

By ANTHONY HUBBARD - Sunday Star Times | 5:00AM - Sunday, 23 May 2010

HISTORIAN AUTHOR: Dame Judith Binney says people were confused about the history of the Urewera, and that was why she had written her book. — Photo: Jason Oxenham.
HISTORIAN AUTHOR: Dame Judith Binney says
people were confused about the history of the
Urewera, and that was why she had written
her book. — Photo: Jason Oxenham.


HISTORIAN Dame Judith Binney has slated John Key's refusal to return ownership of Te Urewera National Park to Tuhoe, saying his claim that it created a precedent was "quite wrong".

Tuhoe's situation was unique, and Key "could have responded to it if he'd understood the history clearly", Binney told the Sunday Star-Times.

Binney, made a principal companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2006, is the author of the book, Encircled Lands: Te Urewera, 1820-1921, published last year. She is now recovering after being badly hurt in a traffic accident in Auckland in December.

The Crown had not acted honourably in its dealings with Tuhoe and it was time it did, Binney said.

The Crown's confiscation of large amounts of Tuhoe land during the wars in 1866 and 1867 "was not justified and neither has it been compensated for". Moreover, in 1896 the Liberal government of Richard Seddon had passed a law giving the tribe a large degree of self-government or tribal authority over its area — a measure that was "absolutely unique", Binney said.

"Seddon said in his speech introducing the bill into parliament that he was upholding the promise that Donald McLean, the native minister, had made to Tuhoe in 1871 when he negotiated the end of the war."

McLean's arrangement with Tuhoe "was in essence how he got peace in the area". While Seddon had been sincere in granting a form of self-government to Tuhoe, this power was whittled away between 1909 and 1921. In this process the great Maori leaders and Liberal MPs, James Carroll and Apirana Ngata, played an important part. Both came from families involved in recent military conflict with Tuhoe. Ngata's Ngati Porou had fought on the settlers' side against Tuhoe, which had tried to resist the encroachment of the Pakeha.

"Ngati Porou saved themselves and their land by fighting for the government, and one of the main areas in which they fought was in the Urewera." After Seddon's death in 1906, the government moved further away from the concept of Tuhoe tribal authority, and by "awful pressure and brutality" had acquired about 330,000 acres of Tuhoe land by 1921.

The government passed an act in 1916 "to retrospectively legalise all the purchases up till that point". In 1958 the Urewera National Park was formed out of land that Tuhoe had owned in 1896.

The government should now "give back the land or a form of authority over the land", Binney said. "That's what Tuhoe have been asking for — sometimes it's called mana motuhake, a recognition of their rights because this was their land for as long as any human being in New Zealand has ever had ownership of land."

Because Tuhoe's position was unique, handing back ownership of the park did not create a precedent for other tribes as Key had argued. "And of course Tuhoe is promising that the park would be open — everybody would be free to go in."

Binney, an emeritus professor of history at Auckland University, says she is now "fine" after her accident.


http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/news/3728084/PM-quite-wrong-on-Tuhoe-claim
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« Reply #11 on: May 24, 2010, 06:17:30 pm »


Some hotlinks to threads about Tuhoe and Te Urewera National Park that have been posted to this General Forum messageboard @ XNC2....

Tuhoe Nation

Tuhoe want an apology

Key makes cannibal joke about Tuhoe

Global Media: Keys racist joke. he's really done it now :O

TUHOE & TE UREWERA NATIONAL PARK

______________________________________

Some hotlinks to other threads posted to this General Forum messageboard @ XNC2 which are relevant to a lesser degree....

Top 10 biggest NZ debates over the past 10 years

Burial rows give police cultural nightmare

Guns and ammo found at port

Hunter tells of confrontation with Mob members

Another hunter attacked.

Widow asks court to order body dug up

Bard goes Maori at the Globe

Tama Iti to open 'terror raid' exhibition

Why are Maori Such Crybabies

Why Do Maori Hate Being Of Mixed Blood

Key rejects Harawira's 'History'

Republic of New Zealand

SIS successfully countered security threat

Hunting-row-Keruru-in-Kiwis-sights-too

Nats give in to Maori over rights declaration

Remains could be gang member or missing taxman

from the Nats' lower North Island regional conference....
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« Reply #12 on: May 25, 2010, 10:13:14 pm »


Mine!
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« Reply #13 on: June 02, 2010, 07:48:58 pm »


Graham says Tuhoe deal toughest yet

By YVONNE TAHANA - The New Zealand Herald | 4:00AM - Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Sir Douglas Graham. — Photo: Paul Estcourt.
Sir Douglas Graham. — Photo: Paul Estcourt.

The architect of the Treaty settlements process, Sir Douglas Graham, says resolving the Tuhoe claim will be among the most difficult attempted.

Negotiations have been teetering on the edge of disaster after Prime Minister John Key said ownership of Te Urewera National Park was off the table.

Ownership of 212,673ha is a bottom line for the tribe.

Sir Douglas was at the helm of negotiations in the 1990s when first Tainui and then Ngai Tahu signed deeds of settlement.

He said Tuhoe were now "victims" of those settlements because his Government had said national parks were out of bounds during negotiations. That set the precedent, and if broken could see the possibility of deeds being relitigated.

"You can't wreck the country [financially] because one group has said this is their bottom line."

He said he admired both major players in this settlement, but it was possibly the most difficult ever dealt with.

"I would say [treaty Negotiations Minister] Christopher Finlayson is a reasonable bloke and so is [Tuhoe chief negotiator] Tamati Kruger."

"They should go away together. Maybe wander up and down the beach, go to the Bahamas. Maybe Lake Waikaremoana."

"Yes. I have no idea how they're going to solve this one."

Asked whether the return of a national park in the Northern Territory this month by an Australian state could be a precedent for these negotiations, Sir Douglas said that should not happen.

"What they do doesn't matter. We've got our own path and we've got to stick to it."

Mr Kruger said Crown officials and tribal leaders had been planning a trip to Australian national parks to see how indigenous ownership worked.

"Like our clean green image, our record on indigenous issues — that we're so far ahead of Australia — it looks a little tarnished."

He said Tuhoe did not accept that other tribes would automatically take the Government back to court, but the Government was talking as if that was a given.


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/te-urewera-national-park/news/article.cfm?l_id=500533&objectid=10647426
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« Reply #14 on: June 02, 2010, 07:49:29 pm »


Give us back the park or we quit talks say Tuhoe

By MARTIN KAY - The Dominion Post | 5:00AM - Saturday, 29 May 2010

Tuhoe's Treaty negotiations with the Government are on a knife edge after the iwi's leader said the talks could be scrapped unless ownership of Te Urewera National Park is put back on the table.

Tuhoe chief negotiator Tamati Kruger said that if the Government did not map out a clear path for the iwi to take ownership of the park, it was likely his team would walk away.

"We are looking for an idea that will eventually lead to the return of Te Urewera to Tuhoe. If the proposal the Crown has bears no resemblance to that, then it is most likely that we would have to withdraw from negotiations," he said. "We have made it clear right from the start that, if it doesn't end with the return of Te Urewera to Tuhoe, then the settlement is not struck."

Tuhoe would also consider taking its claim to the United Nations, he said. Although the UN had no jurisdiction, raising the Government's refusal to hand back the park would cause international embarrassment.

The national park is on land confiscated from Tuhoe in the 1860s, and its return is of crucial importance to the iwi, who see it as their home.

It is understood the Government was poised to offer ownership options, including vesting full title in Tuhoe's ancestors — in effect, giving the park to the iwi — in a paper that was due before the Cabinet on May 10.

But Prime Minister John Key pulled the paper at the 11th hour, angering Tuhoe and derailing celebrations set for that week.

Mr Key said handing back a national park would be outside the normal scope of Treaty negotiations and would set a precedent.

Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson told The Dominion Post this week that negotiators from both sides were expected to meet again next month. He said it was not unusual for Treaty talks to hit snags, and he was confident a deal with Tuhoe could be reached.

A spokesman said yesterday that Mr Finlayson would not comment on Mr Kruger's threat to walk away from the discussions.

Mr Kruger conceded that abandoning the talks would be a big step, as Tuhoe's settlement is expected to deliver significant control over local health, education, housing and social services, with some elements of self-government.

The Government's original offer last year included a $66 million payment on top of the $54m Tuhoe has already received from the Central North Island forestry settlement.

But Mr Kruger said Tuhoe was adamant no settlement was possible without the return of the park.

Options such as shared management, offered by the Crown last year, shared ownership or Tuhoe getting the park then gifting it back were not acceptable.

"It would be like saying that the thief owns half of it, and for us to hand back Te Urewera is to validate the theft. It's to say that the grievance we have and the theft of our homeland by the Crown is OK."


http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/national/3752764/Give-us-back-the-park-or-we-quit-talks-say-Tuhoe



The late-night phone call that wrecked a party

Fears that returning Te Urewera to Tuhoe would be a step too far for
National's core supporters and set a troublesome precedent were
key factors in the offer being taken off the table.


By MARTIN KAY - The Dominion Post | 5:00AM - Saturday, 29 May 2010

Te Urewera Mining (the REAL reason for denying ownership to Tuhoe?)

Tamati Kruger was working at home late at night when the call that crushed 18 months of hope came through.

It was 10pm on Sunday, May 09, and Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia was on the line breaking the news that Prime Minister John Key had vetoed any chance of Tuhoe being given Te Urewera National Park.

It was a devastating blow for the iwi's chief negotiator.

About 10.30am the next day, Mr Key phoned to confirm the worst.

"He was not asking my opinion, he was not ringing me up so we could have a discussion over it, he was telling me what he had decided," Mr Kruger says.

"I expressed my astonishment at what he was doing and told him he was going back on the agreement and doing a complete U-turn."

As Mr Kruger tells it, restoring ownership of the park had been on the table since Tuhoe's Treaty negotiations began, and even Mr Key had indicated it was likely when the pair met earlier this year (though Mr Key says he cannot recall saying that).

So firm was Tuhoe's belief that the prize had been won that a hui had been called for the following Friday to sign off an expected agreement in principle.

Commemorative pens had been prepared and accommodation booked for Justice Ministry staff and other Government officials in nearby Whakatane. Tuhoe had budgeted $160,000 for the event and nine marquees had been ordered.

Mr Key and Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson have refused to give details of what was to have gone to the Cabinet, though Mr Key has strongly suggested that full ownership was still in the mix.

Why then, the eleventh-hour change of heart? Mr Key has said that returning the park would be outside the "generally accepted principles" of Treaty settlements, and would set a precedent with far-reaching consequences.

But, if including a national park in any Treaty settlement was unacceptable, why was Te Urewera still up for grabs so late in the negotiations? One factor behind Mr Key's veto of the ownership option was likely to be the growing wariness that the Government is getting too far ahead of public opinion on Maori and Treaty matters.

In the months leading up to the May 10 Cabinet meeting, National had agreed to allow iwi and hapu to seek customary title to coastal areas under a proposed new Foreshore and Seabed Act and adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Both moves caused disquiet among some core supporters.

One source has confirmed that some ministers were worried that returning the park to Tuhoe would be a step too far, too fast, and that the matter did not get as much scrutiny as it should have earlier in the process.

Crucial legal considerations were also a factor. Mr Key's reference to the precedent-setting nature of returning the park applies not just to future negotiations with other iwi, but also deals long done and dusted.

Former Treaty negotiations minister Sir Doug Graham, the architect of the groundbreaking negotiations with major iwi Tainui and Ngai Tahu under the 1990-1999 National government, says giving Te Urewera to Tuhoe could have seen those deals relitigated.

Ngai Tahu had sought the return of national parks in the South Island and Tainui wanted conservation land in Waikato as part of their settlements, but both were rebuffed.

The government of the day had made clear that while returning some Crown land was possible, land in the conservation estate was set aside for public use and off limits, setting a precedent for future negotiations with other iwi.

"[If Te Urewera was returned] Ngai Tahu would turn around and say, ‘Hang on a minute, you wouldn't give us any national parks, and not 20 years later you give one back to Tuhoe. We want to have another go’. What's the Government's argument to that?"

Mr Finlayson refuses to say what was in the offer to have gone before the Cabinet or what will be on the table in place of the park's ownership when negotiations resume.

"In the context of something as important as the Tuhoe negotiation, I don't want to leave any room whatsoever for misinterpretation at the Tuhoe end, if I start saying `well that was right or that was wrong, or that was misconstrued or there was a misunderstanding'. I just don't think it's helpful, because I've got my eye on the big prize, which is a just and durable settlement with them."

In the original offer to Tuhoe, the Crown proposed joint management of the park, including transferring certain "attributions of ownership", but not title.

Mr Kruger has made it clear that does not go far enough, and that ownership of the park may be a bottom line for Tuhoe.

But the iwi would be giving up a lot if it walks away from the talks, — not least because the offer of significant control over education, housing, health and other social services is still on the table. The Crown's original offer also included $66 million in cash on top of the $54m already delivered to Tuhoe under the central North Island forestry settlement in 2008.

Mr Finlayson is adamant a settlement can still be reached. "They've got very good leadership, their negotiating team is excellent, they're very principled people and so I believe that I will be able to work well with them, as I have been doing."

He does not think the decision to take the park off the table will derail other Treaty negotiations, which National wants completed by 2014.

But Maori party whip Te Ururoa Flavell says the way the offer to Tuhoe was sunk by Mr Key at the last minute has not gone unnoticed by other iwi.

"There's a lot of disappointment at many of the hui that I've been to that this has happened for the Tuhoe people, and also there's a questioning of why, because no-one's given a clear explanation, especially when we know ministers were involved right to the end, and they were making arrangements to go to the Bay [of Plenty] to have the celebration."

Although the Maori Party was "distressed" by Mr Key's decision to veto any chance of the park being returned, relations with National had not soured and Mr Flavell is also hopeful a way can be found through the Tuhoe negotiations.

But Mr Kruger warns that ownership of Te Urewera is critical to Tuhoe, and iwi members may insist no settlement be made unless its eventual return is on the table.

"From one perspective, it's real estate, but it's not for us. For us, it's home. It's ours and we want it back."


http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/politics/3750365/The-late-night-phone-call-that-wrecked-a-party



Editorial: Tuhoe negotiations must get back on track

The Dominion Post | 5:00AM - Saturday, 29 May 2010

The starting point in any negotiation between Tuhoe and the Government is an acknowledgment that Tuhoe have been treated unjustly by the Crown as long as there has been a relationship between the two.

Vast tracts of land were unfairly confiscated, agreements were made and then conveniently forgotten or simply overridden by the Crown in a combination of military and legal imperialism.

That is why the Government should have trodden more carefully in its latest dealings with Tuhoe. Instead, it has left the tribe believing it was led up the Urewera National Park path, and its negotiators are entitled to feel they have been left looking foolish after Prime Minister John Key's last-minute change of heart.

Whatever the ins and outs of who was told what when, there is no excuse for this farrago. The Government should have known before the negotiations started nearly two years ago that there would be massive problems in offering Tuhoe formal ownership of Te Urewera National Park as part of any settlement — and that national parks had not been on the table in earlier deals.

Mr Key is right to worry about precedent, and to be concerned that at least three other iwi could want national parks included in deals, including some, like the Ngai Tahu and Tainui settlements, which had already been negotiated on a full and final basis. However, the time to voice those worries was at the start of negotiations, not when the commemorative pens for the deal-signing had been bought.

Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson now refuses to say what was in the offer that went before the Cabinet — or what will be on offer when the issue goes back to the negotiating table. There is a danger in that.

As well as the future formal ownership of the national park, which Tuhoe is still saying is a deal-breaker, any settlement that provides any measure of mana motuhake or self-government will be controversial. That is a key issue for Tuhoe but any moves toward it will be hard to sell to many Pakeha.

That leaves open the prospect of another last-minute pullout as Mr Key and his colleagues realise they have gone too far for the electorate.

For their part, however unjust it may seem to them, Tuhoe need to recognise that a partial redress of their grievances — and that is all that is possible, even with the best will in the world — can come only through negotiation with the Government. Taking the grievance to the United Nations is a poor substitute, and momentum for a settlement with the Government can easily be lost.

The National Party has come a long way in healing old wounds and in pushing to settle long-standing grievances. It has stumbled with Tuhoe.

Its task now is to make sure that stumble does not end in the collapse of the settlement process.


http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/opinion/editorials/3752674/Editorial-Tuhoe-negotiations-must-get-back-on-track



Heart of the Tuhoe Nation

For the people who live among the rugged bush-clad hills of Te Urewera,
it is not just somewhere to live, but a place that defines them. Tuhoe
residents talk about their love of the land, and how they are prepared
to wait for as long as it takes to have it returned to them.


By TRACEY COOPER - Waikato Times | 5:00AM - Saturday, 29 May 2010

SCENIC VISTA: Lake Waikaremoana with Panekiri Bluff in the background. — PETER DRURY/Waikato Times.
SCENIC VISTA: Lake Waikaremoana with Panekiri Bluff in the background. — PETER DRURY/Waikato Times.

YOU DON'T have to be Tuhoe to realise that you're entering Tuhoe country. Just across the fertile Rangitaiki River flats past Murupara, where the paddocks give way to bush and the road abruptly hits the edge of the Ikawhenua Range, cellphone reception dies almost instantly and a bright yellow sign on the side of State Highway 38 warns: 95km of winding, unsealed road.

It's not a road for the faint-hearted, and it's the only road through Te Urewera National Park.

And you don't have to be Tuhoe to understand their love of this country, Te Urewera.

Just look deep inside yourself. Everyone has a place in their heart of hearts where they belong. For Tuhoe, that place is Te Urewera.

And at the heart of Te Urewera, about an hour down that winding and unsealed road, is Ruatahuna, home to about 250 almost exclusively Tuhoe residents, a general store with motel units attached and about 10 marae. The settlement is surrounded on all sides by towering, mist-covered hills clad in dense and beautiful native bush.

On the road to Ruatahuna you pass settlements such as Ngaputahi, with its tidy and tiny Catholic church, Te Whaiti and Papueru, places few people have heard of and that seem to exist only because of the signs saying that's where you are.

A few dead cars, homes where Sky dishes cling to walls covered with peeling paint and lawns holding back the ever-present bush. There are no fences in this part of the country, and horses, cows and pigs barely bother lifting their heads, let alone moving off the road, for the infrequent passing traffic.

The Ruatahuna General Store sits just above the road, with lichen-overed petrol pumps under an awning out the front. It's been about 20 years since fuel last flowed through them, and the nearest petrol station is back in Murupara or another hour down the road at Waikaremoana.

Behind the counter, a small collection of cubbyholes holds the latest post to arrive and posters on the wall advertise the school board of trustees elections and tomorrow's Pig Day Out at Mataatua Marae. The Boar Wars contest has sections for the prettiest pig, best recycled pig, best pig recipe and the biggest pig.

Beside the counter in the shop a well-thumbed ringbinder contains Te Urewera Report, Part 1. Outside the shop, an old Toyota Corolla has been tagged with the words Te Mana Motuhake, and across the road one home flies the flag of the United Tribes of Aotearoa.

A black Nissan Navara with the licence plate UREWRA pulls up and Rangi Mataamua hops out and pops into the shop to check the mail.

He'll talk about what makes this place special to Tuhoe, he says. "You'd better come up home for a cup of tea."

Across the upper reaches of the Whakatane River, past the house proudly proclaiming itself part of The Tuhoe Nation, through the valley where a small marae is visible behind a clutch of homes and down a driveway that leads past another far larger marae, Mr Mataamua parks beside the tidy home he had built four years ago.

It's where his grandfather's home used to stand, a fact confirmed when he points it out in old photographs of the imposing wharenui Te Whai A Te Motu, which stands next door on Mataatua Marae.

The building was opened in 1888 in honour of Te Kooti Arikirangi, who sought refuge from government forces with Tuhoe in Te Urewera. "It was also to say to the Crown that, even after everything you've done, we can still build something like this," Mr Mataamua says.

By 1888, the Crown had already done a fair bit to Tuhoe, but there was plenty more to come.

In 1866, Governor George Grey agreed to the confiscation of thousands of hectares of Tuhoe land, arguing that they were actively collaborating against the Crown by sheltering Te Kooti.

In later years the Crown would invade the Tuhoe settlement of Maungapohatu and execute prophet Rua Kenana's son. Then, in 2007, it would invade the Ruatoki Valley, "just over the hill" to the north, claiming Tuhoe were training terrorists. And earlier this month the Government snubbed Tuhoe by ruling out the return of Te Urewera National Park to their hands.

"It's just the latest slap in the face," Mr Mataamua says. "Some of the events that occurred here are unique. The Crown enacted a policy of scorched earth here. They shot animals, burned crops and left people to die. It was very harsh.

"Tuhoe has this persona about them as gun-toting types of people on horseback that are really defiant in the face of anything. That's born out of our history. Tuhoe have had it pretty tough."

A PLACE TO BELONG: The Whakatane River meanders its way through Te Urewera National Park. The remote area is reached by only one winding, unsealed road, but residents say they wouldn't swap it for anywhere in the world. — PETER DRURY/Waikato Times. ONE WITH NATURE: A wild pig in Te Urewera National Park. — PETER DRURY/Waikato Times.
A PLACE TO BELONG (left): The Whakatane River meanders its way through Te Urewera National Park.
The remote area is reached by only one winding, unsealed road, but residents say they wouldn't swap it
for anywhere in the world. | ONE WITH NATURE (right): A wild pig in Te Urewera National Park.
 — PETER DRURY/Waikato Times.


AT 36, Mr Mataamua is young to be chairman of the Mataatua Marae Committee, but says that, though the title may sound flash, it isn't. "It also means I'm cook, cleaner, bed-maker and everything else as well."

He's a lucky man. Mataatua Marae is one of Tuhoe's main marae, named after the waka that carried some of their ancestors to New Zealand. Original carvings, paintings and tukutuku panelling line the walls, with two main figures, Toroa — who captained the Mataatua waka – and Whitiaua, another ancestor, shown in carvings wearing waistcoats and ties.

"No-one owned suits back then but they knew it signified prestige," he says.

But for all the impressiveness of the structure, one wall is on a bit of a lean, the neighbouring dining hall has leaks in the roof, and the kitchen area out the back has walls open to the weather. A broken axe leans on a massive woodpile under a rudimentary shelter.

"I wouldn't swap it for anything in the world," Mr Mataamua says. Why would he? He's already swapped the world for Ruatahuna.

He moved back to the settlement four years ago after completing his doctorate in philosophy at Massey University. It was, he says, an easy choice to make.

"There are decisions you make every day in your life, such as what to have for breakfast, that sort of thing, but there are a handful of major decisions that define you as a person for the rest of your life. That [coming home] was one for me," he says.

"I sacrificed income and opportunity to come home. We don't have the amenities and services here, but the rewards far outweigh anything."

Although he grew up with his grandparents in Levin, Mr Mataamua says there were frequent trips to Ruatahuna for holidays, hui and tangi, "so it wasn't unfamiliar to us. We knew where we were from".

"When my grandfather died, it came to me to move home. One of the last things he said to me was to come home."

"I do some contract work and some research work. I've got broadband at home."

For Mr Mataamua, Ruatahuna is not just somewhere to live, it's the heart of the Tuhoe Nation.

"Living here is fully understanding my identity. It is the core of my being. The core of who I am is here, knowing I am part and parcel of the community I come from. No matter where I am in the world, I will always be from this area. We enact our culture on a daily basis."

"This is where I am meant to be. It sounds a bit esoteric and metaphysical, but it's real for us."

"We hunt, we ride horses. The kids, from an early age, all have their own animals. We grow vegetables."

There aren't many doctors of philosophy who spend much of their time in the bush, but that's where Mr Mataamua likes to be. "I spend every moment I can in the bush. It is part of who we are. Every tree, every river flat, every bend in the river has its own history."

That's obvious with the paintings on the ceiling panels in Te Whai A Te Motu. They show men high in trees spearing pigeons and Mr Mataamua says the trees are not just symbolic, "they are specific trees".


THE ESSENCE OF TUHOE: Original carvings, paintings and tukutuku panelling line the walls of Mataatua Marae at Ruatahuna. Rangi Mataamua is particularly proud of a carving of his ancestor Whitiaua, adorned with a waistcoat and tie. — PETER DRURY/Waikato Times.
THE ESSENCE OF TUHOE: Original carvings, paintings and tukutuku panelling line the walls of Mataatua Marae
at Ruatahuna. Rangi Mataamua is particularly proud of a carving of his ancestor Whitiaua, adorned with a
waistcoat and tie. — PETER DRURY/Waikato Times.


FEEDING THE FAMILY: Waka Te Kurapa, left, with Puke Timoti, carries a stag he shot near Ruatahuna. The possum trapper says he often comes across a deer or pig while working. — PETER DRURY/Waikato Times.
FEEDING THE FAMILY: Waka Te Kurapa, left, with Puke Timoti, carries a stag he shot near Ruatahuna. The possum
trapper says he often comes across a deer or pig while working. — PETER DRURY/Waikato Times.


RON TAHI knows better than most where those trees are and what they mean. The 65-year-old is about to saddle up and ride off to one of his bush camps for a couple of days.

"I've got to bring something out this time. I'll set a couple of hinaki [eel traps] and just check on the place."

Mr Tahi was born in Ruatoki but "my grandparents plucked me from there and brought me here".

"When I was growing up, I felt that all the bush around me was just part of my home."

"Possums were just coming in when I was young. In the bush where our old people were living, there were fruit trees, all the stonefruit, pipfruit, but when the possums came they were just stripped, they were ruined."

Mr Tahi was in his teens when the 212,672-hectare Te Urewera National Park was formed in 1954 — largely from confiscated Tuhoe land — and says few people in Ruatahuna knew anything about it.

"I didn't hear of the national park until I went to college, round about the 1960s. That's when we heard the first whispers of `this is a national park'. People didn't know. To them, this was their place."


‘WE JUST WANT WHAT WAS TAKEN FROM US’

SENSE OF BELONGING: Ron Tahi outside the wharenui, opened in 1888, at Mataatua Marae. He was raised in Ruatahuna by his grandparents. “When I was growing up, I felt that all the bush around me was just part of my home.” — PETER DRURY/Waikato Times.
SENSE OF BELONGING: Ron Tahi outside the wharenui, opened in 1888, at Mataatua Marae. He was raised in Ruatahuna
by his grandparents. “When I was growing up, I felt that all the bush around me was just part of my home.”
 — PETER DRURY/Waikato Times.


PART OF THE PRIZE: Lake Waikaremoana sits amid bush-clad hills in Te Urewera National Park. — PETER DRURY/Waikato Times.
PART OF THE PRIZE: Lake Waikaremoana sits amid bush-clad hills in Te Urewera National Park.
 — PETER DRURY/Waikato Times.


IT WAS the arrival of the New Zealand Forest Service, which introduced pest control measures, that had the first direct impact. "That's when we felt an encroachment on our patch," Mr Tahi says.

"Then they left and the national park people came in and took over. That's when we could see some anger, not from our generation but the old people."

However, in the great tradition of ignoring authority, "we just carried on". "We'd catch pigeons as we had always done into the 1960s. That was how we lived here. Our ancestors lived here and we just treated the place as ours. To me, it is ours."

It was only when access tracks were formed on the Whakatane River and the road was opened in 1927 that "outsiders" could start to come in, he says.

"Everyone is Tuhoe here. The only [non-Tuhoe] people who used to come here were people that had friends here and hunters in the roar."

"Every family had their Pakeha hunter and they would take them out to their part of the bush in the roar. Everybody knew where they were and they were all safe, it was guided tourism really. We ran all this ourselves."

"We have our rules and protocols connected to parts of the area — you don't just go roaming around in the bush."

That's what outsiders wonder about when they hear of Tuhoe heading off into the bush for days on end, but Puke Timoti likens it to simply making sure everything's OK down the back of the section. It's just a far bigger section.

"It's just checking out the land," he says. "I go bush twice a week if I can."

But it's much more than that. "It's memories as well. There are big memories, so many stories, it just reminds me of them. I feel a little bit sorry for our ancestors, they're still there, so it helps to revitalise the soul."

Like Mr Mataamua, Mr Timoti has given up city life to return to Ruatahuna.

He was living in Auckland and working as an architect but "then I had my first child and I wanted to bring my child back here. I made a considered decision to move home when we had kids. I did my thing in Auckland. When I had kids, I wanted them to grow up here as well."

He was born in Murupara and lived in Ruatahuna until his teens, when he attended Rakaumangamanga College in Huntly, before studying architecture at Auckland University. He moved back home two years ago. "I did architecture thinking, ‘No one's doing that from Tuhoe’, and I could set a platform for others to follow."

"I think for us Tuhoe people, when you go out and get an education, you think of your family but you also think of your tribe as well."

Another factor was the increasing number of old people reaching the end of their lives.

"There were a lot of our old people dying and I wanted to come back and learn from them. It's knowledge you can't get from a book and I wanted to get that knowledge off them before they go."

"People like Ron, he was my principal [at school] and he was the teacher in the bush as well. Now we're on the school board of trustees together."

Mr Timoti credits more people learning about Maori culture and language for what he thinks is an increasing number of Tuhoe returning to Te Urewera. "With more education, people hunger for where they come from.

"A lot of Tuhoe people want to come home but it's hard. It's money that keeps them there. You could be giving up a successful career to run possum lines."

Possum fur provides the backbone of the Ruatahuna economy, he says, and although he will always be an architect, he goes out each day to pluck possum fur by hand.

"I go to work on my horse. I leave at 7am and I'm back by 12. It keeps me fit and that's my office," he says, glancing at the surrounding bush.

Then his ears pick up a sound in the distance. "It sounds like dogs bailing up something."

Ten minutes later he's proved correct when he scrambles down a steep bank to help Waka Te Kurupa recover a solid rusa stag his dogs got onto while he checked his possum line.

It's a fairly common occurrence, Mr Te Kurupa says, to have his work interrupted by a deer or pig. As Mr Mataamua points out, "we're not stuck in the nine-to-five rat race, but that's not to say it's not busy".


HUNTER GATHERERS: Rangi Mataamua, left, and Waka Te Kurapa hoist a deer on to their truck. — PETER DRURY/Waikato Times.
HUNTER GATHERERS: Rangi Mataamua, left, and Waka Te Kurapa hoist a deer on to their truck.
 — PETER DRURY/Waikato Times.


STREET WALKERS: Horses on the road between Ruatahuna and Waikaremoana. — PETER DRURY/Waikato Times.
STREET WALKERS: Horses on the road between Ruatahuna and Waikaremoana. — PETER DRURY/Waikato Times.

HE HAD expected to be even busier last week if the Government had delivered — as Tuhoe expected — Te Urewera back to its rightful owners. Any settlement would have been signed at Mataatua Marae.

"We were under the impression that we were on track to receive ownership of the park. It was very disappointing. We were moving to what we thought would have been a settlement and that would have lessened the pain and still the Crown refuses us. We don't want their money, we just want what was taken. As land was taken, so land should be returned."

He says it would not mean Tuhoe blocking access to the park. "Neither would we chop it down. We were pretty keen to maintain its uniqueness and its biodiversity."

"It has its own spirit, it's who we are. You can't separate who we are from where we are. Our understanding of who we are is bound up in our environment."

"We thought that, under this Government, we could have settled those grievances. I felt the people had moved to a point where they were ready to move on and for Key to make a unilateral decision, it's just the latest slap in the face."

Mr Mataamua can't see Tuhoe ever settling for anything less than the return of Te Urewera, no matter how long it takes. "We've waited 120 years and we're still waiting. And we're quite willing to wait another 120 years. We're not going anywhere. I just can't believe they think they can look after the place better than we can."


http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/features/3759199/Heart-of-the-Tuhoe-Nation
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« Reply #15 on: June 03, 2010, 03:27:15 pm »


Why I can empathise with Tuhoe

Letters to the Editor - The Dominion Post | Thursday, 03 June 2010

Given my lineage has no history of oppression, it's difficult for me to see things from a Tuhoe perspective.

Therefore, I decided to consider what I would do if tomorrow a tactically superior country arrived and took over the country that I love so dearly, implementing its own government, laws, and religion and then punishing us Kiwis if we didn't conform to its way of life. The answer I came up with was that I'd fight that country every step of the way and refuse to be ruled by it.

It would become my life mission to eradicate as many of its people as possible.

I would also pray that the generations to come would carry on the fight and never allow themselves to become subjects of the invaders.

So, though I might be on the other side of Tuhoe today, I do at least understand how the tribe must be feeling.

NATHANIEL GOZA
Blenheim


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« Reply #16 on: June 04, 2010, 03:17:59 pm »

LOL - thats my letter it got published!
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« Reply #17 on: August 02, 2010, 02:05:44 pm »


Tuhoe assured UN visitor on apartheid — Kruger

NZPA | 11:18AM - Friday, July 30, 2010

Tuhoe Spokesman Tamati Kruger. — Photo: Rotorua Daily Post.
Tuhoe Spokesman Tamati Kruger.
 — Photo: Rotorua Daily Post.


A TUHOE delegation that met United Nations special rapporteur James Anaya last week says it assured him the iwi would not practise apartheid, should it regain ownership of Te Urewera National Park.

Tamati Kruger, one of the iwi's three Treaty of Waitangi negotiators and chairman of the Tuhoe Establishment Trust, said Professor Anaya requested the meeting.

A five-strong Tuhoe delegation spent 2½ hours last Thursday with Professor Amaya at a Hamilton venue, arranged by Te Puni Kokiri.

Mr Kruger said Professor Anaya, the UN's special rapporteur on human rights and indigenous peoples, was keen to talk about the breakdown of treaty negotiations brought about by Prime Minister John Key's sudden decision in May that the Government could not live with a settlement handing ownership of the 212,000-hectare park back to Tuhoe.

Mr Kruger said Professor Anaya "delved into" the issue of mana motuhake — the concept of separate Maori identity and autonomy sought by Tuhoe.

"I took from his questions that he wanted to satisfy himself that this was not apartheid dressed up.

"He asked whether we were going to kick out all the non-Tuhoe people. He wanted to know whether this was evolving democratically, or whether it was racially motivated.

"We assured him it was not exclusive."

Professor Anaya asked about the "logic and workability" of Tuhoe achieving self-government within the remnants of its homeland.

On the park itself, Professor Anaya wanted to know whether Tuhoe would share it with other New Zealanders.

Mr Kruger said the delegation, which also comprised Tame Iti, Huka Williams, Patrick McGarvey and Kirsti Luke, assured him other New Zealanders would be welcomed.

Professor Amaya sought to understand why Tuhoe rejected joint management and co-governance mechanisms.

"He wanted to understand why those options were not palatable."

Mr Kruger said Professor Anaya was also interested in the detail of events related to the so-called terror raids of October 2007.

He asked about the warrant police used, the connection between the Government of the time and the police action, and whether the Government was involved in authorising the raids.

"He had heard and read about the terror raids and was seeking some certainty around facts.

"Not so much about dates and numbers but around charges and procedure...and around evidence being given in the courts."

He was interested in responses by the judiciary, the Crown and police.


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10662352
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« Reply #18 on: August 02, 2010, 02:07:51 pm »


Second part of Te Urewera report released

Radio New Zealand News | 12:05PM - Monday, 02 July 2010

THE SECOND PART of the Waitangi Tribunal report on Te Urewera has been released.

Released at midday on Monday, chapters six to 12 include war in Wairoa and Waikaremoana in the mid 1860s, and legislative land alienation until 1930.

The inquiry is so big the tribunal is releasing its results in parts, and at least one more section is to come.

The first five chapters, released in April, told how Crown forces acted mercilessly while hunting the messianic leader Te Kooti between 1869 and 1871.

Tuhoe non-combatants were killed and some were believed to have been raped. Homes, food supplies and taonga were destroyed, and a senior officer spoke to his troops of ‘extermination’.

The Tribunal found Te Kooti's earlier attacks justified a military response but that the roots of the fighting were wrongful confiscations, including half of Tuhoe's best land.


http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/stories/2010/08/02/a1cf66eb3be6
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« Reply #19 on: October 26, 2010, 05:38:44 pm »


Tuhoe return to negotiating table

By YVONNE TAHANA - The New Zealand Herald | 5:30AM - Thursday, October 21, 2010

Photo: Greg Bowker.

TUHOE and the Government are back at the negotiating table, five months after a deal ground to a halt over the ownership of Te Urewera National Park.

Government officials and tribal negotiators met last Friday to discuss the specifics about how the groups can push forward towards settlement.

In May, Prime Minister John Key scuttled a deal which would have seen the park returned to Tuhoe ownership. The tribe's chief negotiator Tamati Kruger said at the time that ownership was a bottom line for the iwi but that wasn't acceptable to Mr Key.

Yesterday, Treaty Negotiations Minister Christopher Finlayson was asked whether there was a middle way forward between the two positions.

"What I'm going to do is negotiate with the iwi, which is the approach I take to all negotiations, and I'll let you know in due course," he said.

Since the breakdown, negotiations of any substance had stopped although the groups continued talking. Sources said these meetings were largely about making sure that communication didn't break down entirely.

A new, agreed set of media talking points between the two parties says that there is a desire to settle.

Te Urewera remains the deal breaker and while fee simple ownership of Te Urewera is out, Tuhoe's re-engagement points to a willingness to find some creative solution. The park, which Tuhoe considers its homeland, was only one part of the old settlement.

A full financial offer was worth $120 million, $66 million of which would have been taken as cash, while the remaining $54 million would be taken as paid from the tribe's share of its the multi-iwi Central North Island Forests or Treelords deal in 2008.

The other major negotiation plank is the tribe's push for mana motuhake, a form of self-government under which it would be responsible for providing government services.

The Herald understands that for the most part while detailed work still needs to be done on the last two components, the broad outline of financial redress and the mana motuhake proposals are likely to remain unchanged.


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/te-urewera-national-park/news/article.cfm?l_id=500533&objectid=10681977
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« Reply #20 on: October 29, 2010, 06:51:43 pm »


Tuhoe asks PM why tribal ownership is evil

By YVONNE TAHANA - The New Zealand Herald | 5:30AM - Friday, October 29, 2010

Prime Minister John Key. — Photo: Associated Press.
Prime Minister John Key.
 — Photo: Associated Press.


JOHN KEY should explain why tribal ownership of Te Urewera National Park is "evil" as a starting point for Treaty negotiations, a Tuhoe leader says.

Talks broke down in May after the Prime Minister ruled out the handover, saying it was "unacceptable" despite months of Crown work on the issue.

Two weeks ago both parties agreed to re-enter negotiations and Tuhoe's chief negotiator, Tamati Kruger, said the tribe felt an explanation was a rational place to start.

"Everything is back on the table so if that is so, then we deserve an explanation about what evil does the PM see in sole vesting?"

"We want to investigate it. We may get to the point of full understanding about his point of view and so we can go with confidence investigating other options. But at the moment we are asked to investigate other options by default, not by reason," Mr Kruger said.

The tribe was happy to be back in active discussions but hoped that Mr Key's role in negotiations would be clearly defined this time around.

"We've always remarked that we are negotiating with the Crown, not the Prime Minister."

The Crown for us is the elected consciousness of New Zealand so through the Crown we're talking to the country. Through the Prime Minister we believe we're talking to the National Party."

Mr Kruger said it was unlikely a deal would be done before next year's election.

If it was not, Tuhoe would be talking to the Maori Party to see if completing it could become part of any coalition agreement should it find itself supporting a National government again.

The Herald was unable to get comment from Mr Key yesterday.

May's scuttled deal included a $120 million offer in which the Crown retained an option to take full management control of Te Urewera if ownership was vested in the tribe and featured the formation of a joint Crown/iwi park board based on past co-governance models.

At the time, Mr Key said a full vesting was not possible unless there was "another leg to that transaction".

A spokesman for Treaty Negotiations Minister Christopher Finlayson said he would not comment.


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10683797
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« Reply #21 on: May 03, 2011, 03:28:25 pm »


A message from the heartland

By ROD EMMERSON - The New Zealand Herald | 10:34AM - Saturday, April 16, 2011

Te Hau o Punanui was carved at Ruatahuna in the late 1800s. — Photo: Whakatane Museum and Gallery.
Te Hau o Punanui was carved at Ruatahuna in the late 1800s.
 — Photo: Whakatane Museum and Gallery.


IT'S 5.30am on a crisp April morning and the powhiri opening this unusual exhibition is well-advanced. Outside, a faint but definite whiff of White Island is lingering.

Some 80 people (mostly Tuhoe) are tucked into an exhibition room while the formalities unfold.

Tuhoe are in song and I'm wondering if the spirit of Te Kooti, the guerilla leader from Gisborne who hid out in Tuhoe land, isn't among us.

From the corner of my eye, I see a handful of men chanting with a slightly raised hand. Perhaps they are Ringatu (upraised hand), the faith established by this prophet. My musical ear has sensed a rhythm that is more chant than melodic chorus.

I have heard many an iwi in song and chant, but not like this. But then, when you talk about Tuhoe to those who know Maoridom they will tell you — Tuhoe are different.

So when they undertake an exhibition that provides a unique cameo perspective of their origins and title it The People and the Land Are One, you don't have to take too much time out to think this through.

Perhaps a cleverly loaded double entendre carries a message that has resonated since 1840 and now painfully rings in the ears of Parliament.

The land, of course, is Te Urewera and there isn't enough exhibition space to timeline the triumphs and tragedies of Tuhoe and their maternal land. They were never given the opportunity to sign the Treaty of Waitangi, and never relinquished their identity and sovereignty.

That, along with the beliefs of Rua Kenana and Te Kooti, has brought them 170 years of admiration, contempt and almost obliteration.

Although it is sheer coincidence, there is also the timing of the opening of the exhibition. In just a few short weeks, the "Urewera 18" face a questionable jury-less court as a result of the 2007 "terrorist training camp" raids. Brought forward to May from August, there was apprehension it could permeate the World Cup.

But there is none of this in the exhibition. It could well have been an embittered whakapohane (baring of the bum) aimed directly at the Crown.

A message from the heartland — but it's not. Instead, it's tempered, historical and matter-of-fact.

They are patient, methodical, committed and have but one goal.

At this stage, no promotional literature exists, deliberately relying on traditional Tuhoe and their hapu "word of mouth".

Day one and the gallery is full by mid-morning. School children line up outside while others soak it up inside.

Tuhoe spokesman Tamati Kruger, with arts and cultural manager Wayne Marriott and the gallery's project co-ordinator Kay Boreham, are beaming at having nurtured this to fruition. Marriott refers to the two-inch syndrome, whereby youth walk out two inches taller and proud of their heritage. With the Tuhoe sport and cultural event, Ahurei, due in the area shortly, the syndrome will transcend all ages.

Three highly prized artefacts greet you as you enter. Unique to Tuhoe is the pumotomoto. This rare flute is played directly into the fontanelle (soft area of the cranium) of a new-born child, to embed tribal mythology.

Another is a small but distinctive cast-iron pot known as a "Go-ashore", said to be from Captain James Cook's 1769 landing in Poverty Bay. Another is a magnificent taha, or ornamented gourd, named Kurariki and gifted to missionary Sister Annie Henry by Rawiri Paraki. It's said to have been aboard the great waka Mataatua.

For me, it's the story spread around the walls. The blanket that Tuhoe activist Tame Iti presented to former Cabinet minister Doug Graham at a hui in Opotiki, now dry-cleaned with the distinctive odour of horse sweat removed, takes its place among these walls. "A blanket for my land back." As a cynical cartoonist, it gets a smile from me. Its more permanent home is the meeting room at the Office of Treaty Settlements.

In 1997, art collector Dame Jenny Gibbs negotiated with Iti and activist Te Kaha for the return of Colin McCahon's Urewera Mural, taken from the Aniwaniwa conservation centre at Lake Waikaremoana. She considered the theft a lesson in how it feels to have taonga stolen.

This morning, Iti glides around the museum wearing a heavy fawn-coloured coat, a dark-brimmed hat and spats. He is many things, artist and activist, with one wahine going so far as to say he's a "pussycat". Terrorist, I suspect, is not one of them.

Two of my cartoons appear on a far wall with one from Mark Winter, better known as Chicane.

Triumphantly standing alone like a pulled tooth is a prized survey peg. Tuhoe reefed these out by the hundreds as an act of defiance to impede the spread of Pakeha farmers to their lands. Early photographs of various leaders line the walls - the most striking of which is of Te Makarini Tamarau. You can't help but wonder what they would think of today's New Zealand.

The Tuhoe goal of a sovereign state within the Ureweras has ignited debate for years. Tamati Kruger is an extraordinary communicator who can allay primal fears and bring a highly commendable argument to the table. So much so, they were within inches of gaining a toehold resolution with the Government last year, until Prime Minister John Key backflipped at the 11th hour. Blue-rinsed National had nabbed his ear.

But the dream is always on the march. Last year, Tuhoe sent a delegation to Australia to study the 1985 return of Uluru (Ayers Rock) to the Pitjantjatjara. So, too, to the Inuit of Arctic Canada. Don't be surprised to hear they may visit sovereign states like Bhutan, Thailand and beyond to independent Ireland and Scotland.

They are patient, methodical, committed and have but one goal.

Make no mistake, Kruger will produce a model designed to survive the acrid test of bureaucratic scrutiny and wily heartland New Zealanders.

What then?

No doubt Maoridom will be watching this space very closely. After all, the people and the land are one. Truly worth a journey to Whakatane. Who knows, you may walk out two inches taller.


______________________________________

EXHIBITION

What: Ngai Tuhoe — Te Urewera: The People and the Land are One.

Where: Whakatane Museum and Gallery until June.

Online: WhakataneMuseum.org.nz.


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10719735
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« Reply #22 on: May 03, 2011, 03:37:23 pm »


A year on, no Tuhoe resolution in sight

The withdrawal of the deal to return iwi land
has caused ongoing grief, writes Paul Moon.


The New Zealand Herald | 5:30AM - Tuesday, May 03, 2011

The proposed deal to return Te Urewera National Park to Tuhoe would have maintained public access. — Photo: Greg Bowker.
The proposed deal to return Te Urewera National Park
to Tuhoe would have maintained public access.
 — Photo: Greg Bowker.


HISTORY can be informative, instructive, and sometimes even illuminating. Cicero admonished us that without learning from history, we will continue as children, while Hegel viewed human history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom.

However, what the ghosts of history past did not mention was that history can also be frustrating, even painful.

This month marks a year since one such lesson was foisted on Tuhoe by the Crown in a saga that has dragged on intermittently for more than a century.

At the start of May last year, all the indications were that the Crown and Tuhoe were putting the finishing touches on a deal that would see Te Urewera National Park returned to Tuhoe, with enough caveats to ensure that access and other rights for the public would remain practically unchanged.

Tuhoe would have what all the evidence shows rightfully belongs to it, and the rest of the country would not be adversely affected in any way in the process.

The sort of settlement one would have expected the Crown and the public to welcome with open arms.

The deal was a long time coming. The Waitangi Tribunal has documented in excruciating detail how successive governments since the 19th century trampled over Tuhoe rights — appropriating their lands with disregard for the occupants and with contempt for any sense of natural justice.

In the roughly 18 months before last May, negotiations between various Government departments and the iwi looked promising.

All that remained were the formalities confirming the transfer.

Then, someone blinked. A rushed announcement was made by the Prime Minster that Tuhoe were not going to have the National Park returned to them after all.

The iwi's clearly stunned negotiators were left wondering what had suddenly gone wrong with negotiations that had appeared to have been progressing so well.

The excuse the Government used last May - and has stuck to since - was that the return of Te Urewera National Park might set a precedent for other Treaty settlements.

Putting aside the sui generis nature of Tuhoe's claim, the argument that doing something right in dealings with one iwi might mean having to do things right with other iwi, hardly seemed to be a good basis for the decision. The moral rectitude of returning Te Urewera National Park to Tuhoe ownership was completely airbrushed out of the political equation.

Yet, in spite of the enormous frustration of having the expected return of the land snatched away at the last minute, Tuhoe's response in the subsequent 12 months has been one of patience, restraint and dignity.

Its negotiators have persisted with their calm, informed approach in dealings with the Crown, while all the time, the Crown's tactic has been one of delay.

No doubt the beguiling character of Te Urewera National Park has been a consideration for those who oppose returning the park to Tuhoe.

Its long-lauded sublime characteristics have for more than a century left visitors to the area in awe of its staggering beauty.

Toothers, it is a drug-addled and gang-choked backwater — a dystopia in the middle of utopia. Either way, it is a part of the country where the links indigenous communities have with the land is strong, and where experiences since the 1860s have left an ingrained sense of grievance among many of the inhabitants.

With one year having passed since the Government's decision to pull the rug out from under the feet of Tuhoe, on the surface, things seemed to have stalled.

Low-level talks have continued, but the momentum lost last May has yet to be regained. Yet a resolution is still tantalisingly close.

Courage on one side and continued goodwill on the other seem to be all that is now required to produce a lasting settlement for an area that has for too long been victim to reticent government policies.

And that for just as long has lived with the mounting despair of a major grievance left unresolved.


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10722964
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« Reply #23 on: September 21, 2011, 12:34:00 pm »


Te Urewera — from the beginning

Rebecca Kamm looks at a dramatic work paying homage to the eviction of the Tuhoe people.

By REBECCA KAMM - The New Zealand Herald | 5:00AM - Monday, September 19, 2011

Choreographer Maaka Pepene sees Te Houhi as telling “the story of where we come from”. — Photo: Steven McNicholl.
Choreographer Maaka Pepene sees Te Houhi as telling “the story of
where we come from”. — Photo: Steven McNicholl.


TE KOOTI ARIKIRANGI TE TURUKI was the best-known Maori freedom fighter of the 19th century and famed for his prophetic visions. The Tuhoe people, whose traditional lands centre on rugged Te Urewera, tell of his visit to the old Maori village of Te Huohi, where he slept just outside the settlement on a grassy knoll.

While Te Kooti slept, he dreamed the surrounding valley was covered in a dense mist, intruding from all areas and obscuring his view.

Choreographer Maaka Pepene, of Tuhoe descent, knows the story well. "Te Kooti's dream has been interpreted to mean that the people were going to be separated from the land," he says.

"He placed eight treasures under the ground, prophesying that when a child came to unearth them, the people and the land would be reunited."

"So this story doesn't have an end, because the prophecy hasn't been fulfilled yet: the people are not one with the land again."

The story might not yet have an end, but it certainly has a beginning, and that beginning forms the backbone of Pepene's new work, “Te Houhi”. The first full-length performance from the Atamira Dance Collective in three years, Pepene's production will pay homage to his turbulent tribal history; the eviction of the Tuhoe people.

Labelled rebels for harbouring Te Kooti in the late 1800s, the Tuhoe people were subjected to scorched earth military tactics and war, leaving them ravaged and dispossessed. Their land was fraudulently acquired by two pakeha settlers, and — crucially — they were forbidden to take their beloved wharenui (meeting house) with them.

Eventually, in 1908, the Government agreed to return the wharenui to its rightful owners, offering to pay for its transportation.

But the Tuhoe people declined, and in a poignant act of defiance carried their sacred building several kilometres by hand, from Te Houhi to a new settlement in Waiohou, inland from Whakatane.

Inlaid with early Maori figurative art and central to the Tuhoe people's Ringatu faith, the Tuhoi wharenui is a crucial symbol of faith and hope.

A production visit to Pepene's family in Waiohou during the work's planning stages made that fact even clearer for all involved, says Moss Patterson, artistic director of the Atamira Dance Collective.

"We didn't realise the weight of it at the time, but it was a celebration of the shifting of the house," he says. "There was a full haka powhiri; it was huge ... We were part of their Ringatu church service ... We met his father, Pepe, who was the Ringatu priest in that area. [Ringatu] is very much a living faith, and it forms the backdrop for the story."

Accordingly, Te Houhi starts at the start. That is, at the very beginning of time. "I wanted to establish that we didn't come here in a waka, that we were born from the Urewera elements," says Pepene. "We're part of the air, the soil, the wind."

The body of the work itself is made up of three segments: Te ao o neheraa, the ancient world; Te ao hurihuri, the arrival of the Europeans; Te ao marama. the world of light.

Within these three segments are seven central characters — the ageless gatekeeper who "opens the portal to let people traverse through time and space" — and six other entities.

Two play the parent types, two are siblings or offspring, and two are cousins, or uncles.

Pepene has given each character a "persona", or element, and symbolism, lighting and costume all work to define the emotion represented by each of these personas.

"In the beginning and the second half, each character has on their costumes a moko, representing their element. Those motifs are carried through in the AV, and come to represent different emotional states, like fire, aggression and anger."

Pepene and set designer John Verryt also uses projection to recreate the "metaphysical realms" of the landscape, using high-definition film of Te Urewera and the warenui.

Pepene says his aim was a magically cinematic effect.

"There are connotations to Te Urewera," he says. "Some people think of it as a mystical place, others think of it as the place of rebels and activists. Because of the content of the story I wanted to establish a sense of a mythical realm, a utopian society, to tell the story of where we come from."

The choreographer's foray into the emotional and spiritual is enhanced by a soundscape by Tuia award-winner Louise Potiki Bryant and Pitch Black's Paddy Free, who have powered Te Houhi with simple, organic sounds that fuel its narrative.

Rumbling thunder accompanies the scorched earth scene, a rhythmic heartbeat the work's opening.

"Music and sound make it a more complete experience," Pepene says. "The sections of the work are full of content, but they're each also expressions of a certain feeling."

Expressions of feelings via dance form the crux of this tribal retelling.

"Movement is nothing without intention," says Pepene, who — true to his allegiance to holistic performance — has incorporated kapa haka, contemporary dance, and movement inspired by Butoh; a minimalistic Japanese dance form.

His performers, dressed by Marama designer Tracey Loyd, will wear flowing, "Greek god-like" dresses and trousers. In contrast, the second act has hyper-stylised colonial costumes.

Yet despite all the grandeur and intensity, Pepene maintains his ethos is one of clarity.

"I'm a simple person, and storytelling is about finding the essence of the story, and then embellishing that to create highs and lows."

"Life is about those highs and lows, and then those moments of stillness. It's those moments of stillness that make the high and lows even more poignant."


______________________________________

Performance

  • What:Te Houhi”.

  • Where and when: Q Theatre, 305 Queen Street, Auckland CBD. September 21-25.


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10752866
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« Reply #24 on: October 06, 2011, 04:45:54 pm »


I reckon the Nats are waiting until after the general election.

Then, they will sign ownership of Lake Waikaremoana over to Tuhoe.

The Nats will then have almost three years for voters' short memories to erase the fallout.
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