Iwi: Getting land back a priority
The last of Taranaki’s eight iwi to settle its Treaty of Waitangi claim has put a stake in the ground over its negotiations – Ngati Maru wants its land back.
The north Taranaki iwi yesterday hosted a delegation from the Office of Treaty Settlements and the Department of Conservation (DOC), including one of the Crown’s chief Treaty of Waitangi negotiators, David Tapsell.
Ngati Maru, which has about 2000 registered members, is in the early stages of negotiating its treaty settlement with the government but a deal is on track to be done by August 2017.
And a clear message was sent by the iwi to the government representatives – it wants back the land illegally taken.
Ngati Maru’s lead negotiator, Anaru Marshall, said the number one issue discussed at hui about the settlement was how much land they would be getting back through the treaty deal.
The iwi’s rohe stretches from the eastern side of Mt Taranaki to the source of the Waitara river, across to the Heao Stream and down to the Whanganui river and back across the Matemateaonga ranges to Stratford.
Historian Pare Hayward said during the 1850s, having survived inter-tribal warfare, Ngati Maru had been a prospering iwi with its own flour mill and fruit orchards.
But in 1865, the iwi had 220,000 hectares of land illegally confiscated from it by the Crown or sold out from under it by people who had tenuous connections to the group, leaving it with next to nothing.
Of the large tracts of land taken off the iwi, about 80,000 hectares or 131 different sites are now governed by DOC.
Hayward said despite the losses and the challenges the iwi had faced in the years since, its efforts to establish a marae and to keep up connections between its members was a tribute to Ngati Maru’s strength as a people.
‘‘That’s something that demonstrates our fortitude amidst everything that was done to us,’’ she said.
Te Runanga o Ngati Maru chairman Holden Hohaia said negotiations with the government had begun in earnest about three months ago.
He said the starting principle for negotiations with the Crown is that land wrongfully taken from them would be returned. That would also apply to DOC land, Hohaia said.
Yesterday’s visit, which also included a tour of sites significant to the