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The Haane Manahi VC claim (Wai 893) was filed with the Waitangi Tribunal in 2000 by Arapeta Tahana, the chairperson of the Te Arawa Maori Trust Board. It concerns the downgrading of a recommendation for a Victoria Cross (the highest possible Commonwealth military award for bravery) to a Distinguished Conduct Medal for an act of bravery by Lance-Sergeant Haane Manahi, in action at Takrouna (Tunisia) in 1943. Te Arawa claim that their requests to restore the original VC recommendation have not been handled adequately by the New Zealand Government and that this failure constitutes a breach of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. They seek recommendations that the Crown consult with Te Arawa and present a fully researched and agreed proposal to the Queen for her consideration.

This report concerns a claim about the control and future of wananga in New Zealand, particularly Te Wananga o Aotearoa.

The report covers 14 individual claims stretching from Dargaville down the West Coast to Muriwai, and from Mangawhai on the East Coast to Riverhead on the Waitemata Harbour. The Tribunal concluded that claimants were prejudiced by numerous breaches around these issues and that several breaches to articles 2 and 3 of the Treaty of Waitangi had occurred. The Tribunal finds that the Ngati Whatua o Kaipara claim (Wai 312), and four other southern Kaipara claims, are well founded. This report also contains a minority opinion from one of the Kaipara Tribunal members, Dr Michael Bassett.

On 24 June 2006, on a sunny windless day at Ngahutoitoi marae near Paeroa, the Tribunal presented the Hauraki Report to the assembled claimants. This ceremony, following presentation of the report to the Minister of Maori Affairs, was the culmination of some seven years work, covering 56 claims within the Hauraki Inquiry District.

The report is the largest in the Tribunal’s history and comprises three volumes, 1310 pages in all. The first claims were lodged by the Hauraki Maori Trust Board, constituted under act of parliament in 1988 to represent the 12 main iwi in the district’s complex tribal structure. Subsequently, many of the constituent iwi and hapu lodged separate claims.

The Tribunal appointed to hear the claims were Dame Augusta Wallace, presiding officer, John Kneebone, Professor Wharehuia Milroy, and Dame Evelyn Stokes. To our great regret and sorrow, Dame Evelyn died in August 2005, when the report to which she had made invaluable contributions was near completion. Hearings of claims and evidence began in September 1998 and concluded in November 2002. Assessing the evidence accumulated over four years of hearings, and reporting on the many claims, placed considerable demands on the Tribunal’s resources.

This is the first time that issues relating to gold mining, a central feature of the Hauraki claims, have been considered in depth by the Waitangi Tribunal. The claimants did not argue that gold, separately from land, is a traditional taonga, like pounamu. They owned the land, however, and everything in the land, and they controlled the access to it. The key questions were whether the Crown waited upon the owners’ full and free consent to open the land for mining, and whether the payments to owners for the right of access – the mining cessions or leases negotiated over Coromandel, Thames, Ohinemuri and elsewhere – were fair.

The Tribunal found that in the 1860s the Crown did generally negotiate openly and fairly and that the payments to owners of the annual miner’s rights fees and lease rentals for residential and business sites (rather than a royalty on gold actually extracted), were reasonable. This finding is related to the huge capital costs involved in quartz mining, which could be borne only by companies, as distinct from alluvial mining which can be done by individuals or small groups of miners.

However, the Tribunal found that undue pressure was brought to bear in some cases, especially in Ohinemuri, and that the Crown unilaterally reduced the scale of fees in the 1880s, when the mining industry was in difficulties. Even more seriously, the Crown systematically pursued the purchase of the freehold of land already subject to mining cessions. In 1940, a commision of inquiry found that Maori owners had not been fully advised that sale of the freehold meant that they were no longer entitled to the mining revenue, that the Crown, as holder of the mining leases, had at least a moral obligation to so advise them, and that a substantial ex gratia payment should be made. The Crown has conceded in the Tribunal’s proceedings that this payment should have been made. The Tribunal has welcomed the Crown’s concession and recommended that 1940 recommendation should be implemented ‘fully and in a generous spirit’.

Raupatu, the confiscation of land by the Crown during the wars of the 1860s, was another major issue in Hauraki. The Crown asked the Tribunal to examine the whole question of the war in Waikato and Hauraki, which had not been previously considered by the Tribunal because the Waikato Raupatu Claims Settlement Act 1995 was based upon direct negotiations between Tainui and the Crown. The Tribunal found that responsibility for the renewal of war in 1863 indeed lay largely with Governor Grey and his Ministers, and that the wholesale confiscation of land, including Hauraki land as well as Waikato land, was unwarranted and in breach of the Treaty. Moreover, the Crown has conceded that very little land was subsequently returned to the Hauraki tribes, following earlier inquiries.

The Tribunal has welcomed this concession, because of the seriousness of the injuries to Hauraki iwi by war and raupatu. In relation to the intersecting claims of Tainui and Hauraki over the Maramurua forest, the Tribunal had concluded that the Crown has met its obligations concerning the forest under the 1995 act, and that the forest lands, and other Crown lands in Hauraki, are potentially open to negotiations between Hauraki and the Office of Treaty Settlements in settlement of the Hauraki claims.

The Crown’s systematic purchase of Hauraki lands was a third major aspect of the Hauraki claims. Despite early purchases and confiscation, Hauraki iwi in 1865 still possessed some 80 per cent of their traditional lands. By 1900, they possessed no more than 20 per cent and at the time of hearing only about 2.6 per cent.

This dispossession had been carried out under the mechanisms provided by the Native Land Acts and under legislation which secured the Crown a monopoly right of purchase over most Hauraki land. The tribes did not generally have access to an open market or the opportunity to lease. The Tribunal’s report shows that (contrary to general opinion) the Native Lands Act 1862 was applied in Hauraki, without the two-stage process provided of first granting a tribal title then allowing the community to make considered decisions about multiple uses of the land, including their own farming or forestry enterprises as well as sale and leasing. Subsequent legislation – notably the 1865 and 1873 Acts – were little more than convenient mechanisms to divide the owners and facilitate purchase.

Despite successive governments’ rhetoric that they wished Maori as well as settlers to develop land, Maori aspirations in this regard were persistently frustrated, rather than fostered, by the Native Land Acts. Even after the Stout–Ngata commission in 1907 reported that Hauraki tribes could not afford to sell any more land, the 1909 Act again included mechanisms to facilitate purchase and the Crown launched a further campaign of systematic purchase in the district. The Tribunal has concluded that systematic purchase under the Native Land Acts exceeded even war and raupatu in its far-reaching and damaging consequences to Hauraki Maori.

In this report, and in its earlier report on Tikapa Moana (the Hauraki Gulf), the Tribunal has recognised the enormous importance to Maori of the seas, foreshores and inland waterways. In relation to foreshores and the seabed, the Hauraki Tribunal did not revisit the legal issues reported upon by a previous Tribunal but it did examine the complexity of customary interests in the Thames and Coromandel foreshores. It also concluded that the Crown’s withdrawal of the Native Land Court’s jurisdiction over foreshores after 1872 prejudiced Maori interests.

The Hauraki claims related to many issues which arise in other districts as well: old land claims and pre-emption waiver purchases, Crown purchases before 1865, the purchase of timber, thermal springs, the loss of taonga and wahi tapu, the rating of Maori land, and public works takings. In short, this is one of the most far-ranging and comprehensive reports produced under the Treaty of Waitangi Act.  It will assist in the settlement of the historical claims process generally. Moreover, for the general as well as the academic reader, it modifies existing historical understandings of many of the most important issues in post-1840 New Zealand.

On 24 June 2006, on a sunny windless day at Ngahutoitoi marae near Paeroa, the Tribunal presented the Hauraki Report to the assembled claimants. This ceremony, following presentation of the report to the Minister of Maori Affairs, was the culmination of some seven years work, covering 56 claims within the Hauraki Inquiry District.

The report is the largest in the Tribunal’s history and comprises three volumes, 1310 pages in all. The first claims were lodged by the Hauraki Maori Trust Board, constituted under act of parliament in 1988 to represent the 12 main iwi in the district’s complex tribal structure. Subsequently, many of the constituent iwi and hapu lodged separate claims.

The Tribunal appointed to hear the claims were Dame Augusta Wallace, presiding officer, John Kneebone, Professor Wharehuia Milroy, and Dame Evelyn Stokes. To our great regret and sorrow, Dame Evelyn died in August 2005, when the report to which she had made invaluable contributions was near completion. Hearings of claims and evidence began in September 1998 and concluded in November 2002. Assessing the evidence accumulated over four years of hearings, and reporting on the many claims, placed considerable demands on the Tribunal’s resources.

This is the first time that issues relating to gold mining, a central feature of the Hauraki claims, have been considered in depth by the Waitangi Tribunal. The claimants did not argue that gold, separately from land, is a traditional taonga, like pounamu. They owned the land, however, and everything in the land, and they controlled the access to it. The key questions were whether the Crown waited upon the owners’ full and free consent to open the land for mining, and whether the payments to owners for the right of access – the mining cessions or leases negotiated over Coromandel, Thames, Ohinemuri and elsewhere – were fair.

The Tribunal found that in the 1860s the Crown did generally negotiate openly and fairly and that the payments to owners of the annual miner’s rights fees and lease rentals for residential and business sites (rather than a royalty on gold actually extracted), were reasonable. This finding is related to the huge capital costs involved in quartz mining, which could be borne only by companies, as distinct from alluvial mining which can be done by individuals or small groups of miners.

However, the Tribunal found that undue pressure was brought to bear in some cases, especially in Ohinemuri, and that the Crown unilaterally reduced the scale of fees in the 1880s, when the mining industry was in difficulties. Even more seriously, the Crown systematically pursued the purchase of the freehold of land already subject to mining cessions. In 1940, a commision of inquiry found that Maori owners had not been fully advised that sale of the freehold meant that they were no longer entitled to the mining revenue, that the Crown, as holder of the mining leases, had at least a moral obligation to so advise them, and that a substantial ex gratia payment should be made. The Crown has conceded in the Tribunal’s proceedings that this payment should have been made. The Tribunal has welcomed the Crown’s concession and recommended that 1940 recommendation should be implemented ‘fully and in a generous spirit’.

Raupatu, the confiscation of land by the Crown during the wars of the 1860s, was another major issue in Hauraki. The Crown asked the Tribunal to examine the whole question of the war in Waikato and Hauraki, which had not been previously considered by the Tribunal because the Waikato Raupatu Claims Settlement Act 1995 was based upon direct negotiations between Tainui and the Crown. The Tribunal found that responsibility for the renewal of war in 1863 indeed lay largely with Governor Grey and his Ministers, and that the wholesale confiscation of land, including Hauraki land as well as Waikato land, was unwarranted and in breach of the Treaty. Moreover, the Crown has conceded that very little land was subsequently returned to the Hauraki tribes, following earlier inquiries.

The Tribunal has welcomed this concession, because of the seriousness of the injuries to Hauraki iwi by war and raupatu. In relation to the intersecting claims of Tainui and Hauraki over the Maramurua forest, the Tribunal had concluded that the Crown has met its obligations concerning the forest under the 1995 act, and that the forest lands, and other Crown lands in Hauraki, are potentially open to negotiations between Hauraki and the Office of Treaty Settlements in settlement of the Hauraki claims.

The Crown’s systematic purchase of Hauraki lands was a third major aspect of the Hauraki claims. Despite early purchases and confiscation, Hauraki iwi in 1865 still possessed some 80 per cent of their traditional lands. By 1900, they possessed no more than 20 per cent and at the time of hearing only about 2.6 per cent.

This dispossession had been carried out under the mechanisms provided by the Native Land Acts and under legislation which secured the Crown a monopoly right of purchase over most Hauraki land. The tribes did not generally have access to an open market or the opportunity to lease. The Tribunal’s report shows that (contrary to general opinion) the Native Lands Act 1862 was applied in Hauraki, without the two-stage process provided of first granting a tribal title then allowing the community to make considered decisions about multiple uses of the land, including their own farming or forestry enterprises as well as sale and leasing. Subsequent legislation – notably the 1865 and 1873 Acts – were little more than convenient mechanisms to divide the owners and facilitate purchase.

Despite successive governments’ rhetoric that they wished Maori as well as settlers to develop land, Maori aspirations in this regard were persistently frustrated, rather than fostered, by the Native Land Acts. Even after the Stout–Ngata commission in 1907 reported that Hauraki tribes could not afford to sell any more land, the 1909 Act again included mechanisms to facilitate purchase and the Crown launched a further campaign of systematic purchase in the district. The Tribunal has concluded that systematic purchase under the Native Land Acts exceeded even war and raupatu in its far-reaching and damaging consequences to Hauraki Maori.

In this report, and in its earlier report on Tikapa Moana (the Hauraki Gulf), the Tribunal has recognised the enormous importance to Maori of the seas, foreshores and inland waterways. In relation to foreshores and the seabed, the Hauraki Tribunal did not revisit the legal issues reported upon by a previous Tribunal but it did examine the complexity of customary interests in the Thames and Coromandel foreshores. It also concluded that the Crown’s withdrawal of the Native Land Court’s jurisdiction over foreshores after 1872 prejudiced Maori interests.

The Hauraki claims related to many issues which arise in other districts as well: old land claims and pre-emption waiver purchases, Crown purchases before 1865, the purchase of timber, thermal springs, the loss of taonga and wahi tapu, the rating of Maori land, and public works takings. In short, this is one of the most far-ranging and comprehensive reports produced under the Treaty of Waitangi Act.  It will assist in the settlement of the historical claims process generally. Moreover, for the general as well as the academic reader, it modifies existing historical understandings of many of the most important issues in post-1840 New Zealand.

On 24 June 2006, on a sunny windless day at Ngahutoitoi marae near Paeroa, the Tribunal presented the Hauraki Report to the assembled claimants. This ceremony, following presentation of the report to the Minister of Maori Affairs, was the culmination of some seven years work, covering 56 claims within the Hauraki Inquiry District.

The report is the largest in the Tribunal’s history and comprises three volumes, 1310 pages in all. The first claims were lodged by the Hauraki Maori Trust Board, constituted under act of parliament in 1988 to represent the 12 main iwi in the district’s complex tribal structure. Subsequently, many of the constituent iwi and hapu lodged separate claims.

The Tribunal appointed to hear the claims were Dame Augusta Wallace, presiding officer, John Kneebone, Professor Wharehuia Milroy, and Dame Evelyn Stokes. To our great regret and sorrow, Dame Evelyn died in August 2005, when the report to which she had made invaluable contributions was near completion. Hearings of claims and evidence began in September 1998 and concluded in November 2002. Assessing the evidence accumulated over four years of hearings, and reporting on the many claims, placed considerable demands on the Tribunal’s resources.

This is the first time that issues relating to gold mining, a central feature of the Hauraki claims, have been considered in depth by the Waitangi Tribunal. The claimants did not argue that gold, separately from land, is a traditional taonga, like pounamu. They owned the land, however, and everything in the land, and they controlled the access to it. The key questions were whether the Crown waited upon the owners’ full and free consent to open the land for mining, and whether the payments to owners for the right of access – the mining cessions or leases negotiated over Coromandel, Thames, Ohinemuri and elsewhere – were fair.

The Tribunal found that in the 1860s the Crown did generally negotiate openly and fairly and that the payments to owners of the annual miner’s rights fees and lease rentals for residential and business sites (rather than a royalty on gold actually extracted), were reasonable. This finding is related to the huge capital costs involved in quartz mining, which could be borne only by companies, as distinct from alluvial mining which can be done by individuals or small groups of miners.

However, the Tribunal found that undue pressure was brought to bear in some cases, especially in Ohinemuri, and that the Crown unilaterally reduced the scale of fees in the 1880s, when the mining industry was in difficulties. Even more seriously, the Crown systematically pursued the purchase of the freehold of land already subject to mining cessions. In 1940, a commision of inquiry found that Maori owners had not been fully advised that sale of the freehold meant that they were no longer entitled to the mining revenue, that the Crown, as holder of the mining leases, had at least a moral obligation to so advise them, and that a substantial ex gratia payment should be made. The Crown has conceded in the Tribunal’s proceedings that this payment should have been made. The Tribunal has welcomed the Crown’s concession and recommended that 1940 recommendation should be implemented ‘fully and in a generous spirit’.

Raupatu, the confiscation of land by the Crown during the wars of the 1860s, was another major issue in Hauraki. The Crown asked the Tribunal to examine the whole question of the war in Waikato and Hauraki, which had not been previously considered by the Tribunal because the Waikato Raupatu Claims Settlement Act 1995 was based upon direct negotiations between Tainui and the Crown. The Tribunal found that responsibility for the renewal of war in 1863 indeed lay largely with Governor Grey and his Ministers, and that the wholesale confiscation of land, including Hauraki land as well as Waikato land, was unwarranted and in breach of the Treaty. Moreover, the Crown has conceded that very little land was subsequently returned to the Hauraki tribes, following earlier inquiries.

The Tribunal has welcomed this concession, because of the seriousness of the injuries to Hauraki iwi by war and raupatu. In relation to the intersecting claims of Tainui and Hauraki over the Maramurua forest, the Tribunal had concluded that the Crown has met its obligations concerning the forest under the 1995 act, and that the forest lands, and other Crown lands in Hauraki, are potentially open to negotiations between Hauraki and the Office of Treaty Settlements in settlement of the Hauraki claims.

The Crown’s systematic purchase of Hauraki lands was a third major aspect of the Hauraki claims. Despite early purchases and confiscation, Hauraki iwi in 1865 still possessed some 80 per cent of their traditional lands. By 1900, they possessed no more than 20 per cent and at the time of hearing only about 2.6 per cent.

This dispossession had been carried out under the mechanisms provided by the Native Land Acts and under legislation which secured the Crown a monopoly right of purchase over most Hauraki land. The tribes did not generally have access to an open market or the opportunity to lease. The Tribunal’s report shows that (contrary to general opinion) the Native Lands Act 1862 was applied in Hauraki, without the two-stage process provided of first granting a tribal title then allowing the community to make considered decisions about multiple uses of the land, including their own farming or forestry enterprises as well as sale and leasing. Subsequent legislation – notably the 1865 and 1873 Acts – were little more than convenient mechanisms to divide the owners and facilitate purchase.

Despite successive governments’ rhetoric that they wished Maori as well as settlers to develop land, Maori aspirations in this regard were persistently frustrated, rather than fostered, by the Native Land Acts. Even after the Stout–Ngata commission in 1907 reported that Hauraki tribes could not afford to sell any more land, the 1909 Act again included mechanisms to facilitate purchase and the Crown launched a further campaign of systematic purchase in the district. The Tribunal has concluded that systematic purchase under the Native Land Acts exceeded even war and raupatu in its far-reaching and damaging consequences to Hauraki Maori.

In this report, and in its earlier report on Tikapa Moana (the Hauraki Gulf), the Tribunal has recognised the enormous importance to Maori of the seas, foreshores and inland waterways. In relation to foreshores and the seabed, the Hauraki Tribunal did not revisit the legal issues reported upon by a previous Tribunal but it did examine the complexity of customary interests in the Thames and Coromandel foreshores. It also concluded that the Crown’s withdrawal of the Native Land Court’s jurisdiction over foreshores after 1872 prejudiced Maori interests.

The Hauraki claims related to many issues which arise in other districts as well: old land claims and pre-emption waiver purchases, Crown purchases before 1865, the purchase of timber, thermal springs, the loss of taonga and wahi tapu, the rating of Maori land, and public works takings. In short, this is one of the most far-ranging and comprehensive reports produced under the Treaty of Waitangi Act.  It will assist in the settlement of the historical claims process generally. Moreover, for the general as well as the academic reader, it modifies existing historical understandings of many of the most important issues in post-1840 New Zealand.

This preliminary report concerns claims about the northern South Island.

The Tāmaki Makaurau Settlement Process Report followed an urgent inquiry into claims that six different groups were adversely affected both by the process and proposed outcome of the Treaty settlement negotiations between Ngāti Whātua o Ōrākei and the Crown.

Two reports were prepared by the Tribunal on claims relating to the September 2006 deed of settlement between the Crown and the iwi/hapu of Te Arawa affiliated to Nga Kaihautu o Te Arawa, a body mandated to negotiate the settlement of the historical claims of approximately half of Te Arawa. The Tribunal panel comprised Judge Caren Fox, Peter Brown, the Honourable Douglas Kidd, and Tuahine Northover.

The claimants alleged that the proposed Kaihautu settlement would prejudice their interests by transferring to affiliate groups cultural and commercial redress assets in which they had interests. The Tribunal’s first report dealt with claims on cultural redress, the second with commercial redress. The two reports were published together in a single volume.

The claims discussed in these reports were brought by: Te Arawa groups who chose not to be represented by the Kaihautu; Te Arawa groups who disputed the mandate of the Kaihautu to represent them; and (in the second report) central North Island iwi outside the Te Arawa confederation whose interests were affected by the commercial redress terms of the proposed settlement.

The Report on the Impact of the Crown’s Treaty Settlement Policy on Te Arawa Waka

The first report dealt with cultural redress aspects of the settlement. The Tribunal examined the processes by which the Crown, during the Kaihautu negotiations, communicated with and gathered information from groups whose interests overlapped those of affiliate iwi/hapu. It found that these processes were seriously flawed, and that the Crown had failed to protect the interests of overlapping groups in the cultural redress sites offered to the Kaihautu.

The Tribunal recommended that the Crown undertake to vary the settlement to recognise the customary interests of certain non-affiliate groups with particular cultural redress sites. It also recommended that the statutory acknowledgement in respect of the Rotorua regional geothermal system should apply to the entire Te Arawa waka, and that the Minister of Maori Affairs should annually review the development of policy advice within the Office of Treaty Settlements.

In respect of the claimants who disputed their representation by the Kaihautu, the Tribunal recommended that before the legislation is introduced, the Crown facilitate hui-a-hapu to gauge their support for the Kaihautu mandate once and for all.

The Final Report on the Impact of the Crown’s Treaty Settlement Policies on Te Arawa Waka and Other Tribes

The second report dealt with the major commercial redress element in the Kaihautu settlement: the transfer of approximately 51,000 hectares of Crown forestry licensed land to the affiliate iwi/hapu. The Tribunal found several failures by the Crown to protect the interests of overlapping claimants during its negotiations with the Kaihautu.

First, the Crown had failed to engage fully and robustly with overlapping claimant groups during its negotiations with Kaihautu. The Tribunal considered that the interests of claimants had been put at risk as a result of this failure.

Next, the Tribunal found inadequacies in the Crown’s approach to assessing the sufficiency and appropriateness of the Crown forestry land remaining after the Kaihautu settlement for use in future Treaty settlements with other central North Island iwi.

The Tribunal also found that the Crown had breached the Treaty by including in the deed provision for it to receive the accumulated rentals associated with certain Crown forestry lands included in the settlement. The Tribunal had grave concerns regarding the impact of the settlement on overlapping iwi and on the durability of future central North Island settlements. However, it also recognised that the affiliate iwi/hapu of Te Arawa had done nothing wrong and deserved their settlement.

The Tribunal therefore recommended that the proposed settlement be delayed pending the outcome of a forum of central North Island iwi and other affected groups. The aim of this forum would be to negotiate between participants, according to tikanga, high-level guidelines for the allocation of Crown forest lands. The Tribunal considered that truly durable Treaty settlements would grow out of such a process.

The Waitangi Tribunal released its second preliminary report on Te Tau Ihu customary rights on 3 September 2007. This report follows an earlier preliminary report released in March 2007. The Tribunal has prepared these reports to assist claimants and the Crown with their negotiations by providing early findings on customary rights and their treatment by the Crown. The Tribunal’s main Te Tau Ihu report will address the remaining issues in the Northern South Island inquiry.

The Tribunal panel comprises Judge Wilson Isaac (presiding officer), Rangitihi Tahuparae, John Clarke, Professor Keith Sorrenson, and Pam Ringwood.

Their second preliminary report concerns the customary rights of Te Tau Ihu iwi in the area defined by Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu Act 1996 as the Ngai Tahu takiwa. The Tribunal found that the six Te Tau Ihu iwi that advanced claims with respect to the takiwa – Ngati Apa, Rangitane, Ngati Toa Rangatira, Ngati Rarua, Ngati Tama, and Te Atiawa – had valid customary rights in the takiwa, overlapping the acknowledged rights of Ngai Tahu.

On the east coast, the Tribunal found that Rangitane, Ngati Toa, and Ngai Tahu had legitimate overlapping customary rights in the area between Parinui-o-whiti and Waiau-toa. On the West Coast, the Tribunal found that Ngati Rarua, Ngati Tama, Te Atiawa, Ngati Toa, Ngati Apa, and Ngai Tahu had legitimate overlapping customary rights between Kawatiri and Kahurangi. The rights varied, depending on the iwi, but none of the rights had been extinguished prior to Crown purchasing from 1847.

The Tribunal found that the rights of all these iwi were protected and guaranteed by the Treaty. Notwithstanding this, the Crown extinguished the vast majority of these interests in a series of purchases between 1847 and 1860 without determining the correct right-holders or obtaining their full and free consent.

In 1847, the Tribunal found, the Government extorted the Wairau block from three chiefs in Wellington, thus disenfranchising all other Ngati Toa, Ngati Rarua, and Rangitane people. Then, in 1853, the Government arranged a cession of all Ngati Toa’s interests in the South Island by an unfair manipulation. From 1854 to 1856, it used this cession (the Waipounamu purchase) to obtain the interests of all the other Te Tau Ihu tribes without their free and full consent. These actions, the Tribunal concluded, were in plain breach of the Treaty and its principles.

The Tribunal found that Ngai Tahu’s interests in the northern part of the takiwa were also extinguished through a series of blanket purchases from 1848, concluding with the Kaikoura purchase (1859) on the east coast and the Arahura purchase (1860) on the west. In the Kaikoura transaction, the Crown neither inquired into nor considered Ngati Toa or Rangitane rights. Ngati Toa’s interests in the northern part of the takiwa had been inadequately acknowledged in the Wairau purchase and were not reconsidered in the Kaikoura transaction. The Crown had altogether failed either to inquire into or to consider Rangitane’s interests on this part of the coast and these interests were unfairly extinguished through the Kaikoura purchase, in breach of the Treaty and its principles.

On the West Coast, the Tribunal considered that the rights of Ngati Toa, Ngati Rarua, Ngati Tama, and Te Atiawa had been inadequately acknowledged in the Waipounamu purchase and were not reconsidered during the negotiations for Arahura. The Crown had never inquired into Ngati Apa’s customary rights and once more failed to do so in the Arahura transaction. Ngati Apa were only belatedly considered, and the Government made no inquiry into the extent of their interests. This limited and belated acknowledgement precluded Ngati Apa’s informed consent and was, in the opinion of the Tribunal, in breach of the Treaty and its principles.

The Tribunal further considered that these historical breaches against Te Tau Ihu iwi continued into the twentieth century when the Crown chose to deal exclusively with Ngai Tahu in the Ngai Tahu takiwa, at the expense of Te Tau Ihu iwi who also had legitimate rights in the area. On the basis of a Maori Appellate Court finding in 1990 that Ngai Tahu had sole rights of ownership in the Kaikoura and Arahura blocks at the time of the sale to the Crown, the Government has since dealt exclusively with Ngai Tahu.

The boundaries of the takiwa were statutorily defined in Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu Act 1996 and the Ngai Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998.The Tribunal pointed out that there is nothing in this legislation that prevents the Government from considering Te Tau Ihu iwi interests within the takiwa. The legislation is not in itself in breach of the Treaty, rather the breach lies in the way in which the Government has interpreted it. Te Tau Ihu iwi interests were ignored during the negotiation and settlement of the Ngai Tahu claim. The Tribunal concluded that the Crown had failed to consult adequately with Te Tau Ihu iwi during this process and assets that could potentially have been included in future settlement with Te Tau Ihu iwi were vested in the sole ownership of Ngai Tahu. This exclusive treatment had continued since the settlement, to the detriment of Te Tau Ihu iwi.