Rapua ngā tuhinga ruku tātari

The quantification of property loss, personal injury, social impairment, and forfeited development opportunities may assist the consideration of comparative equities between claimant groups, but it is not necessarily determinative of the measures appropriate for relief in any one case today. As we consider further at the end of this report, in resolving historical claims a pay-off for the past, even if that were possible, may not be as important as the strategies required to ensure a better future.
—The Waitangi Tribunal

When The Taranaki Report: Kaupapa Tuatahi was released in 1996, it was hailed by many as one of the Tribunal's most important reports. Indeed, the Minister in Charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations at the time, the Honourable Doug Graham, urged all New Zealanders to read it. The report dealt with 21 claims concerning the Taranaki district and canvassed the land wars and confiscations in the area, as well as the story of Parihaka.

The Tribunal constituted to hear the claims was made up of Chief Judge Eddie Durie (presiding), Bishop Manuhuia Bennett, Emarina Manuel, Professor Gordon Orr, and Professor Keith Sorrenson. Twelve hearings were held between September 1990 and June 1995, and the report was presented to the Minister of Maori Affairs and the claimants on 11 June 1996.

The Taranaki claims could be the largest in the country. There may be no others where as many Treaty breaches had equivalent force and effect over a comparable time. 'For the Taranaki hapu, conflict and struggle have been present since the first European settlement in 1841. There has been continuing expropriation by various means from purchase assertions to confiscation after war. In this context, the war itself is not the main grievance. The pain of war can soften over time. Nor is land the sole concern. The real issue is the relationship between Maori and the Government. It is today, as it has been for 155 years, the central problem.
—The Waitangi Tribunal

The complaints stemmed from land confiscations that took place during the 1860s wars, which began in Taranaki before extending elsewhere. In fact, armed initiatives did not cease in the region for an unparalleled nine years, and the Tribunal commented on the effect that this had on local Maori:

If war is the absence of peace, the war has never ended in Taranaki, because that essential prerequisite for peace among peoples, that each should be able to live with dignity on their own lands, is still absent and the protest over land rights continues to be made.

The confiscations came with an undertaking that the lands necessary for hapu survival would be returned without delay, but the Tribunal found that this promise was not maintained. Instead, many hapu were left with nothing of their own to live on and became squatters on Crown land:

Taranaki Maori were dispossessed of their land, leadership, means of livelihood, personal freedom, and social structure and values. As Maori, they were denied their rights of autonomy, and as British subjects, their civil rights were removed. For decades, they were subjected to sustained attacks on their property and persons.

The Tribunal thus saw disempowerment as the main foundation of the claims:

By ‘disempowerment’, we mean the denigration and destruction of Maori autonomy or self-government. Extensive land loss and debilitating land reform would likely have been contained had Maori autonomy and authority been respected, as the Treaty required. Maori autonomy is pivotal to the Treaty and to the partnership concept it entails.

As Sir William Martin, our first Chief Justice, said, when opposing land confiscation in 1864:

The example of Ireland may satisfy us how little is to be effected towards the quieting of a country by the confiscation of private land … how the claim of the dispossessed owner is remembered from generation to generation and how the brooding sense of wrong breaks out from time to time in fresh disturbance and crime.

The Tribunal considered that an endowment that provided adequately for tribal autonomy in the future was what was important, not payments for individual benefit. While the Tribunal thought that, based on legal principles, some billions of dollars were probably owed for the land, leaving aside exemplary damages or compensation for loss of rents and the devaluation of annuities, it accepted that such a quantum of damages would not be possible and recommended only that generous reparation be made:

the settlement of historical claims is not to pay off for the past, even were that possible, but to take those steps necessary to remove outstanding prejudice and prevent similar prejudice from arising; for the only practical settlement between peoples is one that achieves a reconciliation in fact.

Released in 2003, Te Whanganui a Tara me ona Takiwa: Report on the Wellington District is a report on 13 claims relating to the area covered by the New Zealand Company’s 1839 Port Nicholson deed of purchase, as extended in 1844 to the southwest coast. The inquiry area consists of the takiwa (district, or environs) of Te Whanganui a Tara (Wellington Harbour or Port Nicholson), including Wellington city and the Hutt Valley. The report deals with the complex process by which this land was acquired from Māori, and with issues relating to the administration and alienation of Māori reserves in the inquiry area.

The Tribunal originally constituted to hear the claims consisted of Bill Wilson (presiding), Professor Gordon Orr, and Georgina Te Heuheu, with Bishop Manuhuia Bennett joining the Tribunal shortly after the inquiry began, but Mr Wilson and Mrs Te Heuheu subsequently resigned from the Tribunal. As a result of these resignations, Professor Keith Sorrenson and John Clarke were added to the Tribunal, and Professor Orr took over as presiding officer. The claims were heard between 1991 and 1999. Sadly, Bishop Bennett died at the end of 2001, before the report was ready for release.

The Tribunal found that the 1839 deed by which the New Zealand Company purported to have purchased the Port Nicholson block was invalid, conferring no rights on the company or its settlers. However, from 1840, company settlers began arriving at Port Nicholson, and quickly came into conflict with local Māori, who discovered that land which they occupied and cultivated had been sold to settlers. Despite an investigation by a Crown-appointed land claims commissioner, which revealed many of the deficiencies in the company’s supposed purchase, the Crown agreed to a process whereby Māori would release their interests in 67,000 acres of land to the company in exchange for £1500 ‘compensation’. The Tribunal found that this process was deeply flawed, and was carried out without the informed consent of Maori .

Furthermore, in 1848 a Crown grant was issued to the company covering not just the 67,000 acres but the whole of the Port Nicholson block, said to contain around 209,000 acres. Māori retained only some 20,000 acres of reserves. This Crown grant deprived Māori of roughly 120,000 acres which they had never sold or consented to give up, and the Tribunal found this to be in breach of their Treaty rights.

Another issue covered in the report is the conflict over Heretaunga (the Hutt Valley). In the early 1840s, parts of Heretaunga were occupied by Ngāti Rangatahi and Ngāti Tama, who had close ties with Ngāti Toa of the Porirua area. Crown officials did not recognise the rights of Ngāti Rangatahi and Ngāti Tama in Heretaunga, where they were living on land claimed by the New Zealand Company and its settlers. Both groups were pressured into leaving the valley by Governor Grey in 1846, Ngāti Rangatahi leaving only under threat of attack by Crown forces. The Tribunal found that the Crown failed to recognise or protect the interests of Ngāti Rangatahi and Ngāti Tama, who were required to surrender their land without their free consent, and who received either inadequate compensation or, in Ngāti Rangatahi’s case, no compensation. In addition, the Tribunal found that the Crown failed adequately to recognise Ngāti Toa’s interests in the Port Nicholson block.

The report also deals with Māori reserves in Wellington. Part of the New Zealand Company’s original plan for the settlement of Port Nicholson was that a tenth of the land acquired by the company would be set aside as native reserves, which came to be known as ‘tenths’. The Crown subsequently assumed responsibility for these tenths reserves. Another category of reserves (known as ‘McCleverty reserves’ after the Crown official who set them aside for Māori) was placed under the direct control of Māori owners, and the bulk of the McCleverty reserves were later either sold or taken for public works. The tenths reserves, however, were administered by Government officials on behalf of the Wellington Māori who were the beneficial owners of these reserves. In 1851 and 1853, the Crown appropriated 23 acres of valuable urban tenths land as endowments for hospital, educational, and religious purposes. The Māori beneficial owners did not consent to these appropriations, received little benefit from the endowments, were not compensated until 1877, and even then received only inadequate compensation. The Tribunal found that these appropriations were in breach of Treaty principles.

For most of the twentieth century, the tenths reserves were placed under perpetually-renewable leases for 21-year terms, a system which effectively alienated this land from its Māori beneficial owners in perpetuity. Furthermore, the beneficial owners received below-market rents due to the setting of rents at a fixed percentage of the value of the land at the start of the 21-year term. This meant that rent could rise to reflect increased land values only once every 21 years. The legislation which imposed the perpetual leasing regime, without the consent of the Māori beneficial owners of the reserves, was found by the Tribunal to be in breach of the Treaty.

Other matters discussed in the report include the taking by the Crown of land for the town belt and other public reserves without the consent of, or payment to, Māori; the creation of reserves in Palmerston North for some Wellington Māori, to replace tenths reserves in Wellington which had been sold by the Crown; the taking of Māori reserved land for public works purposes; and issues relating to the management of Wellington harbour, including the reclamation of much of the harbour foreshore.

The Tribunal concluded that serious breaches of the Treaty by the Crown occurred in the Port Nicholson block, and that these Treaty breaches affected Te Atiawa, Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Tama, Ngāti Rangatahi, Taranaki, and Ngāti Ruanui. It recommended that representatives of these groups enter negotiations with the Crown to settle these Treaty grievances.