Rapua ngā tuhinga ruku tātari

In November 1992, the Tribunal hearing the Ngawha geothermal resource claims acceded to an application by certain Te Arawa claimants to accord urgency to their claims, which concerned their interest in a geothermal resource in the Rotorua district. The application was granted because of a concern that any findings and recommendations of the Tribunal on the Ngawha claim could impact directly or indirectly on this and other geothermal resource claims. In addition, in early July 1993 the Bay of Plenty Regional Council was due to publicly notify its proposed regional plan for the Rotorua geothermal field, and it was considered desirable that the Tribunal issue its report before that occurred. The hearings were thus held between February and April of 1993.

Given all the information we have had yesterday and this morning I believe we have argued we own the resource, we owned it from the dawn of time … and nowhere along the line of ancestral descent were our rights alienated or given away; nowhere, anywhere did anyone come and take it … anyone who can claim ownership should do what we have done … and we would like to see their whakapapa, their genealogy … the way they have lived on the land; and if they conquered, when and how, and sing waiatas that are appropriate to those incidents …
—Joseph Malcolm

The Tribunal found that the Arawa people assert an undisputed mana whenua over all the lands represented in the claims:

In the claims before us, the respective claimants have rangatiratanga over hot pools and springs which, in each case, are a highly valued taonga over which they exercise kaitiakitanga, and which they wish to preserve.

Because of time constraints, the Tribunal of Professor Gordon Orr (presiding), Sir Hugh Kawharu, Joanne Morris, and William Taylor issued this preliminary report in June 1993. It was confined to the claimants' interest in surface manifestations of the geothermal resource and the impact of the Resource Management Act 1991 on their Treaty rights to their geothermal taonga. The Tribunal reiterated a recommendation it had made in the Ngawha Geothermal Resource Report that the Resource Management Act be amended to take account of the Treaty of Waitangi. The Tribunal further recommended that a moratorium be imposed on the granting of resource consents, the notification or making of regional plans, and the imposition of royalties or rentals in relation to geothermal fields or resources which were the subject of Treaty claims, until such time as those claims were determined. The Tribunal also recommended that the Crown and claimants discuss the matter of royalties and resource rentals generally, and it left the way open for the parties to return to the Tribunal for urgent consideration should they fail to reach agreement on those matters.

The Ngawha Geothermal Resource Report 1993 was the first Tribunal report concerned with a geothermal resource. The claim, by the trustees of the Parahirahi C1 Maori reservation and the hapu of Ngawha, was filed in response to a joint-venture application by the Bay of Islands Electric Power Board and the Taitokerau Maori Trust Board to use the Ngawha geothermal resource for electricity generation. The claimants feared such development may harm their taonga, the hot springs and pools at Ngawha.

The Springs, indeed the entire underground geothermal resource is a taonga to us. You have heard of its miraculous healing powers and I can confirm in my long experience as Kaitiaki of that taonga that everything that these Kaumatua have told you is the truth. I believe that its healing powers, God-given, are sourced deep within in our Mother Earth. Any interference in that spiritual source is a desecration of our taonga.

Kereama Rankin

Our ancestors [knew] that the heart of Ngawha is underground. They are channels of hot water flowing underground. They knew and believed that it was one taonga, underground and up on the surface of the ground. It has been said the hot pools represent the eye of the taonga. But its heart is in, is within the depths of Mother Earth. If we abuse the very heart the pain will affect the heart, the eyes. It is all one treasure.

Ngatihaua Witehiri

The two main components of the grievance were the acquisition by the Crown of the land and hot springs and the provisions of the Geothermal Act 1953 and the Resource Management Act 1991, which were claimed to be inconsistent with the rights of the claimants under the Treaty of Waitangi.

The Tribunal constituted to hear the claim comprised Professor Gordon Orr (presiding), Sir Hugh Kawharu, Joanne Morris, and William Taylor. The first hearing of the claim took place at Kotahitanga Marae, Kaikohe, in October 1992. The second hearing was held in December, and in January 1993 the Tribunal heard final submissions.

The Tribunal found that the claimants retained ownership and rangatiratanga over the Ngawha hot springs on the one acre vested in the trustees of the Parahirahi C1 Māori reservation. They were also entitled to the return of four acres vested in the Crown as a recreation reserve, since they were an integral part of the springs and were acquired in breach of article 2 of the Treaty of Waitangi.

After a full inquiry, there was no doubt in the Tribunal’s mind that the Ngawha springs had always been a highly valued taonga of the Ngapuhi people, and the Treaty guaranteed to Māori the Crown’s protection of their taonga. The Tribunal recommended that the Crown amend the Resource Management Act 1991 to provide that ‘all persons exercising functions and powers under it, in relation to management the use, development and protection of natural and physical resources, shall act in a manner that is consistent with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi’.

The water from the puna wai [water of the spring] of a whanau is considered a taonga to that whanau as it carries the Mauri [life force] of that particular whanau. Of course all the waters of the puna wai find their way into the river and thereby join with the Mauri of the river. In essence then the very spiritual being of every whanau is party of the river. … In this sense the river is more than a taonga; it is the people themselves.

Wiremu McAuley

Claim Wai 212 concerned the mana and tino rangatiratanga of the hapu of Te Ika Whenua over the Rangitaiki, Wheao, and Whirinaki Rivers and their tributaries. It built on the Te Ika Whenua energy assets claim and, like that claim, was severed from Te Ika Whenua's original claim and accorded urgency by the Tribunal.

The claim was brought in the name of Hohepa Waiti and Kini Porima, as the chairman and secretary of Te Runanganui o Te Ika Whenua Incorporated Society, on behalf of themselves and the hapu represented by Te Ika Whenua.

The Tribunal constituted to hear the Te Ika Whenua rivers claim comprised Judge Glendyn Carter, Bishop Manuhuia Bennett, Mary Boyd, and Georgina Te Heuheu, though Ms Te Heuheu resigned from the Tribunal following her appointment as a list candidate for the National Party in September 1996. The first hearing was held at Tipapa Marae in Murupara in early November 1993, the second hearing at the Maori Land Court in Rotorua in late August 1994, and the third and final hearing at Painoaiho Marae in Murupara in mid-October 1994.

The Tribunal heard how the rivers served as a vitally important food source and means of transport and communication, and how they were essential for Te Ika Whenua's spiritual and cultural well-being. Claimant evidence 'clearly established' that the middle reaches of the Rangitaiki and the Whirinaki and Wheao Rivers were a taonga over which the hapu of Te Ika Whenua had mana and rangatiratanga.

The Tribunal also heard of the effect that hydro schemes had had on the resident eel population and the flow of the rivers. The Rotorua Daily Post reported that:

Maori anger is mounting over development on the Rangitaiki River that has seriously depleted eel populations in the Murupara District. … Below the Te Mahoe dam, eel populations are building up. But in the quiet Ikawhenua Range country, the river's birth place, Maoris are concerned that one of their traditional foods is disappearing.

Moves to press the Internal Affairs Department into building a run-off or race for eels so they might 'climb' over the dam have been turned-down because of high costs.

‘One of the greatest tragedies of the diversion of the Rangitaiki and the Wheao “blowout”’, the Tribunal wrote, was that:

all the beautiful little pools of clear water that made the Wheao one of the greatest trout fishing rivers in the world, as well as a great place for tuna, were wiped out. The Wheao they had known, the lands on which they had lived for weeks and what used to be a great place for mahinga kai were all gone.

Like the Mohaka River Tribunal before it, the Ika Whenua rivers Tribunal considered the application of the common law rule ad medium filum aquae, which assumes that the owner of land bordering a non-navigable river owns the adjacent riverbed to the middle line. According to the Tribunal, this rule conflicted with the Maori view of ownership, and in the Tribunal's view, it was 'inescapable' that the application of this rule was a major factor in Te Ika Whenua's loss of title and tino rangatiratanga over their rivers:

Clearly, the customary and Treaty rights of rangatira and hapu and tangata katoa (all the people) of Te Ika Whenua are part of their tino rangatiratanga and are in conflict with Crown assertions on the ownership of rivers by virtue of statute or common law. Claimant evidence shows that rivers were and still are a taonga that provides material and spiritual sustenance and a strong continuing bond. The people belong to the river and the river belongs to the people.

In its report, released in September 1998, The Tribunal found that Te Ika Whenua held a proprietary interest akin to ownership of the rivers as at 1840 in that they had full and unrestricted use and control of the waters thereof while they were in their rohe. That right or interest was property guaranteed protection under article 2 of the Treaty and Te Ika Whenua were entitled to have had conferred on them in 1840 a proprietary interest in the rivers that could be practically encapsulated within the legal notion of the ownership of the waters.

The Tribunal also made a number of recommendations to the Crown relating to the recognition of Te Ika Whenua's residual rights in the rivers, the management and control of the rivers, the vesting of certain parts of the riverbeds in the claimants, and the compensation owed to them for the loss of title resulting from the application of the ad medium filum aquae rule.

Claim Wai 212 concerned the mana and tino rangatiratanga of the hapu of Te Ika Whenua over the Rangitaiki, Wheao, and Whirinaki Rivers and their tributaries under article 2 of the Treaty by permitting the Bay of Plenty Electric Power Board and the Rotorua Area Electricity Authority to erect the Aniwhenua and Wheao Dams on the Rangitaiki and Wheao Rivers.

Claim Wai 273 was filed in 1992 by Paul White and related to the Tapuwae 1B and 4 Incorporation. The land under the incorporation was managed under the Maori Affairs Act 1953 and was returned to Maori shareholders, with outstanding debts, in 1982. The claim alleged negligence during the period of Crown management which resulted in the outstanding debts.

In 1993, the claimants filed a notice of discontinuance, and Crown counsel advised that the details of a confidential agreement between the parties constituted a full and final settlement of the claim. The Tribunal therefore closed its inquiry into the matter without making any findings or recommendations. Its report on the matter, signed by Chief Judge Eddie Durie, was issued on 8 March 1993.

In 1993, Sandra Lee and Tuhuru Tainui lodged a claim for themselves and the rangatira Tuhuru and his descendants which endeavoured to establish that a grievance would be caused by the passing of the proposed Ngai Tahu Bill.

In March 1987, John Paki lodged a claim with the Waitangi Tribunal concerning the Maori-owned Pouakani B9B block and adjoining Crown lands. Mr Paki brought the claim on behalf of himself and the other trustees and beneficial owners of the lands held by the Titiraupenga and Pouakani B9B Trusts. The claim came to be registered as Wai 33.

The Tribunal constituted to hear the claim comprised Judge Ross Russell (presiding), Emarina Manuel, Professor Evelyn Stokes, and Bill Wilson. Three hearings were held in 1989, in May, August, and October, and the report was released in February 1993.

The Tribunal found that the claim was well founded and recommended that the Crown refund the costs incurred by the claimants in researching the boundaries of the Pouakani B9B and other blocks and that it return 343 acres of land taken as payment for survey charges. It also recommended that the Pouakani B9B block become whenua rahui, or protected land.

In 1992, Hariata Gordon lodged a claim on behalf of herself and Ngati Paoa which concerned the appointment of members to the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission under the Treaty of Waitangi (Fisheries Claims) Settlement Act 1992. The claim alleged that Ngati Paoa, and others that joined the claim, were prejudicially affected by the consultation proposals in the 1992 Act and by a proposed policy of the Minister of Māori Affairs not to consult collectively at a hui, and that the Act and the policy were to that extent inconsistent with the Treaty of Waitangi.

The Tribunal, comprised of Chief Judge Eddie Durie (presiding), Bishop Manuhuia Bennett, and Mary Boyd, recommended that a hui be called, and considered it within the competence of the Ministry of Māori Development for it to call one. They recommended that the hui be directed first to the criteria for appointment and then to the selection of possible candidates.

In June 1991, Archie Taiaroa, on behalf of himself and Māori affiliated to the National Māori Congress, lodged a claim with the Waitangi Tribunal concerning the disposal of surplus New Zealand Railways lands. The Tribunal constituted to hear the claim comprised Judge Eddie Durie (presiding), Professor Gordon Orr, and Georgina Te Heuheu, and it reported on four such cases, Auckland, South Auckland, Wellington and Waikenae.

In 1992, the Crown-Congress Joint Working Party proposed a scheme for the disposal of 3605 square metres of surplus Railways lands at Waikanae. In its Report on Railway Land at Waikanae of 21 December 1992, the Tribunal said that, having heard the party, it was satisfied that the only Māori with an interest in the land were the Ruakohatu Urupa Trustees and that the Crown would not be acting contrary to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi in treating with them.