May 28, 2013
Long struggle for settlement ends
A northern Hawkes Bay hapū is hoping for a better future now it has finally settled its outstanding historical Treaty claims.
Maungaharuru-Tangitu signed a deed of settlement with Treaty Negotiations Minister, Christopher Finlayson, at Tangoio Marae near Napier at the weekend.
Chair, Bevan Taylor, says the claim was lodged in the early 1990s when the hapū learned from the Crown Forestry Rental Trust that a state-owned forest sat on land taken from their ancestors.
He says the Waitangi Tribunal hearings were completed in 1997, and it has taken almost two decades to negotiate the settlement for what was a litany of injustice in the wake of the land confiscations of the 1860s.
"They suppressed our people. Our people were living in poverty. Land was taken from them. Land was returned and taken and given to the wrong people and there was the whole saga of it all," Mr Taylor says.
One of the hapū’s first tasks is to find land to relocate its marae.
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