July 24, 2013
Iwi seeks return of Matakana land
Ngāi Te Rangi wants the Western Bay of Plenty District Council to return a 200 hectare block on the southern tip of Matakana Island at the entrance to Tauranga Harbour.
Chairperson Charlie Tawhiao says Panepane Point was taken for harbour board purposes, and transferred to the council in 1989.
The council has plans to turn it into a regional park once the forestry lease expires in 2026.
But Mr Tawhiao says access problems and fire risk means that is not a good idea.
He says it should go back to the hapū on the island.
"Well it’s important to Ngai Te Rangi and Tauranga Moana and especially to Matakana because Hori Tupaea is buried there, it is a place where a lot of other bodies were buried during the wars, and because the sands were there, my dad tells me that as kids after a storm the bones would be uncovered and the old people would go out and pick them all up and just move them further up on the foreshore and sand dunes and rebury them," Mr Tawhiao says.
Ngāi Te Rangi has proposed a staged approach to the return, starting with a reserve management plan giving tangata whenua joint governance.
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