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Urban Maori advocates hope a judicial review in Wellington this week will finally free up funds from the fisheries settlement intended to benefit Maori living in the cities.
National Urban Maori Authority chief executive Lance Norman says He Putea Whakatupu Trust, which sits under the fisheries settlement trust Te Ohu Kaimoana, has been under the control of directors sympathetic to iwi rather than urban Maori.
The High Court was told the $20 million fund was administered in a way that was contrary to the wording of the law and the spirit of the settlement by making no provision for the 110,000 Maori who did not identify their iwi in the last census.
"When you have a form that says you have to identify your iwi before you can access the fund, you are missing out giving access to resources for those 110,000 Maori who clearly for some reason didn't indicate or didn't want to indicate what iwi they affiliated to, and it might be they don't know or there were other reasons, but you can't have a fund set up for people living in the city, urban Maori, and then not allow them to access that fund." Mr Norman says.
In the past Te Whanau o Waipareira has got money from the fund to run numeracy and literacy programmes.
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