December 11, 2023
Te Paparahi o Te Raki Report challenge for crown
As the country’s largest iwi – Ngāpuhi – begins to digest the Waitangi Tribunal’s 2000 page report ‘Te Paparahi o Te Raki – stage two’ all eyes are now on the coalition government’s response.
The report was presented to Ngāpuhi by Waitangi Tribunal members over the weekend – at the historic Waitangi Treaty grounds in Northland.
Radio Waatea reporter Gideon Porter says about 500 Ngāpuhi, from dozens of iwi, hapū attended the day with
the photos of deceased claimants and Tribunal members, displayed on the mahau of Te Whare Rūnanga at the Treaty grounds.
Many attendees said they felt vindicated by the report’s key recommendations – that all Crown-owned land in Te Tai Tokerau be returned, and for the Crown to enter talks about reworking New Zealand’s constitutional framework.
This follows the stage one report of 2014, where the Tribunal found Ngāpuhi “did not cede authority, to make and enforce law over their people or their territories.”
However, with several new coalition government decisions perceived as deliberately rolling back Māori gains of recent decades – many people were pessimistic of a positive government response to this latest report.