The Environment Court is this week hearing a challenge from a Ngāti Hine hapū to a Whangarei District Council consent for a 93-home development west of Te Kamo.
Ngāti Kahu o Torongare says the development is on Ōnoke Pā, which is a known wahi tapu.
They’re having to reargue a case they won in the court 30 years ago to stop the land being rezoned from rural to residential.
Green MP Huhana Lyndon, who has whakapapa to the hapū, says the developers were stamping the mana of their ancestors.
“The developers’ lawyer said that it is argued that the tupuna Tipene Hāri is not a tohunga. They’re demeaning in the way that they’re talking about our tupuna in the 1860s who lost that land through the acts and omissions of the Crown, and now somehow, magically, the tapu of that generation is gone – and it hasn’t. So it’s really sad we’re in the space again,” she says.
Ms Lyndon says elders like 88-year-old Dick Sheppard feel the hapū are being eliminated from their whenua.
