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October 02, 2024
Crown shown up on Indigenous rights backtrack
Adam Gifford
Posted On October 2, 2024
Download AudioA Māori lawyer says the Government is getting caught out for telling one story about Indigenous rights overseas and doing something else at home.
The United Nations Human Rights Office has sent a please explain note to New Zealand over the lack of resolution to Wakatū Incorporation’s loss of its lands at the top of the South Island when they were under crown control, and about the legislative manoeuvring that prevented Wairarapa Moana Incorporation pursuing claims for land taken to build a dam on the Waikato River.
Dayle Takitimu from Te Whānau a Apanui says the crown goes to Geneva to present glowing reports on its activities, but increasingly Māori and Human rights groups are there as well to put their side of the story.
“It’s not a human want, it’s not a human nice-to-have, it’s a human right because they’re not a the discretion of governments around the world as to how much they’ll give cognisance or give recognition to them. They exist as a matter on international law and they’re an international standard by which the global community say ‘Here’s where we expect you to be operating with regards to Indigenous rights and Indigenous people,” she says.
Ms Takitimu says it was a National government that signed New Zealand up to the United National Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and National has abandoned its commitments to form a new coalition.
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