Claim Wai 10, the Waiheke Island claim, was brought by Hariata Gordon for Ngati Paoa on 8 March 1985. The claim concerned the disposal, by the Board of Maori Affairs, of lands comprising the Waiheke development scheme to the Waiheke Station Evans Partnership, when it ought, the claimants said, to have passed the land to the Ngati Paoa tribe. The scheme comprised some 2050 acres at Onetangi to the north-east of Waiheke Island.
The claimants alleged that, by overlooking them when the board disposed of the Waiheke scheme, the policies of the Crown failed to support the tribal groups that were parties to the Treaty of Waitangi and, in particular, those tribes like Ngati Paoa now rendered almost landless. The claimants sought a recommendation that the lease of the land to the Evans partnership be declared null and void and that the board negotiate with the tribe to establish a Ngati Paoa trust upon the land.
Hariata Gordon said that the people of Ngati Paoa saw in the Waiheke scheme ‘a chance to follow the path other tribal groups were on, and a base from which to they could draw in their young people again and help them to stand tall, as Ngati Paoa, as Maori and as New Zealanders’.
Our entire future as a people, our opportunity to create our own employment, our chance to establish an economic tribal base for the benefit of controlling our own destiny both economically and spiritually, has been affected.
Te Tii Kaaho Andrews
The Tribunal constituted to hear the claim comprised Eddie Durie (presiding), Ned Nathan, and Marcus Poole. A hearing was held in September 1985 and the Tribunal presented its report to the Minister of Maori Affairs and the claimants on 2 June 1987.
There is little Crown land left in the Ngati Paoa territory, not already committed to an existing public need, with which to make amends. The Waiheke Scheme, however, was excess to the Crown’s requirements it having been said that it could readily be sold as surplus Crown land. Thus, there was an opportunity to reaffirm in a modern way the Treaty with Ngati Paoa, the Treaty on which Ngati Paoa had relied in a time of great stress to ensure its own survival. I hold to the view that the omission to seek a land base for Ngati Paoa, when the opportunity presented itself, and although a substantial gift of equity would have been involved, was contrary to the principles of the Treaty having regard to Ngati Paoa’s landless state.
Eddie Durie
The members of the Tribunal followed different lines of reasoning but came to a common conclusion. They recommended that the Crown negotiate with the Board of Maori Affairs, the Waiheke Station Evans Partnership, and the Ngati Paoa Development Trust with a view to release the Waiheke Station to a Ngati Paoa tribal trust, or failing that agreement, that the Crown seek for Ngati Paoa some other endowment that involved a land base within its ancestral territory.
Because the claim was filed by the claimants before the jurisdiction of the Tribunal was extended back to 1840, it was beyond the Tribunal’s authority to review the Government transactions of the 1840s which acquired nearly all the Ngati Paoa lands around Auckland, other than to provide a background to the Ngati Paoa people.
I realise that the Board of Maori Affairs is not expected to re-establish Ngati Paoa as a tribe, but because of their past history and the suffering endured for 150–200 years, it would be worthwhile to find relief for this particular tribe. History informs us of their suffering.
Ned Nathan |
