Tribunal issues preliminary opinion on customary interests in Kāweka and Gwavas Crown forest licensed lands
The Waitangi Tribunal panel in the Taihape: Rangitīkei ki Rangipō district inquiry recently issued its preliminary opinion on claims by the Ngāti Hinemanu me Ngāti Paki Heritage Trust to customary interests in the Kāweka and Gwavas Crown forest licensed (CFL) lands.
These CFL lands lie outside the Taihape inquiry district and east of the Ruahine Range and have already been included in the Treaty settlements of Hawke’s Bay groups in Ahuriri and Heretaunga–Tamatea. Ngāti Hinemanu claims in Hawke’s Bay have been settled in this way, but Ngāti Hinemanu claims in the Taihape district have yet to be settled. It is generally understood that, in Hawke’s Bay, Ngāti Hinemanu interests are based on descent from Taraia Ruawhare, while in Taihape they are based on descent from Punakiao, Taraia Ruawhare’s wife.
The Heritage Trust claimed, however, that Punakiao herself had customary interests in these CFL lands rather than her rights being solely confined to the Taihape side of the Ruahine Range. In 2015, before a settlement awarding these lands exclusively to Hawke's Bay claimants was finalised, the Heritage Trust sought an urgent Tribunal inquiry to preserve what they argued were their distinct interests in the CFL lands. An accommodation was reached whereby 10 per cent of the company holding the CFL lands was reserved from settlement pending consideration of the trust’s claims. The Taihape district inquiry panel then began a process to determine the merits of the trust’s contentions.
This process involved the commissioning of expert, independent research on the existence of Ngāti Hinemanu me Ngāti Paki customary interests in the CFL lands based on descent from Punakiao. The Tribunal heard this evidence at Ōmāhu Marae in Heretaunga in February 2020, along with oral testimony from the claimants, other Taihape Māori who opposed the Heritage Trust’s claims, and representatives of Ngāti Hinemanu ki Heretaunga. The next step in the Tribunal’s process was the issuing of a preliminary opinion on the merits of the trust’s claims.
Since neither the research (including a subsequent, additional expert review) nor claimant oral testimony yielded any confirmation that such interests existed, the Taihape panel concluded that there was ‘insufficient evidence’ before it to ‘sustain the Ngāti Hinemanu me Ngāti Paki claim to a customary right in these CFL lands that is derived from Punakiao’. The Tribunal could not entirely discount the possibility of such rights, but it did not believe that there was any reliable basis for it to uphold the Heritage Trust’s claims. As the Tribunal’s determination is preliminary, the parties now have ten weeks to make submissions on it.
The preliminary opinion is now available to download: