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The Tribunal's Mohaka ki Ahuriri Report was released on Saturday 5 June 2004. It covers 20 Hawke's Bay claims spanning a district bounded by the Tutaekuri River to the south, Hawke Bay to the east, the Waiau River to the north, and the inland ranges and the old Hawke's Bay provincial boundary to the west. The claimants were predominantly Ngati Kahungunu, although some identified more or equally with Ngati Tuwharetoa.

In summary, the claims concerned Māori land in two broad ways. First, they related to the loss of land through pre-1865 Crown purchases, the operation from 1865 of the Native Land Court, the 1867 Mohaka–Waikare confiscation, and later Crown purchasing (mainly conducted from 1910 to 1930). Secondly, they related to the barriers to the use and enjoyment of lands retained in Māori ownership, including title disruption, the lack of development opportunities, the fragmentation and multiple ownership of tiny parcels, and the lack of access.

In particular, the Tribunal investigated:

The status of the first land transactions with the Crown in the district in 1851, which the claimants asserted to be akin to ‘treaties’. Whether a supposed ‘rebellion’ justified the military engagements in 1866 and the confiscation in 1867. The propriety of the Crown’s handling of both the ‘return’ of certain lands after the confiscation and the title disputes which followed for over 80 years. The point at which the Crown should have stopped purchasing Māori land and put its effort into helping develop the remaining Māori land base; and whether there is a link between poverty and landlessness.

The Tribunal found a number of serious breaches relating to land loss and remaining Māori land base:

Overall, we have identified serious breaches of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi by the Crown in the loss of Māori land in our inquiry district. We have also found that the Crown acted in clear breach of the Treaty in its treatment of the remaining Māori land base. We have also made the point that by far the bulk of that surviving base (some 125,000 acres out of a total of roughly 800,000) remains in Māori ownership principally because it was viewed by the Crown as too rugged and unproductive to bother purchasing.

Of particular note was the Crown's use of section 363 of the Native Land Act in 1910, alienating Māori land ownership:

from 1911 the Crown persisted over two decades in buying up individual interests in land, more than halving the amount of land left in Māori ownership at Mohaka in 1910. It adopted the usual tactics of employing alienation restrictions under section 363 of the Native Land Act 1909, as well as making payments on the basis of out-of-date valuations. This purchasing not only conflicted with the Stout–Ngata recommendations but seemed to serve no clear purpose. And, because the Crown had acquired so many partial interests, scattered throughout the various blocks, it decided upon a scheme to consolidate its interests. Even after this decision was made, however, purchasing continued unabated – in fact, the impetus for it increased, as the Crown tried to gain as much land as it could in the northern part of the Mohaka block, where the blackberry infestation was less, before the exchanges took place.

The Tribunal recommended that the Crown and the claimants negotiate over the settlements of the claims, and it made some suggestions as to the appropriate groups for the Crown to deal with. It also noted that Crown counsel had made a number of concessions of failings by the Crown to live up to the standards envisaged in the Treaty.

In 1990, the Tamaki Maori Development Authority lodged a claim with the Tribunal alleging that the Crown’s actions in delaying the authority’s review proceedings against the former Department of Māori Affairs were a denial of the rights of due process secured to Māori under the Treaty of Waitangi.

The Tribunal decided not to inquire further into the claim because there was an adequate remedy for the matters complained of within the general courts.

The water from the puna wai [water of the spring] of a whanau is considered a taonga to that whanau as it carries the Mauri [life force] of that particular whanau. Of course all the waters of the puna wai find their way into the river and thereby join with the Mauri of the river. In essence then the very spiritual being of every whanau is party of the river … In this sense the river is more than a taonga; it is the people themselves.

Wiremu McAuley

Claim Wai 212 concerned the mana and tino rangatiratanga of the hapu of Te Ika Whenua over the Rangitaiki, Wheao, and Whirinaki Rivers and their tributaries. It built on the Te Ika Whenua energy assets claim and, like that claim, was severed from Te Ika Whenua’s original claim and accorded urgency by the Tribunal.

The claim was brought in the name of Hohepa Waiti and Kini Porima, as the chairman and secretary of Te Runanganui o Te Ika Whenua Incorporated Society, on behalf of themselves and the hapu represented by Te Ika Whenua.

The Tribunal constituted to hear the Te Ika Whenua rivers claim comprised Judge Glendyn Carter, Bishop Manuhuia Bennett, Mary Boyd, and Georgina Te Heuheu, though Ms Te Heuheu resigned from the Tribunal following her appointment as a list candidate for the National Party in September 1996. The first hearing was held at Tipapa Marae in Murupara in early November 1993, the second hearing at the Maori Land Court in Rotorua in late August 1994, and the third and final hearing at Painoaiho Marae in Murupara in mid-October 1994.

The Tribunal heard how the rivers served as a vitally important food source and means of transport and communication, and how they were essential for Te Ika Whenua’s spiritual and cultural well-being. Claimant evidence ‘clearly established’ that the middle reaches of the Rangitaiki and the Whirinaki and Wheao Rivers were a taonga over which the hapu of Te Ika Whenua had mana and rangatiratanga.

The Tribunal also heard of the effect that hydro schemes had had on the resident eel population and the flow of the rivers.

Maori anger is mounting over development on the Rangitaiki River that has seriously depleted eel populations in the Murupara District … Below the Te Mahoe dam, eel populations are building up. But in the quiet Ikawhenua Range country, the river’s birth place, Maoris are concerned that one of their traditional foods is disappearing.

Moves to press the Internal Affairs Department into building a run-off or race for eels so they might ‘climb’ over the dam have been turned-down because of high costs.

The Rotorua Daily Post

one of the greatest tragedies of the diversion of the Rangitaiki and the Wheao ‘blowout’ was that all the beautiful little pools of clear water that made the Wheao one of the greatest trout fishing rivers in the world, as well as a great place for tuna, were wiped out. The Wheao they had known, the lands on which they had lived for weeks and what used to be a great place for mahinga kai were all gone.

The Waitangi Tribunal

Like the Mohaka River Tribunal before it, the Ika Whenua rivers Tribunal considered the application of the common law rule ad medium filum aquae, which assumes that the owner of land bordering a non-navigable river owns the adjacent riverbed to the middle line. According to the Tribunal, this rule conflicted with the Maori view of ownership, and in the Tribunal’s view, it was ‘inescapable’ that the application of this rule was a major factor in Te Ika Whenua’s loss of title and tino rangatiratanga over their rivers.

Clearly, the customary and Treaty rights of rangatira and hapu and tangata katoa (all the people) of Te Ika Whenua are part of their tino rangatiratanga and are in conflict with Crown assertions on the ownership of rivers by virtue of statute or common law. Claimant evidence shows that rivers were and still are a taonga that provides material and spiritual sustenance and a strong continuing bond. The people belong to the river and the river belongs to the people.

The Waitangi Tribunal

In its report, released in September 1998, The Tribunal found that Te Ika Whenua held a proprietary interest akin to ownership of the rivers as at 1840 in that they had full and unrestricted use and control of the waters thereof while they were in their rohe. That right or interest was property guaranteed protection under article 2 of the Treaty and Te Ika Whenua were entitled to have had conferred on them in 1840 a proprietary interest in the rivers that could be practically encapsulated within the legal notion of the ownership of the waters.

The Tribunal also made a number of recommendations to the Crown relating to the recognition of Te Ika Whenua’s residual rights in the rivers, the management and control of the rivers, the vesting of certain parts of the riverbeds in the claimants, and the compensation owed to them for the loss of title resulting from the application of the ad medium filum aquae rule.