1998: Ngai Tahu Claims Settlement Act
July 20, 2021
By AHNZ
Know your history – Kimihia ō kōrero tuku iho. Richard Tankersley hails his tribe as ‘trailblazers’ for their successful Treaty of Waitangi claim culminating in the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act (1998). Among other things, $170,000,000 cash and exemption from income tax were carried away down the “blazing” trail. But were generation 1998 really the first?
“Ngai Tahu were trailblazers back in 1998 because back then the settlement of Treaty claims were new. ” – On Waitangi Day, remembering a fight for justice that took generations, Richard Tankersley, Stuff (2018)
1973: Kirk’s Labour Government awarded $20,000/year in perpetuity to Ngai Tahu and started paying it out as full compensation and make everything right between Crown and Tribe. Mat Rata, MP, would be the trailblazing tzar in this case and perhaps again in the 1998 next gen instant replay. However, in 1997 he was killed on that blazing trail in unsuspicious circumstances by swerving Singaporeans.
1848 Situation Vacant AdvertisementGrievance Pimp needed! Someone to provoke resentment among South Island Maori. Job involves telling poor and lazy Ngai Tahu their failures are not their fault, they’ve been hard done by, someone else needs to compensate them.Must have an affinity for jackals and vultures, you will be feasting off the wounded. Not to be an associate of James West Stack.
Compensation to be discussed. House of Representatives seat guaranteed. Ministerial Portfolio offered based on job performance, subject to Prime Minister’s approval.
1944: Fraser’s Labour 2.0 Government passes Ngai Tahu Claim Settlment Act (1944), Ngai Tahu awarded £10,000/year for 30ys as full and final settlement. It was Sir Eruera Tirikatene who blazed this trail during and after The Great Depression, including dozens of meetings “to get Ngai Tahu consent.” This true trail blazer died an MP in 1967 in unsuspicious tree-felling circumstances and by 1969 Mat Rata’s lot had the initiative again to open up the trail.
This timeline could go on and on back! Suffice to say that my pick for the true trailblazer, if you want to know your history, is Walter Mantell. The very first to start conciliating Ngai Tahu with more land and more money back in 1848. When that’s put a halt to, Mantell sails back to stab his employer in the back with direct plea to The Secretary of State for the Colonies. When they refuse to interview, Mantell resigned and returned to New Zealand. As Tirikatene and Rata after him, Mantell gained his seat as a Member of Parliament by fanning and appealing to petitioning Southern Maori aggrieved. Their backing leads him all the way, time and again, to political power and the position of Native Affairs Minister. The exact same political niche that Tirikatena and Rata would occupy by following Mantell’s example. Eventually, he was gotten out of the way in unsuspicious circumstances with a seat on the Legislative Council upon which he died, aged 75.
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Note: Date of Royal Assent to Act, 1 October 1998
Note: 1998 Chief Negotiator Doug Graham has not been promoted or killed. He is alive and well but taken out of political circulation in 2012 by criminal conviction for securities fraud
Image ref. 1998 ”full and final” settlement negotiated by Sir Douglas Graham and Sir Tipene O’Regan, with Christopher Finlayson as Ngai Tahu’s legal counsel; ODT 1998
Image ref. Richard Tankersley – “I stopped playing rugby because I’m gay”, Human Rights Commission (2016)
Image ref. Rata showing the size of the Treaty claim that got away; Evening Post; nzhistory.govt.nz
Ref. Also 2002: Discovery of Lost Tribe, Ngati Hinerangi
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