Bastion Point land return recommended

Press, 27 November 1987, Page 3

Bastion Point land return recommended

By

JANE ENGLAND,

Maori affairs reporter

A milestone in race relations was yesterday set by the Waitangi Tribunal when it recommended that the Government return Bastion Point parks and pay $3 million in settlement of the first Maori land claim.

The claim had been presented to the tribunal in 1984 by the Ngati Whatu tribe. Tribespeople made headlines during a 17-month protest in the mid-70s when they “squatted” on land at Bastion Point. In its report on the tribe’s Orakei land claim in Auckland the tribunal outlined a history of breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi by the Crown. These had turned the tribe into a "disillusioned, scattered, and landless people” through no fault of their own but great fault of others. The tribunal has recommended that: • The Ngati Whatua be entitled to reparation for the loss of the Orakei

block of 283 hectares. • The public retain access to the 67 hectares held as public parks and reserves but ownership of the Okahu Park and the headlands of Bastion Point be given to the Ngati Whatua through the Orakei Maori Trust Board. • Vacant Crown lands including a Youthline House site, Community House site and certain Housing Corporation land be given to the tribe. • A $3 million minimum cash contribution to the tribe and remission of a $200,000 debt for urgent housing and other programmes to re-establish the tribe. • The Orakei Marae be given to the tribe’s board

with the Orakei Church and Urupa (cemetery). The powers of the tribe’s board would be extended to enable it to buy, borrow or lease land. The parks would be retained to be administered jointly by the board and the Auckland City Council. The tribunal said that the recommendation was small recompense for a tribe that had stood by the Crown, held fast to law and order, and suffered dreadful consequences. The tribunal found that there was no legitimate basis for the Crown’s acquisitions in Orakei. Because the land was tribally owned — a custom protected by the treaty — the Crown was bound to inquire whether

the tribe wished to 5e11... “and the Crown never did.” “The failure to provide for tribal ownership was no oversight. The evidence is rather that it was conscious policy to break down the tribal control the treaty, in fact, guaranteed.” The recommendations reflected a need to save and re-establish the Ngati Whatua tribespeople on their ancestral land. “The greater Ngati Whatua need, we consider, is for more homes, work-generating schemes, an economic base and restoration of the tribe’s status, a status severely put down by the city though the tribe was its founding partner.”