Land claim boost

Press, 23 January 1988, Page 5

Land claim boost

By

JANE ENGLAND

The Ngai Tahu Maori Trust Board is planning to boost education on its land claim with a new publication which could be circulated throughout Christchurch.

In a meeting yesterday board members agreed that the majority of farmers, business people and school children, still had little notion of “what the claim was about.” The board’s deputy chairman, Mr Hearne Tau, said it was vital that people understood the Treaty of Waitangi and the Crown’s contractual obligations towards Ngai Tahu.

The new publication could result in up to 50,000 copies being circulated throughout Christchurch and it expected to contain a series of articles containing evidence edited by Christchurch

historian, Mr Harry Evison.

Mr Tau said the board was delighted that Mr Evison had agreed to undertake the task, as his previous book on Ngai Tahu land righths had proved extemely popular. Letters praising the book had been received from people asa far as Auckland and Wellington, Mr Tau said. One letter from a former professor of Education at Victoria University, had congratulated the author for revealing the “deceit and chicanery” of pakeha authority. “I was even more disturbed to read of the ignoring of the poverty and misery of the Ngai Tahu consequent to their being deprived of land and traditional food sources. Turning a blind eye to that can only be described as despicable/’ the letter said.