Keeping the fires burning: grievance and aspiration in the Ngai Tahu Settlement

摘要: The Ngai Tahu, comprising approximately 39,000 people, hold rangatiratanga (tribal authority) over 80 per cent of New Zealand's South Island, a place known to them as Te Waipounamu (The Greenstone Island). 1 The history of the Ngai Tahu claim dates from 1848, following the decision of seven Ngai Tahu chiefs to add their names to the document now known as the Treaty of Waitangi (Treaty) in 1840.2'Our ancestor filed the first grievance in 1849, it has been accumulating in size, grievance and intensity ever since'(O'Regan 2003). Like Maori tribes elsewhere in New Zealand, the rights of Ngai Tahu accorded in the Treaty were ignored by the Crown until the establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal (Tribunal) by the Rowling Labour Government in 1975 (King 2003, p 487). The Tribunal was set up to deliberate and make rulings on the alleged breaches of the Treaty that occurred from this date. Little public notice was taken of its operations until 1985, when its powers were made retrospective to 1840 under s 6 of the Treaty of Waitangi Act [1975]. From this time, it became the focus of Maori resource claims against the Crown and the source of major settlements that would reinvigorate tribal activity over large parts of the country (King 2003, p 487).King (2003, p 487) refers to the Tribunal's establishment and the extension of its powers as a'revolution', that changed'the face of New Zealand life in the 1980s and 1990s'. Williams (2004, p 163 passim) assesses the intent of the Treaty, a document written in both English and Maori, and notes that'[t] he moral legitimacy of the New Zealand Government's lawmaking power is to be found in the Treaty even if …