Tradition should guide forest carve up
Tuesday, 29th November, 2011
Ika Whenua elder Maanu Paul is urging Central North Island tribes to use an opportunity to divide up the Kaingaroa Forest before the lawyers step in.
Murupara-based Ngati Manawa has won the right to go to the High Court to argue their case, but Justice Joe Williams delayed the case for four months to give the eight CNI iwi a chance to use traditional processes to resolve who has mana whenua over the 176,000ha of forest land involved in the multi-tribal settlement.
Mr Paul is proposing a solution based on the Maori concepts of mana or owing people, utu or repaying people and koha or gifting.
“Give a little, take a little, and that process is a Maori process that ends up with everyone agreeing to a tatau pounamu, a sacred previous doorway in which everybody gets into the whare and sits down and discusses what is good for everybody rather than what one regards is good for their rightful position,” he says.
Mr Paul says the process harks back to the tatau pounamu reached between Ngati Awa, Ngati Manawa and Ngai Tuhoe in the 1860s, when they were under pressure to define their tribal territories.
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