June 19, 2017
Te Whanau a Apanui seeks mandate for talks
Te Whanau a Apanui is on the road seeking a mandate to negotiate a settlement of its historic claims and its customary rights to marine and coastal areas.
Runanga chair Rikirangi Gage says about 30 percent of the tribe’s 12,000 people still live in the eastern Bay of Plenty, and there are other concentrations in Auckland, Hamilton and Wellington.
Relations with the crown became strained while the iwi was seeing off oil company Petrobras from its shores, but earlier this year a majority of its 12 hapu voted to pursue direct negotiations.
"Mana is really the bottom line for us in terms of our tribal estate. Most of our land is still in the ownership of the uri of the ancestors of the tribe. We're not too worried about the money side it's more the mana side. That's where we have most of the difficulty with the crown," says Rikirangi Gage.
There are consultation hui in Wellington on Thursday, Christchurch Friday, Hamilton Saturday and at the University of Auckland’s Epson campus next Sunday.
Submissions on the draft mandate strategy need to be with the Office of Treaty Settlements by June 29.
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