June 22, 2018
Beach fight puts grit in oversight machine
The chair of the board set up to oversee Ninety Mile Beach is rejecting a call to put it on hold.
Mate Radich, the board’s deputy chair and Far North District Council representative, put up a motion to stop meetings until the iwi sort out disputes about boundaries.
But Haami Piripi from Te Rarawa says there is great potential in having iwi and council work together.
While Te Rarawa and Te Aupouri have attended the meetings, Ngai Takoto has only been to one and Ngati Kuri is staying away because of a contest over mana whenua in the northern part of the beach.
Mr Piripi says overlapping mana whenua claims are a feature of the region and hard and fast boundaries are unrealistic.
"Those borders were 100 maybe 200 years old just for other people other times it's hard to extrapolate that from our history, put it into our future and say we're going to do it like that. It wouldn't have the right rationale. These days we have to think individually positively and we have to look ahead and try and make sure that we can wrap each other up as we all move ahead together", he says.
Haami Piripi says rather than fight past battles the iwi should look at the summer fatality toll from people using the beach irresponsibly and work together to create a management plan.
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