Maori tribe votes to settle land grievance

A tribe of indigenous Maori today announced that they have accepted a multi-million dollar settlement and a formal New Zealand government apology nearly 140 years after being stripped of its land after being falsely accused of murdering a missionary.

The Ngati Awa tribe from the east coast of North Island will get an apology and 42 million New Zealand dollars (£14.4 million) of compensation in cash and land, tribal chairman Hirini Mead said.

The deal with the government, announced last year, was accepted by the tribe’s 13,000 members in a postal ballot.

It is the latest settlement of Maori grievances sparked mainly by illegal land confiscations during the 19th century by European farmers.

Other agreements have seen tribes paid up to NZ 170 million (€85m) in compensation for lost land and other resources.

Mead said the deal was the culmination of 20 years’ work by the tribe to have its grievances acknowledged.

He said no amount of compensation would justify the executions and imprisonment of Ngati Awa men branded as rebels after the killing of the missionary, the Rev Carl Volkner, at Opotiki in 1865.

The Ngati Awa people were driven from their homes and many were forced into poverty after the seizure of their lands, forests and freshwater fisheries.

The tribe was exonerated in 1988, after a full review of the evidence found Maori from another tribe had carried out the killing.

“Achieving the settlement means that Ngati Awa can finally begin to build an economic base” after more than 245,000 acres of its land was confiscated in the 1860s, Mead said.

Treaty Negotiations Minister Margaret Wilson said last year that the confiscations had left the tribe “virtually landless”.

New Zealand governments began addressing Maori grievances after law changes in the 1970s accepted that the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi between Maori and the British Crown was still a binding document.

Under the treaty, Maori ceded sovereignty to Britain in return for protection of their lands, forests, fisheries and other treasures, including their culture and language.

Maori are among the least educated and least healthy New Zealanders, and make up half of the country’s prison population. Maori comprise 15% of the 4 million population.

Opotiki is a small east coast settlement 340 miles north-east of the capital, Wellington.