Land loss shattered hapū’s way of life, tribunal told

apology. ‘‘Ngāti Whakatere suffered from the stigma of being sellers for quite some time. That has a huge impact on their wairua (spirit) and their mauri.’’

Hapū member Te Meera Hyde said the Crown failed to protect Ngāti Whakatere’s ability to retain its tino rangatiratanga over its land, resources and customs. This caused an ‘‘intergenerational chain of economic disaster’’, leading to things such as poverty, alcoholism, abuse and racism ‘‘at the hands of the people our tū puna put their faith in – Pā kehā ’’. Hyde showed the tribunal drone footage of what was part of the Manawatū Kukutauaki Block near Shannon, ‘‘vast tracts of land from those ranges, from the maunga, out to the Manawatū River’’, which was mainly farmland now.

‘‘It shows how much wealth is made off that land.’’

The Crown had forced Mā ori to individualise ownership of land, rather than having collective iwi or hapū ownership, to break them down, he said. ‘‘We were subject not to the musket but the might of the pen. Pene raupatu made them near landless.’’ The culture change from assimilating to the Pā kehā way ‘‘shattered the security and stability of the Mā ori way of life’’, and Mā ori were over-represented in negative health statistics.

Musician Che Ness, better known by stage name Che Fu, read the evidence of his late mother, Miriama Rauhihi-Ness. Both whakapapa to Ngā ti Whakatere.

Rauhihi-Ness was an organiser of the 1975 land march in protest against the loss of Mā ori land and was an advocate for Māori and Polynesian rights.