moana’ expresses their ongoing relationship with the natural world of Tauranga Moana, and the seamless unity of culture and nature within their ancestral landscapes.⁴

Previous chapters have detailed how Tauranga Māori have lost the great majority of their ancestral lands. Even so, claimants said, they have not lost their association with those many places and environments, which remain the source of their cultural identity. Indeed, very many of the claims before us related to the ways the natural environment of Tauranga Moana has been treated since its possession and control passed from the tangata whenua.

Despite having lost possession of most of these places, claimants stressed the continued significance to them of the harbour, waterways, forests, and fisheries, as well as sites such as tīpuna maunga and awa, the sacred mountains and rivers of their ancestors that mark their identity. They described these aspects of the natural environment as taonga, and the source of their economic, cultural, and spiritual well-being.

The claimants argued that they never willingly alienated their taonga, and that they therefore ought to have retained rangatiratanga over them. Antoine Coffin, of Ngāti Kāhu, evoked a more general understanding among the claimants when he stated that, for the Wairoa hapū, their collective rangatiratanga comprises ‘the rights of possession, use and management’ of their ancestral natural resources.⁵ The claimants also said that, in claiming whakapapa to the original inhabitants of Tauranga Moana, they inherit ongoing responsibilities as the kaitiaki, responsible for guarding and protecting these taonga for the benefit of present and future generations. Tauranga Māori affirmed to us that the authority and capacity to act as kaitiaki in the management of resources is a vitally important and practical expression of their rangatiratanga over their ancestral taonga.⁶

The tangata whenua of Tauranga Moana told us, however, that over the decades in which the town of Tauranga has burgeoned into a city, they have been excluded from the decisions that shaped its development, and have been unable to act as kaitiaki, and to guard and protect their taonga. It is important to stress that, in the main, the claimants before us wholeheartedly welcomed the development of Tauranga. Their concerns, rather, related to what they perceived as the unnecessary damage to their taonga that development has caused. A particular complaint was that the decision makers - the Crown and its delegates, especially local government - had failed to prevent, and had often been complicit in, the careless and even casual pollution of waterways. Desmond Tata, of Ngāi Tamarāwaho, summed up this consistently expressed sentiment when he told us:

4. Waitangi Tribunal, Te Raupatu o Tauranga Moana: Report on the Tauranga Confiscation Claims (Wellington: Legislation Direct, 2004), p 28; counsel for Wai 540 claimants, closing submissions, undated (doc U31), p 24

5. Antoine Coffin, ‘Ngati Kahu, Ngati Rangi, Ngati Pango’ (commissioned research report, Wellington: Waitangi Tribunal, 1996) (doc A37(b)), p 72

6. See, for example, counsel for Wai 664 claimants, closing submissions, 12 December 2006 (doc U5)(a), p 18; counsel for Wai 100 and Wai 650 claimants, closing submissions, 29 November 2006 (doc U15), p 4; doc U31, pp 36–37; counsel for Wai 210, Wai 637, and Wai 751 claimants, closing submissions, 10 December 2006 (doc U34), p 56.