7.3 NGĀ TAONGA: WHAT RIGHTS DID THE TREATY PROTECT?

In its English version, the Treaty explicitly protected Māori possession of ‘their Lands and Estates Forests fisheries, and other properties which they may collectively or individually possess so long as it is their wish and desire to retain the same’. The Māori version protected their tino rangatiratanga over their lands, villages, and 'o ratou taonga katoa’ - all their treasures. To understand how these Treaty protections applied in this inquiry district, we must first examine which aspects of the natural environment Tauranga Māori regarded as their ‘other properties’, or taonga.

There is no easy definition of ‘taonga’. The Tribunal observed in its Te Whanau o Waipareira Report that the term rests on the concept of a spiritual link between a taonga and the people, who have an obligation to protect it for the future.¹⁰ In the Ngawha Geothermal Resource Report, the Tribunal described taonga as ‘objects of guardianship, management and control under the mana or rangatiratanga of the claimant group, hapu or iwi’, which were invested with the aura of spirituality.¹¹ The Report on the Muriwhenua Fishing Claim found that:

All resources were ‘taonga’, or something of value, derived from gods. In a very special way Maori were aware that their possession was on behalf of someone else in the future. Their myths and legends support a holistic view not only of creation but of time and of peoples.¹²

Two points to highlight from these observations are, first, the definition of taonga as something of value that also carries a spiritual dimension, and, secondly, that rangatiratanga over taonga carries the accompanying responsibility of guardianship or kaitiakitanga.

The Tribunal has also previously determined that whether specific taonga are subject to Treaty protection is context-specific. As the Tribunal for the central North Island claims observed:

Whether a resource falls into the definition of taonga protected by the Treaty turns on the evidence of a particular case. That evidence is sourced to and depends on Maori law and tenure, cultural values, and customary use.¹³

How and why did Māori view, use, and possess elements of Tauranga’s natural environment as taonga?

10. Waitangi Tribunal, Te Whanau o Waipareira Report (Wellington: GP Publications, 1998), p 23

11. Waitangi Tribunal, Ngawha Geothermal Resource Report (Wellington: Brooker and Friend Ltd, 1993), p 20

12. Waitangi Tribunal, Report of the Waitangi Tribunal on the Muriwhenua Fishing Claim, 2nd ed (Wellington: Government Printing Office, 1989), p 179

13. Waitangi Tribunal, He Maunga Rongo: Report on Central North Island Claims, revised ed, 4 vols (Wellington: Legislation Direct, 2008), V0l 4, p 1251