Local democracy reporting spoke to three members of Bay of Plenty Ūpokorehe hapū this week, who are urging the people of Whakatōhea to keep them in the iwi.
Voting opened on Tuesday to decide whether the Whakatōhea Pre-settlement Claims Trust mandate should be amended to exclude Te Ūpokorehe and their claims from the Whakatōhea Settlement for historical treaty claims.
The settlement with the Crown is at the ratification stage of the process after a Deed of Settlement was initialled in December, however, the process is being held up by members of Te Ūpokorehe who say they are a separate iwi in their own right. Meanwhile more than 1700 Ūpokorehe hapū members are registered with Te Whakatōhea Maori Trust Board.
Te Ūpokorehe Iwi Treaty Claims Trust, which protested at the initialling, instigated this vote by lodging a petition with more than 700 signatures to the Whakatōhea Pre-settlement Claims Trust, wanting to remove Te Ūpokorehe claims, whenua and sacred sites from Whakatōhea settlement.
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Three spokespeople of Te Ūpokorehe hapū, who asked not to be named through fear of the repercussions for their school-aged children, said they represented the majority of Ūpokorehe who have always considered themselves a hapū of Te Whakatōhea and are asking people of Whakatōhea to vote “no” to their removal from the mandate. They said it was just one whānau driving the separation from Whakatōhea.
“They are the same group who protested inclusion of Te Ūpokorehe in the Ngāi Tūhoe settlement. Their stand with Tūhoe was ‘we’re with Whakatōhea’. Now they’ve gone and contradicted themselves.”
What [Te Ūpokorehe Iwi Treaty Claims Trust] are actually doing is changing our whakapapa connections to Whakatōhea to suit them,” one spokesperson said. “They are doing it because they want money from the Crown. They say that it’s the Whakatōhea Pre-settlement Trust that are being greedy, but we know what these people are like. We know that we’re doing it for themselves and their own whānau. Our marae will miss out.”
There are five marae within Te Ūpokorehe though only three are in use: Roimata, Kutarere and Marumahoe on the awa Waiotahe. The spokespeople for Te Ūpokorehe hapū are connected to Kutarere and Marumahoe marae, although they say they also whakapapa to Roimata Marae, which is the principal marae for Te Ūpokorehe.
They said the schism within the hapū had become “quite nasty” in recent times and the whānau behind the iwi claim had pushed other whānau out of Roimata Marae, which still receives funding from Whakatōhea as one of its marae.
“At the marae, there’s always been a representative for each whānau of that marae. At Roimata Marae they’ve actually taken off all the other whānau as trustees and it’s just six of them. We had whānau on there and they’ve been removed.
“They don’t acknowledge our whakapapa either when they speak about the area. Our family is never mentioned and we’re tuakana (senior) whānau, but they push that aside. We descend from the eldest (sibling) and they come from the teina (younger).”
They said meetings held at the marae have not been notified publicly.
“They never put it out there for other whānau to come and join hui or attend AGMs. Not only are we being pushed apart, but we are being pushed out of our own marae.
“We didn’t know about this iwi thing until it came up in the newspaper. They don’t tell us anything. They’ve just done all of this behind our backs. It’s really quite hurtful. There’s a lot of us that feel the same way. It’s not just us three.”
They are also dubious about the 700-plus people who are supposed to have signed the petition.
“I don’t know if there were actually 700. Some of the signatures were not even proper names. Someone had signed ‘Satan’.”
“As I see it, if we are voted out of the mandate, we will lose everything. It affects us in a lot of ways. It affects our whakapapa, it affects our marae. We’ve got a great relationship with Whakatōhea. They’ve always kept us informed of anything that they do. Any hui are always advertised.
“But the big thing for us is the fact that they are changing our whakapapa and our history. It becomes a question of who are we then?”
Te Ūpokorehe Iwi Treaty Claims Trust says that being included in the Whakatōhea mandate and settlement would effectively confiscate Te Ūpokorehe lands all over again.
It is urging people to tick ‘yes’ on their ballots in the mandate amendment vote that opens today.
An information sheet released by the trust states: “We believe that this settlement will leave Te Ūpokorehe worse off. Rather than a settlement which would not recognise our interests, since 2010, Te Ūpokorehe has asked for a process where both Whakatōhea iwi and Te Ūpokorehe iwi would work to secure a settlement for their people in their own respective rohe, but work together on shared areas.
“The WPCT [Whakatōhea Pre-settlement Claims Trust] Board has never had a representative mandated by Roimata Marae, nor do we accept that Te Ūpokorehe representatives on the WPCT Board represent our people. As a result, we do not believe that the voice of Te Ūpokorehe has been heard while the settlement was being negotiated.”
A public information hui to discuss the mandate amendment vote will be held on Saturday between 11am and 1pm at the Ōpōtiki RSA. It is one of six information hui being held between now and August 22, both online and in person, and the only one to be held in the Ōpōtiki district.
The Whakatōhea Pre-settlement Claims Trust is also holding a hui-a-iwi on the mandate amendment vote on Sunday from 10am to 12pm at Waiaua Marae.
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