KEY POINTS:
Avoiding the pitfalls other iwi have faced on their way to settlement is the aim of the country's second-biggest iwi as it tries to secure a mandate to negotiate a deal directly with the Crown.
Te Runanga o Ngati Porou will be in Auckland this weekend as part of their bid to represent their 72,000-strong East Coast iwi.
Direct negotiations would circumvent the Waitangi Tribunal and speed up the settlement process by years.
Runanga representatives will hold two information hui for iwi living outside their tribal region who are eligible to vote in the mandating postal ballot but recent controversial settlements could affect the way negotiations are conducted.
This year, the tribunal lobbed two scathing reports at the Crown for the way it conducted Treaty of Waitangi negotiations for Ngati Whatua and Nga Kaihautu, a grouping of Te Arawa hapu.
Both negotiations saw tribal relationships strained to breaking point after neighbouring hapu said they were cut out of deals and future settlements were prejudiced by the respective deals.
Mandate project leader Te Rau Kupenga said avoiding the problems other iwi had faced was important.
"We don't want to be in that position but we've got to get over the mandating hurdle first."
There have already been pockets of opposition from smaller iwi who believe the runanga is pushing beyond its tribal boundaries but chairman Api Mahuika said lessons had been learned.
"If we can't learn from other people's mistakes ... well, we believe we have learned."
If the tribe were to go through a tribunal hearing, settlement could possibly be pushed out to 2015.
However, the Government is prepared to give priority to settling the claim, if a tribunal hearing is bypassed for negotiations.
Once the result of the vote is in on November 19, the Crown will assess the robustness of the mandate process and decide if negotiations will start.
This weekend's meetings are at Otara's Whaiora Marae at 12pm on Saturday and on Sunday at Auckland College of Education's Tutahi Tonu Marae at 12pm.
