KEY POINTS:
Evidence from a dead claimant via a DVD recording will feature as part of a month-long sitting of the Waitangi Tribunal's Whanganui district inquiry.
It is not the first time a deceased claimant's evidence on DVD has been heard in a tribunal inquiry but lawyers are encouraging kaumatua to record their stories before they die.
Judge Carrie Wainwright is heading the tribunal at Wanganui's Putiki Marae and will hear evidence from over 50 claims covering an area stretching from the mouth of the Whanganui River to just north of Taumarunui, taking in land around the Whangaehu River, Waiouru and the Waitotara River catchment.
Claimant John Tauri died aged 59 last October before he could take part in the inquiry.
He had already registered a claim on behalf of the Te Poho o Matapihi Trust and hapu along the lower reaches of the Whanganui River.
He recorded an oral interview with lawyers and his daughter Vanessa Tauri will present evidence tomorrow which media will be banned from hearing.
Trust lawyer Aidan Warren stresses the importance of recording oral information to DVDs to clients. "If there are people that have the korero [stories] that are not well or getting on, we advise them to do it, because once the information is gone it's gone."
The inquiry will focus on the relationship between Whanganui Maori and the Crown from 1840.
A tribunal report released in July looking into the Native Land Court and Maori land alienation patterns from 1865 found 566,801ha, or 62 per cent of Maori land in the district, had been alienated by 1900 - most of it to the Crown.
Meanwhile, yesterday the tribunal also released its full and final report on the Central North Island inquiry - the largest it has undertaken, covering more than 120 claims.
That inquiry process ran alongside Crown negotiations with Nga Kaihautu o Te Arawa, an umbrella organisation which represented about half of the the Te Arawa confederation.
Running a district inquiry in parallel and separate to Crown negotiations is an unusual practice and has proved to be problematic for the Crown.
It has been criticised by the tribunal for the way it dealt with iwi not in negotiation, who are in the inquiry process, and has said the settlement deal has splintered Te Arawa.
The report release comes ahead of the probable introduction of legislation to to implement the Nga Kaihautu deed of settlement.
