Killings blamed on both sides

BY JONATHAN MILNE



The Waitangi Tribunal has stunned supporters and critics alike by finding that Maori breached the Treaty in murdering settlers around Gisborne - believed to be the first time it has ever apportioned the blame to Maori.

However, the tribunal's report, released yesterday, also takes the opportunity to make its most savage criticism of the Crown since it famously described the Taranaki land confiscations as a "holocaust".

The systematic execution of unarmed Maori prisoners at Ngatapa Pa in 1868, says the tribunal, was "one of the worst abuses of law and human rights in New Zealand's colonial history", and certainly the worst by the Crown.

The tribunal recommends the government and claimants now negotiate for a speedy and "substantial" settlement.

With the report's delivery to claimants and the Crown yesterday, at Whakato Marae in Gisborne, the tribunal also marked another breakthrough.

Its inquiry into the Gisborne claims took a record four-and-a-half years. The tribunal has never before delivered a district report in less than a decade.

While the government welcomed the report and the opportunity to enter into negotiations, NZ First leader Winston Peters said the quick and even-handed report showed that the tribunal was finally listening to its critics. "It's a positive sign that they've taken notice that the original intention of the tribunal was to inquire into the facts, and not to be the main originator and participant."


Peters had last month announced with some fanfare a new policy to replace the tribunal with a commission of inquiry, saying it was no longer objective.

The tribunal's report, Turanga Tangata, Turanga Whenua, finds Te Kooti and his followers were entitled to escape from the Chatham Islands aboard the seized schooner, the Rifleman, because they had been unlawfully detained.

But their attack on the people of Gisborne was a breach of the Treaty and of their own responsibilities as citizens.

Te Kooti's followers killed between 29 and 34 settlers including women, children and young people of mixed descent, the report finds, and another 20 to 40 Maori.


But when Te Kooti fell back to his old mountain-top hideaway, Ngatapa Pa, the colonial government acted with equal inhumanity, the tribunal found.

The Crown's Ngati Porou forces rushed and looted the pa, killing about 50 defenders, then pursued the survivors into the bush. Some of Te Kooti's men were killed in the pursuit, but 86 to 128 were captured and taken back to Ngatapa or Fort Richmond for summary execution.

"The horrors of Ngatapa were perpetrated to avenge the horrors of Matawhero," the report says.

As for Te Kooti, he and a few remaining supporters escaped into the bush to fight another day - he was never captured, and died peacefully in 1893.

- THE HERALD ON SUNDAY