The Uenuku Charitable Trust wants to create a transformative iwi-led ecological restoration and tourism project on its ancestral land, trust member Moana Ellis says.
Proposing it was one of the aims of the trust's Rā Wawata/Aspirations Day on March 9. The trust is representing three iwi - Uenuku, Tamakana and Tamahaki - in the Te Korowai o Wainuiārua negotiation for land claims in the middle reaches of the Whanganui River.
The claims cover 615,320ha, most of it managed by the Conservation Department. The three iwi have a total of about 8000 members, Ms Ellis said.
Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Andrew Little was invited to the day, with the aim of introducing him to the iwi and its land.
He was to have been welcomed at Te Poti Marae, opposite Pipiriki, but the Whanganui River was too high. Instead he was welcomed at the Uenuku Charitable Trust office in Raetihi.