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The Banks Peninsula claims consisted of three ‘purchases’ by the Crown (Port Cooper 1849, Port Levy 1849, and Akaroa 1856). The background against which these three Deeds were signed is complicated. The French claimed to have purchased the land from Ngāi Tahu by way of two deeds of sale in 1838 and 1840. At the…
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The Otago Deed of Purchase, 31 July 1844, is the oldest of the official Ngāi Tahu land purchase deeds. It conveyed land to the New Zealand Company for the Scottish settlement of New Edinburgh, later renamed Otago. The Deed was signed by 23 Māori signatories and two ‘proxies’ and saw Ngāi Tahu sell over 400,000…
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The Rakiura (Stewart Island) Deed of Purchase was signed at Awarua (Bluff) on 29 June, 1864 by 34 Ngāi Tahu signatories. It gave ownership of Rakiura to the Queen, together with “all the large islands and all the small islands adjacent.” This was the last of the major land purchases in Te Waipounamu. The price…
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The Canterbury Purchase, commonly referred to as Kemp’s Deed, was signed by a group of Ngāi Tahu chiefs on board the HM Sloop Fly in Akaroa Harbour on 12 June, 1848. It was the largest of all the Crown purchases from Ngāi Tahu and the least carefully transacted. In 1848, Henry Tacy Kemp, acting on…
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Tā Mark Solomon is not the kind of man who speaks at length about himself. He values his privacy and he’s prone to under-playing any suggestion that he’s made a significant contribution to Māoridom, to Ngāi Tahu.
The fact that he was knighted in 2013 in recognition of the work he has done for Ngāi Tahu and for Māoridom is a case in point. His initial reaction was to baulk at the honour, but there were those who told him to “pull his head in,” that it wasn’t just for him, it was for the tribe. He relates how he was told firmly to “get up there to Wellington and receive the honour on behalf of the tribe.”
The business card simply says Dr Graham Kitson, Relationship Director. Nothing here to suggest that the man sitting in front of me helped kept Te Kerēme on track in the 1990s.
However it was Dr Graham Kitson’s introduction of Tipene O’Regan to Japanese businessman and philanthropist Masashi Yamada that enabled a lifeline to be extended to Ngāi Tahu while the tribe waited for the result of its Waitangi Tribunal hearings. It came in in the form of a series of loans which enabled the tribe to continue with Te Kerēme.
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Historian Harry Evison, pictured here at an ‘A Team’ dinner in 1991, played a pivotal role in presenting evidence supporting the Ngāi Tahu Claim. Kaituhi Mark Revington reports. The first time Harry Evison met Tā Tipene O’Regan, the former was a historian who had written an interesting but largely ignored thesis, and the latter was…
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