Claims Update 20 September 2006
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Over the last month the negotiation team have been utilising conference calls each Thursday to keep progressing the various tasks toward Agreement In Principle. We met informally with OTS last month and are unable to meet with their full team as two of them are on leave through September and into October.
One of our main articles had to be rewritten which delayed our newsletter going to print by a week and by the time of the meeting it is envisaged that the newsletter would have been distributed.
Our last meeting on 4 September involved Chris Shenton and Pahia Turia for Ngati Apa whilst Ken Clarke and Mel Rerekura for Whanganui Iwi. We presented them with mapping and summary information regarding our historical impressions of where the extent of our interests reside. They agreed to take this information back to their groups and respond to where they beleive their interests extend to. We await their formal response.
The hapu profile documents have made a great deal of progress over the last month. We have been around the rohe a few times taking photographs of the various Crown blocks that are of significance to hapu. The blocks are of a wide range from old railway lands to dune lakes and remnant native bush lands. We have also mapped a lot of the Crown lands on our mapping data base which enables us to use them in many different applications.
The negotiation team also paid a visit to Te Papa last month whereby we were able to cite some of the Ngati Apa taonga held there. Thought needs to go into the potential for a significant taonga to be returned to Ngati Apa as part of the settlement process. More generally we need to be looking at the Antiquities Act and ensure that there protocols that reflect the mana whenua of Ngati Apa when taonga are found.
An issue arose regarding the collation of the Ngati Apa taonga held at Te Papa and that there was funding available for one of our own to do this. We will be following up on finding someone who could carry out such a project for us.
Forestry is seen as the key issue for our commercial redress. We have almost completed a report on Forestry which is a comprehensive analysis basically reflecting the importance of this for our commercial redress. We have learnt a great deal from the Te Arawa settlement which involved forestry and we are also looking at synergies with our Kurahaupo relations.
Registrations keep on rolling in. Currently we are just over the 3900 mark and so hopefully we will reach the 4000 mark soon.