Message from the Chair

Aubrey Te Tokawhakaea Tēmara

I am honoured to be re elected Chairman for another term in 2009. I have been chairman since 1996. In that time the Board has seen a lot of changes. In May 2009 our long standing Secretary announced his impending retirement. We appointed our first full time manager and set up new offices to handle the challenges of a ‘new’ environment that would take us into a post settlement era.

 

The Tūhoe-Waikaremoana Māori Trust Board is Tūhoe’s oldest governance board. We started as just the Tūhoe Trust Board. The Government in 1920/21 took land in Te Urewera from land owners to build roads. As has been Tūhoe experience with government, the land was taken but the roads were never built.

 

In 1958 the government paid just $200,000 thousand in compensation. Through the careful management by our forefathers that $200,000 has grown to over $10 million today. The beneficiaries are the descendants of the original land owners who had their land taken for the roads that were not built.

 

The Trust expanded in 1971 to become the Tūhoe-Waikaremoana Māori Trust Board when Government sought to take Lake Waikaremoana and Tūhoe owners said no! Tūhoe owns ⅔ of the lakebed. Ngāti Kahungunu owns the balance.

 

The Trust has always focussed on education and has made hundreds of grants to the children of beneficiaries for their education, sport and recreation and as well to our many marae.

 

In recent years the Board oversaw Waitangi Tribunal Claim WAI 36, first lodged by Dr. Te Wharehuia Milroy and later joined by current board member Tamaroa Nikora. The Tribunal has decided to issue its report in stages releasing Part 1 (only) to assist the Crown and Tūhoe in their negotiations to settle all Tūhoe claims. The first report completely upholds Tūhoe’s wider claims in so far as mana motuhake is concerned and also finds, as Tūhoe have always said, that confiscations of Tūhoe land were unjustified and illegal.

 

We realise that our beneficiaries now live across the country and around the world. This website is a way for us to communicate and to be accountable to all our beneficiaries.

 

I urge all beneficiaries to become involved in your Trust by:

The Board seeks, not just to grow and manage your assets, but to actively support Tūhoe culture and language. The Board is working to encourage and support unified relationships between Tūhoe mandated representatives to settle all Tūhoe Claims and to establish the post settlement structure of Ngāi Tūhoe.