South Island Māori landowners to get more than 3000 hectares returned by Crown

*This story has been updated to include additional comments and details

Māori landowners at the top of the South Island will have more than 3000 hectares returned to them in a landmark agreement with the Crown.

In the 1830s Māori in Te Tauihu were promised that if they sold 151,100 acres of land to the New Zealand Company they would be able to keep one tenth. They instead received fewer than 3000 acres.

The agreement to reserve the land was in part-payment for the company's purchase of the land.

A Crown grant issued in 1845, known as the Spain Award, stated a tenth of all land used for the Nelson settlement, plus pā, wāhi tapu, urupā and cultivations owned by the whānau and hapū, would be reserved by the Crown in a trust for the customary owners, but this did not happen.

In 2017 the Supreme Court ruled that the government must honour the deal made during European settlement of the region but efforts to resolve the case outside court since had been unsuccessful.

In Wellington on Wednesday, Attorney-General Judith Collins and Conservation Minister Tama Potaka announced that an agreement had been reached.

Under the agreement, 3068 hectares will be returned to descendants of the original owners, including the Kaiteriteri Recreation Reserve and part of the Abel Tasman Great Walk.

The agreement also includes a $420 million compensation payment to recognise land that has been sold by the Crown since 1839 and in recognition of the lost earnings and land use.

Collins said the agreement differed from Treaty settlements, which settled historical claims concerning breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi and its principles.

"In this case, we are simply returning land to its rightful and legal owners," she said.

"The Crown failed to keep its side of the deal but in 2017 the Supreme Court ruled it had a legal duty to the original owners. In 2024 the High Court confirmed that the land, in parts of Nelson, Tasman and Golden Bay, had been held on trust by the Crown and that it had always belonged to descendants of its original owners."

Collins said she felt reaching an agreement with the customary landowners was the right thing to do and the signing of the agreement had been emotional occassion, because it was about correcting an injustice.

"The law was very clear from the High Court case, I agreed with it and I thought, would this make a difference if these people were Māori, or if they're Pākehā, or if they're anyone else? The answer is it shouldn't be any different."

"Of course the government could have continued to fight, we could have moved from High Court to the Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court, we could have gone to legislation, could have done a lot of things but it seemed to me the right thing to do was what I would hope that every other New Zealander would expect if their land was held in trust and the trustee had just used it as their own."

Collins said she felt reaching an agreement with the customary landowners was the right thing to do and the signing of the agreement had been emotional occassion, because it was about correcting an injustice.

"The law was very clear from the High Court case, I agreed with it and I thought, would this make a difference if these people were Māori, or if they're Pākehā, or if they're anyone else? The answer is it shouldn't be any different."

"Of course the government could have continued to fight, we could have moved from High Court to the Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court, we could have gone to legislation, could have done a lot of things but it seemed to me the right thing to do was what I would hope that every other New Zealander would expect if their land was held in trust and the trustee had just used it as their own."

Collins said when the New Zealand Company went into liquidation in the 1850s, the Crown took over its responsibilites and ended up taking the assets without any of the liabilities.

She said the land in question had been specifically excluded from previous Treaty of Waitangi claims and she was not concerned about the case setting a precedent, nor was she aware of any similar claims elsewhere in New Zealand.

Collins said the $420m in compensation was a far smaller amount than the figure of between $4.4 and $6 billion sought by the trust for land that had been sold off, but both parties were happy with the deal.

"What's really clear is that the land itself was never ours...it was clearly held in trust and trust law is very clear. If trustees take the beneficiary's land and then use it as their own, they're in deep trouble and actually the Crown needed to fix this and so we have."

The case was first brought against the Crown by Kaumātua Rore Stafford in 2010.

He took legal action on behalf of ngā uri, the descendants of the tūpuna named in the 1893 Native Land Court list and the descendants of specific Kurahaupō tūpuna.

Agreement reached over public access

The Crown and the owners, descendants of Te Tauihu Māori, have agreed to allow continued public access to land currently used by the government agencies.

Potaka said the Department of Conservation had worked with the owners to ensure ongoing public access.

"The Abel Tasman Great Walk, the Kaiteriteri Recreation Reserve and wider conservation areas will remain open, with all bookings and access continuing as normal," he said.

"Visitors, tourism operators, and local communities can be assured there will be no immediate changes to access or day-to-day use."

Potaka said both parties were mindful of the need to balance legal ownership with how the land is currently being used and the desire for certainty.

"Everyone acknowledges that the Great Walk and reserve are important sites, much loved by locals and visitors and that they are of deep significance to the original owners, local business operators and future generations," he said.

Private property is not affected by the agreement. The Crown had been using some of the affected land for roads, schools and conservation purposes and the agreement transfers the land back to its rightful owners but allows the Crown to lease some of the land currently being used for important public purposes.

PM thanks customary owners for patience and pragmatism

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said he acknowledged the impact on the customary landowners, who had not had the use of their land for many generations.

He thanked those representing the customary landowners for their patience, for their pragmatism, and working towards this resolution.

"I want to thank our Attorney-General Judith Collins, for her leadership, our coalition partners who recognised, alongside National, the need to resolve this and I also say thank you to our team and our negotiators who worked incredibly hard on both sides to bring us to this day."

Luxon said some of the land being returned included places cherished by New Zealanders.

"Visitors have long been driven to the tracks, the huts, the beaches and the bays in the area and by maintaining public access, it will remain a taonga up in which to build a base so that the trust and associated businesses, the environment and the region will flourish."

Te Here-ā-Nuku (Making the Tenths Whole) project lead Kerensa Johnston said the agreement marked the end of more than a decade of litigation.

She said the original landowners remained short of the land they were due under the deal struck with the New Zealand Company, as some of it had passed into private ownership since 1839.

"What we see here today which is hugely positive for our region, is the recognition of court proceedings that have been underway for almost 16 years and the return of the trust property that remains with the Crown that it has been holding as trust for us over that time."

Johnston said it was the leadership of the Attorney-General and other ministers who had held firm to the rule of law and the private property rights inherent in the case, that had made reaching an agreement possible.

The case had otherwise been scheduled to be heard again in the Court of Appeal next April.

Johnston said the High Court had provided clear guidance last October that the case needed to be resolved, instead of continuing with protracted and costly litigation.

She said the trust would be working to ensure a seamless transition of ownership.

"These are places that we know and love very much as the customary owners and we know that our community and the broader region does too. So that's been an absolutely critical principle as we've moved through the negotiations over the last few months.

"Certainly over the summer and the coming years, there'll be no changes to those sorts of access and use issues and we are now entering into a long-term relationship with DOC, which absolutely ensures that public access to [the Abel Tasman Great Walk and the Kaiteretiri Recreation Reserve] is in place for a period of 25 years."

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.