The Pākaitore occupation

Pākaitore, beside the Whanganui River in what is now Whanganui city, was used by Whanganui iwi and hapū in the 1800s as a trading place; Te Ara notes that the land had once hosted a thriving market. In May 1840 Edward Jerningham Wakefield bought 40,000 acres for the New Zealand Company from 27 chiefs in exchange for goods worth £700, and many Māori disputed the terms of the sale. In May 1848 the government effectively repurchased the Whanganui block, paying £1,000 for 34,911 hectares, of which 2,200 hectares were reserved for Māori. Whanganui Māori later maintained that Pākaitore, the site of a pā and a traditional place for trade, had been set aside from the purchase; the city denied this. The site became a public park named Moutoa Gardens, after a battle at Moutoa Island in May 1864 in which lower-river Māori defeated upriver Pai Mārire supporters who were advancing on the town. A monument there honoured those who fell 'in defence of law and order against fanaticism and barbarism'.

At the heart of the protest was the Whanganui tribes' claim to the river itself. Te Ara describes that claim as the longest-running legal case in New Zealand history, beginning with petitions and court action in the 1930s. In the 1970s the Tongariro Power Diversion took water that would have flowed into the Whanganui River and diverted it into the Tongariro power scheme. The Whanganui River Māori Trust Board, set up in 1988, lodged a claim with the Waitangi Tribunal in 1993 asking that the riverbed be returned to the Whanganui people. In the same year Whanganui people occupied a Department of Conservation hut at Tīeke, in the middle reaches of the river. In 1995, in Te Ara's words, 'concern widened to issues of land and especially to Pākaitore'.

On 28 February 1995 Whanganui Māori and supporters occupied Pākaitore, the site of the Whanganui courthouse, to show their frustration over the lack of progress towards a settlement of their river claims. Te Ara records that young and old alike saw the occupation as a way to restore the mana of the Whanganui people. Wikipedia names Ken Mair, Tariana Turia, Henry Bennett, Niko Tangaroa and Matiu Mareikura as Māori leaders of the occupation. It split the town and public opinion, drew significant attention from police, and regularly made national news. The occupiers were given a deadline of 5 p.m. on 31 March to leave, and stayed on. A statue of the former premier John Ballance in the gardens, which had been beheaded in 1993 and again in 1994, was removed in 1995, and a sculpture in the park was damaged during the occupation.

Pākaitore was one of several major protests about land and the treaty in the mid-1990s; NZHistory notes that Moutoa Gardens was occupied twice, and lists among others the occupation of Takahue school in Northland and an attack on the lone pine on One Tree Hill. Many of these protests responded to the government's proposal to cap the value of treaty settlements, the so-called fiscal envelope. The sources describe the cap differently: Te Ara's history of the tribunal dates the policy to 1994 (its history of Māori protest says it was announced in 1995) and says it set a maximum of $1 billion for all past and future historical claims, with no transfer of state-owned natural resources or conservation land; NZHistory describes a limit of $1 billion over 10 years. Māori protested at a series of consultation hui in 1995, and Te Ara notes that the $1 billion figure was seen as entirely arbitrary. In NZHistory's account the hui showed the breadth and depth of Māori rejection of a limit set before the extent of claims was fully known, and much of the policy package, especially the cap, was dropped.

The occupiers remained at Pākaitore until 18 May 1995, 79 days in all, and the occupation was resolved peaceably. A tripartite agreement between iwi, government and local government was signed afterwards, and the Pākaitore Trust was set up to manage the courthouse and surrounding land. In March 2007 a deed of settlement returned ownership of the courthouse and the land on which it stands to the Whanganui people, vested in the Pākaitore Trust on their behalf, with the Ministry of Justice paying rent to the trust for the courthouse. The tribunal reported on the Whanganui River claim in 1999, a river settlement was signed on 4 August 2014, and in 2017 the river was recognised in law as a living being with legal personhood. In December 2023, at the request of Whanganui iwi, the Pākaitore Historic Reserve Board agreed to remove the Moutoa monument and relocate it where the events of the battle could be explained and put into context.