Who can submit a claim?
Any Māori person can submit a claim to the Waitangi Tribunal. They can be an individual, or represent a group, hapū or iwi. A claim must allege that a particular law, policy, action or inaction by the Crown breached the Treaty of Waitangi, and that Māori have suffered prejudice (harmful effects) as a result.
Claimants usually employ lawyers to help prepare their claims and present evidence, and often qualify for legal aid to meet those costs.
Researching a claim
Once a claim was accepted by the Waitangi Tribunal, tribunal staff decided what research would be necessary to fully investigate it. That research was likely to include the traditional history of the claimants’ iwi, hapū or whānau (and in district inquiries, their tribal rohe ), and surviving oral traditions about the impact of Crown actions and their prejudicial effects on claimants. Research was carried out by the tribunal itself and by the claimants. Some claimants could apply to fund their research through the Crown Forestry Rental Trust (which collected fees from Crown-licensed forestry land which might be returned to claimants). The Crown also commissioned research into claims.
The books
Research for Waitangi Tribunal claims was carried out by tribunal staff, claimants and independent researchers. Much of this research was detailed and complex, and resulted in discoveries or new interpretations of New Zealand’s race-relations history. Books partly based on tribunal research include: Encircled lands: Te Urewera, 1820–1921, by Judith Binney; The beating heart: a political and socio-economic history of Te Arawa, by Vincent O’Malley and David Armstrong; This is my place: Hauraki contested 1769–1875, by Paul Monin; The great war for New Zealand: Waikato 1800–2000, by Vincent O’Malley; and An unsettled history: treaty claims in New Zealand today,by Alan Ward.
Written and oral evidence
The resulting research was part of a wide range of evidential material, including claimant briefs (statements of evidence), archival material, and technical reports written by professional historians. The latter were publicly available, often of great historical value and in some cases published as books. However, the tribunal also welcomed evidence in the form of eyewitness accounts of historical events, visual demonstrations of places and their significance, kōrero tuku iho , and mōteatea and waiata. At times the Crown also delivered some of its evidence in oral form, for example through the testimony of former and current public servants.
Research casebook
Since 1996 the full body of research prepared for a particular inquiry has been incorporated into a casebook that formed the basis of the evidence for the tribunal’s hearings into those claims. The casebooks from tribunal inquiries over many years amount to a comprehensive study of land loss or alienation and other forms of Pākehā–Māori interaction since 1840. It is likely that no comparable country has so fully researched its colonial history as has New Zealand through the tribunal inquiry process.