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  • The Waikato River is an important New Zealand waterway with a long history of people making claims to it, including Treaty of Waitangi claims by Māori for guardianship and ownership rights. The claims process has most recently culminated in Waikato-Tainui and the Crown signing a 2009 Deed of Settlement for the river. The 2009 deed establishes a new co-governance structure for the river, with equal Māori and Crown representation. However, what has also transpired from the agreement is the emergence of a new guard of Māori decision-makers who have challenged and displaced the traditional Kīngitanga (King Movement) leaders as the main power-brokers of the Waikato River. Before Waikato-Tainui's most recent river negotiators there were a number of other Waikato ancestors who contributed to strengthening the relationship between Waikato Māori and the Waikato River. Prominent Kīngitanga leaders such as Princess Te Puea Herangi, Sir Robert Mahuta, Te Arikinui (paramount chief) Te Atairangikaahu and successive Māori kings are recognized as mediating the relationship between Waikato Māori and the Waikato River.

  • 'We have always owned the water . . . we have never ceded our mana over the river to anyone', King Tuheitia Paki asserted in 2012. Prime Minister John Key disagreed: ‘King Tuheitia's claim that Maori have always owned New Zealand's water is just plain wrong'. So who does own the water in New Zealand – if anyone – and why does it matter? Offering some human context around that fraught question, Tupuna Awa looks at the people and politics of the Waikato River. For iwi and hapu of the lands that border its 425-kilometre length, the Waikato River is an ancestor, a taonga and a source of mauri, lying at the heart of identity and chiefly power. It is also subject to governing oversight by the Crown and intersected by hydro-stations managed by state-owned power companies: a situation rife with complexity and subject to shifting and subtle power dynamics. Marama Muru-Lanning explains how Maori of the region, the Crown and Mighty River Power have talked about the ownership, guardianship and stakeholders of the river. By examining the debates over water in one New Zealand river, over a single recent period, Muru-Lanning provides a powerful lens through which to view modern iwi politics, debates over water ownership, and contests for power between Maori and the state.

Last update from database: 10/24/26, 4:11 AM (UTC)