Coming Together as Kurahaupo Who are the Claimants ? The Settlement Process What Are the Grievances? From the outset the Crown refused to acknowledge that the Kurahaupo Iwi retained customary rights in the land. Instead they purported to purchase the entire northern South Island from Ngati Toa chiefs residing at Porirua. In the end the Crown was forced to recognise the rights of the resident Kurahaupo Iwi in three land transactions - two in 1856 and one in 1860. But this recognition was mean spirited at best. Payment for the land was derisory. Promised reserves were not set aside, and those provided were pitifully small fragments located on poor isolated land often subject to flooding. By the end of the nineteenth century most of the Kurahaupo people were landless and had become economically and socially marginalised. Crown officials freely admitted that the people were landless as a result of earlier Crown actions, but their only attempt to ameliorate the situation - by way of grants to "landless natives" - was little more than a cruel hoax. The land set aside was so remote as to be impossible to utilise for any agricultural or horticultural purposes. The position of the Kurahaupo people was further exacerbated in the 1880's and 1890's by the failure of the Native Land Court to recognise Kurahaupo customary interests in a number of large reserves set aside by the New Zealand Company and the Crown in a series of pre-1856 transactions with the Taranaki/Kawhia Iwi. Even though the Crown had signed land deeds with all three Kurahaupo Iwi, the Native Land Court persisted in later denying legitimate customary Kurahaupo rights on the basis that they were a defeated "slave" tribe without rights. This stigma was added to the already heavy burden of poverty. In the meantime the application of European succession laws resulted in the massive fragmentation of such land as remained in Kurahaupo ownership in the twentieth century. Shares soon became hopelessly uneconomic, and many were simply appropriated by the Maori Trustee or acquired piecemeal by the Crown and third parties. A detailed Claim Summary, which defines the claim grievance, and Claimant Definition, which identifies whom Kurahaupo represents, can be viewed by clicking here